"It will go down as one of the greatest strategic blunders in US history."

"After a war that has cost an estimated $30bn, killed thousands and destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US military hardware, have any of Trump's declared objectives been fulfilled?

"Five big nos:

• No on Iran's nuclear programme ... It remains far from obliterated.
• No to changing the regime: Ayatollah Khamenei and a slew of top-ranking commanders have been killed but have been replaced by even more hardline figures, apparently in no mood to compromise.
• No to helping the Iranian people who rose up against their government. ...
• No to destroying Iran's ballistic missile arsenal. ... 70% of Iran's missiles remain serviceable.
• No to reining in Iran's proxies. These are not part of any deal ...

"Iran has acquired leverage through this war that it never enjoyed before. Its control of the Strait of Hormuz gave it a grip on a fifth of the world's oil supply. It can wield that power at will in the future.

"It is likely, therefore, to be even less accommodating in these negotiations.

"Attacking Iran turned out to be a massive miscalculation ...

"It has cost America's standing in the world dearly and left Iran potentially stronger.

"It will go down as one of the greatest strategic blunders in US history."

~ Dominic Waghorn from his op-ed 'Trump just admitted defeat on Iran war after historic blunder'

"Does history's diplomatic record know a more consummate moral swindle?"

 

 

"Inciting a people to rise up, abandoning them to the slaughter, then making deals with their executioners: does history's diplomatic record know a more consummate moral swindle?"

~ Emmanuel Ruimy (translated from the original French)

 

"Wealth exists, somehow ... "

"... the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it." 

~ Thomas Sowell from his 2002 book Controversial Essays

"The Australian green and gold represents a landscape of 'boundless plains to share.' The victory celebrated today is one of an Australia produced by migration."

"We are a soccer house: we are diehard Socceroo (and Matildas) fans, we are jumping on the furniture with joy at Australia’s 2-0 victory over Türkiye in their opening men’s World Cup game today ...

"It’s a proud day for Australia, but it’s not one that 'anti-migrant' or 'anti-refugee; locals get to share with the rest of us.

• 8 of the present squad who just played the most disciplined, meticulous game in our men’s World Cup history were born overseas - three of those in refugee camps. 
• The 26 players come from 15 different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. 
• That amazing first goal? Scored by Nestory Irankunda (#17) who was born a Burundian refugee in Tanzania. 
• [And just in case we forgot him, coach Tony Popovic's parents migrated from Croatia.]

"When Australia gives opportunity, it’s repaid in talent. It’s repaid in joy. That’s the real story of this country. Every wave of migration brings more of the amazing world we live in to us, making all of us more capable and courageous in engaging with that world, whether our endeavours are in sport or art, business, research, or anything else.

"So I want to say this to everyone jumping on the 'anti-migrant” bandwagon, and everyone making excuses for themselves as they sidle up to those who do:

"The Australian green and gold represents a landscape of 'boundless plains to share'* with anyone from anywhere who chooses this place and chooses to be Australian.

"The victory the rest of us are celebrating today is one of an Australia produced by migration. 

"If you can’t grasp that, I can’t help but wonder what team you’re really on. "

~ Van Badham

* These words are in the Oz National Anthem. Look it up.

 

Thoughts on Prosperity from a Hipster Coffee Shop

This article was written by a 26 yr old American college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren who, back then (seven years ago), was in the middle of an MBA. "My Generation," she reckons, "is blind to the prosperity around us!"

I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of political candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBooks, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.

These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!! Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.

Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity." Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. 

My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress.

Let me lay down some universal truths really quickly. The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history. Not only that but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25% of the world’s GDP. The list goes on. However, these universal truths don’t matter. We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity, some of the poorest countries in the world have low-income inequality), we are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history), we are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralisation of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering).

Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why? The answer is this: my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the Great Depression, or live through two World Wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism.

We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague.

With the current political climate giving rise to the misguided idea of a socialist utopia, will we see the light? Or will we have to lose it all to realize that what we have now is true prosperity? Destroying the free market will undo what millions of people have died to achieve.

My generation is becoming the largest voting bloc in the country. We have an opportunity to continue to propel us forward with the gifts capitalism and democracy has given us. The other option is that we can fall into the trap of entitlement and relapse into restrictive socialist destitution. The choice doesn’t seem too hard, does it?

Hat tip Michael Reddell Joseph Mooney, who reminds us that for all our own problems eager to be "fixed" by the political classes, New Zealand's own poverty line, measured on similar terms, still begins 25 times above the global average ...

RELATED: Jimmy Carr: “Life has never been objectively better, and subjectively worse”.
Every day we’re here is a stroke of fortune in the grand scheme of time, so appreciate it fully."

