Here's my Top 10 items from around the Internet over the last week or so. As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
See all previous Top 10s here.
My must read is #9 on the rise of the robots.
1. Women of Algiers - The astonishing record-high price fetched by Picasso's Women of Algiers recently has got people thinking about where all the money being printed is being pumped.
All sorts of hard assets, property and stocks are inflating in value as people look for places to put it.
The art world is a beneficiary.
The art world, though, seems to think it's real and sustainable.
Here's the thinking via WSJ:
“Art likes to move around the world, but the scale is so much bigger now,” said Ed Dolman, chairman and chief executive of boutique auctioneer Phillips. “We’re talking an incredible orgy of spending, and it feels like a total transformation.”
2. So where is the money coming from? - Here's an indication via the same WSJ article:
Asian collectors played a key role in this latest round. David Norman, a four-decade veteran specialist at Sotheby’s, said a handful of Asian collectors—including Chinese movie mogul Wang Zhongjun and business tycoon Wang Jianlin—accounted for a third of the spending at his house’s $368 million Impressionist and modern art sale on May 5.
3. The cash supply is enormous - The extraordinary money supply growth seen in China between 2009 and 2012 has ended up in bank accounts in China and the numbers are astonishing -- about US$17 trillion.
It's been quite hard to get that money out of China, but it is starting to move now, either overseas as the authorities ease the restrictions on capital outflows, or into Chinese stocks now that apartment prices have started falling under the weight of over-supply.
These two charts tell the story. The first is Chinese term deposits. The second shows capital outflows from China and China's stock market.
4. So where are some of those outflows going? - Australian property, it seems, going by this chart courtesy of Business Insider's Alan Kohler.
No wonder the Government here is starting to rethink it's view that foreign buying is not much of a factor here.
5. Show us the ghosts now - Remember all those Chinese ghost cities? WSJ has gone back to have a look at a few. What it found was fascinating. Some are coming to life (sort of).
When a ghost starts taking on corporeal aspects, but still isn’t exactly alive, what is it?
That state of in-between horror is what some of China’s ghost cities are experiencing as they morph, Benjamin Button-like, into something more vital. Some, like Henan province’s Zhengzhou, have evolved into fully functioning cities, having passed seemingly unscarred through the trauma of a premature after-life. Others, however, still look as though they will never grow up to be a real boy.
That seems to be fate of new Tieling city, about an hour’s drive north of Shenyang in northeast China. Old Tieling is a city of about 340,000. Plans for a new Tieling were launched by the local government in 2005. When the Wall Street Journal visited in early 2013, it was the model of a ghost city.
Two years later, the city is starting to look more lively.
6. Why are some people so relaxed about the new LVR restrictions on Auckland property investors? - This Reserve Bank chart out this week (see below) shows that there was NZ$16.3 billion lent to rental property investors nationwide in the last eight months alone, which is when the Reserve Bank started collecting the data. The bank effectively banned this type of lending in Auckland last week. We don't know the Auckland vs the Rest breakdown, but it would have to be around the 50% mark, so that would suck NZ$8 billion or so out of the 'demand' in Auckland over the next eight months.
This chart shows rental property investor borrowing by LVR type. The red bits were just banned.
7. Ban the deflators? - The likes of Uber and Air BnB are unleashing a revolution where the services provided by people and hard assets are turned into software that can be appified and put into the cloud, all the while reducing prices.
The reaction in some places is to try to ban them. Here's the latest in Santa Monica where the local council trying to ban peer to peer short term rentals.
8. The end of life - I'm a big fan of Atul Gawande, who is asking some hard but necessary questions about medical interventions to prolong life and 'solve' many other problems.
