economy
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Labour’s labour policy good for labourers
Written By: - Date published: 7:50 pm, October 27th, 2008 - 19 comments
Labour has unveiled its work rights policy, and it’s a good one: – minimum wage increases at least at the rate of inflation or the average wage increase, whichever is higher. That would bring it to nearly $15 a year by 2011. Why they didn’t just commit to $15 like the rest of the Left, […]
The Standard line: Kiwisaver
Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, October 24th, 2008 - 26 comments
So, you’re talking with someone about politics and they say something really dumb and wrong and you know it’s wrong but you don’t have the arguments and facts at your fingertips to make a decisive point. That’s where our election series, The Standard line, comes in. The info you need in bite-size form. Today: Kiwisaver Points […]
Reserve Bank drops OCR 1%
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 am, October 23rd, 2008 - 30 comments
The OCR is down from 7.5% to 6.5%. That’s an unprecendented cut in one go and further confirmation that we are entering tough economic times. Inflation has been high but the Reserve Bank thinks the increasingly likely global recession will remove inflationary pressure. Keeping the economy going will be the challenge.
Wait, what’s the RSE?
Written By: - Date published: 3:46 pm, October 22nd, 2008 - 38 comments
OK, we’ve reported on, given historical context to, and mocked Lockwood Smith’s racist comments about seasonal migrant workers. Now, to the substance of what Smith as saying, ie that fewer permits issued under the Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme (RSE) should be allocated to people from the Pacific Islands (because, he says, other people are smaller […]
Inflation up but already on way down
Written By: - Date published: 1:18 pm, October 21st, 2008 - 21 comments
Inflation hit 5.1% for the year to September driven by the mammoth spike in oil, food, and other commodity which has abated since then, for now. There is nothing that could be done to avoid this impact on New Zealand from international markets. The economy is already in recession, and now would be the worst […]
Childish
Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, October 18th, 2008 - 64 comments
We live on a finite planet. We can’t just keep adding 75 million people a year to the human population while also increasing the average resource consumption per person without collapsing the biological systems that support us. Current projections have the world population rising another 2-2.5 billion in the next 40 years to peak around […]
Make-work don’t work
Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, October 15th, 2008 - 24 comments
The Maori Party wants the dole abolished to be replaced by work schemes. It’s a bad idea but it’s not too far from being a good one. Make work schemes are bad in several ways. They distort the market for low-skill work. The State with an army of cheap, semi-involuntary labour ends up undercutting the […]
Wrong time for short-term thinking
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, October 14th, 2008 - 90 comments
National’s Nick Smith has announced that they would cancel the $1 billion fund to insulate New Zealand houses, which the Greens won as part of the Emissions Trading Scheme. This massive programme would improve energy efficiency, create warmer, healthier homes and would provide useful employment during the downturn. A study, ironically carried out under National and mentioned to me […]
‘Give me warning next time’, Key whimpers
Written By: - Date published: 4:08 pm, October 13th, 2008 - 44 comments
While Key was blathering on about who-cares-what yesterday, Clark announced a radical and forward-looking economic stimulus package. Now, Key is having a cry over Clark not notifying him beforehand of the deposit insurance scheme. As if the Prime Minister needs to seek the approval of an opposition party before setting government policy. Key whines that monetary […]
Working our way forward
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, October 13th, 2008 - 16 comments
It was inevitable that the focus of media coverage of Labour’s announements yesterday would be the deposit insurance, it’s a good self-centred middle-class story. But the important stuff, as Irish pointed out last night, is the re-training money, the speed-up of infrastructure construction, the money for sewerage, housing, and anti-erosion projects. The deposit insurance simply acts to […]
Labour takes bull by the horns, Nats left standing
Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, October 13th, 2008 - 25 comments
One of the first rules of politics is don’t set yourself up to be snookered; don’t position yourself in a way that your opposition can and will undercut, don’t run attack lines that your opposition can and will invalidate. National has repeatedly done this. They ran on tax cuts as their sole platform when it […]
A real economic plan
Written By: - Date published: 8:21 pm, October 12th, 2008 - 16 comments
One of the things that has pissed me off about MSM political analysis lately is the constant repetition of the idea that cutting taxes in a recession is all you need to do to be considered Keynesian. This is generally remarked upon in the context of National shifting their economic policy left (that “Keynesianism” and […]
Trickle-down
Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, October 12th, 2008 - 11 comments
A few thoughts from today’s Agenda: Questioned about why National would introduce another tax rebate, having endlessly criticised Working for Families because of its complexity, English says ‘we do, in the long term, want a simpler tax system’. So, be on notice, Working for Families is under threat from National – they would ‘eventualy, but […]
What happens if Nats gut Kiwisaver?