We’re living better than 99.9% of humans who ever walked the earth, hot showers, modern medicine, endless entertainment, kids that actually survive infancy, yet so many of us feel miserable. He calls it “life dysmorphia.” We get used to how good we have it (the hedonic treadmill), then compare ourselves to everyone else and tank our own happiness. As he puts it: happiness = quality of life minus envy. Marcus Aurelius put it perfectly: “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” When was the last time you caught yourself feeling unhappy despite objectively having it pretty damn good?

Production IS Profit

 

"[Observe] such meaningless phrases as 'production for use and not for profit.' ... Production is profit; and profit is production. They are not merely related; they are the same thing. They are not merely related; they are the same thing. When a man plants potatoes, if he does not get back more than he put in, he has produced nothing. This would be obvious if he put a potato in the ground today and dug up the same potato tomorrow; but it is all the same if he plants one potato and gets only one potato as a crop. His labour is wasted; then he must starve, or someone else must feed him, if he has no reserve from previous production. 

    "The objection to profit is as if a bystander, observing the planter digging his crop, should say: 'You put in only one potato and you are taking out a dozen. You must have taken them away from someone else; those extra potatoes cannot be yours by right.' If profit is denounced, it must be assumed that running at a loss is admirable. On the contrary, that is what requires justification. Profit is self-justifying."

~ Isabel Paterson, from her 1943 book The God of the Machine (p. 221).

Here's one price control I can agree with.

Price controls never control prices in the way the controllers wish.  Instead, they 'control' quantities demanded, either increasing demand (with a price cap) or diminishing it (with a floor), but in neither case can markets clear. Short-term net result is market chaos; longer-term result is withered markets.

This is generally a bad thing.

But there might be one exception. And the European Union may have just found it:

Any price cap increases demand while reducing producers' ability to meet the supply demanded. Short-term result is undersupplied markets, black markets, and reduced quality. 

But what about when it's only a notional market anyway?

Notes David Turver:

"Capping carbon prices is a small step in the right direction, but scrapping the ETS altogether would be better because paying carbon taxes to the Government won't change the weather."

Authoritarian regimes actively target personal autonomy

"Every despotism has a specially keen and hostile instinct for whatever keeps up human dignity, and independence. ... [T]o de-personalise man, this is the dominant drift of our epoch. ....

"What is threatened to-day is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the soul, the very nobility of man.

~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal, June 17, 1852

"Marxism has never died. It has mutated."

"Here are four things every serious anti-communist should understand about Marxism: 

    "First, Marxism is not primarily a set of economic policies. It is a complete philosophical system built on the claim that private property and markets are the root causes of human oppression and alienation. This is why communist regimes did not simply make economic mistakes - they systematically tried to abolish the foundations of voluntary cooperation. 

    "Second, Marxism focuses heavily on social structures and class forces while leaving very little room for individual choice and moral responsibility. Individuals are treated largely as products of their class position rather than as autonomous agents capable of shaping their own lives. This deterministic outlook underpins both Marxism’s repeated predictive failures and its readiness to justify coercive social engineering. 

    "Third, the authoritarianism, terror, and centralised control seen in every communist state were not distortions of Marxism. They were logical consequences of attempting to impose a total transformation of society (and Mark understood that). Once private property and markets are rejected, coercive state power becomes necessary to enforce the new order. 

    "Fourth, Marxism has never died. It has mutated. Much of today’s identity politics, critical theory, and institutional “equity” activism draws directly from Marxist frameworks - simply replacing economic class with race, gender or other identity categories while retaining the same oppressor-versus-oppressed logic."

~ Creative Deduction

"There is simply no such a thing as a 'cost-push' inflation."

"[I]n the strict sense, there is simply no such a thing as a 'cost-push' inflation. Neither higher wages nor higher prices of oil, or perhaps of imports generally, can drive up the aggregate price of all goods unless the purchasers are given more money to buy them."

~ Friedrich Hayek from his 1976 book Denationalisation of Money

"In branding profits as excessive, people are injuring themselves."

"In branding profits as excessive and penalising the efficient entrepreneurs by discriminatory taxation, people are injuring themselves. Taxing profits is tantamount to taxing success in best serving the public. The only goal of all production activities is to employ the factors of production in such a way that they render the highest possible output. The smaller the input required for the production of an article becomes, the more of the scarce factors of production is left for the production of other articles. But the better an entrepreneur succeeds in this regard, the more is he vilified and the more is he soaked by taxation. Increasing costs per unit of output, that is, waste, is praised as a virtue. ...