Here's a piece in the New Yorker he has written:
It was lunchtime before my afternoon surgery clinic, which meant that I was at my desk, eating a ham-and-cheese sandwich and clicking through medical articles. Among those which caught my eye: a British case report on the first 3-D-printed hip implanted in a human being, a Canadian analysis of the rising volume of emergency-room visits by children who have ingested magnets, and a Colorado study finding that the percentage of fatal motor-vehicle accidents involving marijuana had doubled since its commercial distribution became legal. The one that got me thinking, however, was a study of more than a million Medicare patients. It suggested that a huge proportion had received care that was simply a waste.
9. Here come the Luddites (again) - The LA Times has written a nicely sceptical alternative view of the growing concerns about robots taking away the jobs.
Here's a taste:
It's a scary story. But, first of all, it's not new. Second, although robots are “coming for” some jobs, that fact does not explain the current economic situation. Robots are a distraction from very real problems.
On the first point, concerns about machines creating mass unemployment date back centuries. The term “Luddite” refers to textile workers in the early 19th century who smashed the machines that threatened to make their skills redundant. When I was young, Kurt Vonnegut's “Player Piano” was a must-read tale of a society in which machines did all the work and people were unnecessary. So we have seen this script many times before.
Turning to the evidence, if technology were rapidly displacing workers then productivity growth — the rate of increase in the value of goods and services produced in an hour of work — should be very high, because machines are more efficient. In the last decade, however, productivity growth has risen at a sluggish 1.4% annual rate. In the last two years it has limped along at a pace of less than 1% annually. By comparison, in the post-World War II “Golden Age,” from 1947 to 1973, productivity grew at an annual rate of almost 3%.
10. Totally Clarke and Dawe on childish tit for tat politics.
68 Comments
Re number 6 - quite a dramatic visual representation of what the effect of the new LVR policy is - thanks BH. The banks will be falling over themselves to lend to anyone with 30%+ equity. There are actually quite a few investors out there that fall into this camp. I think they may have a field day.
I'm one, but I won't be buying till prices fall to 3 times household income or 10% average yield. I don't need to take a loan and I won't till it makes good business. I dare say many others with the available cash (not housing equity) feel the same. It'll probably be quite along wait til the field day, so I'm busy investing in productive assets (needless to say, banks aren't interested in helping me with those...real businesses are too risky, apparently, even when they've made return on equity of several hundred percent in a year..)
Problem Solver
I'm sympathetic, but what if we're entering a deflationary or very low inflationary age because of new technology, the globalisation of services and ageing populations? Interest rates could stay way lower than we all expect for much longer. Then a 10% yield is a long, long way off (or maybe never). There's your conundrum. Meanwhile, your cash is earnings 2-3% or lower once the RBNZ cuts again.
cheers
Bernard
Bernard we will have low interest for a long time - Heres why
The Global Economy Simplified
I will go from the very beginning to the very end
Part 1 – The Money Supply
Let us start with a hypothetical small island, of say, 10,000 people.
The people are fishermen, farmers, shopkeepers and so on, all working for a living. But there is no money to get them started.
To get them started the government prints some money, free of interest. And to get that money circulating, the government builds roads, schools, hospitals.
Now we have money circulating in the economy.
For the economy to function properly there needs to be just the right amount of money in circulation.
Too much money, that is, more money than there are things to buy, and prices rise (inflation).
Not enough money and the shops cannot sell their stuff and so reduce prices (deflation).
So it is important to keep the right balance between the money supply and the amount of stuff for sale.
In this economy, to increase the money supply, the government prints money, interest free, and spends it into circulation.
To reduce the money supply the government taxes the people and destroys the money collected.
It should be noted that this Island is a closed shop. That is, it produces all its own needs and only imports what it cant produce itself.
Part 2 – Banking
The government on this Island sees governments all round the world handing over control of their economies to the banks and decides to do the same.
Now the banks control the amount of money in circulation, and so control the economy.
Banks control the money supply as follows.
When a person borrows money, the bank creates the money from nothing (just like the government used to do) but it charges interest on the money created. This loan increases the money supply.
When a loan is repaid the banks destroy the repaid money thus reducing the money supply.
