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Household Net Worth

6/20/2020

 
Canadian Household Net Worth
CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE

​Thanks to BetterDwelling.com for producing a chart from the Parliamentary Budget Office report of June 17, 2020 "Estimating the Top Tail of the Family Wealth Distribution in Canada" and the PBO's modelling work which produced a new analytical resource, the High Net Worth Family Database  (HFD).

​I have mashed up the chart with some additional text to highlight the results and if I have done the arithmetic correctly, the data represents approximately 15,349,000 families that collectively possess $10.3 trillion in wealth, or an average household net worth of $671,054.*

*For reference in interpreting the summary statistics, the calibrated HFD represents approximately 15,349,000 families that collectively possess $10.3 trillion in wealth. Appendix B, Page 19

Household Assets & Liabilities
CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE
​The distribution of wealth among households is heavily skewed toward the wealthiest families. In Canada, a small proportion of families at the top of the distribution possess net worth that is orders of magnitude higher than the country’s median net worth. The high concentration of wealth among a small number of families makes it difficult to reliably measure wealth at the very top of the distribution. 

​AND "Real estate and mortgages on that real estate, are the single largest asset and liabilities categories." June 17, 2020 PBO

​See also my Household Debt Chart which includes plot overlays of GDP, Net Trade and Foreign Direct Investment to see the trends that have made Canadians prized by the world as consumers with lots of available credit. Our willingness to hock the future,​ supplies net income to entities outside our "borders" financed and subsidized by our own cheap credit and for over 20 years we have switched to becoming net investors offshore instead of net investors in our own production capabilities. The growing capital flight out of Canada is at the expense of Canadian labour. (Employment Chart). 

Moderate Overvaluation

7/26/2017

 
CMHC Moderate Overvaluation
CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE
Say what?
The market continues to see moderate price acceleration and overvaluation due to low supply, despite record level construction.”
Eric Bond, Principal Market Analyst (Vancouver) CMHC, July 26, 2017 News Release Here
Really? Price acceleration and real estate overvaluation is moderate?

According to the data collected from real estate boards and CMHC to create the charts in this site, here are the price increases over the last 10 years of Single Family Detached houses to June 2017:
  • Vancouver 122%
  • Calgary 19%
  • Toronto 122%

The "peaks" in "moderation" over 10 years of Single Family Detached house prices were:
  • Vancouver 183% at JAN 2012
  • Calgary 135% at SEP 2014
  • Toronto 167% at MAR 2017

CMHC and the Bank of Canada as federal government agents along with provincial, municipal and the banking and finance industry agents have wrecked the Canadian housing market by permitting the wholesale flipping of properties and the entrance of off-shore speculators into the Canadian housing supply stock.
​
  • How Canada completely lost its mind over real estate, Macleans April 7, 2017
    ​
CAD Money Supply
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Paul Krugman - Patrimonial Capitalism
Thomas Piketty - Capital in the 21st Century

Death & Taxes

7/29/2016

 
Tiny House on Wheels in VancouverCLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Last week I spotted Ted the 40-year-old Vancouver man at Jonathan Rogers Park (West 8th & Manitoba St) who has been parking his $300 Craigslist shed on wheels in various Vancouver parks along with the rising number of homeless people. July 22, 2016 ​Metro News

"OSFI tells some banks to test for sharp drops in Vancouver, Toronto housing markets" July 26, 2016 CBC News

“B.C.’s 15% tax on foreign homebuyers could drive money to other parts of Canada” July 26, 2016 Financial Post 

"Tory won't rule out a tax on foreign real estate buyers in Toronto" July 28, 2016 
Toronto Sun

​"Chinese-language media up in arms over B.C. foreign buyer tax"  July 28, 2016 Globe & Mail

“Does this set a dangerous precedent in the minds of foreign investors across Canada?" July 29, 2016 Mortgage Broker News

​It must be my age, but when I see politicians trying to solve problems via blunt taxation, I move even closer towards being a grumpy old man - death and taxes - they suck, literally. Here are a few ideas while we wait for the July housing numbers to come out next month.
​
PART I - The Need for Tax Reform

In November 2011, I came across the idea of the APT, the ‘Automated Payment Transaction Tax’ which eliminates the need to file tax or information returns.​ A year later I posted links to the APT and since then I have continued to encourage media, politicians and potential influencers to at least look at the thesis. 

