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notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, November 15th, 2017 - 72 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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McConnell is now talking about expelling Moore if he wins. Last count-up I saw had 13 Repug senators saying expel him if he wins, so they would still need 6 more. Unless Dems decide to “respect the will of Alabama voters” and vote to keep Moore in the Senate to keep tainting Repugs with his stench.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/14/moore-senate-republicans-expulsion-244907
Expulsion wouldn’t actually be that bad an option for Repugs. Presumably the Repug Alabama governor just appoints a new temporary Repug senator, then there might be another special election next year which another Repug will win. Or maybe the appointed replacement just serves out the remainder of Sessions’ term until 2020.
That would still be better for the Repugs than a Democrat winning the seat and holding it until 2020
Zimbabwe army seizes state TV but denies coup ongoing
So, if a coup is going on how is Western MSM and leaders going present it?
They all got rather upset when the Fijian coup happened (although they seem to have got over that now).
I replied over at the daily comment thread to a couple of comments
A labour minister says they will absolutely do something – just wait for the afternoon and another will backpedal on it.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11944434
Parliment will be clown college for the next three years, fuck these people are idiots, I’m suspecting there’s some serious buyers remorse at the moment.
Be interesting to see the next political poll, I reckon the veneer has come off the golden girl and the cheap MDF is starting to show, the voters are feeling a bit duped.
The main thing for you to remember is to keep being bitter and angry. Voters respond to that.
BM’s cat has gone missing.
Again.
Yes loser bm opposition is hell lol
Oh yes BM, all these people having buyer remorse!!! Who is celebrating??
people looking for a pay rise, parents looking for time with their baby, buyers looking for affordable homes, those wanting light rail, those wanting climate change action, those wanting a say in protecting DOC areas from mining, those wanting fairer welfare rules, those wanting trade agreements, and jobs, those looking for reparations after calamities, and those seeking warnings of danger……… I know I have missed a few…… Oh those wanting decent Public broadcasting.
A prime minister telling us what is happening “in her own words”.
How about those that protested the TPPA, are they celebrating? How about the Kermadec sanctuary, any people celebrating that?
No Chris, but neither is finalised yet, or in the 100 days.
Kermadec is complex. I am really relaxed. TPPA? It is a lot better. And at least Jacinda is doing something about Manus. When you are in power every day is a series of decisions and potential compromises …
How do you feel about National’s compromises? There is a whole lot of stuff there to digest …
Pretty sure that wasn’t even Labour policy but National’s. Which just makes me think, again, that Nash is in the wrong bloody party.
It was inevitable he was going to speak out of turn sooner or later. It’s no surprise its sooner rather them later. Some people don’t know when to keep their gobs shut.
Yeah, How dare he actually tell the truth and be honest, 🙄
Was he telling the truth?
About the closest that Labour got was saying that they’d take a look at it and maybe to continue National’s policy.
He said they would absolutely do it – that sounds pretty definitive to me.
I don’t mind people making mistakes, it’s how they deal with them that determines whether they’re fit for government or not.
Weird seeing the righties arguing this about Labour when the leader of National is a liar and cheat.
“Weird seeing the righties arguing this about Labour when the leader of National is a liar and cheat”
Cindy and co have told more than their fair share of lies in the last few weeks.
[citation needed]
Lucky I’m not a moderator.
Do tell. I reckon 5 examples should be more than their fair share.
And it appears that he was talking out his arse and not elucidating actual Labour policy.
It’s not a case of whether he was telling the truth or not. It’s about keeping his gob shut until a decision has been made. Normal govt. practice no matter who is in power.
Yep, that too.
He’s the minister of revenue- he must know the decision already.
A decision had not been made. Nash jumped the gun. He’s done it before so one would think he’d learnt a lesson.
If it was National policy they would have done something about it, wouldn’t they?
They didn’t.
They said it was too hard.
I think that there was also reports saying the the cost of collecting it all would cost more than what was brought in.