If the government wants money to build roads, schools, hospitals it has to borrow from the banks and pay them interest.
The reason for this. If the government controls the economy by printing money they say that is communism and bad. If banks control the economy by printing money then that is capitalism and good.
As can be seen banks have an incentive to create as many loans as possible. They are getting money for nothing. The more loans they create the more money they make in interest.
Banks are now creating as many loans as possible and causing constant inflation. This is because banks care more about their profits than the economy. And, as they are unelected people controlling our economy, we (the people), cant stop them
To control the banks the government give Central banks the power to control interest rates. This is called the OCR (Official Cash Rate).
Central bank = Reserve Bank of NZ or the Bank of England and the FED in America.
When the Central bank sees inflation it puts up the OCR and when it sees deflation it lowers the OCR.
We now have the “Business Cycle”
The “Business Cycle” is the period between low and high interest rates.
Part 3 – Central banks loss of control and the road to world government
As we saw in part 1 an economy has to be balanced between the goods and services for sale, and the amount of money available to purchase those goods and services.
Now imagine the Island of 10,000 in Part 1.
They can create enough of their own currency to purchase all of the goods and services that the Island produces.
Now the government decides they need to go global. So they open their doors to world trade.
The Island is swamped with goods from all over the world. It now becomes impossible for the Island to balance its economy. There is just too much stuff for sale.
The people borrow and spend. Debt goes through the roof. But still, as expected, there is no inflation. As fast as we buy stuff the world produces more.
Prices are permanently low. We hear more talk about deflation and how bad it is.
Central banks become impotent. They cannot increase the OCR. Interest rates at record lows.
All because there is more stuff for sale than each country, individually, can purchase.
The answer is simple.
If we look at the world as one country, with one currency, and one market, then we can get everything back in balance.
If we all used the US dollar as our currency we could fix the problem.
As we have seen in Europe, a common currency has to have complete central control of each members economy.
So we will all use the US dollar and have America set our budgets and we will all be just fine.
The TPP and TTIP is a big step towards American dominated world government
I dont agree with you here. Money is an IOU for work/energy, ie everything comes back to energy. Just for a moment consider that we have no been in huge trouble like this before because energy was cheap prior to 2005 and we could continue to grow and service that growing debt. When that growth faltered due to too expensive energy so did the financial system. Now the Q is what is going to do for us first, the gross financial mis-management effects or lack of growth due to lack of affordable energy.
cart or horse really, either way we will be in the poo.
and no we cant get everything back in balance ergo back to growth. That needs energy, or 1~2.5% more energy for every 4% growth...
I think peoples attitude to debt has changed alot in the last 30 years. I believe the banking system are to blame, they are greedy, they want constant lending growth. The mistake that was made was that in 2008 governments bailed them out. Government backing has made them forget about risk. "You can't let the banking system fail or your economy will fail" but this has created a monster. Creating a world full of easy credit has bogged us all down in debt, how can you get growth when the world is full of people bogged down in interest payments on their credit cards and high mortgages. People will happily borrow as much money as the banks will throw at them, which is often too much. Friends i grew up with are paying off their third house ( they worked there way up to the house they allways wanted.) now many people buy houses they can't really afford. A 20% deposit($160,000) on an $800,000 dollar house. The only way to keep the system going is to create easier and easier credit or find cashed up foreigners looking to get out of their country.
You have a good point here Mike B, and that is if you open up your economy to the world market you lose your own ability to control it through monetary policy. Hence hyperinflation in Auckland property. i.e raising interest rates here may make little difference if you let all this foreign money in.
please review you Part 1 - shop keepers (unlike the usual models) actually have a breakeven point. Some only sell on a 10 - 30% margin, especially if government has encouraged price competition (eg via cheap imports). At a certain point, which is not very far down, the shopkeepers _cannot_ reduce price.