To my dismay I have had insignificant response. I think this is because we have too much tax and are immersed in its complexity and we have not enough death of tired old ideas that should be retired with every generation. ​​
​​
The Automated Payment Transaction Tax

In its simplest form, the APT tax consists of a flat tax levied on all transactions. The tax is automatically assessed and collected when transactions are settled through the electronic technology of the banking/payments system.

The APT tax introduces progressivity through the tax base since the volume of final payments includes exchanges of titles to property and is therefore more highly skewed than the conventional income or consumption tax base.

The wealthy carry out a disproportionate share of total transactions and therefore bear a disproportionate burden of the tax despite its flat rate structure.

The automated recording of all APT tax payments by firms and individuals creates a degree of transparency and perceived fairness that induces greater tax compliance. Also, the tax has lower administrative and compliance cost.

Think about the desirability and feasibility of replacing the present system of personal and corporate income, sales, excise, capital gains, import and export duties, gift and estate taxes with a single comprehensive revenue neutral Automated Payment Transaction tax.
​
​Implementation of this elegant and simple idea in Canada would allow Canadians to create an original, authentic social organization that would eventually be copied by other nations. Let's apply the power of the internet to get this Automated Payments Transaction Tax idea into the public square of discussion and then into application. 


Canadians, write your Member of Parliament." Foreign readers take this idea back to your jurisdiction and spark the conversation there. Some country will be first in the implementation of the APT thesis.

In my opinion the APT or a variant of it will happen one day as sure as Uber, Airbnb and Torrents have arrived and driverless freeways will eventually emerge. It’s a peer to peer thing; it’s the internet, it’s inevitable. “Software is eating the world.” Marc Andreessen.  

A micro tax on all financial transactions reduces the burden on all individuals and allows our governors to manage our spending requirements in a transparent progressive way. The APT thesis calculations were based on U.S. taxation revenues and expenditures from the late 1990’s. The potential tax base has increased significantly since then; think of the machine initiated equity, fixed income and commodity exchange transactions that go on day and night. Here is a snippet from the 41 Page PDF authored by Edgar L. Feige, Professor of Economic Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
​

The APT tax rate from the original study publication in 2000 achieved the goals of replacing the present system of personal and corporate income, sales, excise, capital gains, import and export duties, gift and estate taxes with a single comprehensive revenue neutral Automated Payment Transaction tax of only 0.15% on each side of the transaction for a total of 0.3% on any financial transaction.

The APT tax proposed is designed as a revenue neutral replacement for the present tax system. It is emphatically not intended as an additional source of revenue. It proposes to broaden the tax base by eliminating all implicit tax expenditures, all exemptions, deductions and credits while adding to the tax base the enormous volume of transactions representing exchanges of property rights to real and financial assets and liabilities. The flat rate tax required to maintain revenue neutrality is estimated to be in the neighborhood of 0.6 percent if total transactions volumes fall to half of their current levels.

​PART II - The Need for Policy Reform

Clearly, a 15% provincial tax on Vancouver housing purchases by foreign buyers will simply move what little demand there is from this sector to other jurisdictions. Hot speculative money whether clean or dirty is transnational.

Look at Canada’s record of Federal Direct Investment; in full year 2015 there was a huge spike in FDI OUT such that for every $1 of FDI coming into Canada there is $1.31 going out to get a better return on Capital and Labour. In short, our Canadian investor class, like most other global players, looks for leverage and arbitrage opportunities outside of Canada. This is a trend that has been widening and unbroken since 1997 throughout the last five federal governments (4 Liberal, 1 Conservative).

Meanwhile after seven years of nitro-fueled Zero Interest Rate Policy, we have only increased our consumption habits and widened our debt load across both private and public sectors. While the private sector binges on low cost credit, our multi-level governance is shifting more to fiscal policy since monetary policy has not worked as promoted. Yes - CPI remains muted, No - we have no control over what consumers will do with easy credit especially since competing governmental departments encourage minimum equity positions when borrowing. After seven years, the Bank of Canada is still trying to figure it out:
​
With the next renewal (of the “Inflation Control Target”) approaching in 2016, the Bank is focusing its review and research in the following three areas:

1) The Level of the Inflation Target​
2) Financial Stability Considerations in the Formulation of Monetary Policy​
​
​3) Measuring Core Inflation

We have a failed Canadian central bank policy of ZIRP and NIRP threats that ape the U.S. Fed policy as well mirroring many other central banks since the pit of gloom in March 2009. It’s been a race to the bottom, and here we are.

