Frank wrote on Nov 11
th, 2025 at 11:51am:
1. It is NOT the denomination that it printed on the physical dollar bill, evidently, since what the value of what the particular bill can be exchanged for diminishes during the life of the physical object that is the dollar bill. So the bill symbolises something apart from itself. This is so painfully simple that it hardly needs saying, except to you.
You wrote:
You are confusing value with bank notes.I explained 'value' of money ie the value of the dollar bill, is measured by what you can buy.
Now are saying - because money's value (purchasing power) changes with inflation, the currency's 'value' is "something apart" from the denomination of the currency, ie the dollar bill.
Obviously wrong: the dollar's (the currency's) 'value' is still measured by what it can buy, despite inflation (and devaulation of the currency).
You are merely confusing matters and asserting
government money whether free treasury-issued money, or reserve bank interest-bearing money, causes inflation, which is the mainstream narrative; but regardless of that assertion, the fact remains: bank notes (now mostly digital) have 'value' so long as you can purchase the necessities of life with them (eg, when making purchases using your electronic bank cards).
Quote:2. housing market = houses + people needing houses. If you have a housing market crisis then you have either too few houses or too many people, which, ultimately, the same thing. How many houses are we building each year, every year? How many new people come onto the housing market each year, every year? Why is there n ever growing gap between the two? Because of government policies. Government policies make construction too slow and the influx of new people too fast.
Obviously an inadequate analysis, despite the fact excessive immigration IS making matters worse at present, without proper policies to deal with it.
eg, in the post-war years, Menzies ensured funding of
houses for all - whether in the public or private sector (and whether via rents or ownership), at a time when Oz was experiencing an immigration population boom.....with
housing for all funded via the Keynesian 'welfare state'/'deficit spending' economy of the time.
Quote:You can print all the money in the world if approvals to build take too long and there aren't enough people and materials to actually build houses while there is a steady influx of new demand.
Government can certainly maintain a pubic housing sector
to keep a lid on private housing prices. But the Thatcher-Reagan "taxpayer" money delusion, and subsequent privatization ideology, destroyed government commitment to public housing.
In the age of
floating exchange rate fiat currencies (ie, post gold standard), government can fund public housing with free treasury issued money - up to point when all
available resources are being utilized.
Note: in today's unaffordable market, builders are going broke because prices are sky-high, and hence the number of houses being built in Oz is actually falling, so there IS 'slack' among builders which is available to be utilized straight away.
Quote:Again, painfully simple yet not grasped by politicians. Or maybe it IS grasped and they do want too have a housing crisis (and all sorts of other crises, all the time. There would be no need for politicians if there were no crises. The absence of politicians would go unnoticed in such a world.
Many politicians - like many citizens - are rent-seeking landlords who don't want to see house prices return to an affordable level....
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