Mid-East Views, Land and Resources.

[tcpip]

YouTube has an excellent six minute video that show many of the difficulties of Palestians living under Israeli occupation. Many of el-jays resident libertarians show themselves to be against freedom (for Palestinians). On topic, homais says some very sensible and balanced things about the current conflict in Lebanon, which are quite similar to the concerns of Johnathan Steele. How could both sides have blundered so badly?

A certain trouble maker has been warbling on about land and housing issues. The fundamental claim is correct; well meaning legislators who ration land are just as much to blame for rising house costs as a taxation system that does not capture the unearned increment in rising land prices. In other resource related news, the ALP is set to ditch their uranium policy, an action will undoubtably lose more votes than what they'll gain. Professor Emertius Ian Lowe has a different idea about energy. Further on-topic (from soulvessel Exxon is still avoiding payouts from the Valdez oil spill of 1989. You can email the CEO here.

claudine_c's speech at the Unitarians on rural health work in India was excellent. Noted the particular difficulties of dealing with an entrenched caste system and the inappropriateness of "western" medical mores. Followed by Brent McAuslan's discussion on the history of war at the philosophy group. Discussion tended towards the psychological motivations. Then the Cybernoia game which imajica_lj has summarised. In rodent news, Vagabond has hurt his spine, probably following a fall. Every dozen steps he lets out a sharp squeak of pain. He's currently drugged up on metacam and sleeping soundly ;-). Well done to dr_nic for providing the worst company URLs.

Comments

[zey.livejournal.com]

The problem with releasing land, willy nilly, is that councils and the state government gets lumped with the cost of providing infrastructure to support it: water, sewerage, electrickery, telecoms, public transport, roads, etc.

Land rationing encourages subdividing the land that's already serviced. It's always a lot cheaper to add an extra outlet than build new pipes. The land might be more expensive in the short term, but, everything else ends up cheaper. (One of the benefits seen from severe land rationing in places like Japan is how cheap it is to provide massive broadband speeds to their citizens.)

The biggest problem re housing affordability these days is all the old governments who used to be active in providing public housing alternatives have pretty much packed up and left, in an era like the last 20 years where prices have rocketed up versus annual earnings, at the same time as we've had massive tax breaks put in for investment properties which has caused investors to pump up prices to a point past which a large proportion of first home buyers can't afford without intergenerational asset transfers.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Your arguments regarding infrastructure are partially true and, I suspect your arguments concerning the government giving up on that nasty socialist enterprise, public housing, may also have a grain of truth.

The main difference however has become land prices. Data from the HIA clearly indicate that the price of housing per se has no increased proportionally to land. For example a new house and land in Sydney in 1993 was $107,000 for the land and $121,000 for the house. In 2003 it was $128,500 for the house and $460,600 (!) for the land.

I have links to a couple of Housing Industry Association pdf on my journal a couple of weeks back; grab them - they make fascinating reading for something that is dry as tables and numbers.

[zey.livejournal.com]

Yep. Land prices are largely being fueled by those tax breaks for investment properties I mentioned earlier. Remove negative gearing for investment properties and half the demand disappears and there's a whole heap of sellers. Viola! Affordable land again.

The sad thing is, housing inaffordability for the non-boomer generations is the result of government policy. You can have both restrictions on the release of land and low land prices, but, not without culling the dodgy tax breaks to those largely upper-middle class (Liberal voting) real estate investors.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It has been suggested that negative gearing is a good idea but very badly implemented.

If it applied for new housing it would mean an increase in housing stock. However because it applies to all housing it means an increasing concentration in home ownership.

Of course, nobody has the political will to take on those who benefit from such an arrangement; because you can be sure that having discovered the direct benefit they'll vote against anyone who will take it away, whereas the gains from removing such a poor policy are both long term and indirect (i.e., no votes in it)