Of course, the proper way to address this is to drop GST but that would require going back to proper progressive taxation and properly taxing businesses that are presently rorting us.
Collins needs to explain just what these tariffs are on goods under $400.00 and how that makes an impact on Customs’ ability to do their job. She seems to be suggesting that Customs can only operate because of tariff protection?
Nash is right. The Nats did nothing on this and the law is the same as it was before internet shopping became a thing.
Every purchase in NZ should have a GST or equivalent levy if the goods come from overseas. Easy to administer – the courier collects the money at the time of delivery or in the case of Netflix and co it’s added to their fee and they must remunerate the NZ government.
Judith Collins needs to do no such thing, shes in the opposition, its her job to oppose. Labour need to make it difficult for National to oppose by doing what they said they’d do.
So true, poor old lefties haven’t worked that one out yet, they’re all standing around holding their willies and looking completely lost.
One thing I’ve noticed about RWNJs is their hatred of Kiwi workers. Being cheapskates by definition they want everything for cheap regardless of the conditions it places NZ workers under. A loss-making Uber they’ll take. Tax-free shopping they’ll take.
A courier left a package at the door for me today. It was a USD55 item not manufactured in NZ which I’d ordered from the States. Couriers should have eft-pos like the local curry place does and I’d quite happily have paid the GST amount at the point of delivery.
It’s not hard but the Nats, and their media, and their cat-kicking hangers on seem to think it is.
You’re mention cat kicking a lot, dude we all know you’ve got anger issues, don’t take your weakness out on the family pet, get help.
You are the angry one, son. I’d hate to know what your home life is like.
She’s irrelevant and won’t see government again. Her past will catch up with her.
+ 1 yep that is truth
No purchases in NZ should have GST whatsoever, because we should get rid of GST.
And let me guess “tax the rich” to make up for the shortfall
Typical leftie.
No need. Just eliminate GST, the end. At least on non luxury goods.
Technology invading nearly all U.S. jobs, even lower skilled: study
This highlights two points:
1. That we need the training available so that people can be retrained and/or upskilled. Considering how NZ businesses are responding to ‘lack of skills’ in NZ we can be assured they’re not going to do anything about it.
2. Productivity is already so high that there isn’t enough work for everyone and that this trend will continue.
I’m actually amazed that they’ve still got him there.
“I’m actually amazed that they’ve still got him there.”
Ditto – and they probably won’t for much longer. They’re just making sure it all hangs together before waving him goodbye and thanking him for his 20+ years of ‘passion’ and ‘commitment’.
‘Mum’s the word’: The online influencers secretly paid to go on 1News
The headline is bad as it implies that 1Newz paid but they didn’t. 1News didn’t actually know that they’d been paid.
This article shows that regulation and transparency is needed. Further, it shows again that before any product that goes on sale it needs to be regulated first. The market cannot operate as a free-for-all.
Interesting and both those bloggers lied about being paid when directly asked – what nice people not. This is the legacy of keyster and billshitter – they are directly responsible for liars like this who think they can get away with it.. Sad.
Nah, fb and google enabled these dishonest mooks and the rest of us are responsible for noticing them.
The fault is our own.
Well for me I’m less worried about influencers but I do worry about direct liars and people that deliberately deceive the public.
The bit that got me is that both bloggers had previously said that they needed to be open about being paid – and then lied about being paid.
They’re off.
https://zimnews.net/coup-reality-zimbabwe-army-ready-picture-chiwenga-deploys-army-tanks-fight/
edit: and we have a wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Zimbabwean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
As I said over at the open mike thread, If Mugabe still has support of the his infamous North Korean trained 5th Brigade and his Presidential Guard then things will get very interesting and if he hasn’t then it’s all over red rover unless he can talk his way out of it so he can in exile.
The other two questions are:
What’s China’s position on the coup as they have been propping up the regime so have a lot to lose and the other is,
What the position of the Commonwealth whatever way this goes?
I’ve a few other comments over at the open mike and a few links to further reading from Ian Smith’s UDI to the current events atm.