"All people, entrepreneurs as well as non-entrepreneurs, look askance upon any profits earned by other people. Envy is a common weakness of men. People are loath to acknowledge the fact that they themselves could have earned profits if they had displayed the same foresight and judgment the successful businessman did. Their resentment is the more violent, the more they are subconsciously aware of this fact.

"There would not be any profits but for the eagerness of the public to acquire the merchandise offered for sale by the successful entrepreneur. But the same people who scramble for these articles vilify the businessman and call his profit ill-got."

~ Ludwig Von Mises from his 1951 paper 'Profit and Loss'

#250YEARS: America's abundance

 

"America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialisation. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance — and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way."

~ Ayn Rand from her essay 'Theory and Practice,' collected in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

"For 40 years, NZers have been told that fewer councils mean better government. For 40 years, the evidence has refused to oblige."

"For forty years, New Zealanders have been told that fewer councils mean better government, and for forty years, the evidence has refused to oblige.

"Until 1989, New Zealand had around 850 elected local government bodies. ... That year, the fourth Labour government swept it away. Two hundred and forty-nine city, borough, district and county councils became 73 territorial authorities. Most special-purpose boards were consolidated into 13 newly established regional councils. The reform was justified solely on theoretical efficiency grounds. No serious case was made that the bodies it abolished had been doing their jobs poorly.

"In 2010, John Key's National government did it again. Eight Auckland councils became one [super-sized bureaucracy] governing 1.8 million people through 20 councillors and a mayor. The same efficiency case was made. A 2025 analysis by TDB Advisory found that Auckland Council's real per capita spending had risen 34 percent in the 15 years since the reform. ...

"Between 2017 and 2023, the Ardern-Hipkins Labour government extended the pattern across other sectors. Twenty District Health Boards, each with elected members, were rolled into Health New Zealand in 2022. Sixteen regional polytechnics were merged into Te Pūkenga in 2020.

"Three Waters would have consolidated the country's drinking water, wastewater and stormwater functions into a small number of regional water services entities. More than 30 mayors organised against it, and the programme was reversed at the 2023 change of government.

"The pattern crosses party lines, with both Labour and National making the same kinds of moves with the same lack of evidence.

"Last month, the current government announced the next round, called ‘Head Start.’ RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Local Government Minister Simon Watts gave councils three months to put forward their own merger proposals or have mergers imposed on them. Again, the justification is efficiency-in-theory. And once again, hard evidence that efficiency will be achieved in practice is lacking.

"Forty years of this trajectory have produced predictable results. ... "

~ Nick Clark from his op-ed 'Why 40 years of council mergers have failed to deliver'

"Welcome to the most insidious form of inflation: when newly printed dollars bypass consumer prices and flow directly into financial assets."

"The [US] Federal Reserve created $4 trillion in new money [in the GFC, and another $4 trillion over Covid] yet your grocery bill barely budges while Nvidia stock doubles in six months. [Over Covid, from March 2020 to mid-2021] the NZ Reserve Bank created NZD $50 billion in new money, and here again groceries barely budged over that period compared to bonds, shares and housing.]

"Welcome to the most insidious form of inflation: when newly printed dollars bypass consumer prices and flow directly into financial assets.

"You won't see this wealth transfer reflected in the Consumer Price Index. The CPI measures bread and gasoline, not Bitcoin and Berkshire Hathaway. Meanwhile, the [central banks'] money printing operation sends fresh liquidity straight to primary dealers, who park those dollars in stocks, bonds, and real estate. Asset owners get richer. Wage earners watch their purchasing power erode in real terms, even as official inflation statistics claim everything is fine.

"This creates a vicious feedback loop that sound-money advocates have warned about for decades. Cheap credit inflates asset bubbles, which [govts and central banks] then feels compelled to support with even more money printing. Each cycle makes the wealth gap wider. The Tesla shareholder benefits from artificially suppressed interest rates. The school teacher saving in a current account gets destroyed by financial repression. ... 

"Expanding the money supply faster than real economic growth means that new money has to go somewhere. Since 2008, it has systematically flowed into assets that wealthy people own rather than goods that working people buy. 

"Your [portfolio] might look healthy, but you're watching monetary debasement in real time. The stock market is booming because dollars are dramatically less scarce, not because companies are dramatically more productive. 

"If you can, buy stocks, bitcoin, property, or gold. This makes you a beneficiary of this phenomenon, not a victim."

~ Handre

Status confirmed.

The old saying was" 

"When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a sultan.The palace becomes a circus."

New saying:

"When the sultan turns the palace into a circus, he is confirmed as a clown."