We have the outdated 20th Century wild west mortgage insurance liability of CMHC which was created in 1946 as an elaboration of previous housing incentives beginning in 1919 (Wikipedia).

We have an irresponsible overpriced exclusionary and predatory real estate industry that obfuscates, monopolizes and fails at basic fiduciary behaviour.

This combination of patchwork policy has failed to get capital investment into productive employment. Instead we have asset valuations that exceed the worst possible, measured globally, and we have settled for consumption and waste. Asset values may look good on a balance sheet in terms of credit worthiness, but the social contract does not serve our collective needs.

Nowhere is there public debate or care about tomorrow except in the tedium of blogs and anonymity. Governance has clearly failed and the media is busy chasing sirens and shootouts. It’s shameful. It’s time for reform and modernization using the tools we already have.

​PART III - The Need for Land Entitlement Reform
​
“The social state is advantageous only when all have something and none too much.” A paraphrase of Jean-Jacques Rousseau from his Du Contrat Social ou Principes du Droit Politique of 1762.

​The APT does not solve the problem of the current historic asset valuations in Canadian housing prices which are at crisis proportions and which cannot now be easily solved with ZIRP, NIRP or a revolving door of political ambitions.

Let’s consider the end to private fee simple land ownership and move all our land and territorial limits into the hands of all of us.

Here’s how I see it:

  1. All land and territorial space inside the jurisdiction of Canada (the Land) would be owned by the Canadian Government (the State) on behalf of Canadian taxpayers (the Tenants).
  2. The land would be leased to the tenants.
  3. The state would set the value of the land lease and term according to use.
  4. Only the improvements allowed on the land are owned by the tenant or transferable to another tenant in an open and free market place.

This simple idea would put an end to the endless inflation of the cost of land since the value of the land would be set by the central organizing body of the state which would assess the needs of the community of tenants and the responsibilities of all of us towards the wellbeing of our health and environment.

The improvements on the land would by definition be valued by their utility and composition of materials all of which are readily assigned value by an open marketplace and would be more prone to deflation than inflation because improvements have to be maintained to retain value.

Valuations would be rational, transparent and immediate. Affordability would be easily controlled. Tenancy agreements on the land would be available to both domestic and foreign users and when combined with the ‘Automated Payment Transaction Tax’ outlined in PART I above, all land lease revenue and all improvement transactions would trigger APT revenue to the state for reinvestment.
​
How economic inequality harms societies - Richard Wilkinson
"If you want to live the American dream, go to Denmark.”

​We humans have accomplished a lot of ambitious and technically challenging projects and have expanded our knowledge base to a degree that suggests we should be able to transform our puny little financial problems in a politically impartial way free of ideology to the benefit of the greater good.

I don’t expect that this post will trigger any change during my remaining lifetime to the status quo of 20th century and older ideas that we remain wedded to, but I publish this because ideas precede action and I am not the only one thinking about this.

According to this December 2015 study by Azoulay, Fons-Rosen & Zivin “Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?”, Max Planck’s observation is indeed the way our knowledge base and idea implementation grows.
​
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Real Time with Bill Maher
Michael Moore – Where to Invade Next ​

FOMO vs FOGI

7/22/2016

 
Luxury Spending
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Chronically low interest rates since the Pit of Gloom in March 2009 have fueled a huge credit bubble in Canada. StatsCan as far as I can tell does not highlight luxury sales, but the Bank of America credit card division does as the chart shows. I have added to the mashup a sales chart of detached housing in West Vancouver, one of Canada's most expensive postal codes for real estate. Is the FEAR OF MISSING OUT shifting to the FEAR OF GETTING IN for hopeful West Van buyers?
​
The Bank of America chart of Credit Card luxury sales via Zero Hedge shows that big ticket item purchases peaked in 2011. Zero Hedge goes on to report that Christies International art sales are dropping. 
Asian buyers won 28% of Christie’s offerings world-wide. but a big reason for the drop in the list of sales below was the disappearance of the heretofore relentless Chinese bid. (Year/Year Data)
​
Art Sales down 33%
Auction Sales down 37.5%
Private Broker Art sales down 10%
Contemporary Art sales down 45%
U.S. Art Sales down 50%
Europe Art Sales down 12%
Hong Kong Art Sales down 11%
Rival Sotheby's Art Sales down 22.6%
Tefaf Art Market Report: Global Art Sales down 7%
Asian Art Sales down 33%