What I found strange is the Zimbabwe Army are using the same camouflage pattern uniform of the old Rhodesian Military Forces.
Looks like China knew all about it before hand.
” The transition came just days after Zimbabwean military chief General Constantino Chiwenga visited Beijing.”
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2120091/bloodless-takeover-wont-dampen-chinese-investment
Now’s that very interesting indeed, doesn’t like other countries sticking it noses into China’s internal affairs, but is more than happy to stick it nose into Zimbabwe’s internal affairs and into other countries affairs. The Red Dragon is learning fast from the Western powers.
China’s been taking lessons from the US. Get powerful both militarily and economically and then you can do whatever the fuck you want.
We should be taking lessons from that as well and building up our own military and economy. That’s going to mean developing and producing our own weapons of war and diversifying our economy so that we’re no longer dependent upon imports.
It is not viable for us to maintain the belief that the world is all nice and that no one would attack us:
Seems like this is more of a struggle between factions in the ruling party than an attempt to overthrow Mugabe.
It also seems like that Mugabe is closer to death than we think.
We shall see anyway.
Yes Millsy, it appears that way for the time being atm, but how long before it last and spills over into some sort of civil war? And there is no doubt that will be some old scores to settle if goes the way of civil war.
The robots are coming to take all the jobs, the robots are coming to take all the jobs!
Turns out this narrative started already more than 50 years ago in 1960.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=37361
I see I might have replied this to comment #4.
Yep. It’s a concern as to how we handle ever increasing automation but the automation itself should be seen as a positive. Automating a job out of existence or just increasing productivity so that fewer people are required to do the same job should be seen as a success as it allows the economy to develop in other ways if the support is there for it to do so. like that article says:
Doing that, though, does require removing the ability of the private banks to create money. It also needs the acceptance that it is government spending that is the driver of the economy.
“Doing that, though, does require removing the ability of the private banks to create money”
Not at all, it didn’t require this in the 60’s when this issue was largely sensibly addressed and it doesn’t today (in fact its even easier since the end of the Bretton Woods agreement). All that is needed is for the government to get a grip on its economic ideology and stop believing unemployment is unavoidable and necessary.
It would help to achieve this if commentary frequently pointed out that the unemployment rate is always able to be reduced by the government, as long as it wants that outcome.
And which came to an end in the 1970s because of massive amounts of stagflation seemingly caused by too much money being created but then put only into shares rather than productive use. Same as today’s housing bubble in fact.
It would be nice if the governments of the world realised that the Bretton Woods Agreement had come to an end when the US unilaterally dropped the Gold Standard in 1971. And that with them doing so the world no longer had a Reserve Currency.
The inflation in the 1970’s came about because of OPEC’s politically motivated Oil price hikes. Your explanation is basically an extension of monetarism, but this theory was entirely bankrupt at its inception. Inflation is simply not correlated with the money supply in the way implied there.
That was certainly part of it but the problems started back in the 1960s.
There’s some logic behind it. If we paid everyone a million per week we wouldn’t all suddenly be able to afford new yachts and houses – the prices would adjust for the new normal.
We don’t see the printing of money having a correlation in general prices. But what we do see is price bubbles in sharemarkets and housing as those who can, and do, grab all the new money for themselves. Those people are few and don’t spend any more per week on their groceries as everyone else and so we see general price stability while the poor are priced out of housing and become poorer and poorer as the house owners put the rental up to get higher returns from people who aren’t getting any of that new money.
“There’s some logic behind it.”
No matter how much logic is behind it you still need to demonstrate this is how the world actually functions for any scientific theory to be acceptable. That is totally missing from this example, though you did provide a little contrary evidence “We don’t see the printing of money having a correlation in general prices”.
There is also a significant problem with the direction of causation which you could get out, because if (for whatever reason) prices are raised on purchased goods then we know for certain that the money supply will have adjusted already to make those purchases.
There is strong evidence that excessive money printing has inflationary effects but it’s mostly in house and share prices. The reason why we’re not seeing general price increases from all the massive creation of money is because the money isn’t going to the majority of people.