Also not all the fishermen etc are paid equally. this makes an enormous difference to the model. (1) because it introduces a differentiation across the populous of rich and poor. (2) It creates a migration effect between rich and poor, (3) the rich tend to be those who have a way to manage or oversee their fellows... the management/oversee process is disconnected from the fishermen's (etc) expenses and success dynamic.
Please review your Part one, as these two simple and -unavoidable- processes have huge effect on your model and it's conclusions.
What if those 10,000 people sat down and discussed what they were trying to achieve as a community? How do we align the needs of the individual with the needs of the whole and vice versa?
Lets see now, we all need food, clean air and quality water. Shelter and clothing, while being optional have benefits re protection from the elements. How do we ensure that all members of the community have these needs met? Hmm, the environment provides all this, all we need to do is convert the environment into these needs. That seems like hard work, how about we all work together to achieve this? Hmm, if we take too much from the environment now won't that affect our children and future generations? That is very possible. We also need to work with nature, ensure it's health and regeneration is kept in balance. How about we only take what we need and allow/assist nature to keep providing.
Now that we've taken care of our physical needs, what else do we as humans need? Oh, I know, we need to feel loved, accepted and valued within our community. Hmm, that sounds much more difficult, how do we do this? I guess we need to have a certain attitude towards others. Maybe we consider every human is family? Maybe we could do unto others as we would like done unto us? How about we accept that just as I am different to others in some ways I am also the same as others in some ways, and because of this we are all equal in value?
Ok, after we've worked together to have the needs and wellbeing of everyone met we seem to have all this time on our hands. What do we do then? Do whatever you like as long as you don't harm others. Don't I need a list of rules of what constitutes harm, or a list of things I can and can't do? No, that would limit your freedom to make your own choices true to you. One must make mistakes in order to learn. How about as a community we agree to some ethical guidelines?
Maybe something like this: Care for the Earth, Care for People, Sharing.
That makes sense to me. Of course, many might argue - how do we pay for this? Or they might say "what about wealth and prosperity, how do we get that?"
#9 Robots - It is too simplistic just to look at productivity.
Here are some considerations
Have you seen this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
Secondly many manufactured products have achieved "Commoditization" (see below)
Third much of todays productivity increases are in the service industries which is much harder to measure productivity and were most of the jobs are.
Commoditization
In business literature, commoditization is defined as the process by which goods that have economic value and are distinguishable in terms of attributes (uniqueness or brand) end up becoming simple commodities in the eyes of the market or consumers. It is the movement of a market from differentiated to undifferentiated price competition and from monopolistic to perfect competition. Hence, the key effect of commoditization is that the pricing power of the manufacturer or brand owner is weakened: when products become more similar from a buyer's point of view, they will tend to buy the cheapest. This is not to be confused with commodification, which is a Marxist term for things being assigned economic value which they (according to Marxist theory) did not previously possess, by their being produced and presented for sale, as opposed to personal use.[
Here's another video which explores the subject and contains even more detail.
Indeed. What are the parameters in a capital (eg machine/robotic world)?
Previously scarce resources (who gets the house with the best view and the prime cut of meat gets the most competitive wife) was a strong contender for work = success, and clever work is better success.
But what do in when we have an over-population? Where available labour hours, and machine amplification make the real production of goods minimal.... or where financial instruments render the work-hour sale of most of the populations labour worthless.
Do the fruits go to the Committee? Do they go to the paper bankers? Government sycophants (that didn't work in Greece)?
What value is paper capital? Are the real resource holders (oil, water, sunlight, machine providers) actually worth anything?
Given that government bureaucracy is famously phenomenally bad at real world resource management would any sane person trust them to manage the assets fairly? And just who says what is fair? Is a sychophant with a disabled child get same or more resource allocation than professional service person or an exceedingly bright rural child? Do we force children to be locked into their parents roles? Who gets the nice travel holidays, and who gets to clear the effluent pipes?
