2024: The biggest election year in history?
Shinners give Ireland (and the world) its first ever house price target.
Our latest podcast is up.
Over 100 countries will have elections of one kind or another during 2024. Some analysts think that will be the largest number in history. A lot of those elections could be very consequential.
We start the year with Taiwanese elections - the outcome could well provoke China, widely thought to be preparing for a possible war by the end of the decade.
We end with the possible return of Trump. How bad could that be? Unimaginably bad. The Colorado Supreme Court made a last dict stand for democracy but the Trump-stuffed Supreme Court in DC knows which side its bread is buttered.
As well as a large number of elections, we observe a large number of wars. A secure job occupation for youngsters would be a drone operator. That could be a job for life and one that survives any upcoming European war.
The Shinners reinvent economic policy: they want to drive huge numbers of recent mortgagees into negative equity. Fantasy economics will not deter the fans of Ireland's extremists. Every Western country these days has to prove Putin is right in at least one thing: we truly are all decadent.
Apple podcast link here
Spotify:
Engineering negative equity does not seem like a smart move, and I expect a statement to say they are targeting building social housing at that price. The pain of the last crash is still present for many people, and they will not want to revisit those times again.
Strikes me that all price targeting for housing founders on a particular human motivation: ***we want house prices to be as low as possible when we buy, and high as possible when we sell*** - because a house is most people's principal asset. If people had a much broader range of asset classes to invest in, and house prices were nice and low, then it might be possible to think in these terms.
The reality is we need to build at scale: we should be planning for an all-island population of 9 to 10 million, and a population in Ireland of 7 - 8 million in the next decade or two. Statista, for example suggest 'The total population in Ireland was forecast to continuously increase between 2023 and 2028 by in total 0.3 million people (+5.71 percent). After the tenth consecutive increasing year, the total population is estimated to reach 5.58 million people and therefore a new peak in 2028.' That's shouting distance to 6 million in the not too distant future and still below the population in 1845.
And of course we're not building at scale because we impose problems on ourselves (NIMBYism being a particular one), and we are not really having a national debate on how to handle the future trajectory of what is now a very different country to even the 1990s or early 2000s.
I've written at length before on NIMBYism (e.g.: https://brainpizza.substack.com/p/building-a-better-future-a-radical), so I should stop here...!
https://www.statista.com/statistics/376906/total-population-of-ireland/#:~:text=Total%20population%20of%20Ireland%202028&text=The%20total%20population%20in%20Ireland,a%20new%20peak%20in%202028.
I listened to the IT’s podcast with the Mary Lou. On the topic of a united ireland, she said there were matters far more important to the unification debate than flags, anthems, etc. such as,…… wait for it….. free healthcare at the point of delivery (just like the wonderful Northern Ireland NHS I presume).
Now, where have we seen before the muddling of a constitutional debate with promises on healthcare I wonder? Slogans on the side of buses springs to mind.
Should the penny drop on the realities of healthcare funding and healthcare performance, it’s more likely that the opposite will occur post unification, i.e. the HSE taking over the Northern Ireland NHS and start charging at the point of delivery. When this happens, I am sure Mary Lou will be the commander and chief of the “this isn’t the united ireland we voted for” brigade as she assumes victimhood in opposition once again.