Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, October 14th, 2008 - 89 comments
Categories: climate change, economy, election 2008, Environment, families, greens, health, housing, national, tax -
Tags: nick smith
National’s Nick Smith has announced that they would cancel the $1 billion fund to insulate New Zealand houses, which the Greens won as part of the Emissions Trading Scheme. This massive programme would improve energy efficiency, create warmer, healthier homes and would provide useful employment during the downturn. A study, ironically carried out under National and mentioned to me by Nick Smith, showed that insulating a State house saves $2 in health costs per $1 of insulation – it actually saves the Government money to invest in insulation. But National would cancel the plan. Their priority is tax cuts right now, not a myriad of benefits in the future. I suspect for Nick Smith, personally, this is another ‘dead fish’ he has to swallow to get back into power.
This is part of a disappointing trend from National. Under the Tories, we would see Kiwisaver gutted, R&D credits gone, and no money for insulating homes. These are all programmes that are a long-term investment in creating a wealthy, more high-tech, healthier, more efficient New Zealand but National would rather use the money for tax cuts for the rich (something like 80% of the extra money in National’s tax cuts goes to people on incomes over $100K). It’s this short-term thinking that got us into trouble in the 1990s. They attacked our public services, education, health, benefits and cut taxes for the wealthy. The effects are still being felt now as the children of the Mother of All Budgets reach adulthood.
Now, more than ever, I don’t think New Zealand can afford to be run by a party that refuses to make long-term investments in the future.
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Scoopit!
“I’m preaching to the converted there”
Yes – and you’re preaching to the bored, and unfortunately captive here. Do you really think your fact-free, frenzied rants have any impact on anyone even close to an average IQ? If so, i recommend that you get some professional help ASAP – for everyone’s sake.
“Yes – and you’re preaching to the bored, and unfortunately captive here”
You need to get the police to arrest that man holding the gun at your head and forcing you to read these posts. I’m quite free to choose the posts I read. Don’t you wish you had that freedom?
BTW Lprent- funny ain’t it. I’m always criticising the left for their lack of regard for freedom of expression, and I get a better run on here than on a blog run by a self professed “right winger”. (Matthew “Brian’s doing a good job” Hooten)
G: As I said I can’t tell the difference.
The government looks so limited in both cases that it may as well not be there. That is also what seems to happen when it is tried in a few cases in history. The current case is in the net.
What I was commenting is that you find that situation usually drops into warlords and feudalism. That is the effective case for the nets at present, but it tends to be a benevolent depotism because the people with the skills to do it have other more important things to do.
Scribe
“Most policies being released create a distinction between the two main parties. Now the public can decide what set of policies, what principles, they want in a government.
Rather than chastising everything National says, regardless of what it is, Steve and others might be better off saying here’s what they say, here’s what Labour says, you the voter decide what you want”
Here here and that goes for all the blogs, TV channels and MSM.
At the moment all we have is the red team vs the blue team and infantile analysis about the polls pottering up and down.
Sadly I expect it to get worse starting with the two “leaders” screeching at each other on TV tonight with not a sensible question put to either of them let alone anything coherent out of their mouths.
Back on topic:
I suspect for Nick Smith, personally, this is another ‘dead fish’ he has to swallow to get back into power.
Interestingly on RNZ this morning Nick Smith defended the announcement in an interesting way. I think his words were close to this:
“We will let the electorate decide if they like this (the insulation scheme)…. if they want to keep it they should vote Green or Labour”.
Now that would be an interesting way of putting something at any stage of the electoral cycle… but right now within weeks of an election?
BDTR:
I can choose – but unfortunately people have to read at least part of one of your posts in order to find out that you’ve got nothing of worth to say. What part of captive don’t you understand?
BDTR: Yeah we’re a bit strange like that. I like having people making points and interacting. So long as it is interactive and may (actually probably) eventually get to “agree to disagree” I don’t care.
It is just the trolls that piss me off (as we’ve discussed before). If I can code it, then I’m inclined to treat it as a program without intelligence.
Dialogue is useful. Pure ranting isn’t…
“What part of captive don’t you understand?”
Maybe the part that keeps you reading my posts when you clearly don’t want to. That’s what socialism does to you. Makes you thirst for real intellectualism.
