Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 6:47 am, February 14th, 2012 - 7 comments
The Bankers’ Crisis is hurting people all over the world. From the deepest, darkest austerity in Greece, to the continuing foreclosure tsunami in the US, to cutbacks and job losses here, it’s the ordinary people suffering the hangover for the bankers’ wild decades of unbridled excess and profit. But at least the banks are suffering too, eh? Yeah, nah.
Written By: - Date published: 9:46 am, February 13th, 2012 - 61 comments
Capitalism is good. Globalisation is good. It’s political orthodoxy. But is it matched by economic reality? Perhaps not. Recent pieces by Bernard Hickey and Gordon Campbell give us plenty to think about…
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, February 9th, 2012 - 9 comments
Steven Joyce’s piece on Tuesday was a transparent and hypocritical attempt to frame political opponents negatively, and soften us up for more asset sales, mining, deep sea drilling and the like. Thing is, it’s the Nats with their misguided austerity cuts who are the real nay-sayers holding the country back.
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 am, February 9th, 2012 - 186 comments
It’s slipped down the news agenda but is about to come back up it: The Ports of Auckland Dispute. Tony Gibson is wasting our money on his union-busting campaign that will result in reduced profits for ratepayers. Sign up to make him see sense.
Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, February 8th, 2012 - 2 comments
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Steven Joyce writes in the Herald that the answer to our economic woes is to open up resources to entrepreneurs, and to hell with the social cost or environmental impact.
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, February 8th, 2012 - 66 comments
Shame you couldn’t raise it to a living one though. The working poor will appreciate the extra $1000 per year coming this April, but it still won’t cover their bills…
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, February 8th, 2012 - 42 comments
Steven Joyce reckons that the ‘can’ts’ are holding us back. I agree, just look at these facts:
Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, February 8th, 2012 - 19 comments
The UN High Level Panel on Global Sustainability has delivered a report about creating a future that’s sustainable economically, socially and environmentally. Our government and political parties should be looking at it and measuring themselves against it.
Written By: - Date published: 6:43 am, February 7th, 2012 - 216 comments
The Herald looks like it has an excellent series this week, on Auckland: A city divided by income. It’s an issue that has been waiting to be examined in the local context in more depth. It’s been quite a big issue in the UK for a while, with The Spirit Level making an impact before …
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, February 6th, 2012 - 38 comments
The superannuation problem isn’t going away. The Nats will be fuming that Treasury have just dropped in their laps again.
Written By: - Date published: 2:02 pm, February 5th, 2012 - 214 comments
Fran O’Sullivan took objection to RedLogix criticizing her articles on Crafar farms. It helps our traffic, but really she should relook at the utter crap she has been writing before attacking the questioner. She talks about everything except why the OIO within their legislation limited framework should or should not have approved the sale. The more that I reread her work on this subject, the more I ask: what in the hell is she trying to hide?
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, February 5th, 2012 - 129 comments
While the rest of the world is moving away from the ‘hands off’ monetary policy that became fashionable in the 80s, our government insists on playing by the outmoded neoliberal ‘rules’ of a clean float. Well, what happens when everyone else ‘cheats’ by printing free money to drive their currencies lower and we sit on our hands? We lose our assets and our exporters.
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, February 4th, 2012 - 133 comments
Every time some rightwing ideologue calls 80% of New Zealanders racist or xenophobic because we don’t want to lose control of our future and sell our strategic assets to fall into the hands of a foreign dictatorship that is going around the world buying up key resources to secure their own supply chains at the cost of our sovereignty, and reminds us that National is letting this happen, I smile. Keep it up, Fran.
Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, February 4th, 2012 - 36 comments
Almost missed among all the blacked out paragraphs of the Transport Briefing to the Incoming Minister are 2 interesting graphs. While not explicitly mentioning peak oil, the graph of the National Land Transport Fund shows a massive shortfall in revenue in a ‘high oil price, low growth’ scenario. The other shows how low-quality National’s highway spending is.
Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 115 comments
Public education is the cornerstone of a good country and a buoyant economy. And New Zealanders have long enjoyed the benefits that come to them individually, to their families, their communities, their country, and the economy from having access to quality public education. But all this now seems under attack from a small group of Treasury officials.