"The principal view of human laws is, or ought always to be, to explain, protect, and enforce such rights as are absolute, which in themselves are few and simple."

"[T]he principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature ...[namely] ... the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property ...

“[T]he principal view of human laws is, or ought always to be, to explain, protect, and enforce such rights as are absolute, which in themselves are few and simple. ...

“The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature: being a right inherent in us by birth.”

~ William Blackstone (1723–1780) from his landmark Commentaries on the Laws of England (Book 1, 1765), discussed here

"Chris Penk asked for a conversation. The adult answer is to have one."

"What [PM Luxon] does not appear to understand is that the nuclear issue reaches well beyond the Bomb. Nor does he seem aware of the actual limits of New Zealand’s 'anti-nuclear' legislation, which does not prohibit the peaceful use of nuclear energy at all. But the more troubling thing is the arrogance of trying to close a conversation down.

"This article challenges that dismissal — a dismissal aimed squarely at the modest proposal of his own Defence Minister, Chris Penk [who suggested it would help to distinguish nuclear propulsion from nuclear weapons when we think about our nuclear-free position]. It may well fail to change the Prime Minister’s mind. But if he reads it, he might at least be better informed. ...

"What the law actually says
"The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987 does three principal things: it bans nuclear weapons, it bars nuclear-armed and nuclear-propelled vessels and aircraft from our territorial zone, and it forbids the dumping of radioactive waste at sea.

"What it does not do — and never did — is outlaw land-based nuclear power, nuclear research, or the use of radioactive isotopes ... [for] nuclear medicine ... 

"The safety story we got wrong

"[I]t is the fear that has driven the policy. Most people’s sense of nuclear risk is anchored to three events — Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima — and in each case the popular memory is worse than the record.

"No one died from radiation at Three Mile Island. At Fukushima the reactor releases have been linked to a single confirmed radiation death, with the overwhelming majority of that disaster’s toll caused by the earthquake, the tsunami and the chaos of a panicked evacuation.

"Chernobyl was a genuine catastrophe — but it was the product of a uniquely flawed Soviet design operated with its safety systems switched off, a machine and a culture no modern regulator would permit.

"When you stop reasoning from headlines and start counting bodies per unit of energy, the picture inverts. Oxford’s 'Our World in Data' project, drawing on peer-reviewed modelling, puts nuclear power at roughly 0.03 deaths per terawatt-hour of electricity once Chernobyl and Fukushima are included — comparable to wind and solar, and on the order of hundreds of times safer than coal, which kills around 25 people per terawatt-hour, mostly through everyday air pollution that never makes the news.

"Put differently, nuclear causes something like 99.8 per cent fewer deaths than coal and around 97 per cent fewer than natural gas. The source we have feared most turns out to be among the safest we have ever built. The deaths we don’t count — the steady toll of fossil combustion — are the ones that should frighten us. ...

"The demand that changes the math
"For years the nuclear debate could be treated as a luxury argument, a matter of preference among abundant options. That era is ending, and the reason is electricity demand of a kind the grid has not seen in a generation. Artificial intelligence and the data centres that run it are the most visible driver....

"[T]he policy direction is now broad and international. ... Global nuclear generation reached an all-time high of about 2,667 terawatt-hours in 2024. The major energy-modelling bodies — the IEA, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the IPCC — broadly agree that reaching net zero by mid-century is harder and costlier without a substantial expansion of nuclear, not easier. Treating nuclear as the enemy of climate action gets the physics exactly backwards.

"Why this time can be different: Small Modular Reactors
"The strongest historical objection to nuclear is not safety but cost: the giant bespoke plants of the past ran years late and billions over budget. The most promising answer is a change of strategy — building reactors small, standardised and in factories rather than enormous and custom-built on site. Small Modular Reactors aim to turn nuclear construction from a series of one-off megaprojects into something closer to manufacturing, with the cost discipline that repetition brings. ... Small Modular Reactors will not, on their own, meet all the new demand — honest advocates concede as much — but they reopen the door that cost overruns had slammed shut. ...

"Have the conversation
"[T]he Prime Minister ... should be willing to think, and to let the country think alongside him. ...

"We would be Luddites to turn our backs on the nuclear [energy] option without so much as examining it. Chris Penk asked for a conversation. The adult answer is to have one."

~ The Halfling from his post 'A Nuclear Conversation: A conversation the Prime Minister would rather not have'

"There is no plan about how the cuts in bureaucrat numbers will work"

"As far as can be judged, there is no plan about how the cuts [in bureaucrat numbers] will work. ... The government mumbled about ‘artificial intelligence,’ ... but I have seen no study which would suggest that it is possible to get a 14 percent increase in productivity across such a diverse range of activities in three years. ...

