Open mike 02/12/2024

24 comments on “Open mike 02/12/2024 ”

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1. Dolomedes III 1

   2 December 2024 at 6:57 am

   Try answering my question: what essential services are provided by those ministries?

   [TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
   

   [Hassling other commenters with your demands about some right wing pseudo libertarian talking point is a derail from the post as well as borderline flaming. You’re also trolling. You’ve been warned many times, including the last two times you have a ban, here and here. 1 year ban because the mods are over it – weka]

   [Comment moved from https://thestandard.org.nz/end-game/#comment-2018723%5D
   • weka 1.1

     2 December 2024 at 9:26 am

     mod note.
2. Ad 2

   2 December 2024 at 8:15 am

   So if the Government really is considering an underwrite of oil and gas exploration, a few other industries to underwrite their R&D would including Fonterra, Mercury Energy, RocketLabs, Sharesies, and the local hairdresser.

   The underwrite we're really looking for is an underrighting of our human rights: for each citizen to be well educated, well housed, and well cared for throughout their lives.
   • Bearded Git 2.1

     2 December 2024 at 2:27 pm

     Shane Jones talked about the "mountains of Indonesian coal" we would use if the government didn't subsidised gas exploration on RadionNZ at lunchtime

     This is more Jones porkies for two reasons:

     1. Coal has only supplied an average of around 6% of NZs power needs over the last 10 years.

     2.Wind and especially solar grid scale power projects already in the pipeline with attached storage batteries will mean reliance on coal will almost certainly disappear within 10 years and probably less.

     If the left can get this message across clearly there are votes in this.
   • AB 2.2

     2 December 2024 at 2:54 pm

     Underwriting oil and gas exploration would reveal what it really is. A wasteful and inefficient handout to those provincial businesses (mostly in Taranaki) who will do well out of providing support services to the overseas oil companies.
     It's not a coherent energy policy because there is clearly little expectation that anything will be found. Nor is it a sensible approach to regional development because it has no possibilty of any longevity.
   • SPC 2.3

     2 December 2024 at 4:33 pm

     The Cof C does seem intent on making us an outlier on more than tax in the OECD with this development.

     https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/02/govt-considers-options-after-request-to-underwrite-fuel-exploration/
3. Dennis Frank 3

   2 December 2024 at 8:29 am

   Richard Harman thinks its a win for cautious incrementalism:

   former Minister, former finance spokesperson, and one-time leadership contender David Parker suffered a defeat at the Labour Party conference over the weekend over what has been his political crusade: a wealth tax.

   The conference rejected, apparently by a wide margin, a remit calling for a wealth tax “to proceed”. Instead, they passed a remit calling for more work on both wealth and capital gains taxes. But the odds are stacked against the wealth tax as the party “establishment” clearly prefers a capital gains tax.

   Those senior figures believe it is easier to administer, easier to sell and likely to raise more revenue than a wealth tax. Party leader Chris Hipkins is sceptical about a wealth tax, as is Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and as is the CTU economist Craig Rennie, who is a member of the party’s Policy Council, which will oversee the study of both proposals. https://www.politik.co.nz/the-complex-politics-of-labours-tax-debate/ | Politik

   Nigel Haworth posted on his Facebook page: “So the Labour Party conference has flicked the tax issue on to further work in the Policy Council. The Policy Council has a strong membership. A sensible tax policy must make it through the Policy Council and then through the manifesto process. Delay makes selling any new policy to voters more difficult. Unless the Labour Party shows real purpose, a drift into a catch-up Capital Gains Tax seems the most likely outcome. Delay and conservatism go hand-in-hand.”

   Beating all around that LP bush, while implying that paralytic conservatism is the Labour norm, out of which they somehow must conjure a semblance of progress.
   • AB 3.1

     2 December 2024 at 3:23 pm

     Richard Murphy points out some of the difficulties of implementing a wealth tax in this video (from 3:32 especially). They are mostly the difficulties of finding wealth and then valuing it. The very rich are good at both disguising its existence and paying clever people to legally dispute the valuation. And Governments would have to go through this exercise every year. Wealth tax might end up hitting the merely affluent who don't have the resources to obfuscate and dispute, while the very rich can evade it. Instead he suggests we look at the unearned income streams that derive from wealth, and look at inheritance taxes where the painful business of finding and valuing wealth has to be done only once, not annually.

     Good implementation of tax changes is very important, They have to be easily understood, and pass the sniff test of basic fairness for Joe Public. They must not be littered with too many edge cases, i.e. minor unfairnesses that can easily occur (albeit at low frequency) at the margins. Because a RW media will scream these from the rooftops and destroy any popular support for the idea
     • Descendant Of Smith 3.1.1

       2 December 2024 at 4:17 pm

       While I'm in favour of turnover taxes there is no reason to try and event new taxes.

