capitalism

Categories under capitalism

Goff: I’ll reverse unfair tax cuts for the rich

Written By: - Date published: 8:37 pm, April 24th, 2010 - 125 comments

Labour leader Phil Goff has come out swinging against National’s proposal to cut the top tax rate. It’s great to see Phil living up to his promise to stand up for the many, not the few. National’s plan to cut the top rate will only benefit the very wealthy, like John Key. Now we can stand assured, the 6th Labour Government will fix that injustice.

John Key to slash public services

Written By: - Date published: 8:16 pm, April 22nd, 2010 - 48 comments

John Key is planning to slash and burn $2 billion out of our public services. Key says the slashing is needed to pay for increasing health and education costs. Bullshit. It’s about paying for John Key’s and his rich mates’ tax cuts.

More on Crosby-Textor, mining, and the Nats

Written By: - Date published: 6:53 am, April 22nd, 2010 - 18 comments

We all know that long before John Key got into the gold and uranium mining industry, Crosby Textor Chairman, Robert J Champion de Crespigny was pushing the mining industry’s cause in New Zealand. So, who is this CT man who has been called Australia’s ‘Mr Gold’, a “mining magnate”, a “resource-sector heavyweight” and “a legend”?

Battlers vs billion dollar banks

Written By: - Date published: 11:56 pm, April 21st, 2010 - 33 comments

Finsec’s Andrew Campbell introduces the union’s Better Banking, a trans-Tasman campaign they’re running with their Aussie counterparts to get a better deal for bank workers and bank customers. Campbell notes the banks’ $1 billion profit in the last 3 months alone and asks “Have your fees gone down? Has your mortgage payment become more manageable?”

Give that bludger a tax cut

Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, April 19th, 2010 - 102 comments

Patent lawyer John David Hardie is a bludger. You and me, we pay our taxes. We know we get public services and a decent society out of it. This rich prick is trying to get out of a $10.3 million tax bill. What to do with this rich bludger? How about give him a $1.25 million tax cut. That’s what that other rich layabout John Key is planning.

National’s rock and hard place

Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, April 12th, 2010 - 23 comments

National’s proposed reform of the foreshore and seabed legislation is no ‘elegant solution’. Instead, it is being criticised in the business press as an undemocratic favouring of Maori business interests over Pakeha ones, while iwi are saying that it doesn’t give them what they want.

Tax hikes fail to cause ‘brain’ drain in UK

Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, April 8th, 2010 - 39 comments

George Monbiot writes: It’s a bitter blow. When the government proposed a windfall tax on bonuses and a 50p top rate of income tax, thousands of bankers and corporate executives promised to leave the country and move to Switzerland(1,2). Now we discover that the policy has failed: the number of financiers applying for a Swiss work permit fell by 7% last year.

Kiwis report future less bright under National

Written By: - Date published: 4:01 pm, April 6th, 2010 - 58 comments

In 2008, John Key was promising us a brighter future. 18 months on, we’re in that future he was talking about and Kiwis are reporting their lives are worse than they were before he came to power. 83% of Kiwis surveyed by ShapeNZ rated their quality of life as ‘good’ or better, down from 89% in 2008 and 92% in 2007. Key has a responsibility to live up to his promises

A farmers’ coup in Canterbury

Written By: - Date published: 8:31 am, March 31st, 2010 - 38 comments

National’s mates in the dairy industry were annoyed that the elected councillors in Enviornment Canterbury wouldn’t let them have all the water they want. So National has sacked the councillors and suspended local democracy for four years. The diary farmers will pay along with everyone else for their short-termist ‘science be damned’ attitude. But not before they’ve caused long-term damage.

Let’s not repeat Ireland’s mistakes

Written By: - Date published: 1:25 pm, March 29th, 2010 - 26 comments

The eXileD has a piece on Ireland’s woes and how they got there. The 1980s neoliberal revolution and dodgy deals for the Right’s mates are familiar. Ireland became a tax haven for bludging international financiers. It’s all come crashing down but John Key wants to copy their mistake by creating an offshore financial centre here.

Cynical denialism will cost us all

Written By: - Date published: 1:21 am, March 18th, 2010 - 36 comments

David Farrar is not stupid. Like everyone with a brain, he knows that climate change is a real and dangerous threat caused by human greenhouse gases emissions. Yet he persists in making denialist dog-whistles to his readers, always being careful never to outright deny climate change himself. He and all the leaders of denialism are telling what they know to be lies to people they know to be idiots.

Financial regulation in USA?

Written By: - Date published: 3:51 pm, March 16th, 2010 - 24 comments

The recent recession represented a spectacular failure of unfettered capitalism. One of the main causes in America was a picking apart of financial regulations. This allowed the “innovative” products and practices that brought the system down. Perhaps America has learned the lesson. A new Democratic proposal outlines “the biggest overhaul of regulations since the New Deal”.

Make that man a minister

Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, March 12th, 2010 - 42 comments

British American Tabacco’s Graeme Amey has the brazen lie down pat. The guy quit smoking himself but wants Kiwis to keep smoking and dying to make his company profits. When asked why he quit he said “it was just a personal choice”. But why? “It was just a personal choice”. Yeah. Was that personal choice […]

High unemployment helps Nats keep wages down

Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, March 11th, 2010 - 21 comments

While other countries have used their strong public sectors to steady the private sector and keep unemployment down during the economic downturn, our government is compounding unemployment by cutting the public sector, throwing people out of jobs and feeding worker insecurity.

O’Sullivan and Garrett, strange bedfellows?

