Author Archive

The 59,000 failures of John Phillip Key

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:31 am, February 5th, 2010 - 48 comments

Nearly a year ago, John Key, shaken by the first whispers of disquiet over his government’s month-long holiday at the height of an economic crisis (whispers that would later grow into cries of ‘Do Nothing’ Key), decided to hold the Prime Minister’s Jobs Summit. This would not be a talk-fest, it would be a ‘do-fest’ […]

22,000 more jobless Kiwis

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 4th, 2010 - 113 comments

Unemployment hit a startling 7.3% in the December quarter, far higher than the 6.8% expected. There are now 159,000 officially unemployed workers in New Zealand. Add in the those who want to work but have given up looking and there are 276,000 jobless Kiwis who wanting a job. That’s the highest number of jobless since […]

More jobs lost, govt does nothing

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:24 am, February 4th, 2010 - 13 comments

Telecom is threatening to throw up to 1,500 workers out of their jobs so it can increase profits by offshoring. A good government in this situation is talks to the company, uses the bully pulpit. Telecom should be reminded that it is hoping to make a bomb off the government’s broadband fund. They should be reminded that the one […]

Wages dropping under Key, as promised

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:26 am, February 3rd, 2010 - 28 comments

Remember how John Key said he “would love to see wages drop“. You might remember the big corporate media refused to run it, and the head of APN held an emergency meeting with Key then pressured the journalist who had reported the comments to retract them, which he would not do, and then APN published […]

Unionised workers win pay rises, others get cuts

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:33 am, February 3rd, 2010 - 70 comments

The latest round of the Labour Cost Index is out and it shows that the nation’s 400,000 union members are the workers holding their ground as businesses try to cut wage costs to preserve their profit margins: Inflation was 2% this year. If you didn’t get a pay rise to match or beat that, your […]

Nats soft on crime

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:36 am, February 2nd, 2010 - 38 comments

Oh, sure, the Nats will lock a person up longer after they commit a crime, if they get caught. But what they won’t do is prevent them commiting the crime in the first place. National will spend a fortune on counter-productive vengence after you’ve become a victim of crime but not a fraction of that on saving the crime from happening in […]

Minimum wage myths: unemployment

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:15 am, February 2nd, 2010 - 127 comments

One of the old saws that the Right brings out whenever the topic of increasing the minimum wage comes up is ‘oh no, it will increase unemployment’. They said it this year. The Business Roundtable said it every year as the Fifth Labour Government put up the minimum wage and unemployment kept falling. Hell, they […]

Speak up, Pita. We can’t hear you

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:04 am, February 2nd, 2010 - 20 comments

TVNZ reports: “Associate Education Minister Pita Sharples has labelled the National Standards policy as damaging to Maori but later refused to comment after being shut down by the Prime Minister.” Well, Pita, points for having your heart in the right place but how much longer will you put up with the indignity of being gagged […]

Colin James on Labour’s election record

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:05 am, February 1st, 2010 - 3 comments

Dancr linked to Colin James’ piece in the Press the other day, in which he writes: Here’s Labour’s record for the five decades years since the end of 1959: in government 19 years, out of government 31 years. Its best five decades were 1929-79, when it had 20 years in government, its worst just 12 […]

Goff: no GST hikes or tax cuts for rich

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:06 am, January 29th, 2010 - 30 comments

In his speech yesterday Phil Goff articulated Labour’s position on tax in no uncertain terms and came out very strongly against wealthy tax dodgers : “Too many people on good incomes avoid and evade paying taxes. It’s not right that some top earners pay a lower percentage of their income in tax than those on the […]

Goff advocates real solutions to crime

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 7:33 am, January 29th, 2010 - 41 comments

Goff and his advisers knew that the wage cap on public service CEOs would be the headline grabber of his widely praised speech. It succeeded beautifully and has drawn greater attention to the rest of his message. It also maneuvered National into the position of having to advocate for higher wages for public servants on […]

Colin, I missed you

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:17 am, January 28th, 2010 - 44 comments

Colin Espiner’s back with his first blog of the year. It’s so much fun having him back. In his first outing, he comes up with four suggestions for government action in the year ahead. Since the government doesn’t seem to have any other ideas, let’s look at two of them: End interest-free student loans Yeah, […]

Joyce’s holiday highway

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:00 am, January 28th, 2010 - 60 comments

Steven Joyce has announced plans for a motorway from Puhoi to Wellsford at a cost of $2 billion ($1.4 billion in today’s money). The route is used by just 15,000 cars a day (and that has been falling the last few years) and is estimated (optimistically) to save just 15 minutes off the travel time. […]

Nats in line for big $$ from own tax reforms

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:23 am, January 27th, 2010 - 31 comments

Fran O’Sullivan has a piece pointing out the vested interests of senior Nats regarding tax reform: “More than two-thirds of the National line-up have beneficial interests in trusts (entities that the Inland Revenue believes are responsible for a $300 million hole in tax revenues at the current 33 per cent tax rate).” – National wants to […]

On intellectual failure & economic crisis

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:30 am, January 27th, 2010 - 56 comments

Before they were swept along by the latest incarnation of US Right anti-intellectualism, National used to have some smart people. One of the last to go was Simon Upton. You might not always or even often agree with the man but at least he is informed and has the capacity to engage in serious debate […]

Double-dip recession on the horizon?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:33 am, January 27th, 2010 - 14 comments

Leading US economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman sees a 30-40% chance of the US re-rentering recession this year, and the conditions that would cause that would almost certianly be replicated in other countries, including New Zealand, with the same result. More evidence that a second wave of recession may be on its way came […]