"To add to the confusion, the government is going to merge a wide number of public agencies and centralise some backroom activities. With the possible exception of politicians, everyone knows that such re-disorganisations reduce productivity for a period of three and more years. ...

"Typically, these bigger organisations have more layers of management – I bet there will not be a proportional reduction in generic managers – and the top is even more isolated from the front line. ... In any case they will have increasingly to deal with the job reductions plus the re-disorganisation. There will be an increase in badly supervised consultancies.

"I regret to say that to this independent observer, the proposed reduction seems to be a panic measure. I shall not be surprised if it all turns to custard when the new government arrives after the election. (It may still be a Luxon-Willis Government.) Another source of custard is if the Treasury assumption of the strait of Hormuz opening up soon and smoothly proves optimistic. ...

"Expect some brutal measures after the election."

~ Brian Easton fro his post 'Is New Zealand’s Economy in Dire Straits?'

The true tax

 

"Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax.

    “If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or borrowing. The thing you should keep you eye on is government spending ...”

~ Milton Friedman on Money and Inflation, Q + A [13:44]

Bloomberg has things back to front.

Bloomberg just called New Zealand one of the world's clearest housing cautionary tales.

In a piece titled The World’s Most Extreme Housing Boom Is Now Roiling an Entire Economy, global business news leader Bloomberg has analysed what’s happening here and what other countries can learn.

The piece said New Zealand was once home to the “world’s biggest housing booms,” but is now in the grip of a prolonged downturn, “exposing how deeply the country’s economy depends on ever-rising home values.”

Well, they're right about that last. But they're wrong about how we should react to the leaking of that housing bubble. Cambridge developer John Kenel makes the counter-argument:

Prices down 16% from the peak. Wellington down 27%. The economy stuck in the mud.They are not wrong about the numbers.
    But I think they have got the story wrong.
    Bloomberg is treating falling house prices as the tragedy. I do not think that is the real tragedy. The real tragedy is what falling house prices revealed.
    We did not just build a country with expensive houses. We built a country where housing became the economy. And councils worked that out pretty quickly.
    Every new house became a chance to clip the ticket. Development contributions. Consent fees. Inspection fees. Infrastructure charges. Rates. More reports. More consultants. More delays.
    Somewhere along the way, councils stopped seeing new housing as something to enable and started treating it like a funding machine. Not just for the direct cost of growth. For everything.
    Then they act shocked that new homes cost too much.
    You cannot load cost after cost after cost onto new housing, and then complain houses are unaffordable.
    That is the bit nobody wants to say out loud.
    And now politicians and commentators want to blame mum and dad investors for the mess. The couple who saved hard, took a risk, and bought 1 or 2 rentals.
    Come on.
    Blaming them for the housing crisis is like blaming punters at the pub for the price of beer.
    They did not write the rules. They responded to the rules the system gave them. Just like everyone else.
    We do not have a housing problem.
    We have a country that decided housing was the economy.

A "country" that decided that? Or politicians who determined that, with planning and building rules restricting supply while central bankers gave us near-zero interest rates and pandemic-era stimulus. 

So house prices have fallen. Good. But fallen only to what they were only a half-dozen years ago.

The fall is not the tragedy. 

The fall is the correction. 

Or (if supply is allowed to increase) perhaps the beginning of one. 

How Did The World Get So Ugly?

A fellow is making a show about buildings. A fellow called David Perell, with presenter Sheehan Quirke. Their concept is simple: do for the man-made world what David Attenborough's Planet Earth did for the natural world.

I like the idea.

And it makes a simple argument about 

the carelessness behind so much of what’s built these days. We boast about the triumphs of technology and how advanced we are as a civilisation, but why has our built environment regressed so much? 

    Shouldn’t we use our wealth to make our streets more charming and delightful? 

    There’s lots of talk about how we’ve polluted the natural world, but what about how we’ve polluted the man-made world? We’ve filled our streets with ugly railings, benches, lampposts, and clutter. We assume these things have to be boring, but they don’t. Good design can make everything, even bins and bus stops, charming. New things can be prettier than old things. 

    The first step is believing it’s possible. 

    Something has changed. We’ve taken a dramatic turn, and the majority of people prefer what we used to build to what we build today. Just look at where people take photos. In New York it’s the steps of brownstones in the West Village; in San Francisco it’s the old Victorian homes; in London there’s tourists galore in front of those iconic red phone booths which remain on the streets, even though they don’t work anymore, because they’re so nicely designed that people like having them there. 

    All this is what inspired me to make a TV show. ... 