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, March 6th, 2010 - 6 comments

Fran O’Sullivan is a pro-business liberal or libertarian, David Garrett is a knuckle brain conservative. But actually, they’re not so far apart. It seems both believe in freedom for the rich and control over the poor. Incredibly O’Sullivan goes into bat for Garrett over his sterilisation comments.

Free Market Failure

Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, February 27th, 2010 - 56 comments

It’s time for the National Party to issue an abject apology to the nation… for the 1992 Building Regulations that directly led to the astounding public crisis we now face. Building and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson told the Weekend Herald the official $11 billion figure – which experts believe is half the true cost – […]

‘Atlases’ don’t deserve a tax cut

Written By: - Date published: 9:47 am, February 24th, 2010 - 67 comments

This man is Paul Reynolds, CEO of Telecom. He has overseen the largest corporate disaster in recent New Zealand history. The Nats are planning to give him over $6,600 a week in tax cuts. Apparently this screw up on a $7 million salary is the kind of guy New Zealand needs.

Copying Iceland & Ireland bad idea for NZ

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, February 16th, 2010 - 53 comments

You know how the world has been through the worst financial crisis in decades? You know how countries like Ireland and Iceland who had made themselves into financial hubs via tax breaks for banks are now deep in the crap with burgeoning debt and unemployment? Why don’t we do what they did?

Ideology trumps science for the Right

Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, February 9th, 2010 - 63 comments

Consider these results from opinion surveys of experts different areas of research, I won’t tell you the areas of research just yet: In one, 97% of actively publishing experts agree with a statement (I’ll give you the statement below) concerning their field. In the other field, 46.5% of experts fully agreed with the statement, 27.9% agreed […]

More jobs lost, govt does nothing

Written By: - 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 […]

Don’t go, oh mighty Atlas. We’ll give you tax cuts

Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, February 2nd, 2010 - 87 comments

So, I’m at a cafe having lunch and there’s some fat middle-aged businessmen having lunch at the table beside me. One of them is talking about Blair’s appearance at the inquiry on the invasion of Iraq and says “all these namby-pambies say ‘oh we shouldn’t have invaded’ but they would have shut up if Saddam […]

Why should the rich get to queue-jump?

Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, January 26th, 2010 - 141 comments

Rahui Katene is worried that people who can’t afford stomach staplings here (which supposedly cures diabetes, although the evidence is mixed) are getting unsafe surgeries done overseas. The problem is the private health industry. A private stomach stapling costs $28,000. Well beyond the reach of most. Only the well-off can afford it. The result: allocation […]

The power of public condemnation

Written By: - Date published: 3:39 pm, January 25th, 2010 - 23 comments

Phew, that was quick. Yesterday John Kingi writes to us about Club Physical promoting homophobic myths. I publish his email. The same day a 300 member Facebook group pops up, and John’s on NewstalkZB and GayNZ. Today, Club Physical’s apologising. A lot of the righties complained that we shouldn’t have posted this. Suspect that deep down they are sympathetic […]

Tax is the price the elite pay to maintain their privilege

Written By: - 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 […]

Foreign banks buggering NZ

Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, January 10th, 2010 - 86 comments

I’m no big city banker. But I was under the impression that profit is the income that is left over once you’ve paid your costs. Once you pay your tax on that, your net profit is what is left to pay to the owners as dividends or reinvest. So how the hell did the Aussie-owned banks […]

Re-run: Benefits, wages and anger

Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, December 29th, 2009 - 46 comments

The recent furore about benefit levels has brought a lot of comments along the lines of “I don’t get it why should they?” out of the woodwork along with a lot of hardluck stories from low wage earners such as this one from Phoenix on Colin Espiner’s blog: I am 6 months pregnant with my […]

Neolibs’ great experiment in meltdown

Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, December 15th, 2009 - 41 comments

With huge infusions of EU cash and deregulation that brought in foreign companies looking to make a quick buck, Ireland’s economy grew pretty quickly over the past 25 years. On the back of their new-found wealth, Irish governments implemented a neoliberal revolution – cutting taxes for the rich, privatising public assets, the usual formula for […]

Why deny: the useful idiots

Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, December 15th, 2009 - 91 comments

According to myth (it seems), Lenin called socialists in the West ‘useful idiots’ – people whose ideological fervour saw them accidentally aid the realpolitik aims of the USSR. Similarly, an army of useful idiots are the greenhouse polluters’ best weapon as they attempt to save their right to pollute for profit. These are people who […]

Why deny: the lobby groups/polluters

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, December 14th, 2009 - 93 comments

This is the first in a three part series on the climate change denial industry. I’m trying to understand why there is such a powerful, well-funded, and ideologically solid body of opposition to a body of scientific evidence that even the scientists employed by one of the chief denier lobby groups called “undeniable” (in a […]

Guaranteed minimum income + capital tax, the way forward?

Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, December 2nd, 2009 - 49 comments

Occasionally something in politics really surprises you. Like when I turned over to Campbell Live last night (I’d seen the Family Guy episode too often) and there was Gareth Morgan proposing a guaranteed minimum income funded by a comprehensive capital tax. Guaranteed minimum income/negative income tax is hardly a new idea (I’ve been meaning to […]

Plutonomy

Written By: - Date published: 2:29 pm, November 18th, 2009 - 45 comments

In Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (which is excellent, btw) he refers to two 2005 Citigroup memos about ‘plutonomy’ economies and political structures designed with the primary purpose of further enriching the rich. They’re stunning, not only for their frank admission that capitalism favours a tiny portion of the population at the expense of […]