Daily Review 06/07/2017

33 comments on “Daily Review 06/07/2017 ”

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1. adam 1

   6 July 2017 at 5:45 pm

   If you have the time, about 1/2 and hour. A very good piece on the Venezuelan Opposition. With the final comment by the last person interviewed, worth it’s weight in gold.
   • Bill 1.1

     6 July 2017 at 10:16 pm

     The truth confounds the narrative Adam. So obviously the truth must be stomped on…or ignored.

     Most people in NZ and elsewhere do their bit by turning a blind eye or blithely repeating the lines of “the good guys” (as reported in msm) – the official western narrative.

     And yes. I know you know this.

     But if you posting that video made just one person sit back and reflect then…well, that’s one more, and 99 is not 100. 😉
2. Cinny 2

   6 July 2017 at 7:12 pm

   The most interesting thing about going to listen to Winston this morning for me was… someone I saw in the audience. That spoke volumes, to me, volumes. Would have intrigued Winston as well if he didn’t know that that particular person was going to be there. Crowd watching at a political event is always fascinating.

   Excellent highly entertaining speech as always. Thanks Winston for answering our questions.
3. joe90 3

   6 July 2017 at 7:59 pm

   Righto then, Richie will be along shortly to tell us that everything’s just fucking peachy in Liberland.

   The actuality of a country of Liberland—with residents and infrastructure and global recognition—hardly even matters. Over 103,000 fully registered citizens are willing to suspend their disbelief that the overgrown, three-square-mile land mass could become Libertarian utopia. Liberland has distended beyond the realm of fantasy into a living, growing, big-spending movement, with a massive following and a few off-brand splinter groups. And for an organization driven by xenophobic, Eurosceptic, tax-avoidant white men, the timing couldn’t be better.

   http://www.gq.com/story/the-libertarian-utopia-thats-just-a-bunch-of-white-guys-on-a-tiny-island
   • rhinocrates 3.1

     6 July 2017 at 10:46 pm

     I think William Golding has already told us all about what it’s like:

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies
4. Barfly 4

   6 July 2017 at 8:06 pm

   Great to see a picture of Muldoon here….A man I consider to be NZ’s last great socialist leader. Many of Winnie’s economic policies Rob would have approved of.
   And no I am dead serious.
   • weka 4.1

     6 July 2017 at 8:24 pm

     I was just talking about Muldoon today. When the High Court ruled against a high dam being built at Clyde, Muldoon brought in a law that overrode the court. He might be economically socialist but authoritarian as. Muldoon was of course right wing. So yep, similar to Peters on both counts.
     • Barfly 4.1.1

       6 July 2017 at 9:26 pm

       Sure – authoritarian- and far BETTER than …Douglas, Prebble, Richardson, Shipley, Key, English et cetera….care to dispute that?
       Also do you disagree that Muldoon was economically a socialist the last one running this country?
       • Bill 4.1.1.1

         6 July 2017 at 9:36 pm

         I’ll disagree with that last bit. He was a social democrat. And that’s not in any way, shape or form “socialist”.
       • weka 4.1.1.2

         6 July 2017 at 9:40 pm

         What Bill said, but also, the whole Overton Window thing. What’s being established here is that Peters is right wing. Which I agree with. Old school authoritarian conservative power monger. Very like Muldoon.

         What’s missing from your picture is all the people to the left of Douglas, Prebble, Richardson, Shipley, Key, English and Peters etc.
         • Barfly 4.1.1.2.1

           6 July 2017 at 10:01 pm

           Muldoon had no problem with highly progressive taxes he had no problem with big government he had no problem with “soaking” unemployment by using government departments he was by far better for this country than most who succeeded him.
           • McFlock 4.1.1.2.1.1

             6 July 2017 at 10:11 pm

             he also had no problem with dawn raids, no problem voting against homosexuality legalisation, no problem using the police and security services for political gain, no problem dictating what the media should and should not say, no problem inviting representatives from murderous right wing regimes to play here, and so on.