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 48 comments
No Right Turn has a look at two of the incoming minister briefings impacting on climate change. They are incoherent and it is clear that neither ministry talks to the other. If it wasn’t affecting a important long term issue, it’d be as funny as a Yes Minister episode. But since it does, it just highlights the growing incoherence of this incompetent government and their increasing politicization of the civil service.
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, February 3rd, 2012 - 80 comments
I’ve heard that POAL has private detectives following union officials around and taking photos.
I’d imagine that’s where “scoops” like this are coming from.
Written By: - Date published: 5:26 pm, February 2nd, 2012 - 15 comments
According to TVNZ, the Prime Minister said section nine of the SOE legislation, referring to the Treaty of Waitangi, was “largely symbolic” because it had not been enacted since it was drawn up in 1986. It wasn’t a felicitous phrase; he might well find Maoridom’s response is both symbolic and large, if not in the sense he meant.
Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, February 2nd, 2012 - 100 comments
Treasury has blown the dust off its 1980s economics textbooks and offered the same old failed prescription. Their moronic suggestion to cut education spending to finance tax cuts can be dismissed out of hand. But their suggestion of core Crown spending cuts has some merit; I know where we can get $75m that’s being spent on useless advice and incompetent forecasting.
Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 16 comments
A remarkably nice worker/boss story from across the ditch: Australian Ken Grenda may have sold his bus company, but his staff of almost 2,000 are smiling. Mr Grenda gave cash bonuses totalling A$15m ($16m, £10m) from proceeds of the sale to employees of his 66-year-old Melbourne-based company. The bonuses, averaging A$8,500, were based on the length …
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 118 comments
Spot the difference: Mega-corporation with close ties to foreign dictatorship that has a policy of securing strategic resources buys swathes of New Zealand farmland after a bid by a company directly owned by the dictatorship was rejected. New Zealand public company to become the foreign company’s tenant. vs New resident in New Zealand buys farm.
Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 36 comments
It’s tough getting a job in the Key economy. There’s 80,000 more people wanting work since Key came to office and 43,000 fewer jobs. Fortunately, there’s always a do-nothing government job going … if you know the right people. Eh, Catherine Isaac? Sure she’s got no qualifications but the ACT leader-in-waiting needs an income.
Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, January 31st, 2012 - 89 comments
We’ve been told about how bad poverty is here, and how bad it is for our future by the excellent Inside New Zealand documentary – but will it take an outside view to wake us from our slumber?
If so then Christians Against Poverty‘s John Kirkby is willing to provide it for us.
Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, January 31st, 2012 - 28 comments
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, January 31st, 2012 - 35 comments
I/S at NoRightTurn says we should hold Key to his latest pathetic excuse making for his inaction on the sale of our farmland overseas: “John Key’s excuse for the Crafar farms sale? His hands were tied. But he’s promising to change the law if we make enough noise about it” Unfortunately, Key doesn’t mean it. He has no intention of listening.
Written By: - Date published: 6:41 am, January 31st, 2012 - 84 comments
Most Kiwis have had no payrise, if they’re lucky enough to have kept their jobs, in the past few years. Yet Christchurch City Council CEO Tony Marryatt has kept on getting pay rises on his obscene salary, even as his job performance has declined. Now the arrogant bastard is saying he’ll keep $34,000 he doesn’t deserve unless the elected council ‘behaves’. There is no justification for this madness. Sack him.
Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, January 28th, 2012 - 139 comments
Danyl at Dimpost says it all succinctly on Crafar Farms: while China is a rising economic super-power and a close trade partner of New Zealand, it’s also a totalitarian military dictatorship. People are allowed to feel apprehensive about such a state building its own vertical supply chains within the New Zealand economy without being labeled xenophobic and racist.
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, January 28th, 2012 - 701 comments
Fran O’Sullivan is an enemy of the people. Her article in this morning’s Herald will forever brand her as a traitor to this country. She will be shunned and reviled by people who understand what a disgusting sell-out she has become. There is no coming back from this. The Crafar decision is a victory for …
Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, January 27th, 2012 - 10 comments
CTU President Helen Kelly talks about the Ports of Auckland and the effects of casualisation on workers and workplace health and safety.
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, January 27th, 2012 - 31 comments
Income inequality is one of the major issues of our time, and is being discussed globally. But our government doesn’t appear to be listening. Now a new organisation is aiming to raise awareness of the issue, and pressure our politicians to do something about it.
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