Minister of Housing,
Parliament Buildings,
Wellington.
copy to Minister of Finance Hon. Bill English M.P.
Dear Sir,
Firstly I must admit I know nothing about economics, but have decided
to study and to master the subject with a view to becoming a nominee
and perhaps winning a Nobel Prize for the subject if I can come up with
some innovative formulae and answers to the country's economic problems.
From what I know, the answer is inflation, as illustrated by the need
to make our coins smaller to reflect the increasing price of metals.
They do not need to be made of gold to show this clearly, however if
they were, people would simply melt them down and sell them by weight
to recover inflation, not a bad suggestion. America has not changed the
composition of their 25c coin, the "quarter".
Recently I wrote to the Minister of Finance, suggesting that all
government portfolios be grouped under four: Housing Finance, Health
and Education, and that each of these receive 25% of the tax revenue.
It is logical that housing makes a profit, and so could your other
portfolios. Health could have Police and Defense, but the idea is that
profitable ministries ( and loss making ones)can be traded between these
four in order to balance the books, in the same way any asset, or
business with assets and liabilities can be traded.
One idea I have which may be worth considering, is requiring a new
development to make 10% (or any part) of its land, freely available to
the government for state housing, as a cost of development. It would be
the ministries job to design and build the houses or flats, on this
land, which it could sell after five, ten or twenty years. My own house
is currently appreciating at an average of 20% per year, over the last
30 years, although I have not tried to sell it recently and do not
think I would get the asking price. However the market will return in a
year or two I am quite sure. The more prudent investment for this
climate is movable assets, such as works of fine art, as these hold
their value a lot better and there is always a demand by investors for
proven good ones.
You can find this letter at http://www.rainierbank.biz/economicsletters1.php
and I will write to you again if I have any more good ideas.
Yours sincerely,
Malcolm Baker