Greens want to deflate house prices more

Yes, the Greens think the time is right to pillage more of your children's taxes (it's called borrowing) to build more state houses. Even though property prices have been heading downwards, increasing the affordability of buying a home, the Greens remain outside the planet where price is a factor demand and supply, and think that forcing people to pay for more housing is a good thing.

So the Greens pillage your money and encourage your house price to drop too. Of course they want it in places where there is "excellent public transport" - ignoring whether that public transport actually would take you where you want to go, because a railway station is like a church to them.

Great stuff, check out the loopy economics. Easier to afford a home (cheaper), easier to move around without a car (cheaper) AND you are forced to pay for it whether you own a home, use public transport already or not.

Hopefully voters will simply say - f-off and leave my money alone in a recession you thieving socialists!

British banks to lend you your own money

Satirical website Daily Mash has an excellent take on the UK government's recent welfare subsidising nationalising handout to banks.

"THE government is to invest £500bn of your money in British banks so they can lend it back to you with interest"

The best line has to be this:

"Meanwhile, Emma Bradford, a sales manager from Bath, said: "Why doesn't the government just give my money to me so I can buy stuff from businesses who will then make a profit and put it in a bank?"

But Mr Darling insisted: "Shut up.""

Earth to Jeanette Fitzsimons

Jeanette. You're in the Herald complaining about why motorways get fully funded but railways don't. There is a reason why the Government foots the full cost of motorways.

The revenue for it comes from - road users. The people using the roads pay for the roads (well the state highways anyway). Understand the concept? Fuel tax and road user charges are fully dedicated to the National Land Transport Fund, which funds motorways. Most people would see that as being fair, if a bit blunt.

Let's look at your beloved "urgent public transport improvements", you want the whole Auckland rail network electrified and a NZ$1 billion-plus (yep note the plus, I'm guessing half a billion more) tunnel for a two-way rail loop through central Auckland to the western line at Mt Eden. Where do you want the revenue to come from to pay for that? The people who will use the trains? No. In fact at best they will pay perhaps a half of the operating costs of the trains (if they can match Wellington).

You want ROAD USERS to pay for your rail schemes, even though only 7% of all trips in Auckland are by public transport, and of those a majority are by bus and ferry.

Not only that you want road users to pay to subsidise the operation of the rail scheme too. However you begrudge road users expecting their motoring taxes being spent on the roads they actually use?

Yes I know you'll argue that the road users benefit because someone has decided to ride a train, instead of drive. Well of course that person riding the train has apparently benefited more, because the road user is subsidising their travel. Why should that person not pay the costs of their travel?

Jeanette, don't you realise the reason the roads are congested is because capacity is built according to politically determined funding criteria, and roads are charged the same no matter wherever and whenever you drive, unlike how airlines, hotels, phone calls and other services are charged. Don't you realise your beloved Soviet style management of highways is the problem, not the lack of a goldplated public transport system?

So go on Jeanette - tell motorists that the Greens believe that the majority of fuel taxes and road user charges they pay should be used to pay for transport modes they don't use. Tell them how many minutes they'll save in trips, how much fuel they'll save from this approach - show you've done the research.

Oh, it's just a "belief" isn't it. Yes, that damned religion of yours.

Destructive scum should be denied welfare

The Dominion Post reports on the sort of people who will live off the back of others, who gain great pleasure in destroying what others produce - they aren't a big focus of the criminal justice system - and the welfare system will happily pay them to live, and breed.

It's a very simple policy to stop paying criminals to live and breed. Those convicted of such an offence should be denied any claim on the welfare state, and required to pay full compensation for the damage.

While the compulsory welfare state remains, why should those who wantonly destroy what others create, get the proceeds of it all?

What a leap forward it would be if National just promised to deny welfare benefits to those convicted of property offences, for at least ten years.

What's a bet Sue Bradford would say those who did this are "disadvantaged" (as if the intellectually disabled users of this IHC workshop are not), and deserve more of your money to keep them from being so destructive.

National policy "akin to communism"

So says a man who should know – Dr Michael Cullen according to Stuff.

He was commenting on the absurd policy announcement by John Key that National would direct the New Zealand Superannuation Fund – the only superannuation fund in the country that pays out the same regardless of how much or little you contribute to it – to invest 40% of its funds in New Zealand companies.

Key’s announcement is completely banal. It risks not only reducing the returns for the fund, but also concentrating too much risk in New Zealand investments. Furthermore, he talks about it investing in “infrastructure bonds”, which means simply, funding government borrowing. You don’t need infrastructure bonds if you let the private sector build, operate and charge users for infrastructure – such as how the country’s two mobile phone networks have been financed and built, and how the internet has been developed, how Auckland and Wellington airports have been developed. No – John Key is in Think Big land.

Dr Cullen is right – regardless of the merit of the NZ Superannuation Fund – not letting the fund managers invest where they see fit will devalue the fund. Furthermore, to suggest that it should finance “Think Big” style central planning government infrastructure projects on telecommunications, water, roads or whatever, is further reducing the likely return (or increasing government borrowing costs, you can’t have both), as well as supplanting private sector investment (increasingly used overseas) with compulsory taxpayer funding.

Of course, renationalising an airline and a railway are also “forms of communism”, so Dr Cullen is very experienced in what he is talking about.

The right answer is to do what, ironically, Winston Peters once advocated. Divide the NZ Superannuation Fund into individual accounts, and hand them to taxpayers to keep, invest in or sell. The consequence is that you are responsible for all or part of your retirement income (with some pro rata adjustment for those currently retired or relatively close to retirement).

Imagine - politicians for individual responsibility.