Christie’s said only 29 artworks it sold during the first half achieved prices exceeding $6.5 million—compared with 47 the year before—with nothing selling for anywhere close to the $180 million that Pablo Picasso’s “Women of Algiers (Version O)” brought in 2015."
  • JUL 2016 The late Alan Bond’s Perth mansion sells as the price of Australia’s most luxurious homes plunge
  • JUL 2016 The Hamptons Housing Market Has Crashed: Luxury Home Sales Drop By Half As Prices Plunge
  • JUL 2016 Dramatic Luxury Sales Drop, Fresh Data Shows
  • JUN 2016 Luxury L.A. Home Prices Down First Quarter 2016 As Global Volatility Dampens Buyer Demand
  • JUN 2016 Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus reports decline in both sales and profit
  • MAY 2016 Hong Kong’s retail sales drop hardest in 17 years
  • MAY 2016 Luxury condo boom in Lower Manhattan turns to glut, prices sag.
  • MAY 2016 Luxury-Home Sales Fall in London, NYC With Rich Shifting Focus
  • MAY 2016 Across the world, luxury-home sales get a reality check
  • MAY 2016 The Premium Plunge: Sales of the Most Popular Luxury Cars in America Are Nosediving
  • MAY 2016 At China’s Biggest Yacht Show, the Party Feel Fizzles
  • MAY 2016 Business-Jet Sales Sink Most Since 2011
  • MAY 2016 Luxury jeweller Tiffany posts steepest sales drop since financial crisis
  • MAR 2016 Luxury watchmakers gloomy about 2016 sales

Vancouver Laundry

6/16/2016

 
FinTrac Dirty Laundry
CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE
2008-09 FINTRAC disclosed 197 cases out of 556 involving transactions through the MSB (Money Service Business) sector.
Businesses suspected of being involved in ML/TF (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing):
  • import/export (e.g. food, clothing, medical supplies)
  • financial services
  • real estate
  • transportation, trucking, air, taxi
  • car sales/rentals/repairs
  • convenience stores
  • electronics/computer sales
  • gas stations & petroleum providers
  • non-profit organizations

​Of the case disclosures involving the use of an MSB, FINTRAC identified and focused on 126 cases from 2008-2009, which were the most illustrative of how MSBs could be exploited for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes. Complete 2010 Fintrac Study

COOLING OFF THE BC REAL ESTATE MARKET
FROM THE TOP DOWN

​Reprint in whole by Kenneth Pazder
June 10, 2016 at linkedin.com/pulse

Hat Tip to BenRabidoux ​@BenRabidoux
In our real estate law practice we have seen houses steadily rise over the past seven or eight years and jump drastically since January of this year.

For example, homes in Vancouver on Connaught Drive which were selling for $3-4,000,000 a few years ago are now on the block for $10-15,000,000 (a client of mine recently turned down an offer on her home in this area at $15.8M.  The home was purchased for $6M!)

Correspondingly, homes which were $1-2,000,000 are now $4-5,000,000.
Even condominiums which were valued at a half a million dollars a last summer are now worth $800K to $1M.

Prices are rising so fast, one has to buy a property BEFORE putting one's own property up for sale, for fear of being priced out of the market!

Before the completion date occurred, another client of mine who bought a home in North Vancouver for $1.5M was offered $250,000 by the seller NOT to complete the purchase!

In my view, this lunacy is being fueled to a large extent by foreign money which is pouring into the Lower Mainland at an unprecedented rate and pulling the prices UPWARDS from the top end.

This inflow of money (Chinese principally, but there is also a lot of Iranian, Indian and American capital coming in, as there is still a very substantial discount on the Canadian dollar for those who deal in USD), is destabilizing the BC real estate market for everyone who lives and works here.

Tragically, the only people who can't seem to see this are the provincial and federal politicians and the many pundits who make a living commenting on things they t know nothing about (newspaper columnists, economists, business school profs and other so-called experts).
 
They remind me of the referees at a World Wrestling Entertainment match. Everyone in the stands is screaming that the bad guy has a concealed weapon and the only one in the building who can't see it is the referee!

However in the WWE the refs are paid to look clueless.