Bankers/industralists dream. They have 100% of necessary labour, and 100% of the credit allocation (the amount that you can service from your income). because you can't work up the the required certification standard using your own competitive labour - everything must come from them. This gives them ALL the resources and all the capital. You go where you're told, do what you're directed because you are 100% replaceable at zero cost. This means you're freed up to do the server/service jobs while the robot owners and the bankers have all the holidays and fun that you can't afford.
that they bungled accounting for all these years. inspiring....
I'm just waiting for all those foreign/late-coming owners in Auckland to get 50-60% mortgages, post the cash home; a couple weeks later for the currency speculators across main and minor currencies who have been slowly but steadily building up positions in NZD to Sell off about 200,000 full units of NZD within the 24hrs.
I'm thinking that should move the international price of Auckland property...
If there are ten million Chinese who could buy a house in Auckland and the NZ government brings in a tax measure - like recording tax numbers - that makes half of them change their minds. Then there will be five million Chinese who could buy a house in Auckland. errrr. Only ?
Re. #4. So even though
a) The baby boomers are retiring and becoming net sellers of property according to Harry Dents predictions of doom gloom.
b) House price to income ratios are a staggering 10 to 11x
c) Gross rental yields are going below 3%
d) We're 6, perhaps 13 years into the most aggressive interest rate driven housing boom cycle in New Zealands history.
e) Wage growth is virtually absent and commodity prices are static if not deflating.
f) The Auckland market is being propped up by multi-decade record high net immigration.
Even in spite of all of that risk, gen X and Y Aucklanders are under enormous pressure to borrow as much money as they can just to compete with all the hot Chinese money that's flooding in. If at any point in the next 30 years interest rates spike for any reason, then many Kiwis (perhaps even myself if I can find an overpriced house to buy) will be financially ruined.
its not if interest rates rise but when, everything always moves in cycles, at the moment we are in a extended low interest rate period and people have been lulled into thinking it could stay the same way for another ten years. The FED wants to get to 4% by 2017, personally I think they will only get halfway, but that is still 2% more than now.
Regarding rate hikes - I just dont believe it! Follow the zerohedge / youtube chatter. They (usa) have a low and declining labour force participation, The official employment stats are fictitious. Retail stores like wallmart are closing all over the country. If they tighten, they'll be tightening into a recession. It seems more likely, as Jim Rickards predicts, that they'll start QE4 sometime early next year. Perhaps they'll call it something else. I mean look at their overall debt, what it it? like 17 trillion. They need low rates and inflation, not high rates and deflation.
Coming back to NZ, silly me I forgot the most important risk factor of all, our extremely high private debt to GDP ratio, which if you follow the writings of Steve Keen, will lead to a Minsky style debt deflationary crisis at some point, not while Chinese money keeps flooding in though.
Did some shopping the other day in a provincial town ( population 20,000 approx) . i could see 15 people looking down the long main street, eerily quiet. I think the dairy downturn is really starting to show. I wonder how many locals are maxxed out with credit card debt. It was benefit day as well!
What happened to small towns like Patea, Wairoa, waipawa, etc is now happening to the larger provincial cities such as gisborne, whangarei, Hastings, wanganui etc. Small to medium business is closing down and only the large corporates, agribusiness, schools etc keeping the places on life support.
Provincial towns economic health indicators
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=150346…
boomers _aren't_ selling. If anything their kids might be. The boomers who have property realise its value, and some might be reverse mortgaging but most are using Trusts or companies to manage the property.
Why sell if a couple of properties will keep paying modern rents? A lump sum isn't much good when you don't know what your future will be or for how long AND the rent paces inflation, where the lump sum is abated by it. So why sell?
