economy

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I’m So Dizzy

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, August 9th, 2010 - 44 comments

The rate at which National have been spinning of late is giving me nausea. It can’t be long until they get to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide scenario of declaring black to be white and getting run over on the nearest zebra crossing.

Rethinking Growth

Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, August 8th, 2010 - 82 comments

For the last several decades the over-riding mantra across western governments has been that what is important above all else is economic growth. Now is the time to question whether it should still be our main aim and guiding light.

For the economic record

Written By: - Date published: 6:03 am, August 3rd, 2010 - 130 comments

John Key trotted out a huge lie in Parliament last week: “It took 9 years for Labour to make a complete and utter mess of the economy; it might take a bit longer than that for us to sort it out”. Let’s compare National and Labour’s economic records shall we.

Urgent safety upgrades needed, not a holiday highway

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, July 8th, 2010 - 4 comments

Auckland Transport Blog saying the bleeding obvious about the aggrandizement project that appears to be Steven Joyce’s grand vision for the future of transport in Auckland. If he was concentrating on reducing the road toll on this stretch of road, there are simpler and cheaper ways than wasting taxpayers money.

World Cup according to genius bankers

Written By: - Date published: 3:15 pm, July 6th, 2010 - 14 comments

Economists, bankers, Treasury officials, financial wizards of various kinds, they like to pretend that they know what they’re talking about. All too often they don’t. Predicting the behaviour of complex systems is hard. Consider for example, the big banks’ predictions on the winner of the Football World Cup…

The ETS is a price signal

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, June 25th, 2010 - 44 comments

The point of an ETS isn’t to just blindly pay more, it is to change our behaviour so that we don’t have to. National don’t get it, so they have brought us the worst of all possible ETS schemes. Badly designed and devoid of vision. An ETS with all of the costs and none of the benefits.

Tax cuts don’t cause growth

Written By: - Date published: 6:51 am, May 24th, 2010 - 30 comments

Tories claim that tax cuts “cause growth” in the economy – they “grow the pie”. But it’s rubbish. No honest review of the long term historical picture can sustain the claim. Tax cuts don’t cause growth.

Nats preparing to sell assets, despite promises

Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, May 21st, 2010 - 109 comments

In 2008, Bill English was sprung secretly telling National members that he and Key would sell Kiwibank “‘eventually but not now”. After being caught out, English and Key categorically ruled out asset sales in the first term of a National government and said they would seek a mandate to make any sales in a second term.

The future for oil…

Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, April 30th, 2010 - 48 comments

jarbury

The US Department of Energy shows a comparison between the world’s likely demand for liquid fuels (including oil) over the next 20 years and the various components that will make up the supply of liquid fuels over that time. The emerging gap is alarming, as “Unidentified Projects” would actually be more accurately described as “unfulfilled demand” – meaning quite literally a demand for oil that will not be able to be met.

Forget wondering when peak oil might happen in the future – the answer to that question is: it’s already happened.

More Muldoonism

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, April 29th, 2010 - 15 comments

The government announced a package of measures for the aquaculture industry – including a power for Ministers “to amend regional coastal plans in exceptional circumstances where it is in significant regional or national interest”. The Minister can unilaterally decide what is in a region’s interests, irrespective of what the people of that region may say to the contrary.

This continues this authoritarian government’s assaults on voters ability to choose the own representation.

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.

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

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.

NZ Fabian Society lectures

Written By: - Date published: 5:03 pm, March 6th, 2010 - 15 comments

This looks to be a fascinating set of lectures. I’ll be going – will you?

Economic orthodoxy continues to fail New Zealand. This failure is systemic, not cyclical. Despite this, prevailing political and economic orthodoxy has become almost immune from scrutiny. It seems that policymakers have yet to comprehend that the status quo will inevitably lead to economic collapse.

Tax and economic growth – Bill comes clean

Written By: - Date published: 1:37 pm, February 22nd, 2010 - 19 comments

Bill English’s argument that cutting taxes for the few at the top can cause an economic step change has always been nonsense.

