Economy

Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour

Categories under Economy

Greenpeace on the Green Party’s Farm for the Future policy

Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, September 15th, 2020 - 58 comments

“Wildfires are burning across the world and our rivers and lakes have been pushed to the brink. This is no time for half measures. Phasing out the use of PKE is exactly the kind of bold and transformational policy that is needed to deal with the climate and freshwater crises.”

Labour’s social welfare policy

Written By: - Date published: 12:20 pm, September 13th, 2020 - 62 comments

Labour has announced that if elected they will significantly increase abatement levels for beneficiaries and reinstitute the Training Incentive Allowance Scheme, the policy that Paula Bennett famously had the benefit of but then cancelled once she was Minister.

What is this regenerative agriculture thing anyway?

Written By: - Date published: 11:42 am, September 13th, 2020 - 32 comments

Given the state of New Zealand land and water, changing how we do farming should be a strong political topic for the left this year. The Greens and Greenpeace are campaigning for a shift to regenerative agriculture, so it’s timely to look at what that is.

The Greens sticking to their guns (and their values)

Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, September 11th, 2020 - 157 comments

The Greens just boldly stepped up their election campaign.

National’s infrastructure bank

Written By: - Date published: 7:24 am, September 11th, 2020 - 21 comments

National’s proposed Infrastructure Bank is an accounting trick, with very high risks that the entire power of our political order for anyone affected by these monster projects will weaken citizens’ rights.

Checkpoint shroud-waving over Queensland politics?

Written By: - Date published: 10:56 pm, September 10th, 2020 - 12 comments

Today’s Checkpoint descended into shroud-waving in the case of a New South Wales family not able to visit their dying father in Queensland because of the strict border closure. As our health officials note, “bereavement issues” are where most care is needed to prevent the virus spread.

Labour announces tax policies

Written By: - Date published: 12:55 pm, September 9th, 2020 - 98 comments

Labour and the Greens have both recently announced taxation policies.  Meanwhile there is no sign of any fiscal policy or alternative budget from National.

What did Brownlee know about Southern Response’s misleading and deceptive conduct?

Written By: - Date published: 4:37 pm, September 8th, 2020 - 27 comments

The Court of Appeal has ruled that Southern Response has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct and has potentially short changed thousands of Cantabrians hundreds of millions of dollars.

Landlord lobby group hopes National Government will ditch warm flat requirement

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, September 7th, 2020 - 56 comments

The NZ Property Investors Federation has proposed to its members they should hold off on making flats warmer and drier just in case there is a change of government.

Labour’s two tier welfare plans

Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, September 5th, 2020 - 74 comments

As the covid crisis deepens Labour appear to be committed to entrenching the underclass and giving a helping hand to the middle class.

Will our cities revive?

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, September 5th, 2020 - 43 comments

Our cities are the nation’s lungs; they recycle and accelerate external goods and transform them internally into faster circulation. Auckland and Christchurch have had tens of billions invested in them over successive local and central governments, but has this improved our strength or wealth as a country at all?

“Reds under the Bed”.

Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, September 4th, 2020 - 78 comments

Everyone has recently had an education on  “Socialism” working in practice.

And a graphic illustration of the shortcomings, of under regulated “Free market” Capitalism, Globalism, tax cuts for the rich, and the mania for monetising everything in sight, and “running it like a business”.

Will Jacinda Ardern meet her promise to transform?

Written By: - Date published: 6:53 am, September 4th, 2020 - 62 comments

Neoliberalism has run its course and displayed its profound inability to address inequality issues. It makes the poor get ever poorer while the affluent top 10% ticks of society get bloated and increasingly insufferable on untaxed capital gains. In 2017 Jacinda Ardern set a goal of bringing all children out of poverty within six years. So how is that going? And what are the next steps?

The background traffic is loud.

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, September 2nd, 2020 - 16 comments

Along with the grey weather, the weather around our local net is downright annoying at present. There are a massive increase in attempts to break into this site via backend systems and brute force front-end logins, a surge in scans from the search engine spider bots, and a lot of requests for putting up paid content. All of which have been ignored or dealt with. Good thing that we aren’t a target like the NZX, banks, mainstream media and the MetService are. 