But that massive increase in small areas of the market (market bubbles) is most definitely increasing poverty for those that don’t have access to that massive money increase.
If all else remains the same then the amount of money would make no difference as the price would be relative.
The problem is that the way the system is only a few people have access to the massive printing machines. And only a few more have direct access to the money created. These few can push high inflation in a couple of small areas and say that things are going well while the majority of people, glad that general inflation is low, become poorer as housing is pushed out of their reach and the ability to innovate is removed from them as they no longer have access to the resources necessary because a few people are very very rich from controlling the money supply.
“If all else remains the same then the amount of money would make no difference as the price would be relative.”
Clearly when I said that for some reason there was an increase in prices we are no longer discussing a situation where all else remains the same. and relative to what?
There is a much better correlation between inflation and capacity utilization rates rather than looking at the money supply changes.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/04/money-banking-part-11-inflation.html
“One may doubt that the causality goes from M to P given the strong assumptions required for that to be the case.”
e.g Do you actually believe in these rational economic units ?
Most ‘Wealth’ Isn’t the Result of Hard Work. It Has Been Accumulated by Being Idle and Unproductive.
That money was created by the private banks. Do you think that such a huge increase in prices would have been viable without that?
There’s two points:
1. An increase in the amount of money available will prices up
2. Because the distribution of the new money is constrained to only a few you see specific inflation (i.e, house price increases) rather than general inflation (an increase in the CPI).
We are seeing inflation from an excess of money creation and that money creation is from the private banks, ergo, we need to stop the private banks from creating money.
And I’ve been saying for a long time that the assumptions that underlie modern economics are bunk.
“An increase in the amount of money available will prices up”
Of course when prices go up there is (typically) an increase in the amount of money available. The same goes for incomes when they go up too. Unless you have a good argument for the causality going both directions this doesn’t explain anything causally.
On the other hand I think if some banks had been failing to make various payments that would be called a financial crisis. Probably won’t see the RBNZ causing any of those.
So which is it?
Does an increase in money result in higher prices or not? I’m saying it does and seem to be saying both.
Its the one you just quoted, definitely. Thats what banks create money on demand means.
I’m not saying both I’m saying an increase in money can’t be demonstrated to *cause* an increase in prices. But causality definitely happens in the other direction.
Except that I’ve linked to a couple of pieces that shows that it does cause increases in house and share prices. This limited range of those price increases seems to be because of the limited number of people the new money is going to.
Your links make no arguments about the *cause* of the house price increases.
You also said,
“And I’ve been saying for a long time that the assumptions that underlie modern economics are bunk.”
but you continue to defend one of the most central assumptions of mainstream economics. You need to produce evidence (or at least an argument) that changes in M are causing changes in P for this to be anything more than an assumption.
On the other hand we can see every time somebody makes purchases on their credit card (or based on other forms of lending) how changes in P are causing changes in M.
The key distinction between your claim and mine being if P will increase as M increases *even in the absence of changes in demand*, which would be consistent with changes in M causing changes in P. I don’t think that can be demonstrated. On the other hand some of the more recent changes in the economy have seen higher demand for houses and shares and that appears to have driven those prices up.
The key distinction between your claim and mine being if P will increase as M increases *even in the absence of changes in demand*, which would be consistent with changes in M causing changes in P. I don’t think that can be demonstrated.
I think what can be demonstrated is that some special prices are rising greater than the rise in demand and that those special prices are rising because of the banks ability to create money. The rise in prices also allows the banks to create more money as speculators bank on the unearned income available from house and price shares increasing.
Effectively, we have an inflationary spiral fuelled by the banks ability to create money.
Will the rent increases that come about because of National’s increase in Accommodation Supplement be because of increased demand or because of the expectation of more money being available?
“Will the rent increases that come about because of National’s increase in Accommodation Supplement be because of increased demand or because of the expectation of more money being available?”
If the government buys accomodation supplement that is an anticipated increase in demand, obviously.