His appearance on Q&A yesterday simply confirmed it.

Nats in line for big $$ from own tax reforms

Written By: - 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: - 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: - 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 […]

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

Written By: - 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 […]

Farrar tries to cover for do nothing govt, and fails

Written By: - 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 […]

Between Nats lines, not much to be found

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 pm, January 4th, 2010 - 54 comments

Bill English has usurped his do-nothing leader with an op-ed in the Herald framing National’s agenda for the year to come. This piece was English’s chance to convince New Zealanders to accept his agenda. He gets off to a bad start: As New Zealand emerges from recession, the Government’s focus has firmly shifted towards significantly lifting our […]

A fair pay-rise not unreasonable

Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, December 28th, 2009 - 10 comments

An interesting piece on the SST yesterday: English has warned public servants such as teachers and nurses not to expect pay increases that are “out of line with realistic expectations”. “I think we will see quite a few sparks fly,” O’Reilly said. “Government departments are being told how much they can spend so you’re going […]

Repeating our past mistakes

Written By: - Date published: 2:35 pm, December 23rd, 2009 - 19 comments

Since Marty’s away, no pretty graphs. There’s not much Christmas cheer in the new GDP numbers I’m afraid. The economy grew at just 0.2% in the September quarter (the forecast was 0.3%). That’s below the rate of population growth, so economic output per person continues to fall. GDP per capita is down 5%, $2000 a […]

Economic illiteracy

Written By: - Date published: 4:21 pm, December 16th, 2009 - 7 comments

More economic illiteracy from our old friend: Certainly given the rhetoric from the finance minister of late I’d thought the numbers would be worse than the Budget, not better. Um, everyone knew they would be better. We’ve known for months. The recession was over earlier than expected and that improves all the numbers. what was […]

English’s big promises proven hollow

Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, December 16th, 2009 - 26 comments

An extraordinary moment in Question Time as John Boscawen skewered National’s hollow promise to close the wage gap with Australia by 2025. Watch the video and listen to Bill English’s voice. He was simply left high and dry when Boscawen asked him for some actual evidence that the gap is going to close: Boscawen: By how much […]

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 […]

Nats’ ‘stimulus’: $200K per job

Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, December 15th, 2009 - 12 comments

National claims it created 2,300 jobs with its stimulus spending. Of course, most of this supposed stimulus was smoke and mirrors – re-announcing existing spending – and 2,300 is bugger all when there are over quarter of a million Kiwis out of work. But I had a few more problems with this announcement. Firstly, I […]

In a land of plenty

Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, December 5th, 2009 - Comments Off on In a land of plenty

Alister Barry’s other classic documentary on the effects of the Right’s neoliberal revolution on every day New Zealanders, In a Land of Plenty, is also now online thanks to NZ On Screen. Check it out below:

Oram on the Brash Report

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, December 3rd, 2009 - 12 comments

Always worth listening to, Rod Oram rips the Brash Report on Nine to Noon, not just on the findings but on the quality of the work, that we’re paying half a million dollars for. Here are some of the choice quotes: “At every point it has unbelievably facile analysis and, in fact, substitutes rather generic […]

What works?

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, December 2nd, 2009 - 49 comments

As the dust settles on the cynical theatre that was the 2025 Taskforce, one fact is becoming abundantly clear. The political Right haven’t a clue what to do about the economy. Key and English don’t have a clue, or they’d be doing it. Brash and his Taskforce don’t have a clue and they said so: […]

Dubai: Subprime state

Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, December 1st, 2009 - 31 comments

Dubai is the subprime folly writ large. In the US, they built ‘exurbs’ in the Californian high desert, two hours each way from LA; rows of McMansions bought by people who couldn’t afford them whose lifestyles were dependent on cheap petrol*. In Dubai, they built skyscrapers in the desert; golf courses, swimming pools, even indoor […]

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