Author Archive
The kids aren’t alright
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, August 15th, 2011 - 64 comments
What are the baby-boomer elite doing to our kids? Our rulers, drawn from the selfish generation, have taken more and more of the world’s wealth for themselves, wrecked its environment, and failed to invest. Now, with National in power, they’re asking the young to pay off their debt. And when the kids get pissed, the elite doles out repression.
Cuts for you, tax cuts for Brash
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, August 11th, 2011 - 56 comments
ACT’s Spending Cap Bill is coming to Parliament. It would cap government spending and only let it grow each year by inflation and population growth. At first blush, and assuming that you don’t want the government to do anything it doesn’t do now, this might seem like a way to maintain current services without adding more. But reality ain’t that simple.
London riots: a guest post
Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, August 10th, 2011 - 229 comments
A standard reader based in London has sent us this account of the riots.
Good to get some of the context the UK media doesn’t seem to want to talk about…
Myth busting – reducing agricultural emissions
Written By: - Date published: 9:31 am, August 8th, 2011 - 60 comments
We commonly hear the vested interests (Fed Farmers, National, Fonterra) saying that agriculture should continue to get a 100% subsidy on its greenhouse emissions because there’s no way for farmers to reduce their pollution aside from producing less. That’s rubbish. In fact, as BR shows, agriculture is already producing more value for less pollution.
Joyce and corporate handouts
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, July 28th, 2011 - 105 comments
National has handed Telecom a new monopoly to replace its old one. As landlines go the way of the Dodo, fibre optic cable is the new natural monopoly, and we’re learning that Steven Joyce was talking to Telecom as far back as 2009 to ensure they go the lion’s share of the government handouts for fibre and a virtual monopoly in the market.
Who grows better? Labour or National?
Written By: - Date published: 12:05 pm, July 22nd, 2011 - 89 comments
Under the last Labour-led government the GDP per capita rose 15.6%. Under John Key’s National, it has fallen 1.9%. ‘Ah but Labour was just lucky and Key has just been unlucky’, say the righties. The data, however, shows conclusively which party has the best record on growth.
The $10b hole in National’s budget
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, July 20th, 2011 - 61 comments
Things are going from bad to worse for Steven Joyce. Labour has released its estimate of the cost of lost dividends by 2025 if National’s asset sales plan goes ahead: $9.7b. All omitted from National’s budget. Labour has challenged National to concede the numbers or provide its own. Instead, Joyce’s excuses just show he doesn’t understand accounting.
More dodgy Nat numbers
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 pm, July 17th, 2011 - 102 comments
The Nats can’t tell us how much their asset sales policy will cost in lost dividends and sales costs, yet they’ve magicked up some numbers with all kinds of dodgy assumptions that supposedly show Labour’s tax package doesn’t add up. Well, I suppose they would know something about borrowing for tax cuts but their attacks on Labour aren’t credible.
Game theory
Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, July 16th, 2011 - 15 comments
In a comment yesterday on Eddie’s post ‘CGT or asset sales? Which do you prefer?‘, Matthew Hooton wrote “Where do I tick “I want both”?” Except for Nat sycophants, most righties acknowledge the need for a CGT. What should they do? Well, a little game theory shows that such a rightie should vote for a Labour-led government, this one time.
Don Brash: Hypocrite on CGT
Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, July 14th, 2011 - 17 comments
It would appear that Don Brash has ideals – and when politically required, he has other ideals.
In fact he has so many ideals that his viewpoint on a Capital Gains Tax appears to veer all over the political landscape especially in his latest press release on CGT. At a guess his only real objection to a CGT is that he is not the person proposing it.
Taxpayers
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, July 14th, 2011 - 35 comments
According to Gareth Morgan, “all income should be taxed if it is a fair income tax”. So where are taxes coming from right now? Well increasingly more of it is being paid by wage and salary earners, and less by businesses. Hopefully a capital gains tax will partially redress that imbalance.
Australia: screaming backwards with CGT
Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, July 13th, 2011 - 57 comments
Russel Norman put a dagger into John Key yesterday in question time asking whether a series of national and international economic authorities really wanted to “put a dagger through the heart of growth” with a CGT. Key can waffle and whine all he likes, but he can’t avoid the truth of Australia’s enviable growth record with CGT.
Economic Management
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, July 13th, 2011 - 34 comments
We can expect a lot of economic rhetoric in the lead up to November from our political leaders. What does history suggest with respect to two key economic indicators: production and employment?
A real plan to save the world does exist
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, July 12th, 2011 - 112 comments
A feasible plan to power 100 percent of the planet with complete renewables exists. This plan excludes Nuclear and Biofuels, which the Scientific American authors of this plan also considered to be ultimately unsustainable technologies as well. Instead this plan revolves around Wind, Water and Solar – WWS
Corporate debt is the problem – not the answer.
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, July 11th, 2011 - 160 comments
We keep getting told that government is the problem and that the private sector is the answer. But the reserve bank numbers clearly show that it is the problem. When are the private sector going to deal with their burgeoning debt levels?
