Written By:
notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, November 17th, 2020 - 13 comments
Categories: Daily review -
Tags:
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. ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
People should be in zero doubt about Jacinda and Robbo’s commitment to the Parliamentary neo liberal consensus, and its various structural components.
She said as much re the separation of Govt. and Reserve Bank. There will be no intervention from her.
I have no problems with people’s gratitude for the PM briefly putting people before capital during the Level 4 Lockdown. Public health was the clear winner, but at great cost of billions being transferred to business via bailouts (with literally thousands of cases pending for stealing workers leave, and fraudulently claiming bailouts)-and now gifts to speculators and rentiers.
Time to wake up working class and take action. How about NZCTU and the 60 NGOs promote a nationwide “call in sick day” to push for 10 days sick leave before Xmas?
Not saying this is necessarily the case, But jacinda has form for waiting until the clamour for action has reached a frenzy across the political spectrum…. and then acting.
I wait and see.
dont hold your breath
what would be some examples of that?
going into Lockdown, face masks, border controls.
so watch this space
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/430836/government-under-pressure-across-political-spectrum-over-inflated-house-prices
Michael Cullen is considered to be one of the best performing ministers of the modern Labour party. He is prepared to publicly criticise the Governments approach:
…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/430836/government-under-pressure-across-political-spectrum-over-inflated-house-prices
he does of course have cancer so I expect he is unconcerned about upsetting the party but it is worth remembering he accepted the neolib consensus even after he resigned from Parliament
This sort of statement would be more meaningful if Cullen had revised his understanding considering his own term as finance minister, during which house prices rose far more rapidly as a fraction of incomes (than presently). They did this despite relatively tight monetary policy at the time. The main lesson from this seems to be that monetary policy has almost no influence on house prices (and probably inflation rates more generally, considering the RBNZ inability to get CPI inflation up to 3%).
If on the other hand the problem is the overall preference for monetary over fiscal policy, and the focus on govt fiscal surplus as a goal, and so the resulting lack of spending growth, and so the lack of employment growth, and so the lack of labour market pressure, and so the relative (to house prices) lack of median wage growth. Well in this case Cullen and his focus on higher taxes, could be seen as contributing to the problem.
Cullen can criticise but where does he say that the solution is to build more state housing for renting, with some sold off every year on a buy-back at agreed valuation basis. So people put money into their home, and get it back later. Now that would be speaking up. But merely playing the wise man from the side of the pool hardly gets his toes wet. He needs to dive in or be pushed and come up spluttering something with some passion behind it.
And bringing in tighter housing policy on everybody. And immigration – stop being subservient to people with cash. How did they get it by the way? Ghost houses, drive out the ghouls. Most houses these days look so dull and depressing they would sap the life from anybody. And the ghouls that develop them can even put something like liens on to prevent colour change etc. Talk about pretentious dictators – that’s what neo lib afficianados turn into.
Yes, whole streets and “precincts” in various shades of porridge or beige. Covenants bind purchasers–poor sods–to a limited colour palette.
Cullen, in a Stuff article, says that while he still supports a CGT it would do nothing to slow housing price increases.
More rainbow houses!
Perhaps it's racist now to have coloured houses.