And we all forget that Boomers will live an awful long time. Some assume that they'll all sell when they get to 65. But they're just starting to have fun. Many are still working. They could live in the big house with all the spare bedrooms (now turned into studies and offices and media rooms) until their 90s. Wouldn't you if you could? All the while leveraging up the equity in the house to spread across more rentals.
cheers
Bernard
74 now the end of middle age... so by this measure some people born later in the war years and all boomers are still middle aged!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11539573/Middle-age-now-lasts-un…
balance - Bernard - balance
The Beatles - When I'm 64 - This guy never made it - you even re-tweeted it
The problem with death is that it's so final. I know we had an enormously strong relationship but I miss being able to talk to you. We talked everyday. Then suddenly it stopped. I've even rung your old cellphone number a few times only to find it's disconnected now.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/columnists/68765188/Dear-D…
How many never make it?
Long life doesn't mean long healthy lives
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/68636928/personal-finance-health-…
It used to be different but Life begins at 60. But also there is the saying that growing old is no fun, but the alternative is worse.
Maybe your article (Casual Observer) is correct and with the increased years does not always mean more time with better health. But again what was the alternative. In the supposed ggod old days you lived healthy, then got a cough and died, all in the same week.
Be careful about what you seek.
It used to be different but Life now begins at 60. But also there is the saying that growing old is no fun, but the alternative is worse.
Maybe your article (Casual Observer) is correct and with the increased years does not always mean more time with better health. But again what was the alternative. In the supposed good old days you lived healthy, then got a cough and died, all in the same week.
Be careful about what you seek.
The theory is that the boomers will have had years of empty nests and when they're in their 75+ years (10 years post 65 retirement) they will settle down and want to downsize.
Considering older people tend to look backwards (towards favourable memories in the past) and thus hold on to their homes for as long as possible, as opposed to selling down to free up capital for the future...shows just where on the age scale the theory makers sit.
Bernard - what is going to happen when the wealthy people live on and on and on. Their children will be waiting forever for them to die and get their inheritance (Re Pickety)
Maybe we will be ruled by large multi gereational wealthy families.
And what will happen to the 1% when they live forever. They will lock others out of becomming wealthy.
Democracy is already dead. The dêmos are too stupid, ignorant, or both. 4 examples below. I'm sure you can add dozens more.
1. Voteforpolicies website in the UK revealed that when people were unaware of which policies were promoted by which party, they preferred the Greens and Labour by a significant margin. Conservatives were a distant 4th. The voters overwhelmingly voted for what they didn't want.
2. Congress members in the USA spend 30 - 70% of their time fund-raising.
3. Most Kiwis still think John Key can do no wrong.
4. Mike Hosking received the Sir Paul Holmes Broadcaster of the Year award. Jesus wept.
We're buggered.
I don't disagree with you. I wouldn't sell real estate either, unless I was buying. However Dent's predictions are based on empirical spending habit data which I presume is valid. I've been to a few open homes now where I've asked the agent why the vendor is selling, its often "oh they're retiring and liquidating one of their portfolio. In fact I looked at a unit in St Heliers a few weeks ago for over 800K. I figured out that the previous owner, who at one stage owned three of the four units, was an air hostess! ANyway the agent said she was funding a project up north. Why not? sell a crappy unit and buy a mansion up north then put solar panels on it - live the good life.
That being said, I assume many boomers wont leave Auckland because their kids live here.
