My name is Geoff Simmons and I am standing for The Opportunities Party in the Mount Albert by-election. As an economist I have 15 years experience advising governments, offering real solutions to our long-term problems.
I decided to enter politics because I was tired of being told by politicians that these solutions would work but people would never vote for them. Instead, career politicians prefer to promise the world, but don’t deliver much change because they are afraid of losing their jobs.
So the question is whether you actually want to live in a fair, prosperous society? If so, here’s three reasons to vote for me in the Mount Albert by-election on Saturday:
1/ I’m not currently in Parliament. Jacinda Ardern and Julie Anne Genter are both capable MPs but they are already in Parliament. A vote for Jacinda for example would result in Raymond Huo entering Parliament as a List MP. Who are you really voting for? A vote for me would ensure that Mount Albert had 3 MPs representing your interests for the price of 1.
2/ I’m the only one willing to work with the current government to improve things for the people of this electorate. Neither Jacinda nor Julie Anne are prepared to work with National – they are completely focused on changing the government. This means that the interests of people in this electorate will continue to be ignored. National haven’t even stood a candidate so they don’t care about you either – in election year they are too scared to talk about issues like housing affordability and the infrastructure straining to deal with rampant population growth.
3/ The Opportunities Party is the only party that can deal with the issues that we are facing as an electorate, such as housing affordability. By closing tax loopholes we can stabilise house prices, returning to affordable housing within 15 years. No other party has a realistic plan to achieve this. We would use this tax revenue to cut income tax by a third, making 80% of people better off. Once speculation on land and housing is stopped, there would be no incentive for land banking and we would see increased building as a result. We are a rich country, we can afford to house everyone and look after the environment if we don’t throw all our money into housing speculation. We would also see more investment going into businesses creating well-paid jobs and exports, rather than speculating on land and housing.
A vote for The Opportunities Party is a vote for business with heart, but certainly not business as usual.
Geoff, what other Chairman Mau policies does the Uber wealthy Gareth Morgan wish to inflict upon us. Cat eradication, then what bugs eating crops? I’m sorry to bring this up but why do wealthy people seem to think they have life sussed and then think we have to agree with them?
Thing is that kind of arrogance can lead a party like yours in some strange directions. Colin Craig is no longer alone.
At least he’s putting his money where his mouth is which is frankly more than could be said for other wealthy types who prefer the status quo.
I don’t care if its his money, at the moment, I have a mistrust of wealthy men who think they know better than the rest of us and have the money to force their warped opinions upon us.
You don’t think it will stop at cats do you?
Sorry Geoff, what is taught as economics in schools and universities is a complete travesty of the original Greek term. Indeed, the entire economic system is not only based on fraudulently created money but also uses phony measures (such as GDP) to measure ‘progress, prosperity and welfare’.
‘As an economist I have 15 years experience advising governments, offering real solutions to our long-term problems.’
Well, actually there are no ‘solutions to our long term ‘problems’ because they are not ‘long term problems’. We are now very deep in an unsolvable predicament which is largely a consequence of the meddling of economists using phony indexes and promoting the rapid looting a polluting of the planet by industrial civilization.
The only ‘solution’ to the predicament is to shut down industrial civilization rather quickly. And no politician or candidate is EVER going to propose or promote the ONLY solution to our predicament. Therefore, everything will continue to be made worse until the system collapses.
Whether it will abrupt climate change or the peaking of global net energy that will terminate the current economic system is still open to debate.
I am of the opinion that it will be the peaking and decline of the global liquid fuel supply that will demolish current economic arrangements over the next few years, commencing 2017 if you accept Gail Tverberg’s analysis, and commencing 2018 if you accept HSBC’s analysis.
‘So the question is whether you actually want to live in a fair, prosperous society?’
Financial prosperity is a product of the ability of a nation to print money and acquire and burn fossil fuels.
Environmental and social prosperity are products of NOT printing money and NOT extracting and burning fossil fuels.
Financial prosperity and environmental-social prosperity are therefore mutually exclusive concepts: you can have one or the other but not both.
There are many different schools of economic theory, many of which are in total opposition of the others’, so I am not sure which homogenous ‘economic’ theory you are referring to.
Attempting to find market solutions to non-market problems such as global warming is destined to be inefficient at best, and ineffective at worst. Housing and banking on the other hand require protections that work in the interests of society (such as credit and debt regulation) , and a lot of heterodox economic models advocate for this. Joining social and environmental prosperity is bizarre, as there is no shortage of market solutions to social welfare.
Anyone willing to work with the most corrupt government to date loses my vote.
The housing crisis will not be fixed until we stop overseas investors, stop speculators competing with first home buyers by imposing a capital gains tax, increase deposits required for investors and speculators to 40% stop selling State houses and stop taking in immigrants until we can house those in our country living in cars and garages.
This is not racist. It is what other countries do. It is common sense.
My money however is on a housing crash which will see housing values plummet up to 30%-40% as they have in the past. The catalyst maybe an increase in interest rates which is happening in the States and if rises continue then this means a lot of misery for home owners who end up owing more to the bank than what the property is worth. Banks will no doubt start their predatory ‘calling in’ of loans or forcing mortgagee auctions.
Tax cuts will not do a thing for the most horrendous housing situation ever in the history of this country.