Our politicians are paid to govern in the interests of Canadian citizens, not foreign speculators -but looking at their behavior, one would never guess that.

While it is reported that foreign ownership may be as little as 3-5% of the housing stock that is more than enough to affect the entire market adversely -and it has done so in spades as few can now afford to own a house in Vancouver and even condominium ownership is becoming a stretch.

WHAT TO DO?
1. Make foreign buyers confirm the source of their funds
Right now any foreign buyers can wire any amount of money into  their lawyers' or notaries' trust accounts from any bank in the world to buy a property in BC with no questions asked.

Realtors and mortgage brokers are required to fill in a bunch of useless FINTRAC forms and obtain client identification documents, but NO ONE is asking where the money came from in the first place!

I have heard many stories from realtors of bidding wars where a property is listed at a certain price and then a half a dozen or more offers come in steadily bidding up the price by fifty or one hundred thousand dollar increments and then the final offer comes in at a half a million dollars over everybody else's!

A lawyer in our office recently had the same experience in BC Supreme court on a foreclosure sale.  The offer the court was asked to approve was $1.5M and a six or seven other buyers showed up at the hearing.  As is the court's practice, everyone  was advised of price of the original offer and given the opportunity to bid or re-bid in a sealed envelope.  The Master opened the sealed bids at $1,55M, $1.65M, $1.725M, $1.9M and the WINNER was $3.1M!

It would appear that the winner wanted to pay AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. 

It has been our experience that much like locals, foreign buyers usually don't want to pay a penny more than is necessary to purchase a property here (much less an extra million dollars on a foreclosure purchase).

As most foreign buyers have local realtors who are well aware of the market prices, the only explanation which seems to make any sense is that some foreign purchasers are using the Canadian real estate system to launder their money.

Once a house is purchased in BC the seller has effectively washed it and it can be moved anywhere in the world easily by selling the property (as the seller then has the contract of sale and all the documents necessary from the lawyer's office to "prove" that his funds came from the legitimate sale of Canadian real estate). No foreign country will look past the most recent transaction to confirm the legitimacy of the funds.

In the criminal world, the fee to launder money can be 50% or more.  In Canada, it seems to be NIL.

I believe that many foreign buyers when confronted with a requirement to show where their funds came front would balk and refuse to complete the purchase.

Stemming the flow of dirty money into Canadian real estate would terminate a number of high end purchases, which may push down some of the prices at the $10M - $15M range which would in turn push down the medium high end prices and so on.

2. Increase taxes significantly on those who purchase property in Canada but do not live here or pay taxes here. 
It is commonplace for foreigner investors to park some of their money in Canada (as they do not trust their own governments).  They typically put the title of a property into the names of their wives or children (it is always interesting to look at the occupation listed on the titles to high end real estate like "worker," "student" or "home maker").  The wife and kids live in the property as their principal residence and pay no taxes as they have no income.

The father, who is a non-resident, continues to make money in a foreign state at a much lower tax rate.  Canada taxes income on the basis of RESIDENCY, so the father pays NO CANADIAN TAX.  The family enjoys the benefits of the Canadian health care system, school system etc. while paying nothing other than property taxes.

The misguided view of the premier of this province is that the above situation constitutes FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN BC, to be encouraged at every step.  
With all due respect, that is nonsense.  

As the BC government is perpetually short of money for every worthwhile endeavor (hospitals, schools, pubic housing, seniors, homeless shelters, transit, mental health, child poverty -the list is endless), it would seem obvious that one source of revenue which would be virtually unopposed by BC taxpayers would be to increase Property Transfer Tax and municipal property taxes on foreign buyers who are simply taking advantage of the laxity of the current legal and regulatory framework in BC.

An appropriate rate would be perhaps 20% Property Transfer Tax and triple current property taxes for those who choose to evade paying Canadian income tax (or pay only a token amount for appearance purposes) or simply leave their BC homes vacant.
A sale of a residence so occupied (or unoccupied as the case may be) should also attract income tax on any increase in value (not capital gains tax).  

A capital gains exemption for a principal residence should also be disallowed for such owners (these two changes would of course require an amendment to the Income Tax Act which is a federal statute).

These  even for so-called "legitimate" off-shore funds would also dampen foreign demand for
Canadian real estate, however to the extent that it does not, then at least there is SOME benefit flowing back to the Canadian tax system.

