Quote Originally Posted by dobby41 View Post
Maybe you can clarify something for me - how are equities productive?
Buying initial shares in a new venture is productive but after that the company doesn't get a cut from the trading so how do they add to the company?
Sure, if they make another equity raise it helps to have a high share price but that doesn't happen a lot.

A rental property could be considered productive - they produce a lot of ongoing economic activity from property management to repairs and maintenance.
There's a lot of inconveniences owning a rental property ; the maintenance and rates, insurance, expense that eats the return on the rental income. Where does this leave in terms of overall productivity? Not a lot compared to ownership of a business that allocates the wealth in all different areas. Specifically if one that can be exported (no you can't export the land and house it sits on in NZ abroad). So from an economic potential, there's no way a house can out beat the productivity potential of tangible & intangible products that can have a global market exposure.

But don't take my word for it. Have a read below that puts NZ's productivity at the near bottom:

Or, and the economic issue that mostly drove the creation of this blog, New Zealand’s dismal long-term economic performance. In short, productivity growth (and the lack of it), and our continued decline relative to other advanced economies...

Sadly, the only realistic interpretation one can take is that the IMF thinks that over 2019 to 2025, on current government policies, New Zealand’s productivity growth performance – labour productivity and MFP – will be simply shocking. Most probably negative – the only way to square falls in real GDP per capita, unemployment returning towards normal, and a reasonable level of investment – and almost certainly far worse than in almost all other advanced economies, and especially far worse than the performance in the countries that were aiming to close gaps with the OECD leaders.

https://croakingcassandra.com/category/productivity/

Perhaps NZ's huge preference in owning real estate assets is part of the reasons of NZ's low productivity? I would believe so.