Mirabile dictu: Jess Irvine locates her brain

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We know she has one because from time to time it is glowing, usually when she escapes the clutches of the lunatic RBA. Like today:

…here’s also another, less visible, reason behind the rising share of capital. And that’s housing. Rapidly rising rents, along with home prices, have increased the returns to investment in housing. If you own an investment home, that income is classed as capital income, not labour income.

 The housing market is also affecting workers’ ability to afford to live close to and get the jobs where they can best use their skills and be most productive, dampening potential pay packets.

Kirchner concludes scaremongering about ‘fat cats’ and declining worker power is a distraction from the main game: finding ways to both boost housing supply and boost the nation’s flagging productivity performance – the two being interrelated.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.