    It’s our mission to help people see the world more clearly, and in turn, make the world a more charming and delightful place to live in.

Every object contains a worldview. And if you want to understand a society, don’t listen to what it says about itself. Look at what it creates. ... 

Every technology becomes obsolete and outdated. But a good aesthetic, even if fashions change, can never become obsolete. It is definitionally timeless.

The TV show is called The Modern World. 

What will the show be like? 

    Six episodes, going chronologically through history and arriving at the present, each focussing on the architecture and design of a specific period: 

        1. Middle Ages 

        2. Renaissance 

        3. Enlightenment 

        4. The Nineteenth Century 

        5. Art Nouveau & Art Deco 

        6. Present Day 

    But, in each case, the point isn’t just to learn about that era; the point is to learn about our modern world through those eras and what they’ve left behind. If you watch the pilot episode (included below) you’ll see what I mean. 

    So the show’s not really “about” the past; it’s about the twenty-first century. That’s why it’s called The Modern World.

Here's their pilot episode, which they've sent out to funders.

Key quote for Wellingtonians: "If you want to know what any society really believes in, just look at how they design their sewers."

"Responsible"? They lie to you and assume you're too stupid to notice. [UPDATED]

UPDATE: Professor Robert MacCulloch: "It's a rigged budget ... so she can get a soundbite. ... Media got suckered." The promised return to surplus is a “phony” and “reverse-engineered” political exercise designed for election headlines rather than economic reality.

It's one of those rare occasions, this budget, when commentators have mostly taken the finance minister's own spin as a given and burrowed instead into the details. The result however is to ignore context, and to focus on the irrelevant to the exclusion of the important. That's why the finance minister is looking so goshdarned pleased: because her lies are going mostly unchallenged.

The finance minister tells you that this election-year budget contains "no sugar hits." That New Zealanders won't be bribed on election year with their own money.

That's a lie.

The small matter of a $450 million "emergency contingency fund" has been set aside "in a time-limited contingency" if the cork remains in the Straits of Hormuz -- betting, of course, as she does in her heroic forecasts, that the cork will at least be loosened, allowing a wee flutter when polls show it's needed. 

Yes folks, the true "emergency" being provisioned for is an election debacle. That's what the slush fund is for.

The finance minister also tells us repeatedly that she's being responsible.

That's why she's set aside "just over $1 billion" for unspecified "improvements" to KiwiRail. Which is of course a big win for Shane Jones and his friend Winston. This is their billion-dollar slush fund for the election, which is just over double the fund she's allowed for her own party.

Responsible?

It's also handing councils $400 million in “growth incentives” now while only walking slowly to bring council's rates under control. And this is only because the finance minister can't bring her own govt's costs sufficiently under control to allow the GST component of new housing to go to councils (the real growth incentive she was encouraged to enact).

Responsible?

As Michael Reddell observes (one of the few commentators to put his head under the bonnet with the proper focus, New Zealand remains among the advanced countries with the largest structural fiscal deficit -- which have got "materially worse" under this Government.

 

As the Taxpayers Union notes, "Despite branding this a 'responsible Budget,' Nicola Willis has today confirmed the Government will have borrowed more by 2029/30 than Treasury forecast just five months ago." Over a billion dollars more.

So have things got any better under this National finance minister rather than the last Labour liar? Has it hell.  Reddell again:

In the last full year Labour was responsible for core Crown operating expenses were 31.7% of GDP 

In 24/25 32.6% 

In 25/26 32.6% 

In 26/27 32.6%

Responsible, hell!

And of course, this Government went to the country promising "no new taxes." That's another long-term lie. 

The budget has announced three new taxes on banks and shareholders -- sorry, two "levies" and one "charge" -- that will of course immediately be passed on to customers -- "the Beehive can try to frame it as a levy on the big banks, but this new tax will be paid by savers and mortgage holders. It’s a sleight of hand."

So that's just yet more charges and "levies" to add to the other new taxes already whacking New Zealanders since the last election's promise of "no new taxes (Levy (n.) an officially imposed fee, tax, or penalty demanded by a government or organisation). The full list:

Road User Charges on Electric Vehicles (April 2024)
GST on Digital Platforms -- the "App" Tax (April 2024)
Trustee Tax Rate Increase to 39% (April 2024)

Offshore Online Casino Gambling Duty (July 2024) 

Increased ACC Levies on Electric Vehicles (2025)

Customs and Excise Goods Management Levies (April 2026)

Prudential Regulation Levy on Banks and Insurers (announced Budget 2026)

Company Shareholder Loan Integrity Rules (Budget 2026)

Thin-Capitalisation Changes for Foreign-Owned Banks (Budget 2026)

And finally, the promise of "returning to surplus" by 2029?