Iprent, if you really can’t tell the difference between a system without government that spawns despotic warlords who wipe out individual liberties, and one of a limited government that protects the rights of the individual and prevents the rise of the aforementioned thuggery, then you really are starting too far back for me to waste time in explanation.
and one of a limited government that protects the rights of the individual
It always amused me that the one part of government that libertarians always want to retain, the police and prisons…. is of course the most coercive component of it. The only social tool these so called lovers of liberty would have at their disposal… is the ability to deprive others of it.
How bizzare!
BDTR., G,….I too thirst for intellectaulism. This year’s recently announced nobel prize winner for economics has described the republicans as the “party of the stupid” What would he know though eh?
… and the thing that doesn’t amuse me, Red, is that you socialists can’t tell the difference between coercing the criminals and coercing the innocent; your brand of totalitarianism lumps us all into the same prison: collectivism.
“I too thirst for intellectaulism (sic).”
Stop it, P&A, you’re giving me the stitch…
P&A
“What would he know though eh?”
Hopefully far more about economics than Al Gore does about Global Warming
OK back o/t. Anybody here ever done an adequate job insulating an old house? It pretty much involves gutting & re-jibbing the whole building. If possible to access the underfloor area do that as well. Double glazing is also required. For safety reasons it may also be necessary to undertake re-wiring while your at it. The existing Govt arrangement is ineffectual as leaving your windows open in winter. So it leaves me to wonder if it was implemented to please the greens,
and other segments of the electorate. All new buildings are correctly insulated, so over time it will cease to be a problem.
G,
can’t tell the difference between coercing the criminals and coercing the innocent
And I suppose YOU would get to tell us who is criminal and who is innocent? What for example, if in your hypothetical libertarian world, a large group of people wanted to form a socialist society? Would you then, in order to defend your utopia, be compelled to decalre their ambitions illegal?
Besides, libertarians would coerce other people all the time… only they politely call that ‘freedom of contract’.
BTW, P&A, Paul Krugman is a neo-Keynesian dinosaur — what else would he have to say about (semi) free market conservatives?!
gee g…that little gem is so insightful I am overhwelmed with your intellectual brilliance. so I guess you are not in the party of the ‘stupid’. well if you are so clever then why is natoinal not in government now and why are they going to lose this election?
Coge,
Anybody here ever done an adequate job insulating an old house?
Yes. Many times.
It pretty much involves gutting & re-jibbing the whole building.
Often that is a good approach, especially if the existing linings are in poor condition, but there are good alternatives involving drilling and spraying insulation into the cavity, without gutting the house.
If possible to access the underfloor area do that as well.
The existing schemes include this as a matter of course.
Double glazing is also required.
Actually and surprisingly enough the answer to this is …not necessarily. Research done in NZ (by Otago University) has shown that retrofitting double glazing is a rather poor return for money.
For safety reasons it may also be necessary to undertake re-wiring while your at it.
This is often true… I’ve actually been in this situation just recently. But if it needs doing, then hell it needs doing regardless of whether the house is being insulated or not.
Red: “… What for example, if in your hypothetical libertarian world, a large group of people wanted to form a socialist society? Would you then, in order to defend your utopia, be compelled to decalre their ambitions illegal?”
If we had a constitution that protected the rights of EVERY individual, then the moment these creeps made certain citizens more equal than others they would be acting outside of the law. Sadly they’re the ones in power and it is they who declare libertarian ambitions — of free speech and the like — illegal.
So you would deny the right of individuals to form a social collective that served their needs. Interesting.
So I take that you would not be very keen on say…trade unions… then?
Red: “… Besides, libertarians would coerce other people all the time only they politely call that ‘freedom of contract’.”
Do you mean to say that you object to being held to a contract?
Your free speech been under threat lately G?
I mean in reality, an actual, tangible experience. Something that has actually happened that you can tell us about.
Red: “So you would deny the right of individuals to form a social collective that served their needs. Interesting.”
Collectivism seeks to END individualism. In a libertarian world if a group wanted to bind themselves to a brotherhood they would have every right as a collective of individuals. They may not, however, decide to bind others who choose not to be chained in such a manner.
“So I take that you would not be very keen on say trade unions then?”
Unions are the prerogative of the employees. If they choose to strike they have every right — as much as the employer should be afforded the right to hire others to fill their rolls and continue the enterprise he built and financed.
