Hate Speech Hickey

There is a person who regularly raises his head above the parapet to comment on matters economic and housing in particular. Most who do this, economists, couldn’t accurately predict getting wet in a monsoon, or as economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith said, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”. This brings us to our very own self-styled economic guru and superstar in his own mind, Bernard Hickey. The official description of Bernard Hickey’s Opinion column is that “Bernard is an economics columnist for the NZ Herald“. Well, enough said. We can draw our own conclusions from that.

For the 14 years since I came back to New Zealand after a stint living overseas, he has been regularly stirring intergenerational discontent. The subject is usually the same: housing. The theme is the same too: older generations are scumbags who have plotted and ripped off younger people. It’s his pet conspiracy theory. It’s his grassy knoll.

A couple of years ago on Stuff this appeared.

“You think your parents and grandparents and their friends actually want to help you live the good lives they experienced as the luckiest generations. They may even have convinced themselves and you that they do really want to do this, but they don’t really. They’re leading you up a garden path”

OMG. Dad, Mum, Grandad and Granny and their friends are super villains.

“I’ve looked deep into the dark heart of our political economy and seen nothing but greed, constructed confusion, obfuscation, selfishness and an unbreakable desire by older property owners never to give up what they believe is rightfully theirs.”

stuff.co.nz/business/property/107286491/dear-young-renters-you-are-sooo-toast

Dark heart, greed and selfishness. Yikes, they really are super villains. They want to keep what is theirs; gosh, how unfair! Well, only if you believe carefully crafted, slanted tripe.

This written excrescence was used by Hickey to promote and motivate young people to push for the dreaded CGT that is the pet tax of all good thieving socialists.

His latest wittering has the slanted title, “How past generations pulled up the property ladder on today’s youth”.

Super villains again. Now I’ll give him his due: he does inject some facts and almost manages not to rant conspiracies.

“That affordability was partly because the Government and councils saw it as their role to enable development of suburbs by paying for infrastructure such as roads or pipes and electricity. They did that by taxing all taxpayers (mostly) with relatively high income tax rates. The Government had a department called the Ministry of Works (MoW) that paid for and built all these things.

Fair enough but then he gets disingenuous.

“Then the generations of voters and taxpayers after 1984 decided to change that social contract.

The rash of lawmaking and big structural changes to the economy and government between 1984 and 1993 included the State Sector, Public Finance and Fiscal Responsibility Acts (which entrenched the low Government debt and low Government investment ethos we have today), the Reserve Bank Act (which prioritised low inflation over all else) the Resource Management Act (which made it much easier to block big and little developments by anyone), Local Government reforms to entrench user-pays, and low-rate and broad-based tax reforms for wage income and spending, but not capital or assets.”

Nonsense! Douglas, Prebble and co changed it. We never voted on it. It was not in the election campaigning.

So we voted to skew things our way when we actually didn’t and the housing wealth, which it isn’t if you live in it, was accidental but we are villains. I know he is implying unintended consequences but somehow it comes out older people bad and young people are pure as snow victims.

Now we get to it. I have highlighted the key words.

“The issue of taxing land and property is crucial to this issue of generational wealth transfer and the possibility of a ‘just transition’ to carbon zero by 2050. Paying for the housing and transport infrastructure to adjust for climate change will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. That will have to be paid for with taxes on the wealthiest over the next couple of decades. That will be the battle of our political age

So now we get to the truth behind his modern tropes. He’s a socialist and we have to be taxed for the climate con.

“the merest of hints that prices of double-cab utes might go up to pay for more electric vehicles was weaponised by National to appeal to older (hard-working and property owning) suburbanites.

A low level guerilla war of types is being waged at local levels between younger voters on bicycles and commuters in cars scrapping over room for cycleways and rates increases for bike racks.”

Eh? All youth ride bicycles and old villains drive cars. Generalising is taken to a new level by our king of hype. If Bernard took off his red coloured glasses he’d see youth in cars everywhere.

Next, an astonishing comment on youth inaction on voting and enrolling.

“They realise there’s no point in bothering with democracy when it has repeatedly proven it refuses to address, let alone reverse, the biggest wealth transfer in our history.”

stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300175287/how-past-generations-pulled-up-the-property-ladder-on-todays-youth

What is this socialist dismissing of democracy as not working? Methinks Bernard will soon be making a case for Communism.

Well, I have news for Bernard. I’d say inner-city youth got Swarbrick over the line big time, so it is working.

I have more news from reality land for Bernie. I bought my first house before I was thirty without Government assistance or grants (see the full Hickey article). My sister’s two millennial daughters have bought houses before reaching thirty. None of us is rich and none of my family own rentals.

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