Helen Clark Foundation warns of political polarisation thanks to the Property Pimps
NZ is a Government of the Landlords, for the Landlords, ruling in the interests of Landlords.
The Helen Clark Foundation warns of political polarisation thanks to the Property Pimps…
‘Defining axis of social division’: How politics is feeding our housing crisis
Political flip-flops and kowtowing to the homeowner voting bloc have put housing in New Zealand on a pathway that’s “neither economically rational nor socially unsustainable”.
That’s according to fresh analysis of the housing crisis featured in the upcoming book Facing Up To Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand, published by the Helen Clark Foundation.
It brings together 21 leading thinkers on critical issues in the lead up to the November election, including infrastructure, energy, the environment, education, tax reform, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Auckland. Featured authors include former Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson KC, former Climate Change Commission chair Dr Rod Carr, Victoria University Emeritus Professor Jonathan Boston and the NZ Initiative’s Michael Johnston.
The book echoes major reports over previous years and decades in calling for a more bipartisanship approach to key issues, while ditching short-termism and political opportunism for a longer-term approach.
But this need is becoming increasingly acute, according to the book’s editor and sociologist Peter Davis, who is Helen Clark’s husband. He writes in the book’s introduction about “the shrinking base of the major centrist parties, the polarisation of opinion, the amplification of these issues by mainstream and social media on a 24/7 cycle, with the hollowing out of the public service and the relative absence of universities from the public square”.
NZ Herald
…make a choice, capital flight or pitchforks!
We have turned homes into commodities.
We have convinced ourselves that selling each other more expensive houses will somehow make us wealthy.
The Propertied Boomer Class and Property Pimps have built untaxed generational wealth that has locked everyone else out of public home ownership while gutting public housing.
The Property Pimps are a corrosive cancer fuelled by a total lack of regulation because it benefits Landlords.
That’s why the Green Party Tax policy scares the bejesus out of them.
I remember houses in my neighbourhood in the 1980s used to cost around 30k- 50k. An
average working household family could comfortably pay it off in a couple of years. Gone are those days.
Helen Clark knows damn well that the polices and direction of unregulated capitalism supported by her government and others is the elephant in the room.
Housing is one of the consequences of allowing donated money that captures policy and direction and the market having the last say with Kiwis increasingly powerless to reign in the forces that have been unleashed over the last 40 years.
Still even Helen can’t acknowledge the power imbalance starting with the changes to the Reserve Bank act and huge capital flight that corporates and banks are responsible for.
Helen still supports neoliberal economic orthodoxy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iMSE6C798Y&list=PL3lS2qVBadNP7oxho0VfRqtBdDrYDCFuU
It’s about time one of the main political parties set out how they are going to reform the tax system to capture untaxed wealth, incentivise investment in the productive areas of the economy, take the burden off wage earners, and stop the generational inequity baked into the current system. Looking at how many politicians own multiple properties that would mean acting against their self interest so Im not confident it’s happening any time soon. The pathetic collective of them can’t even have a grown up discussion about tax.