             His economics weren’t “neoliberal”, but he wasn’t a socialist.
             • Barfly …

               6 July 2017 at 10:21 pm

               Faults you could drive a truck through but I say again and you have not disputed this

               “Muldoon had no problem with highly progressive taxes he had no problem with big government he had no problem with “soaking” unemployment by using government departments he was by far better for this country than most who succeeded him.”
               • McFlock …

                 6 July 2017 at 10:29 pm

                 I did not dispute it because it’s pretty much true, for most intents and purposes. The the first few make him an old-school NZ conservative, the last makes him better than Lab4, Nat4, and the current Nat5.

                 None of it makes him a socialist.
               • weka …

                 6 July 2017 at 10:31 pm

                 I haven’t voted for any that succeeded him, so I’ll just point out again the Overton Window. If this was the 1970s Peters would be considered RW. Are you arguing for people to vote on the right?
               • Red …

                 7 July 2017 at 12:56 pm

                 No problem with driving country broke, it all worked until we no longer could rely on been Britains farm and some one else had to pay all those railway worker doing nothing As with all socialism it fails when other people money runs out or the tap is turned off. Pay and price freeze was his last desperate act to deny reality Venezuela is now facing up to the same inevitable consequences of hard socialism
                 • McFlock …

                   7 July 2017 at 1:05 pm

                   Your historical expertise is as bad as your math
             • Bill …

               6 July 2017 at 10:30 pm

               Now throw the basics of that take at Peters…

               And then maybe reflect that the one basic common denominator of socially authoritarian or reactionary populists (eg Trump) and socially ‘progressive’ populists (eg Sanders or Corbyn), is the promises they make around economic management.

               The way they would realise those promises are different (eg Sanders v Trump on investing in US infrastructure), but it’s just the basic appeal of the promise that counts at the ballot box.

               And yes. Neither Muldoon nor any other western leader past, present or future can be sensibly labelled as socialist.
           • Sacha 4.1.1.2.1.2

             6 July 2017 at 11:11 pm

             Muldoon was a statist but a 66% top income tax rate was certainly more progressive than the Finance Ministers who followed him could tolerate.
             • weka …

               6 July 2017 at 11:24 pm

               The Finance Minister who followed was Douglas. After that it was all over for progressive wasn’t it?

               What would Peters set it at?
       • Stuart Munro 4.1.1.3

         7 July 2017 at 1:56 am

         I’d say Muldoon’s nationalism was responsible for his essentially developmentalist policies. He was late on the developmentalist train by global standards, and it was a successful strategy, unlike the current corrupt neoliberalism. But he struggled to find the expertise to make his think big projects successful, so that the public benefits were not always realized for the successes, and a few were not successes.

         Muldoon thought himself an economic genius – a belief more easily understood in the context of the thicket of deadwood who made up his cabinet. Winston knew what Rob was trying to do, the rest of them didn’t have a clue. Which is why the party is busy wrecking the economy under ostensibly the same brand. Most of them never understood how to make things work at all – they just want end runs around all legislation, public interest or not.
5. weka 5

   6 July 2017 at 8:42 pm

   Is TOP against raising the minimum wage?

   The minimum wage has increased by 50c per year for the past few years and is currently $15.75 or 67% of the median wage. That’s very high by international comparisons (as a percentage of both mean and median wage) if Labour keep pushing then there is always a downside – not just a higher bill for workplaces but also the risk of lower employment, particularly for young people.

   Is it that they want wages to rise, not by govt mandate but by the market instead? But still no mandatory minimum raise, so I guess that means individuals bargain for it instead?

   http://www.top.org.nz/future_of_work_or_stuck_in_the_past
   • Psycho Milt 5.1

     6 July 2017 at 9:03 pm

     They always write “X% of the median wage” as though the median wage were some kind of constant. Perhaps, if our minimum wage is 67% of the median wage and still not enough to live on, the problem isn’t with the increasing minimum wage but rather with a ridiculously low median wage?

     If employers treat the statutory minimum wage as a default, of course the median wage is going to end up not much higher than the minimum. That doesn’t mean the problem is that our minimum wage is too high! I thought these fuckwits were supposed to be economists?
     • Macro 5.1.1

       6 July 2017 at 9:13 pm

       If employers treat the statutory minimum wage as a default, of course the median wage is going to end up not much higher than the minimum.
       And they do…
       So yes, we have a heavily skewed income distribution, where the measures of central tendency taken in isolation don’t tell us a great deal.
       As always the economist will choose the statistic that supports their argument/world view.
   • Draco T Bastard 5.2

     6 July 2017 at 9:55 pm

     Morgan is a traditional economist. The fact that raising minimum wages increases business probably hasn’t got through his traditionally thick skull yet.

