Forget PM Luxon: The Biggest Capital Gains-Wanna-be-Tax-Dodgers in NZ are Labour & Greens own MPs.

The Labour Party is trying to lay the foundation for capital and asset taxes in NZ. To build their case, in cahoots with their mates in the Main Stream Media, they're trying to make the likes of PM Chris Luxon look bad for making money by selling off houses & making capital gains. So lets have a proper debate on capital taxes, rather than the drivel our biased Main Stream Media "economics expert journalists" (none of whom have ever studied economics) pour out every other day. One of the strongest arguments in favor of capital gains taxes is that Kiwis (& other nationalities) pour too much of their life savings into housing, rather than investing in more economically productive assets. Much of the wealth that the typical Kiwi has historically built up comes from the appreciation in the value of their own home. Most also have a mortgage on that asset. I remember once attending a presentation by Yale Nobel Laureate Bob Shiller who observed that buying up one asset so that it comprises almost your entire portfolio and, in addition, borrowing / leveraging up to buy that one class of asset, goes against nearly every (diversification) principle in finance.

To try avoiding this sort of scenario, many nations do have capital taxes, including in the United States. In America that tax includes your own home. There's an exclusion letting homeowners who meet specific requirements to exclude up to around $250,000 of capital gains from the sale of their primary residence. Lets see how those numbers would affect NZ's Labour and Green Party Members of Parliament who want capital taxes. Most own their house, and most have made more than $250,000 in capital gains on it. Opposition Leader Hipkins owns his house in Upper Hutt; Willie Jackson owns "family homes" in both Auckland & Rotorua (why he calls them all "family homes" in his Declaration of Interest, and doesn't call one of them an Investment Property is beyond me). Capital gains tax supporter Green MP Swarbrick owns her own apartment in Auckland. And the list goes on and on.

So lets give Labour Party's caucus what it wants - a capital gains tax. And lets make sure its the real deal - one that has integrity - one that ensures there will no longer be an incentive to hold a biased portfolio that heaps most of one's life savings into one's own house. It will catch Chris Hipkins. It will catch Chloe Swarbrick and Willie Jackson and nearly every Labour Party MP. Oh, but it turns out that is not what the Labour caucus want. They want capital taxes, but one that excludes their own family home - that is, excludes their own assets, but catches everyone who has more than them. They define anyone who owns more than them as having an "unfair" amount of wealth. So the truth is the Labour caucus hates capital taxes as much as the National caucus. Labour MPs want capital taxes but only provided their own assets are exempt. They have no interest in economic efficiency, but just a simple desire to soak people they call "the rich". The Labour caucus should stop being such darn hypocrites and attacking PM Luxon when they are the biggest wanna-be tax dodgers in the country.

Race activists in NZ should get over themselves & accept we'll never know whether "sovereignty" was ceded in the Treaty of Waitangi. What even is it?

What does the Treaty Debate, especially regarding the question of whether Sovereignty was ceded or not, have in common with the OJ Simpson Murder Trial in America? A lot. An incredible feature of OJ's trial was that surveys reported up to 75% of white Americans were convinced he committed the murders, whereas 75% of Black Americans were equally convinced he had not. None of those surveyed had attended the trial. If you were a black American who'd been beaten up by a police officer and whose father had been stitched up for a murder he didn't commit, then you would be convinced OJ was innocent. But if you were a white American who'd been robbed by a guy who happened to be black then you'd be convinced he was guilty. The battles raging in the world today are largely battles of beliefs. Many economic models are now being built that assume no-one knows the value of crucial parameters that determine the workings of the economy, but instead we have beliefs about them, like the relationship between effort and reward, based on our own experiences, that are constantly being revised. Statisticians call the process "Bayesian Updating". It was the name given to the Super Yacht that recently sank off Sicily. Artificial Intelligence applications of this process were how the ship's owner, Mike Lynch, became a billionaire.

Along similar lines to the OJ Simpson trial, a recent poll conducted by David Farrar of 1,000 people revealed that 35% of New Zealanders believe Maori chiefs ceded sovereignty in 1840, whereas 27% believe they did not, and the balance are undecided. Its getting close to the point where a third of the population believe sovereignty was ceded, a third believe it was not, and a third are undecided. Like OJ's trial, none of those 1,000 people have likely looked into the matter in any detail, and even if they did, would be no better off. I bet if you asked the 1,000 people exactly what is "sovereignty" none could tell you. I'm not sure on the definition either. In political science & economics, the sovereign authority is sometimes defined as the one who has a monopoly on the use of the force. That force mainly comes in the form of the power to tax and use violence. Only the State can levy charges on you, and bust into your house & throw you into prison for something it claims you did wrong, like not paying your taxes. Others can accuse you of not paying a bill, but they do not have the right to punish you with violence for it.

So its become ludicrous that we now have two sides to the Treaty debate, each convinced they know the truth as to what was in the minds of British Administrators & Māori Chieftains 150 years ago. Both sides to the Sovereignty debate only have beliefs about what they think is the truth - neither will ever know with any certainty what really happened. So its always amusing to read folks like Dr Brash and Dr Basset, both very knowledgeable people, make argument after argument, based on good reason, about how sovereignty was ceded in 1840. And its equally amusing hearing from politicians, academics, lawyers, sociologists and historians make equally sound arguments, also based on good reason, on how sovereignty was not ceded. Both sides are convinced they know the truth. But they've become like a Jewish person arguing with a Muslim, arguing with a Christian, arguing with a Hindu, about who is closer to the one-and-only-truth. They may have devout beliefs - and good on them - but that's it. An historian friend of mine became so fed up with the subject that they quit it, telling me their frustration was how so many of the most interesting historical questions turn on finding out what was in the mind of the leading players at the time - which almost never can be worked out with much certainty.

The challenge for New Zealanders is to come to grips with the fact that the answer to the question, "Was sovereignty ceded in the Treaty of Waitangi?" will never be known. Our most pressing need is to instead answer the truly relevant question, "Where does that leave us?". Yes it was a monumentally important document. Its just a shame no one knows what the parties were agreeing to. Maybe they didn't know themselves. Most of us who sign a contract aren't particularly clear what we're signing up to. Ambiguity abounds in every deal. That may be hard to swallow, but isn't it the truth? In this sense, ACT may have made a mistake with its proposed "Treaty Principles Bill". By naming it as such, with "Treaty" in the title, ACT may have made the (empty) debate about what the Treaty means an even more intense argument about nothing. The debate is not rational: it has become a religious-style disagreement based on faith, with followers joining different camps - each comprising born-again believers - each trying to convert disbelievers to their cause. ACT's bill should instead probably be called something like, "The Constitutional Principles Bill". It should simply map out the fundamental values all Kiwis hold dear, avoiding the futile Treaty-interpretation and mind reading game. Mind reading's hard enough to do even with your own family right now, let alone with people you never knew who lived nearly 200 years ago. Its not too late to re-purpose ACT's bill to ensure that it gets the support it needs to become law.