Boganomics, along with its sister project Things Bogans Like, performs a crucial role in Australian society. While bogans may tell you that they want to bed you or glass you, they also have many other wants and needs that they are less adept at articulating. As the bogan’s unofficial mouthpiece, we simply must take exception to the Unconventional Economist, who on these very pages has been spreading anti-bogan propaganda about negative gearing.
Negative gearing is the lifeblood of cashed up bogans nationwide, asking only that the bogan be greedy and territorial in order to have the federal government bankroll the bogan’s pathway to millionaire status. With a proud tradition of greed and territorialism, the bogan’s bank accounts have never told a negative gearing tax rebate to “piss off, we’re full”. Due to there being nothing more Australian than owning more of Australia than the bogan needs, any proposed measures to curb negative gearing are, by definition, un-Australian.
For generations, the government has acted as buffer between bogans and reality. Each incoming government receives three years in which to convert the bogan’s mutually exclusive set of desires into things that are easily achieved by all bogans. This can be done via private debt, but preferably public debt. If, at the end of the three year period, the bogan feels that it has been exposed to too many of the consequences of its own actions, the government will be voted out.
We at Boganomics Laboratories™ have worked tirelessly to develop a means of measuring the impact of negative gearing on the bogan and its home-buying behaviour. Effectively, as houses become less affordable the bogan is infuriated that homes it does not own are more expensive, while simultaneously thrilled that its assets are now even more overvalued. This level of fury can now be measured: in TerrorHurts (THz). A carefully calibrated metric intended to prevent unnecessary build-ups of bogan rage, one TerrorHurt is equivalent to the amount of bogan rage unleashed in a binary poll on a Fairfax website.
The bogan’s acute sensitivity to the price of housing is often completely unrelated to any traditional battle to keep a basic roof over one’s head. Instead, house prices are more seen, along with the interest rates set by the bogan-hating cretins at the RBA, as the level of headwind facing the bogan’s empire-building aspirations. While the bogan eagerly embraces rises in house prices that lead to capital appreciation in houses it already owns, the same price rises that are also pushing up the cost of houses it doesn’t currently own (but wishes to own) are unacceptable. While the excellent policy innovation of negative gearing does some of the work of placing those additional houses within reach, the discord in the graph above illustrates a profound failure by government to deliver to the bogan the things that it needs.
This week, our Unconventional Economist is pumping up Saul Eslake, who has been continuing his unsuccessful campaign (undertaken during the downtime from his unsuccessful campaign to get an AFL team in Tasmania) to portray the Australian taxation system as fundamentally flawed when it comes to property. While Messrs Eslake and Economist are correct in that the taxation system is flawed, their correctness ceases to be bogan-approved at that point. Eslake’s crusades fail because the bogan knows they are wrong.
Indeed, the bogan enjoys the idea of infinite house prices. Inflated asset values are fine, provided that the banks are willing to lend the bogan the necessary volume of money to acquire any and all houses that the bogan does not currently own, but wishes to own. In this scenario, as long as there is an indefinite interest-free period on the loan, the bogan’s TerrorHurts reading is down in the “Voting in News Ltd Binary Poll” vicinity. Unfortunately, Australia’s lending institutions are almost as corrupt as the RBA, and actively try to harm the bogan by questioning the bogan’s capacity to service an infinite debt load. With the TerrorHurts soaring, marginal electorates become more margin-ey, and politicians eagerly set about attempting to engineer a package of bogan bribes that will soothe the agitated bogan horde.
Unfortunately for both sides of the political fence, this Boganomics column has only commenced since the last federal election. Having spent many years only understanding part of the bogan’s needs in relation to housing, our politicians have probably suffered enough of the bogan’s seemingly unpredictable wrath. Allow us to now explain what the bogan actually wants.
Saul, Unconventional, this graph is correct. It shows a market that is operating at optimal efficiency to please the bogan. It is clear that the bogan’s, ergo Australia’s happiness is best served by house prices far in excess of today’s values. Higher house values make Australia permanently more wealthy, and are therefore an inherently good thing. So now that the destination of national joy is clearly defined, the question on the lips of policy wonks Canberra-wide is “how do we make this joy?” The answer definitely won’t be coming from joyless Christopher Joye, Steve Keen isn’t, and the Eslake is a dry, cracked saltpan of ideas. With the Unconventional Economist’s perceptions quite conventionally fused to Saul Eslake’s, it looks like, once again, it falls to us. And the government.
Policy pathway, step 1: The bogan knows that things should be always taken to the max, and never done by halves. The halving of the capital gains tax on property in 1999 was not max enough by half. The rest of it has to go, ending the government’s greedy thieving of the bogan’s hard-earned.
Policy pathway, step 2: Two wrongs generally make a right. This can be proven mathematically by multiplying two negative numbers by each other. As a result, the current rate of negative gearing needs to be increased exponentially in order to get it right. Beyond a certain level of property prices, mere taxation credits will not be sufficient. The bogan will need cash grants each time it acquires another property, which we tentatively title the Second Home Owner Grant, Third Home Owner Grant, Fourth Home Owner Grant, Fifth Home Owner Grant, Sixth Home Owner Grant, Seventh Home Owner Grant, Eighth Home Owner Grant, Ninth Home Owner Grant, and Tenth Home Owner Grant. All subsequent property purchases will be eligible for a Max Home Owner Grant, which is equal to or greater than the purchase price of the property.
And so it shall be: a grand scheme to all but eliminate TerrorHurts from the bogan’s world, placing infinite home ownership and infinite wealth within the reach of the bogan, and simultaneously remedying the housing shortage, famine, and whatever’s wrong with Charlie Sheen. Any questions? Didn’t think so.