     He’ll keep going on about raising productivity leading to raising wages despite all the evidence of the last 30+ years showing the exact opposite.
   • mauī 5.3

     6 July 2017 at 10:12 pm

     Tax cuts for low income earners according to their tax reform policy.

     “Overall, our package will be tax neutral – every additional dollar of tax collected will be given back via income tax cuts. And we would intend those tax cuts to favour those on below-average incomes to reduce inequality.”
     • McFlock 5.3.1

       6 July 2017 at 10:22 pm

       would a 100% income tax rebate for anyone on a minimum wage take them up to a living wage?

       If not, the minimum wage needs to rise.
       • mauī 5.3.1.1

         6 July 2017 at 10:51 pm

         It might take it up to $17 an hour which I agree isn’t enough, but its something.

         It’s a pity I can’t think of a current NZ political party and know instantly they propose a min wage of say $20 an hour like what Corbyn did recently.
         • McFlock 5.3.1.1.1

           6 July 2017 at 11:22 pm

           Greens propose it without a timeframe and Labour proposes an increment with the goal of heading towards the 2/3 average wage.

           Labour’s increment is closer to the TOP tax cut than it is the status quo, and that’s before the tax review. And doesn’t show Morgan’s fear of raising the minimum wage.
   • Stuart Munro 5.4

     7 July 2017 at 2:09 am

     If Morgan has his wits about him (about 50/50 judging by media behavior) he’ll mean to target cost of living rather than wage increases. There are a lot of places in the world where the NZ minimum wage would be comfortable rather than desperate, but the privatisations have not been regulated so as to produce savings for consumers. Pre-Douglas, NZ had a huge middle class on relatively low income internationally, because state provision had kept costs down to pretty low levels.

     Speculation may be pointless however – at best Gareth might scare up a handful of seats – and the Gnats won’t derail their backer’s gravy trains for principles even supposing he has them. The left might look at some of his policies, but their own policy positions, being hard fought, would presumably take precedence.
6. joe90 6

   6 July 2017 at 9:07 pm

   These pricks…

   .

   Israel confiscated Wednesday two home solar power units that had been contributed by the European Union to a small sheep-herding community in the north of the Jordan Valley.

   The confiscated units, which were installed some three months ago, consist of eight solar panels, four batteries and two transformers. They were intended to operate refrigerators, used to store cheeses – on which the family’s livelihood depends – and medicines for the sheep and the family.

   The Civil Administration, which carried out the seizure, came to Khirbet Tall al-Himma, home of the 25-strong Hlat Hamad community, at 8 A.M. Wednesday with two military jeeps carrying 10 soldiers, four of them women, two cars with laborers and a truck.

   google cache (paywalled)

   .

   The Netherlands has lodged a complaint with the Israeli government after dozens of Dutch solar panels donated to a West Bank village were confiscated by Israeli authorities.

   The hybrid diesel and solar power electricity system was installed last year in remote Jubbet al-Dhib, a village home to 150 people in an area of the West Bank occupied by Israel.

   The panels were not built with proper permits and permissions, the authorities said, confiscating equipment belonging to the £307,000 humanitarian project last week.

   Critics points out that building permissions for new Palestinian homes and infrastructure are almost impossible to obtain.

   The village mayor told Palestinian outlet Ma’an News that the panels were destroyed, although Comet-ME, the aid organisation which installed the panels, said that between 60 and 90 were taken away intact and other equipment at the site destroyed and left behind by Israeli forces.

   http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-solar-panels-palestinians-seize-dutch-government-donate-jubbet-al-dhib-area-c-a7820711.html
   • Barfly 6.1

     6 July 2017 at 10:24 pm

     Zionist fascism at it’s finest
7. Pat 7

   6 July 2017 at 11:11 pm

   sapiens my arse..

   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/05/hopes-of-mild-climate-change-dashed-by-new-research

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