       Death duty, stamp duty on all house sales and higher tax rates on higher income have worked fine in the past and can work fine again.

       I'm fine with stamp duty on the family home – most people live in family homes for years and years and don't turn them over to make capital gains. Those that churn through houses will pay more tax than those who maybe only own one or two houses over their lifetime.

       Add to that making businesses pay PAYE, ACC levies and student loan repayments etc on each payday it is deducted will reduce fraud and wage theft and will also identify much more quickly businesses in trouble.
       • bwaghorn 3.1.1.1

         2 December 2024 at 5:15 pm

         Could a stamp duty be waived for first house buyers?
         • Descendant Of Smith 3.1.1.1.1

           3 December 2024 at 7:01 am

           Nah. Rich people just put houses in family members names to have more first homes. Same with shares when they sell public assets – one for hubby, one for wife, one for each kid.

           I remember way back when they were overvaluing property to get excess capital gains one even had managed to put a house in his dogs name. I believe that loophole was soon blocked.
     • alwyn 3.1.2

       2 December 2024 at 4:45 pm

       There is quite a good review of wealth taxes, and their problems, here.

       https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/eu/wealth-tax-impact/

       It is quite a long read but it is easy to read and its presentation is neutral.
   • mikesh 3.2

     2 December 2024 at 9:47 pm

     So, instead of taxing the excessively wealthy, they would prefer to tax a capital gainer who may not even be be particularly wealthy. Any capital gainer who is wealthy would be caught by a wealth tax anyway.
4. Dennis Frank 4

   2 December 2024 at 8:48 am

   He's been a top player in leading-edge tech innovating since the 1990s:

   Investor Marc Andreessen set off a firestorm this past week when he said dozens of tech executives were quietly "debanked" during the Biden administration, highlighting an obscure but politically fraught practice.

   Having your access to the banking system revoked is a significant but not necessarily unusual penalty – one that nonetheless has aggravated a conservative base prone to suspicion of government overreach.

   Andreessen appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast last Tuesday and said roughly 30 founders of crypto and other companies had been quietly debanked – an umbrella term usually denoting someone having their accounts closed, or ability to create new accounts blocked. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/01/debanked-crypto-andreessen-joe-rogan

   Well, Deep State theory has it that the US state operators at the top level retain collegial control regardless which party has presidency, senate or congress. Makes sense that top capitalists would be ruled by a similar control system, deploying operational gate-keepers to exclude players acting like cowboys.
   • Dennis Frank 4.1

     2 December 2024 at 10:12 am

     Scientific American presents this view of Deep State theory:

     unraveling the roots of one popular conspiracy theory—of a “deep state”—might reveal something important about the cynicism now infecting U.S politics. In the U.S., the idea of a deep state cabal of unelected officials secretively pulling the strings of American government, is widely believed.

     One 2018 poll even claimed that a majority of American voters place credence in the theory. This is no fringe phenomenon. America’s democratic political institutions and public opinion are riven by anxieties that have been given voice in the pronouncements of Donald Trump: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state,” he told a rally in Waco, Texas, in 2023.

     The history of the CIA's drug cartel liaisons was reported in Rollingstone long ago. John Perkins reported his role in destabilising various foreign countries as US govt agent who met routinely with heads of states.

     In learning about these covert interventions in the 1960s and 1970s, the public became acutely aware of the gap between the official narrative of a purely defensive foreign policy and the reality of these previously secret offensive operations. That awareness caused many to ask who oversaw American foreign policy. Was it their elected public representatives or secretive intelligence officers? One of the most influential books of this era to raise this question was The Invisible Government (1964) by journalists David Wise and Thomas Ross. They opened their account with a declaration: “There are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible.”

     In the '80s it became evident that younger generations were much stupider, too lazy to read history, or both, and denial became the norm. Now that ignorant conglomerate are becoming old and bewildered.

     Today the deployment of the “deep state” by populist politicians like Trump taps into a rich vein of popular suspicion in American society that partly resulted from excessive state secrecy and official deception. Since Hofstadter, we have tended to understand belief in conspiracy theories as a kind of psychosis. In doing so we have focused our gaze pejoratively on the “basket of deplorables” who tend to believe such theories, and ignored the official sources and government policies that first produced these widespread anxieties.