Campbell and Hooton on do nothing Key

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:19 am, January 26th, 2010 - 23 comments

I can’t work out how to embed audio alone, so here’s a YouTube of Andrew Campbell and Matthew Hooton on the Key Government. Both agree that this government has done little and doesn’t appear to have a plan. Campbell sums up Key’s record: “The NDU yesterday issued a challenge to the Government to do a […]

You’re not a doctor, Tariana

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 7:30 am, January 26th, 2010 - 46 comments

Tariana Turia got her stomach stapled to tackle her diabetes and it seems to have worked. She wants more people to get the operation. If stomach stapling is a cost-effective way to treat diabetes and will prevent the need for other medical care I think that’s great. What I don’t want to see happen is […]

Tax is the price the elite pay to maintain their privilege

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:27 am, January 23rd, 2010 - 53 comments

John Roughan asks: “Nearly half of all personal tax revenue is contributed by just 10 per cent of us. Is this socially healthy?” To which I reply: “That 10% get 34% of the country’s income and own 52% of the country’s wealth, compared to the 50% who get 16% of the country’s income and own […]

Massive jump in dole numbers – minister washes her hands

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:32 pm, January 22nd, 2010 - 18 comments

You may remember that late last year John Key, Bill English and Paula Bennett could hardly find the words to praise themselves for the falling numbers on the dole. That was until I pointed out that it was a seasonal dip that always occurs between September and November, and, actually, the seasonally dip over the […]

Who wins and who loses from tax reforms

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:33 am, January 22nd, 2010 - 70 comments

You’re probably up to your ears in this tax reform issue by now, but just one more. It’s a good ‘un, promise. I’ve made a pretty graphic of who would lose and who would gain, and how, from the tax working groups’ proposals: The huge tax breaks for the few people on very large incomes are paid […]

33% nonsense

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:00 am, January 22nd, 2010 - 13 comments

David Farrar has one of his dodgy maths posts, where he argues that getting rid of the 33% rate is necessary because typical New Zealanders are paying it: “You see [not] only should people not be paying a 38% rate, most FT workers shouldn’t even be paying the 33% rate.” Quite why 33% is such a […]

The lucky country: Aussie tax system more progressive than NZ’s

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:25 am, January 21st, 2010 - 57 comments

It fascinates me that in all this talk about ‘catching up with Australia’ via tax cuts, nobody bothers to look at the Aussie tax system to see what they’re doing. Keith Ng has a cool interactive graph on the portion of all income earnt by different income groups and the tax they pay. He compares what […]

Nobody else is doing it so why should we?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 7:26 am, January 21st, 2010 - 70 comments

A commenter asked an interesting question yesterday: of the countries that are wealthier than us, how many have aligned their top income, corporate, and trust tax rates? And which countries are they? Well, I did some looking and here are the countries with higher GDP per person than us and their top tax rates: […]

Tax reform: tax cuts for rich, paid for by poor

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:09 pm, January 20th, 2010 - 135 comments

The Tax Working Group has given its recommendations for tax reform to the Government. It predictably recommends: Dropping the tax income tax rates to 30% in line with the corporate tax rate. Dropping the corporate tax rate (and presumably the top income tax rate) further in the future. Paying for this with 15% GST, a land […]

Another benefit beat-up

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:00 am, January 20th, 2010 - 24 comments

The Key Government’s anti-beneficiary campaign continues. The latest is a beat-up on long-term beneficiaries. Apparently, 9 people have been on the dole for longer than 20 years, 14 for 15-20 years, and 181 for 10-15 years. ‘Bludgers!’ we’re meant to cry ‘Bludgers!’ But let’s actually think with our brains rather than our jerking knees. This […]

‘3 strikes’, typical ‘Do Nothing’ Key policy

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:08 am, January 20th, 2010 - 90 comments

The ‘3 strikes’ policy is the kind of policy you put in place when you want to look tough on crime but you have no idea how to actually reduce it, in the same way a cycleway is the jobs plan you have when you don’t have a plan. We know locking people up longer doesn’t […]

The moral case for a decent minimum wage

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:10 pm, January 19th, 2010 - 68 comments

There was quite an interesting discussion on the minimum wage yesterday after a poll showed 61% of Kiwis back a $15 an hour minimum wage, and I thought it would be good to lay out my thoughts. First, increasing the minimum wage changes the division of wealth between labour and capital. It gives more wealth […]

Minimum wage increase, what will it be?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:21 am, January 19th, 2010 - 22 comments

John Key has ruled out a $2.50 an hour pay increase for New Zealand’s lowest paid workers but won’t give any indication of what increase he does think is right. He claims that an increase to $15 an hour would cost jobs. I would love to see the advice he got on that. Anyhow, Employers […]

Say what?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:40 am, January 18th, 2010 - 12 comments

Statements made in Parliament last year, in chronological order: Hon BILL ENGLISH: They have been telling us that we should copy the Australian fiscal stimulus, when Australia’s unemployment rate is close to 6%â€”whereas our fiscal stimulus has kept our unemployment rate down to 5%. So which one is it: copy Australia’s plan and force the […]

Farrar tries to cover for do nothing govt, and fails

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 5:38 pm, January 16th, 2010 - 70 comments

Phil Goff has picked up on the point I made yesterday: while unemployment is falling in Australia due to the $42 billion stimulus package implemented by the Rudd Government, in New Zealand unemployment is still rising while this do nothing government sits on its arse, and unemployment here is now higher than in Aussie for […]