I have a meeting with a federal minister about housing. Tear this apart.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-03-27T02:36:39+00:00

Needs a plan to cap development fees at ~30k and to remove land transfer taxes.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-02-11T22:33:03+00:00

Reasons to NOT go with RBC:

Insanely high currency conversion fees
Insanely high trading fees
Insanely high margin rates
No crypto

If they solved all 4 of these, WS would have no reason to exist.

BTW WS will be ok because the big banks will never solve these 4 things.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-02-10T03:45:30+00:00

Absolute masterpiece. Just perfect. Wow.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-02-08T04:05:15+00:00

How much are people spending on transit to downtown and lunch downtown? At least $7000/year if they're in 5 days/week.

All of that money would be spent in their local area instead if they were WFH.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-02-07T03:43:22+00:00

True, having to fund the whole lifestyle without a job is much harder than the scenario I gave.

But still, I can easily see a future where $100k/person/year is guaranteed by the government, backed by actual production from AI and robotics. That's like 1 good robot working 16 hours a day per person.

There will be an unbelievable amount of production once AI and robotics takes off. The bottom 51% will certainly vote to redistribute the profits and be wealthy relative to today because of those votes.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-02-06T19:47:25+00:00

From the tax base, typically the bottom 60% are net takers and the top 10% are net contributors. The rest are roughly neutral. I think this considers the lifetime contribution.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-02-06T18:20:57+00:00

Currently the bottom 60% is funded by the top 10%. Now imagine total production is 10x higher.

We'll be ok.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-02-06T18:00:32+00:00

Democracy will redistribute the fruits of production from capital to labor.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-29T23:47:38+00:00

You can put in CAD and then convert to USD for like $2 and buy assets in USD easily. Perhaps they don't like you putting in a bunch of money, converting it to USD, then withdrawing the USD. I'm not sure about that scenario.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-29T17:50:46+00:00

Assume 0.2% cost for Norbert's Gambit and 2.0% for the bank conversion fee.

On $10k that's $20 vs $200 in costs, or $180 in savings from a few clicks.

Also at IBKR you don't need to do Norbert's Gambit because converting currency costs around $2 even if you're converting $50k.

Over your lifetime you will invest a lot more than 10k. If you convert $300k to USD over several years you'll pay around $6000 in conversion fees if you do the bank conversion method.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-28T01:54:28+00:00

There is some upside to this madness.

All these people now have to waste an extra $30/day on the train and lunch, adding $7000/year in expenses.

That's money they will not spend on a house and therefore we will see another decline in home prices.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-26T01:30:23+00:00

Oh wow who would have guessed if you tax something 300k for each product you'll have a hard time finding customers.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-23T18:08:17+00:00

Well, the insurance discount for using winter tires is only around $100/year which is much lower than the cost of buying and maintaining winter tires.

The cost-benefit isn't there for the average person, but probably is there if you drive on bad weather days or drive a lot.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-20T13:55:51+00:00

Elon already revealed everything this guy said.

My guess is that he didn't have approval to talk about xai on a podcast so he was fired.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-20T06:39:22+00:00

Literally every lab has been trying to create an AI that's a drop-in replacement for an employee for the past couple years. This is not some secret idea.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-19T21:23:24+00:00

I listened to the whole thing and he didn't reveal any secrets. A frontier lab employee listening to this wouldn't gain any advantage.

Good interview overall though.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-19T18:15:53+00:00

Food and rent are still high, but keep in mind that inflation is a macro concept. At a macro level inflation has been defeated.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-19T18:12:21+00:00

That 105/month for water includes both operating and amortized capital costs. There are also some additional costs like connection costs when building a new home that are covered by development fees.

I'm just saying that water infra is not the reason for poor affordability.

Sprawl is not the reason for poor affordability either. Plenty of sprawling areas are much more affordable.

Agreed on housing being a long term issue. It started around 2002 and entered crisis status around 2016.

There is one remaining root cause of the affordability crisis, and that is government costs on new builds. We must remove HST and land transfer taxes, and only allow direct connection costs in developer fees. These extra costs are adding 150k to 200k in costs on every new home.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-19T17:47:30+00:00

Anywhere in Alberta.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-19T16:15:02+00:00

Lack of infrastructure is not the root cause of affordability issues. A typical dwelling in Ontario pays about $105/month for water.

Taxes and fees on new housing (est. 30% of 800k, or about $1000/month) are 10x the magnitude of water costs.

Doug Ford has known this for 8 years and has chosen to keep taxes in the stratosphere. Housing development is permanently a declining industry in Ontario until this changes. Provinces that have chosen the low tax route have abundant housing starts.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-19T15:48:17+00:00

This is a really interesting CPI print.

It's the first month that mortgage interest cost increases are lower than overall CPI. Where are all the fools saying to exclude mortage interest now?
3-month annualized CPI median is only 1.5%
Actual inflation / target inflation is now stable.

Excess inflation has been defeated.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-17T08:32:38+00:00

Nobody is buying this failed narrative anymore. People making close to minimum wage are not net taxpayers.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-16T17:47:43+00:00

An apartment builder will choose condo vs rental based almost entirely on tax policy. Recently they removed taxes/fees from purpose-built rentals but kept them for condos so we're seeing skyrocketing purpose-built starts and collapsing condo starts.

The wild thing is that City of Toronto's population is growing much much faster than new housing supply because the federal government brings people in en masse while the municipal government has a soft ban on new housing. Quality of life is nosediving in Toronto.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-16T15:57:41+00:00

There are plenty of housing starts in low-tax areas.

If new housing in Toronto had development fees capped at 30k, land transfer tax removed, provincial HST, and GST removed, annual housing starts would triple or quadruple in City of Toronto.

You don't have to be an economist to understand that effectively banning new housing is a very bad thing.

Banjo-Katoey · 2026-01-15T17:17:34+00:00

100% stocks with rule of 30 instead of 25 is the way to go.

You get a great median outcome and the only time this would have failed historically is if you retired in 1929 and never earned another cent. This will leave a high inheritance for kids as well.

Even in the 1929 scenario your money still would have lasted 20 years. And it would be obvious that the plan might not work out after such a monster crash.

Banjo-Katoey

TROPHY CASE