     So ignorant masses believe those who learn from experience are psychotic. One could observe that this is a deplorable state of affairs, n'est ce pas? Nice that the scientific establishment points to American difficulties with realism though.
     • Mike the Lefty 4.1.1

       2 December 2024 at 1:50 pm

       One of the things that makes me laugh about USA "democracy" is that the union's equivalent of the cabinet is filled by people who are not elected, but handpicked by the president.

       Imagine if in NZ the Minister of Broadcasting was Mike Hosking, or the Minister of Finance was Alan Gibbs, or the Minister of Health was Brian Tamaki.

       Shudder!
       • Ad 4.1.1.1

         2 December 2024 at 1:55 pm

         Private sector Cabinet hires aren't unusual in the UK especially if they're a Lord.
         • alwyn 4.1.1.1.1

           2 December 2024 at 4:53 pm

           I think you have cause and effect the wrong way round. The wish to make them a Cabinet Minister comes first. The business of making them a lord is so that they can do it.

           It is often the reason a person is ennobled. We want Joe Bloggs in the Cabinet. Make him a life peer so he can sit in the House of Lords and then make him a Cabinet Minister.
     • tWig 4.1.2

       2 December 2024 at 2:33 pm

       Like everything, it's not until you're burnt yourself that the hypocricy strikes home.

       An article in last week's Manawatu standard on a local paper firm making paper bags for supermarkets quoted the owners as saying they had received no government support for their initiative, begun several years ago.

       In talking with the Nats before the election, they were promised a Nat government would help them out with subsidies. They then say, more or less, the promise was hot air, as no luck for them since then.

       Get the feeling a lot of this was happening pre-election.
   • joe90 4.2

     2 December 2024 at 6:40 pm

     The original Operation Choke Point was an Obama-era program targeting the bank accounts of those engaged in consumer fraud, though it became a lightning rod for conservative outrage.

     Because thieving bankers and financial scammers have rights, too…

     /

     Elon Musk has said he wants to “delete” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal watchdog that helps protect consumers from predatory financial practices.

     […]

     The CFPB is an independent watchdog agency with oversight over banks and other financial institutions, created after the financial crash of 2008 and charged with overseeing consumer protection in the industry.

     Musk’s post came in response to a recent podcast clip from the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a significant Trump donor, who said the agency’s primary purpose is to “terrorize financial institutions”.

     But it was soon reported that Andreessen’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horwitz, was among other investors who had backed LendUp, an online consumer payday lender, that was shut down by the CFPB in 2018.

     The CFPB director, Rohit Chopra, said the company’s lending operations were shuttered “for repeatedly lying and illegally cheating its customers”.

     https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/28/elon-musk-cfpb-trump
5. observer 5

   2 December 2024 at 2:17 pm

   "Et tu, ZB?"

   You know things are bad for a National PM when even the loyal courtiers at Newstalk ZB are getting the knives out …

   "By Newstalk ZB political editor Jason Walls' count, Luxon uttered the phrase "what I'd say to you is" 21 times – and often struggled to answer Tame's direct questions.

   "I'm not surprised he said it so many times, it was one of the worst interviews I've ever seen with a Prime Minister."

   https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/wellington/wellington-mornings-with-nick-mills/audio/beehive-buzz-jason-walls-on-prime-minister-christopher-luxons-horrific-qa-interview-and-labours-annual-conference/

   Sure, every politician has a verbal tic or uses padding ("the reality is" "at the end of the day" etc), but none has ever been as robotically repetitive as Luxon. Look, what I'm saying to you is the guy has the vocabulary of a six year old. In his first language.
   • Cinder 5.1

     2 December 2024 at 6:04 pm

     A I said to my workmate last week, when he says "What I'm saying is / What I'm telling you is" – He means he isn't actually listening to you at all.

     He may as well just stick his fingers in his ears and go "lalalalalalalala" at the questioner.

     And in that Q&A interview, he has the absolute cheek to blame Labour for the deterioration in Māori / Crown relations.

     The sooner he trips over his clown shoes in public and lands flat on his face, the better
6. tWig 6

   2 December 2024 at 2:24 pm

   Brian Tamaki, who blamed homosexual activity for natural disasters, and who has had his followers harass drag storytime presenters as groomers for pedophilia, had, surprise, surprise, a youth pastor predator in his own church who admits to sexual abuse of hundreds of boys.

   A clear case of throwing shade to hide your own church’s failings. First remove the beam from thine own eye, etc.

   This info is buried in the NZH website, not in breaking news. I wonder why?
7. gsays 7

   2 December 2024 at 2:39 pm

   Hopefully we don't experience this mob managing a pandemic!

   Shudder to think.

   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/nzs-first-case-of-bird-flu-found-on-otago-egg-farm/7GU4CPBVARFWJDAOGKJGFUNSBM/

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