How Trump Has Changed New Zealand’s future

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, September 2nd, 2020 - 28 comments

Post Trump how is the world order looking?

Kia kaha Greens

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, August 29th, 2020 - 304 comments

The Green Party is facing major push back from members relating to a decision to give shovel ready funding to a private school involved in education about the environment.

If National wins the hope for clean water and swimmable rivers will be gone by lunchtime

Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, August 27th, 2020 - 40 comments

National has promised that if it gains power rules designed to improve water quality in our streams and rivers will be “gone by lunchtime.

US v China: new Cold War or new Opium War?

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, August 25th, 2020 - 23 comments

The Trump administration has declared war on China, and there is much speculation in the punditry as to whether or not this is a new Cold War similar to that waged post World War 2 against Russia. In my opinion, the 19th century Opium Wars may offer a more appropriate analogy, albeit with a likely different outcome.

The top seven things Covid has changed

Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, August 14th, 2020 - 47 comments

Covid has fundamentally changed society for the better in surprising ways.

UMR Poll August 2020

Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, August 12th, 2020 - 34 comments

The latest Rogue Poll™ is out. This time it’s UMR’s turn and Judith Collins is on the rise.

Why you should vote Labour this election

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, August 11th, 2020 - 146 comments

Four very good reasons why you should vote Labour in this election.

Covid recovery and bouncing forward

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, August 10th, 2020 - 21 comments

Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience. Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better. How then to ‘bounce forward’ from COVID-19 in such a way that we also move to a way of doing things consistent with the scale of the climate crisis?

July 2020 Roy Morgan Poll

Written By: - Date published: 7:11 pm, August 8th, 2020 - 45 comments

The latest Roy Morgan poll is out.

Crusher?

Crushed!

The return of John Key

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, August 7th, 2020 - 110 comments

In a sign of desperation National has trotted out John Key to campaign that the country’s success in containing Covid should be put to risk because of a misguided perception that it would be good for the economy.

The fragility of our food supply

Written By: - Date published: 11:11 am, August 6th, 2020 - 98 comments

As climate, ecological, pandemic and neoliberal pressures put our food security at risk, we can take heart from the many people who have been developing and practicing sustainable and resilient food growing.

Who are you going to trust with your job, Jacinda or Judith?

Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, August 5th, 2020 - 16 comments

Defying expectations official labour force data from Stats NZ released today shows that the unemployment rate dropped to 4 per cent from 4.2 per cent in the June quarter.

National’s policy platform

Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, August 5th, 2020 - 45 comments

For a party that promised to be a policy factory National’s policy offerings are severely deficient.

Falling into a coma

Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, August 4th, 2020 - 92 comments

Why have we fallen into the most boring and predictable election we’ve had since Bolger’s second term?

One News CB Poll July 2020

Written By: - Date published: 5:22 pm, July 30th, 2020 - 132 comments

The July One News Colmar Brunton poll is out at 6PM. Has Judith Collins worked the oracle? Or is it another of Gerry Brownlee’s rogue polls?

Stay tuned …

UPDATE: Labour in the 50’s, National 32

Quarantine costs – critics fruitlessly whine

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, July 30th, 2020 - 28 comments

I’m reasonably happy with where the coalition wound up on the quarantine cost recovery. It sends a clear economic signal to businesses and the fools who want to travel during a global pandemic. It will discourage some of the stupidity of the travel addicted. It also balances the legal position. Something that most of the critics clearly aren’t thinking through and cause them to whine without realistic alternatives

Hong Kong principles

Written By: - Date published: 9:49 pm, July 28th, 2020 - 38 comments

According to our Prime Minister, today’s announcement that New Zealand is suspending extradition arrangements with Hong Kong is because of our principles. But it is not immediately clear what these principles are, other than falling into line with our Five Eyes spying partners. Some history is important.