G: The problem is that most really simple social structures are just too damn easy to shift to depositism. If you ever have a close look at ‘primitive’ societies you see that they are usually excessively complex for the functions they’re performing. It makes them relatively stable. That is also how modern societies operate.
Most of the people who profess either anarchism or libertarianism are in fact trying to get simpler societies where the rights of the individual are more pronounced than the societies. This also means that there are fewer coalitions to resist against attempts to subvert the society for one reason or another. They tend to fall far to easily to extremism, usually in times of crisis. Alternatively they fall into stasis and die when the environment changes.
Or to put it another way, both philosophies are just too simple and designed for the simple to understand. I prefer our more complex societies to allow room for the freedom of choice.
I’d also suspect I’ve been thinking about this topic for far longer than you. It may be hard to bring you up to speed.
Do you mean to say that you object to being held to a contract?
Never heard of coercive, exploitative or deceptive practice? Of course the usual libertarian answer to that is the individual is always free to move on to another contract that suits them better. (Assuming of course that the existing contract can be effectively terminated, and another better contract is on offer.)
But of course when us socialists suggest that you libertarians are totally free to leave this little socialist suckhole of NZ, and start your own small govt paradise somewhere elsewhere (like Somalia)… you seem to get all sniffy.
To throw some hard data into the mix: Chapman, et. al. “Retrofitting houses with insulation: a cost-benefit analysis of a randomised community trial” shows that the NPV of insulation is around twice the upfront cost, and that most of that comes from health benefits (which are incompletely measured). Or there’s Howden-Chapman et. al. (2007), which showed that installing insulation led to better self-reported health, fewer GP visits, and a possible downward trend in hospital admissions.
The household fund is an investment which will make us all better off in the long term. but National would rather give money to its rich mates than invest in the health and wellbeing of ordinary kiwis.
Yes, Felix, but I’d get myself into a whole heap of trouble if I divulged my identity and what I was doing.
as much as the employer should be afforded the right to hire others to fill their rolls and continue the enterprise he built and financed.
So now we have an economic climate in which it is very much in the interests of employers to have high unemployment and a large pool of people desperate enough to take on any “role” at any price.
Sound familiar?
Iprent, you need to get up to speed: for the last 100 years your Keynesian complexity has strangled one economy after another with it’s wretched red tape. For the clearest example I present you the ugly experiment of former East & West Germanys: the half that produced more in every aspect of human endeavour, from the sciences to the arts, was the one with the most economic freedom.
Postitive and Ambitious – Exactly, the nobel prize winner in economics, puts a lot of the blame for the current financial situation on the bush administration.
From Larvatus
“What conservatives can’t point to, ultimately, is any form of regulation that actually caused the crisis. No one put a gun to the head of US bank executives and made them lend to people without the means to repay loans. No one threatened dire retribution to investment bankers unless they packaged sub-prime securities. And no one compelled Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s to inexplicably and wholly irresponsibly rate those securities at AAA levels even when they didn’t understand the packaging mechanisms being used.”
Lprent – Do you mean the science ficiton writer Heinlein or someone else because you can’t lump that Heinlein with Rand. Heinlein was a socialist for a time, a member of various socialist organizations.
Coercive, exploitative or deceptive practices, Red? Examples please.
Redlogix, I would also suggest large high quality thermal drapes as an alternative to double glazing.
My point is though for any Govt scheme to be effective it must have an overall view as to it’s usefulness, or you may as well leave your doors open. Broad brushed approches, as you would know, will not work well as every building has it’s unique needs. Depending on design, age, location & how well it has been maintained. It’s pointless doing the underfloor alone if you can’t complete the rest.
gee you sound like a rich idiot but I bet you dont have any money…just a wannabee
Red /coge
I think you are correct about the value of dg – but it is great for stopping wind noise. Makes you wonder why the govt has made double glazing mandatory for all new building and renovations? It is pure ideology that’s why
I/S
The Chapman paper shows that the much vaunted energy saving benefits – the principal justification for the efficiency programme – are false and that it can only be justified by incorporating much harder to quantify health benefits. They spent $1800 to save 530kwh of power worth $120. It’s blindingly obvious this doesn’t stack up financially on energy grounds, just like solar doesn;t, just like biofuels, just like the new home insulation rules. If the primary benefit is actually health then be honest and fund it from the health budget.