Which is preferable to sticking it in now.

I still don’t see why we don’t spread the cost over the lifetime of the asset though, like anyone investing would if they could …

Those SOB (Son’s of Bentham).

It is all about the margin. At the current margin I think that the cost of thinking about policy is lower than the benefit, substantially.

And trust me, I doubt anything I write here signals much in the way of intelligence 😉

@Eric Crampton

The real kicker for me is that I don’t believe any of the assumptions required to generate a levy to start with. Hell, we are talking about rebuilding the capital stock – what is the problem with borrowing to fund that. If we are worried about a structural deficit then we need to ask questions about tax and spending – but this has nothing to do with the earthquake.

All these politician dudes are just being punks in my professional opinion (IMPO)

That is indeed a HUGE public policy risk. However, if we don’t trust government to implement it then that is a reason for changing tack once we have figured out the “ideal” policy – we were just doing the first step of thinking about the policy transparently first.

seems to me that putting it off probably means never charging it, politics will change and the focus will move.