Written By: advantage - Date published: 11:21 am, May 4th, 2023 - 21 comments
Prime Minister Hipkins has put Labour on course to win a third term. Here’s how.
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:48 am, April 2nd, 2023 - 36 comments
As we adjust to the advent of civilisation threatening climate change there is a new threat that is emerging, the unregulated development of artificial intelligence.
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:55 am, January 6th, 2023 - 116 comments
* or is it?
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 11:33 am, November 5th, 2022 - 86 comments
National’s recent press releases show that its approach to politics will be relentlessly negative, with no idea of what it will do as an alternative or how it will fund changes.
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 9:48 am, August 4th, 2022 - 57 comments
Hot on his confusion of Hawaii with Te Puke Christopher Luxon’s has dropped a couple of new clangers by admitting then denying that National will not increase health funding at least by the rate of inflation and then by displaying his class prejudice by saying people are not going to get rich on welfare.
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:29 am, July 12th, 2022 - 124 comments
Anyone else getting tired of the media presenting the fact that New Zealand essentially has full employment is a very bad thing?
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:41 am, November 24th, 2021 - 120 comments
Remarkably low Covid death and infection rates, good and improving vaccination rates, low unemployment and debt to GDP …
Written By: weka - Date published: 6:10 am, August 6th, 2021 - 97 comments
Rather than economics, can we talk about the values that underlie how we manage the country?
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:28 am, August 5th, 2021 - 84 comments
Yesterday Statistics New Zealand announced a dramatic drip in the unemployment rate as well as solid increases in wage rates and average weekly earnings for workers. While the Government celebrated Employers thought it was a crisis.
Written By: advantage - Date published: 7:32 am, July 15th, 2021 - 20 comments
Minister Roberston’s recent speech to the Trans Tasman Business Circle sets out both how this government is using the pandemic to reset whole sectors of the economy, and also how it is getting its head around economic and social challenges. The points made were unsurprising, but his intended direction was unclear.
Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:02 pm, June 20th, 2021 - 59 comments
One of the details announced in the budget was funding to explore a ‘social unemployment insurance’ scheme. This scheme has been pushed by the Council of Trade Unions and Business NZ, which will work with the Government in a newly set-up Tripartite Working Party. When we dig into it though, we realise it is no safety net. It’s a parachute that slows our drop, giving us time, before we hit that real net – down so far below.
Written By: advantage - Date published: 7:00 am, November 11th, 2020 - 36 comments
IF the discovery of a potential Covid vaccine looks like a new dawn, let’s not forget that this is the accelerating point of the K-shaped recovery New Zealand have been dreading. Our already rich are on the line heading upwards. They are getting richer because of a range of our Government policies.
Written By: advantage - Date published: 4:45 pm, September 16th, 2020 - 22 comments
Much has rightly been made of the leadership quality of Prime Minister Ardern this year. But the PREFU results announced today shows that Minister of FInance Grant Robertson is by a long way the most effective Minister of Finance we have had since Dr Michael Cullen.
Written By: mickysavage - 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.
Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 3:11 pm, June 19th, 2020 - 8 comments
Is it time to completely rethink how we deal with unemployment? We face a tsunami of job losses not seen in generations. Two ideas — social insurance and a job guarantee — are gaining prominence as ways to change how we deal with the problem. One provides income protection for those who lose employment, the other aims for something bolder: the elimination of unemployment. All welcome; register here.
Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 4:51 pm, June 12th, 2020 - 31 comments
…is the US sharemarket roaring away – up 44% – while economic recovery prospects are grim?” ANZ’s Sharon Zollner’s answer on Tuesday was the Fed printing money, but worried markets were turning a blind eye to the bad news. The bad news hit today as the sharemarket nose-dived. Wolf Richter’s answer was more to Kim’s point: “Fed bails out the wealthy while America convulses in pain.”
Written By: Incognito - Date published: 7:00 am, June 1st, 2020 - 65 comments
National’s new job-creation scheme appears to be inconsistent with their desire to fully re-instate the 90-day trial period.
Written By: notices and features - Date published: 1:33 pm, May 29th, 2020 - 19 comments
Borrowing heavily from Monty Python’s Life of Brian Labour MP Deborah Russell sets out what the Government is doing for small business in these Covid 19 times.
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:21 am, May 29th, 2020 - 68 comments
Holy hyperbole. Todd Muller has claimed that most kiwis are unemployed although they do not realise it yet. Although in one case he may not be wrong …
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:32 am, May 27th, 2020 - 24 comments
National has released a social media ad suggesting that New Zealand’s per head of population Government debt figure will be worse than Greece’s by 2014. But the data used presumes the effects of Covid 19 in New Zealand’s figure but no effects of Covid 19 in Greece’s figure.
Written By: Bill - Date published: 2:58 pm, May 25th, 2020 - 217 comments
I thought we were “in this together” or some such?
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:30 am, May 12th, 2020 - 33 comments
In this time of uncertainty when mass unemployment beckons you would expect that stock exchanges would be plummeting. But think again. Because they seem to be doing fine.
Written By: KJT - Date published: 12:07 pm, April 25th, 2020 - 20 comments
“Othering” has long been a staple of Governments that want to remain in power for the benefit of an Oligarchy, an “Elite”, a small ruling class, or the ones with, “the money”. Deflecting blame for economic and social issues on, an ethnicity, a class, the elderly, the poor, the young, the unemployed, young solo mothers, the disabled, immigrants, or any other convenient group that can be demonised. Very soon more of us may become the “others” we didn’t care about.
Written By: Incognito - Date published: 7:00 am, April 14th, 2020 - 116 comments
We cannot go back to business as usual after the lockdown but can we shape the way things will be for the greater good?
Written By: advantage - Date published: 9:16 am, April 11th, 2020 - 126 comments
Covid 19 is not some great leveller. To succeed the state has to completely redirect the economy to so that ordinary workers and working families are supported.
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:30 am, August 13th, 2019 - 125 comments
David Seymour has written a critique of Deborah Russel’s review of the hard right economic tome “Economics in one lesson”. And totally missed the point of what she was saying.
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 2:20 pm, August 6th, 2019 - 27 comments
Five days ago Simon Bridges predicted that unemployment had gone up. The latest figures show that the unemployment rate is at its lowest rate for the past eleven years. Update: My enthusiasm was too high. It has been pointed out to me that the Bridges tweet was from last year. My apologies to Simon …
Written By: advantage - Date published: 10:41 am, May 18th, 2019 - 98 comments
Forestry is forcing an important tilting point between mitigating climate change and land use, and it’s going to affect the viability of some North Island towns.
Written By: Incognito - Date published: 7:00 am, May 6th, 2019 - 58 comments
For some reason, this story struck a nerve. An 80-year old had his 59-year career terminated by an impersonal e-mail from a faceless manager. Ironically, the manager on his public LinkedIn profile likes a post entitled “Treat a janitor with the same respect as the CEO”. Isn’t it sad that we now treat people as […]
Written By: Simon Louisson - Date published: 2:20 pm, November 7th, 2018 - 14 comments
The latest unemployment data showing the jobless rate falling to under 4% follows the equally bad 1.0% economic growth in the September quarter and a budget surplus of $5.5b, confirming the economy is going down like Donald Trump, as predicted by the ANZ Bank’s business confidence survey
Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:43 am, June 6th, 2018 - 112 comments
National thinks that getting back to full employment, having wages and conditions sufficient to allow a working family to live in decency on one full time wage, and home ownership rates of about 70% are a bad thing.
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