If you let in money from controlled economies , it creates a need for a market correction. i.e house prices double, rents and wages don't? The other way to look at it is that the average worker is experiencing a massive reduction in the value of the dollar they are earning. Is chinese currency valued correctly? Is whats happening making a mockery of the value of our hard earned dollar? All we are seeing is a tranfer of assets to the people with the monopoly money. Aren't we better to hang on to the assets?, beacause the value of our currency is rapidly depleting. ( maybe welfare payments should double in line with Auckland property prices)
A new Chinese milk plant for Otorohanga - tempted Omnologo? ;-)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/68696398/chinese-t…
So much for a FTA our companies can only own 49% lease the land, but we let them come in and take control, I have no problem wit it as long as it is the same conditions for us, this spouting of we need to be an fully open economy will come back to bite us in ten to twenty years. And yes if our farm gets a better price for his milk I would say go for it even though deep down I know it would not be good for the country as a whole
A history lesson so close to home - and so quickly forgotten
The 1987 Fijian military coups
By 1987 the Indo-Fijian ethnic groups had reached 46% of the population and controlled 100% of the country's commerce and trade
background history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Fijian_coups_d%27%C3%A9tat#Background
again in 2006
2006 Fijian coup d'état
Fiji had seen four definitive coups in the past two decades. At the heart of the previous three of these lay the tensions between the ethnic Fijians and Indian Fijians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Fijian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
And it's happening in Malaysia
Not so long ago
There were riots and looting and arson of Chinese businesses in SE Asia
February 2014
Malaysia's ethnic tensions rise as its economy declines
http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Malaysias-ethni…
1998 Riots in Indonesia were economically driven and targeted Chinese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1998_riots_of_Indonesia
The Chinese get a lot of bad press with the anecdotal hoovering up of AKL property but what are the Indian immigrants doing. From a recent Interest article
http://www.interest.co.nz/property/75604/net-migration-hit-56800-april-…
"The biggest net gains of migrants in the April 2015 year were from India (12,200), China (7,800), the United Kingdom (4,600), and the Philippines (4,000). About three-quarters of migrants from India, and half of migrants from China, arrived on student visas"
Are we unfairly looking at just the Chinese based on what we see on the N Shore or do the Indian migrants just join the rental queues? Also if they come initially on a student visa how can they convert that to a full entry after completing a degree, probably often a BA or similar. Calling them Skilled Migrants with just a piece of paper and no real experience is surely taking the mickey.
Nope them too, Indians possibly hold large numbers of bottom end real estate that is being rented out. The Chinese are quite different given the totally different political system they come from and their motivation is very different.
ANY uncontrolled foreign ownership of housing is bad The govt needs to remove residential housing from the Investor category for potential immigrants, they added it in, they can take it out. I think this is very detrimental to NZers.
And yeah they can line up for the rentals just like kiwis have to
Some might agree if the verbal evidence of this dairy worker's employment experiences are irrefutable. A former dairy farm worker says he's given up on the industry because he can't find a decent boss.
and because of government policies they mostly all head to Auckland for jobs
why cant the government departments be moved to the provinces to help them grow and put money into their local economies
population
1 Auckland 1,527,100
2 Christchurch 362,000
3 Wellington 200,100
4 Hamilton 153,100
5 Dunedin 124,600
6 Tauranga 121,700
7 Lower Hutt 101,700
8 Palmerston North 84,300
9 Napier 60,100
10 Porirua 54,100
11 Invercargill 53,700
12 Nelson 49,300
13 Upper Hutt 41,800
I absolutely agree sharetrader, As a farmer we have to deal with city people in Nait. none of them would no the back end of a cow from the front. Why aren't these jobs in the provinces, where you are dealing with people who know about the industry they are in. They would do a much better job. And the provincial towns desperately need a boost.
Wishful thinking - probably too late
Auckland population of 1,527,000 outvotes the sum of all those other centres of 1,407,000
While the lever pullers allow a continued inflow of retail managers, restaurant workers, and taxi-drivers into the country to deposit themselves into Auckland the growing weight of voting numbers will continue the imbalance
Lay off them - they are very skilled the lot of them the way they increase the GDP in JK's great Ponzi scheme.Unless the great communicator can rustle up another earthquake or a massive drop in the $, we need those 2$ shops, flat whites, uber rides, and all their highly skilled workers. Oh and also immigrants to build houses for all the immigrants who are coming in to build houses for all the immigrants who are coming in to build .........(to infinite and beyond)
It is actually quite frightening to think of the Ponzi scheme collapsing with the rural industries struggling and the Christchurch rebuild plateauing. Lets hope we can send JK off to Hawaii in style before it collapses and tarnishes his amazing story line. Far better for a PM Collins to take the blame, she probably deserves it.
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