To use Michael Reddell's term, that's just vapourware:

Not only has the projected date for getting back to budget surplus (on the standard OBEGAL measure) kept being pushed back but the projected surpluses for 26/27 (the yearr today's Budget directly relates to) have worsened by more than 4% of GDP in 3 years (under both governments).

Responsible? They lie to you and assume you're too stupid to notice.

Co-Governance is still quietly bubbling away

Whether it knows it or not --whether by Coalition design or by bureaucratic subterfuge -- it appears that legal implementation for co-governance has been strengthened under this Government's term rather than diminished.

A recent post pointed out that the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights, the underpinning that creeping implementation, was a poison pill quietly smuggled in with the Indian Free Trade Agreement (FTA ). It was Gary Judd KC who spotted the clause in the signed Agreement calling on the parties to "affirm" NZ's commitment to this race-base Declaration. As Judd notes this morning, this is an escalation on previous Free Trade Agreements with the UK, which called for the parties to "note" the commitment, and with the EU to "further note." 

This is not simply harmless playing around with words. In legal terms, as Judd himself notes, it is "a significant escalation."

And it's not the only escalation towards co-governance. 

Remember that what underpinned the moves made by Ardern's Labour Government towards co-governance -- towards sharing government power with tribal leaders -- was that UN Declaration. That gave legal strength towards their quiet moves towards what Elizabeth Rata calls "re-tribalisation."

In 2007, the position of Helen Clark's Government was in opposition. Clark was many things, but she wasn't stupid.

John Key was. In 2010, his Government sent Pita Sharples to the UN to "support" it. That "support," when ratified here, underpinned the Ardern Government's support for He Puapua and for every flavour of co-governance emerging since.

And then in 2023, Hipkins's Government moved from endorsing the UN Declaration to a commitment “to upholding the rights affirmed in the Declaration.” These weren't just a small change in words. As a result, the Hipkins's Government then sought advice “to support the drafting of a plan to achieve the ends of the UN Declaration in Aotearoa New Zealand.” Those ends, of course, called for "self-determination" for so-called indigenous people. As Judd explains it, this is when "Non-binding aspirations morphed into affirmed [legal] rights." Once the NZ Government regarded self-determination as a cornerstone of the UN Declaration it then meant tribal participation in government decision making.

As the New Zealanders who claim indigenous status are Māori and governmental decisions affect all New Zealanders including Māori, this means the New Zealand position had become one where Māori should have the right to participate in all or most decision making. That is co-governance between a democratically elected government for all New Zealanders and Māori. Māori protocols ensure they are represented by an essentially self-selected elite.

Words, in politics, are so much fluff. Words, in law, do matter. 

[B]y the affirmations of the declaration and New Zealand’s position, has confirmed that the UN Declaration has binding status (for that’s the meaning of affirm in legal parlance) with a double whammy by confirming New Zealand’s position when that position at the UN and in international law is the July 2023 position.

The Minister and MFAT officials may try to justify themselves by claiming that New Zealand saying in an international agreement that it is bound by the UN Declaration and committed to upholding the rights contained in it is not the same as acknowledging that it has binding effect in New Zealand but that is sophistry which will not wash.

For reasons given in [my earlier post], there is little doubt that the courts will take the affirmations for what they plainly are: New Zealand’s acceptance that the UN Declaration is binding such that its principles may be utilised in the interpretation of legislation and as influencing the common law.

As Rata says in her own post on this, "today's politicians [should] look closely at all re-tribalisation language." Especially if it is being smuggled in through political stealth.

Yes, it's Budget Day ...

 ... so to help journalists desperate for something to write about before the Budget comes down, here are some quotable quotes. Send a copy to your favourite columnist:

"The average ... family head will be forced to do twenty years’ labour to pay taxes in his or her lifetime."
    ~ James Bovard

"The average family pays more in taxes than it spends on food, clothing, and shelter combined."

    ~ Congressman Dick Armey

"If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganising about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both parents working."

    ~ Thomas Sowell

"I think coercive taxation is theft, and government has a moral duty to keep it to a minimum."
    ~ William Weld

"A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property – an unpaid tax bill."
    ~ Hans F. Sennholz

"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it."
    ~ Richard Lamm

"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone."

    ~ Frédéric Bastiat

"Apparently, politicians can change the planetary climate, but they can’t fix the potholes, repair the drains, or balance their books."