The housing market implications of capital gains tax
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, July 7th, 2011 - 126 comments
The landlords’ lobby group is making a lot of noise over Labour’s, still unannounced, capital gains policy. They say rents will go up, the supply of housing will fall, and it won’t stop house prices bubbles. Examining those claims shows that there would be little impact on rents while housing bubbles would be reduced and home ownership would be more affordable.
Case for capital gains tax builds
Written By: - Date published: 2:52 pm, July 2nd, 2011 - 69 comments
In the Herald today, Mark Lister says the lack of investment in the productive economy is due to the favourable tax treatment of housing. On Thursday, Brian Fallow wrote how Kiwis are being shut out of home ownership by investors who see capital gain from housing as an easy win, and workers’ taxes effectively subsidise property investors who pay none.
Salt in the wound
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 30th, 2011 - 81 comments
Two years ago, this government sparked the biggest protests in a generation when it tried to open up the most precious parts of our conservation estate to mining. The policy got canned but the agenda has continued below the surface. Now, 100 DoC staff have been sacked while the MED unit for oil drilling and mining will nearly double its staff.
We All Have Our Vices
Written By: - Date published: 11:13 am, June 30th, 2011 - 31 comments
Yesterday, Dakta Green was sentenced to 8 months prison on drugs charges arising from The Daktory cannabis ‘dispensary’ that operated openly for 2 years in West Auckland. But what harm was caused to justify denying a man his freedom at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to the taxpayer? More harm than other small vices?
Farrar’s tax cut chicanery
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, June 24th, 2011 - 98 comments
The National Research unit has created National pollster David Farrar has taken time out of his holiday to create a graph showing the reduction in tax across incomes. Supposedly it shows National’s tax cuts weren’t for the rich after all – we just imagined it! But the research unit Farrar have avoided some inconvenient facts.
Are you a Key person?
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, June 24th, 2011 - 56 comments
What about: ‘see ya, I’m off to India’?
If it quacks like a sexist duck…
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 pm, June 23rd, 2011 - 126 comments
Sure Alisdair Thompson’s comments today were sexist.
But they were also so dumb it’s hard to be offended.
Queen of Thorns explains
Round 3 in the Eastern – one week on
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, June 22nd, 2011 - 62 comments
After another terrible night in Christchurch, guest poster Andy-Roo writes about life on the ground in East Christchurch.
The buck stops with Gerry
Written By: - Date published: 12:33 pm, June 21st, 2011 - 9 comments
Every day more stories of the poor management of the Christchurch recovery are coming out. Delays in physical rebuilding are understandable. Delays in EQC payouts are another. They undermine the city’s economy and stop rebuilding. A reader has sent in their story. It’s one of many. Brownlee should have sorted this months ago.
Privatisation, if only
Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, June 20th, 2011 - 19 comments
NZX Chairman Andrew Harmos laments opposition to asset sales saying “if only opponents of this could have the intellectual honesty to recognise that it is a policy that has no losers”. Rijab respectfully disagrees and wonders if it isn’t the Chairman of the organisation with the most to gain from privatisation that is being intellectually dishonest.
The Magic Market
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, June 20th, 2011 - 64 comments
Low-paid, crappy job? It’s obviously your fault, according to the Right. You mustn’t have enough qualifications, or the correct ones. The good jobs are out there, they’re just hiding. Or, if they’re not, you can weave one from thin air. But, even if this free market magic were real, what’s the end point? The crap jobs still need to be filled.
The war on drugs is lost
Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, June 17th, 2011 - 28 comments
The Global Commission on Drug Policy have just released their latest report on the global war on drugs. Its message is quite simple; the war has failed, and it is time to begin new dialogue on what has become the greatest social failure of the last fifty years.
Lifting productivity
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, June 17th, 2011 - 14 comments
So, the statement of intent from the Ministry of Health has just been released. This document outlines how our health service will operate during the next three years; so what does it actually say? Is health truly safe under National?
Nat websites publicly-funded
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, June 16th, 2011 - 30 comments
Ianupnorth does ‘the Whale’ and has a dig around the National Party websites. It turns out they are registered and run by Parliamentary staffers. In fact, National and ACT’s MPs’ sites are all publicly-funded, while other parties’ MPs’ are not. Is NACT breaking the rules? No doubt everyone’s least favourite cetacean will be on to it.
Monopolies
Written By: - Date published: 12:49 pm, June 15th, 2011 - 271 comments
Natural monopolies should be controlled by councils or government. The so called free market has only one plan for them: extract as much money as they can, then keep milking them for all they are worth till the government steps in and regulates or is forced to buy the asset back with the private owners making a huge profit.
Back to High School for English
Written By: - Date published: 6:20 am, June 15th, 2011 - 86 comments
My jaw dropped when I heard this listening to Question Time yesterday. Mallard: “Does he understand that real average wages go up when high-income earners get massive tax cuts-$1,000 a week, in his case-and low-income workers lose their jobs?” English: “No, I do not understand that, because it is not true.” Can’t English do simple maths?
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