Are these measures discriminatory?  Absolutely!  They discriminate against foreign buyers who are simply seeking to take advantage of the Canadian real estate system, while parking or washing their funds.

These changes should apply to ANY foreign buyer of any nationality (US, Europe, Britain and Australia included).

UBC already does this with foreign students who are required to pay much higher annual tuition than local students -and no one is complaining!

Will this "fix" the real estate affordability problem?  Maybe not, but you have to start somewhere and you might as well start with the most obvious cause.

Are either of these measures likely to come to come to pass?  I would not hold my breath.
​
Generally, by the time the government gets around to doing anything of consequence "the proverbial horses are already out of the barn and the farm has been sold off to a foreign syndicate." 

Better Call Saul Explains Money Laundering

California or Bust

10/21/2015

 
San Francisco & Vancouver Housing
CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE
Residential Mortgage Debt as a % of GDP (Sep 2014 Source)
  • Australia (AUS) 
    Debt 1.3 Trillion
    GDP 1.6 Trillion
    Debt/GDP 81%

  • Canada (CAD)
    Debt 1.2 Trillion
    GDP 1.55 Trillion
    Debt/GDP 77%​
    ​
  • U.S.A. (USD)
    Debt 11 Trillion
    GDP 16 Trillion
    Debt/GDP 69% 

If it looks like Vancouver, it's probably San Francisco

The inflationists have bet the farm on housing in all the global markets that attract non-resident buyers. When I look at my long term (since 1956) Canadian Housing Starts with Census overlaid chart, it strikes me that we actually need a lot more housing if we want to see affordability again. But the price to rent ratio does not incent the construction industry. If offshore money is willing to buy physically depreciating negative yields, then let's help them along. Perhaps a public-private (us-them) partnership is in order. We build them, they finance them. 
IMF-OECD Housing Data
CLICK CHART TO ENLARGE

Trapped in Silicon Valley

Billionaire Club

10/10/2014

 
Billionaire Census 2014
The Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2014
Record number of billionaires (now): 2325
Billionaires combined net worth: 7.3 trillion
New billionaires since 2013: 155
New billionaire growth since 2013: 7.1%
Billionaires in Europe: 775
Billionaires in U.S.: 609
Billionaires in Asia: 560
Billionaires in Middle East: 154
Billionaires in Latin American: 153
Billionaires in Africa: 40
Billionaires in Pacific: 34
Average time to become a billionaire: 45 years
Self-made billionaires: 55%
Inherited/Self-made billionaires: 26%
Inherited billionaires: 19%
Billionaires with university degree: 65%
Billionaires in private companies: 63%
Billionaires in public companies: 31%
Billionaires with over $50b: 4
Billionaires with $25-50b: 16
Billionaires with $10-25b: 88
Billionaires with $5-10b: 169
Billionaires with $2-5b: 732
Billionaires with $1-2b: 1316
Average billionaire cash holding: $600m
Philanthropic donations by a billionaire: more than $100m
Real estate held by a billionaire: less than $100m
Number of billionaires that are networked by a billionaire: 3
Number of billionaires by 2020: 3800+ "this might change eh?"
Data Source & Full Report

Commuter Lament

9/23/2014

 
Picture
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Picture
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Savills' Thumbnail
Real Estate Evaluation

  • Shanghai, Moscow & Mumbai
    Potentially over-valued with weak or falling rents.
  • London, Singapore, Hong Kong & Paris
    Fully valued, static prices or trending down. 
  • New York & Sydney
    Becoming fully valued but still rising at slowing rates. 
  • Tokyo
    Recovering, still trending modestly upward.
  • Dubai & Rio de Janeiro
    Growing strongly but volatile.
Commute times say as much about the locations in which different employees choose to live as it does about the nature of the transport networks. In New York, where staff favour living more centrally, the average commute is just 19 minutes. By contrast, the more dispersed nature of Rio, Mumbai (3 times longer to commute than NY) and Shanghai means that people spend longer commuting, despite faster travel times on a per kilometre basis. Here, administration level staff live far from the centre, priced out of the best neighbourhoods and reflecting income inequality. (Source savills.com)

Overslept, so tired,
if late, get fired.
Why bother?
Why the pain?
Just go home,
do it again.


The Commuter’s Lament/A Close Shave by Norman Colp as public art in the tunnel connecting the NY Port Authority to the Times Square subway station. 