    ~ Alice Smith

"The secret to balancing the budget is to remember that all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head. Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay your taxes you'll be fined. If you don't pay the fine you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot. Thus, I - in my role as citizen and voter - am going to shoot you - in your role as taxpayer and ripe suck - if you don't pay your share of the national tab. Therefore, every time the government spends money on anything, you have to ask myself, ‘Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?’"

    ~ PJ O'Rourke

"The state is never accused of greed. There is no limit to what it may take from us. And those who live on what is taken in taxes are never accused of greed either. Greed is virtually identified with the "profit motive." We have no invidious term for the parasitic motive. The state and its clients are all but immune from moral criticism."
    ~ Joseph Sobran

"[There are dangers in] the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts."     
    ~ Winston Churchill

"To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours."

    ~ John Stuart Mill

"When Barbary Pirates demand a fee for allowing you to do business, it's called 'tribute money.' When the Mafia demands a fee for allowing you to do business, it's called 'the protection racket.' When the state demands a fee for allowing you to do business, it's called "tax." 
    ~ Jeff Daiell

"There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation."
    ~ Frédéric Bastiat

"Taxation is far greater an evil than theft. It is a form of slavery. If you cannot choose the disposition of your property, you are a slave. If you must ask permission to work, and/or pay involuntary tribute to anyone from your wages, you are a slave. If you are not allowed to dispose of your life (another way of defining money, since it represents portions of your time and effort, which is what your life is composed of) in the time, manner and amount of your choosing, you are a slave."

    ~ Rick Tompkins

"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities."

    ~ Robert Nozick

"The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave."
~ Ayn Rand

“Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilised society, since taxation represents force.”
    ~ Mark Skousen

"The bureaucrat’s first objective, of course, is preservation of his job – provided by the big-government system, at the taxpayers expense. … Whether real world problems get solved or not is of secondary importance. It doesn’t take much cynicism, in fact, to see that the bureaucrats have a vested interest in not having problems solved. If the problems did not exist (or had been invented), there would be no reason for the bureaucrat to have a job.”

~ William Simon, former U.S Treasury Secretary

"… thou shall not steal, even by majority vote …"

    ~ Gary North

"In levying taxes and in shearing sheep, it is well to stop when you get down to the skin."

    ~ Austin O’Malley

"Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens."

    ~ Ludwig von Mises

"A [tax loophole is] something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform."

    ~ Russell B. Long

[S]tatism is but socialised dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others – on the grand scale. There is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any other social program."

    ~ Leonard Read

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle”
    ~ Winston Churchill

"Taxation without representation is tyranny."
    ~ James Otis

"Taxation WITH representation ain't so hot either."
    ~ Gerald Barzan

"If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalised."

~ Lysander Spooner

"When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before."
    ~ HL Mencken

"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."
    ~Mark Twain

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it."
    ~ Ronald Reagan

"According to the Tax Foundation, taxes now consume more than 38% of the average family’s budget. That is more than is spent on food, clothing, housing, and transportation combined. Compare this to the plight of medieval serfs. They only had to give the lord of the manor one-third of their output — and they were considered slaves. So what does that make us?"

    ~ Daniel Mitchell

"Death and taxes are inevitable; at least death doesn't get worse every year."
    ~ Will Rogers

"When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government."
    ~ former US President Grover Cleveland

"Rulers do not reduce taxes to be kind. Expediency and greed create high taxation, and normally it takes an impending catastrophe to bring it down." -
    ~ Charles Adams

"We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidises non-work."

    ~ Milton Friedman

"When you subsidise poverty and failure, you get more of both."

    ~ James Dale Davidson, US National Taxpayers Union

"The mounting burden of taxation not only undermines individual incentives to increased work and earnings, but in a score of ways discourages capital accumulation and distorts, unbalances, and shrinks production. Total real wealth and income is made smaller than it would otherwise be. On net balance there is more poverty rather than less."
    ~ Henry Hazlitt

"The poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape."
    ~ PJ O'Rourke

"A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul."
    ~ George Bernard Shaw

"There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion."

~ Frank Chodorov

"Freedom is the quality of being free from the control of regulators and tax collectors. If I want to be free their control, I must not impose controls on others."
    ~ Hans F. Sennholz

"There's only one way to kill capitalism--by taxes, taxes, and more taxes." -
    ~ Karl Marx

"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."
    ~ Vladimir Lenin

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
    ~ PJ O'Rourke

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
    ~ Bertrand de Jouvenel

"The power to tax involves the power to destroy."
    ~ former US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall

"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
    ~ Robert Heinlein

"Taxes are the sinews of the state."
    ~ Cicero

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

    ~ Frederic Bastiat

"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors, and miss."
    ~ Robert Heinlein