A 15% capital gains tax will see speculators “laughing all the way to the bank” with 85% of their ill gotten gains.
Indeed, Mike.
As I’ve written elsewhere, it is my belief that a Capital Gains Tax should be the same as Company Tax (currently 28%). Even that allows the speculator/investor to retain 72% of their gains).
Otherwise speculators have a distinct advantage over companies that actually create widgets/services and add to the economy by providing jobs.
Capital gains tax is more complicated than that. Say you buy a property for $100,000 and it rises to $200,000 in a year. You pay $28,000 (but “keep” $72,000). You don’t sell, but decide to ride it out for another year. The next year the price drops by $50,000 so you pay no CGT this time. The next year it rises again to $200,000 and you pay $14,000 in CGT. Now you have paid $42,000 in tax on your property and it’s STILL worth $200,000 – repeat this a few times, and you can easily find that you have paid more in tax than the entire property was ever worth.
The idea of CGT only works as long as the prices keep rising (which they won’t) and never drop (which they will). This is why a modest CGT is actually more effective than you think because it greatly increases long-term risk vs reward over the longer term.
There are of course potential kludges that can be added to the CGT system to address this – e.g. when the price drops that you can write off the “loss” as a tax deduction, but imo that really starts to mitigate the whole point of the CGT in the first place.
It might not be racist, but I haven’t heard of other countries solving homelessness by stopping immigration. Can you name one?
Our housing crisis is the result of our housing policies and inequality. Stop blaming immigrants. It’s illogical. Blaming immigrants makes the wealthy elite happy because you’re blaming other victims.
Maybe you are confusing immigrants like say Thiel with refugees who are victims.
Clearly in my post I do not blame immigrants but it is senseless to keep on increasing immigrant numbers when we cannot offer them housing, jobs and hope for a better life at the expense of our own citizens.
I am an immigrant myself from a different era one in which I was given an equal opportunity alongside other NZer’s to a free education , employment and a decent standard of living. Sadly today, immigrants from poorer countries face bleak futures here due to our own impoverished population with limited access to housing, jobs and a livable wage.
Many countries have policies that restrict or forbid foreigners from owning property which protects their citizens from the investor/speculation ponzi markets they create.
This has happened in NZ and especially Auckland where unprecedented rises in house values up more than 100% on 2008 values and driven by the huge amount purchased for property investors results in reduced stock , unaffordable homes
and rents which can be as much as a weekly wage .
Around 1/3rd of the rent is paid via govt subsidies to these private landlords by the taxpayer. These are a couple of reasons why our country is impoverished and why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
“Maybe you are confusing immigrants like say Thiel with refugees who are victims.”
No, I know what an immigrant is. Our housing crisis is due to housing policies over the last 30+ years.
“I am an immigrant myself from a different era one in which I was given an equal opportunity alongside other NZer’s to a free education , employment and a decent standard of living.”
Yes, when we had good housing policies we housed kiwis and immigrants. We can do it again, easy. We just have to focus the blame on those that caused this mess, and the policies they promote.
“Many countries have policies that restrict or forbid foreigners from owning property which protects their citizens from the investor/speculation ponzi markets they create.”
Which countries? Has this solved their housing crisis? No.
We can learn some good policy ideas from some countries, such as Germany… But they also let in a lot of immigrants
A vote for you could mean Mount Albert gets three MPs for the price of four.
I think you are very optimistic thinking working with National will improve things for ALL the people of this electorate. National have shown a willingness to work ensure those who don’t vote for it are left behind.
And that gives rise to the widely held suspicions that your party will be a replacement for Peter Dunne and are comfortable with the God awful National Party.
But thanks for spelling that out, we are left in no doubt now!
Reasons 2 & 3 juxtapose each other unless by closing tax loopholes you mean cutting taxes on the rich so the loophole is the norm – as stated by John Minto
“When it was pointed out that many of the wealthy were using family trusts (tax rate 33c) to avoid paying the top tax rate (39c) the John Key government “closed the loophole” by reducing the top income tax rate to the family tax rate!!!”
I guess you’re trying to reach out to National voters but I don’t know, you’re policies thus far seem far more to the left (which is a good thing) than right wing. (The term right wing nowadays is referring to helping out giant corporations that screw us over instead of the smaller business you actually seem to care about).
I actually legit hope you win this but don’t work with National or any other party, just work with policies. Should Marama Davidson give a bad policy or Bennett a good policy (both things which will never occur), you should be able to decide for yourself what is what.
This quote is a complete nonsense parties do work across party lines when party policies are support of whatever National is doing. do you really think they are going to listen to you and your one tiddly vote unless of course like Dunne you are flopping all over the show.
Mostly of course what National are doing is stomping on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. The very fact that they gave tax cuts to the richest in our aotearoa says they give preference to business and the rich wankers.
Yep, I think the Maori Party gave us that bullshit quote too.
Kudo to ‘the daily blog’ for giving TOP party a say.
+1
+1
Lol. Good luck with that! Your party had a good first policy, but the rest have been average.
Where’s your UBI? The Morgan Foundation spent many years talking about it, but then you turn up empty handed.
“Big thinking on the UBI is not for the fainthearted (or weak headed)”
You should recognise that quote – it comes from your website
TOP seems to have one solution to all problems… Just tweak the tax settings and the market will rationally modify it’s behaviour… Someone else got my vote yesterday
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