Written By: - Date published: 12:53 pm, October 10th, 2008 - 23 comments
I was going to write about the economic effects of taking money out of Kiwisaver and spending it on tax cuts but this youtube video with South Park characters does the job and is much more fun: (hattip: Labour’s ‘Campaign Trail‘ blog)
Nats break into your piggy-bank
Written By: - Date published: 3:42 pm, October 8th, 2008 - 61 comments
John Key has announced that Kiwisaver would be slashed along with National’s tax cuts for the rich (and they are tax cuts for the rich, while most people would get less than under Labour’s plan, under National’s plan by 2011 around half a billion a year more than under Labour’s plan would be going to […]
The rainy day cometh
Written By: - Date published: 3:50 pm, October 6th, 2008 - 117 comments
The Pre-election Fiscal Update projects that gross debt will rise from 17.4% today to 24.3% of GDP in five years. Fortunately, we are facing these tough economic times starting from a solid position due the the Government’s policy of running surpluses and paying down debt, rather than slashing taxes. 24.3% debt is right at the […]
Spin-busting: Govt could have used surpluses for tax cuts
Written By: - Date published: 2:37 pm, October 6th, 2008 - 28 comments
With the economic situation deteriorating the surpluses the Government has run for the first eight years have turned to a deficit. National’s line now is that the Government ‘suquendered’ these surpluses when it could have been cutting taxes. As if when the Government runs a surplus it takes the extra money out and burns it. […]
Previewing the Prefu
Written By: - Date published: 12:49 pm, October 5th, 2008 - 9 comments
Tomorrow the government’s books will be opened up. It is not expected to be a pretty picture. Oil prices and the credit crunch have forced the economy into recession. The debt to GDP ratio will be higher than was modelled in the Budget for three reasons (at this point, I just want to remind our excitable righties that […]
Wage gap decreasing thanks to pro-worker policies
Written By: - Date published: 12:05 pm, October 3rd, 2008 - 36 comments
As The Standard first reported on April 1 and Radio New Zealand picked up today, Treasury figures show that the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand increased 50% under National in the 1990s and has decreased moderately under Labour since then. Now, a lot of our readers simply won’t want to believe that […]
Rhetoric vs reality
Written By: - Date published: 1:55 pm, October 2nd, 2008 - 25 comments
With expectations about National’s tax cuts justifably very high (thanks to National talking them up for nine years), National is suddenly trying to change course. John Key, who has promoted tax cuts as the solution to doctors’ strikes, the wage gap, and petrol prices along with every other issue facing this country, is now saying […]
Speculators stuff up, put us all in peril
Written By: - Date published: 9:40 am, October 2nd, 2008 - 59 comments
The formula to determine the fair value of a share is pretty simple – take the expected future dividends,adjust them using the discount rate, and add them up, there’s your fair share price. Of course, expectations on future dividends and people’s discount rates vary but it should all be pretty simple. It isn’t though because the […]
Between the lines: Nats’ RMA free-for-all
Written By: - Date published: 4:55 pm, September 30th, 2008 - 24 comments
The RMA is a quick and cheap process in the vast majority of cases, and it is regarded as a world-leading piece of legislation. Few consent applications are refused or appealed. Reforms of the RMA over the years have made it more efficient. The studies show that the delays that do happen in consents being […]
Shallow recession this year but the future looks tough
Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, September 26th, 2008 - 42 comments
We all knew New Zealand was in recession in the first six months of this year. The official figures have confirmed this. The surprise though is on the upside. The consensus had been that the economy had shrunk 0.5% in the quarter. In fact, it was 0.2%. Remember that this figure occurred during the height of […]
Free trade must be fair
Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, September 23rd, 2008 - 16 comments
In principle, a free trade deal between the US and the P4 countries (NZ, Chile, Singapore, and Brunei) is a good thing. If we want our world’s limited resources to be used efficiently, we should not place artificial barriers in the way of trade without good reason. But we must make sure that the FTA […]
NZ – still a great place to do business
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 pm, September 10th, 2008 - 33 comments
We can do good news here on the Standard! According to a World Bank survey shows New Zealand is still ranked second in the world when it comes to ease of doing business. Singapore ranked first with the United States third. According to Clayton Cosgrove: …positive findings included that New Zealand was the easiest country […]
The polls and petrol prices
Written By: - Date published: 1:43 am, September 8th, 2008 - 19 comments
Updating a post from a few months ago, here’s how Labour’s Roy Morgan poll numbers are going compared to the price of petrol since the last election (the price of petrol axis is inverted, lower line = higher price). The trend continues, when petrol prices go up support for Labour goes down and vice versa. Labour hit a […]
Buy Kiwi online
Written By: - Date published: 6:07 am, September 2nd, 2008 - 7 comments
As part of the Buy NZ Made programme that was part of the Government’s abstention deal with the Greens, the Get NZ Made website has been launched. It works like a normal online shopping site and lists thousands of New Zealand-made products – everything from asphalt to zinnia skirts. Now, if only the Buy NZ […]
Causes and effects
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, August 30th, 2008 - 47 comments
A series of graphs from the Social Report. First off, the unemployment rate When the unemployment goes up or down, the practical effect is a decrease or increase in household incomes as the country got poorer under National, unemployment rose, incomes fell, and and the poverty rate rose, compounded by National’s cut benefits and its choice […]
Social Report shows Kiwis better off
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, August 28th, 2008 - 31 comments
MSD released its Social Report today, an annual publication that collates a wide variety of standard of living measures, and produces this awesome graph. The circle represents the status quo in 1995-97 each spoke represents a different measure (income, crimes per capita etc). If the spoke is longer than the circle than the measure has improved between 1995-97 […]
Mythbusting: Half of new generation is thermal
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, August 22nd, 2008 - 16 comments
Reading National’s energy policy last week I was surprised to learn that of 1942MW of new generation that has come online since 2000 1073MW of that has been thermal*. Sure enough, John Key is going around using that as a ground for National’s policy of building more gas power plants and giving up on the […]
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