Doctor Who "Gridlock" Scene 6

Gilded Age

9/12/2014

 

Left, Right or Down

The national wire service press subscribers refer to the Broadbent Institute's September 2014 study "Inequality and the Fading of Redistributive Politics" Edited by Keith Banting and John Myles (see the quoted paragraphs and link to the source material below) as being "left leaning" I am willing to bet that the bottom quintiles of earners are more concerned with the direction of "down".

Picture

Click Both Charts To Enlarge
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Canada’s poorest 10% of the population saw their net worth drop some 150% since 2005. They have an average net worth of -$5,100, meaning on average the lowest earners have $5,100 more debt than assets, down from -$2,000 in 2005.
(Huffingtonpost.ca)
In the U.S. those in the lowest 20% quintile had a negative median net worth of -$6,029 in 2011, compared with -$905 in 2000. Those in the 2nd lowest quintile saw their assets drop by nearly half to a median of $7,263 in 2011 from $14,319 in 2000. (CNBC.com)

Deep and Persistent Wealth Inequality in Canada
Broadbent Institute September 2014


The Fading Redistributive Impact: Inequality and Poverty After four decades of relative stability, income inequality in Canada surged upward in the latter half of the 1990s. Between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, inequality increased more in Canada than in other OECD countries, and the redistributive impact of the tax-transfer system in Canada declined (OECD 2008, fig. 4.7). As we saw at the outset, by the mid-2000s, the redistributive impact of Canadian taxes and transfers was among the smallest among OECD countries (OECD 2011, 271).

The big surge in market income inequality began during the recession of the early 1980s and continued until the end of the 1990s. Rising market inequality reflects several distinct but powerful trends. Most attention has focused on the stunning rise in the proportion of income captured by the top 1 percent of income-earners, reflecting changing norms about compensation for the highly paid (Saez and Veal 2005; Fortin et al. 2012). The share of income captured by the top 1 percent is now approaching the levels reached in the “Gilded Age” of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s, generating an intense debate about the division between the rich and the rest, which was highlighted by the Occupy Movement in 2011. 


However, other trends have also mattered. One is the loss of solid middle-income jobs as a result of a combination of technological change, outsourcing, and declining unionization. According to one analysis, “the young and the poorly educated have borne the brunt of these forces, but significant numbers of those previously in the middle and lower middle of the occupational skill and wage distribution have also been adversely affected” (Fortin at al. 2012, 133). 

Finally, social changes have been important. Women and men increasingly choose spouses with similar educational levels, a process known as marital homogamy, or educational assortative mating. This trend tends to increase family income inequality as high-income earners increasingly marry each other and lower-income earners do likewise. Figure 1.1 captures the impact of these wider trends, demonstrating the strong rise in the real income of families at the 80th and 90th percentile, compared to the stagnation in the incomes of families in the middle and lower levels of the income distribution.
Read the whole Broadbent Institute study with charts here.

Bill Maher - Wealth Inequality in America

Millionaires

7/22/2014

 
PictureCLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE - Credit morguefile.com
The Spear's & WealthInsight list of cities with the highest percentage of millionaires. Toronto is ranked 15th with 3.3% of its population having assets apart from prime residence, of more than US$ 1,000,000. Spears July 2014

A ranking like this is important, said WealthInsight Analyst Oliver Williams, "...because wealthy individuals, more than any other group, will change their home and even their domicile based on factors of ready access to wealth managers and private banks as well as political stability and heritage. Owning a piece of history in a city such as London is an aspiration for many, particularly wealthy individuals from overseas..."
  1. Monaco (29.21%)
  2. Zurich (27.34%)
  3. Geneva (17.92%)
  4. New York (4.63%)
  5. Frankfurt (3.88%)
  6. London (3.39%)
  7. Oslo (2.90%)
  8. Singapore (2.80%)
  9. Amsterdam (2.63%)
  10. Florence (2.59%)
  11. Hong Kong (2.58%)
  12. Rome (2.54%)
  13. Dublin (2.40%)
  14. Doha (2.31%)
  15. Toronto (2.29%)
  16. Venice (2.25%)
  17. Brussels (2.11%)
  18. Houston (2.09%)
  19. San Francisco (2.07%)
  20. Paris (2.04%)


Grace Kelly & Prince Rainier Attend A Gala Show 1955?

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