The anxiety levels in west Auckland from simultaneous level 4 lockdown and a flood require free distribution of 6 deep chocolate marijuana cookies to everyone.
We’ve all grown tired of lockdowns, border closures and other restrictions. So the promise of a freer life, when 70% and then 80% of Australians aged 16 and older are vaccinated, feels like a beacon on the horizon.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, some premiers, and leading public servants have promised us at 80% we can live “safely” with COVID-19, or come out of our “caves” in the PM’s parlance.
The narrative is one of Team Australia and we are “all in this together”. But are we really?
The fundamental problem with socialism is that it contradicts the most basic human instincts. Ultimately the self contradictions contained within it's ideology begin to eat away from within, and the state is then forced to introduce draconian measures to ensure it's ongoing survival. The evidence is the array of socialist states that have broken down under the weight of failing economies and brutal authoritarianism.
Socialism failed in the 20th century, and it is failing in the 21st century. At best it is an illustration of why we should never give the state any more power than is necessary to ensure the worst excesses of the free market are curtailed.
There are nine democratic socialist countries currently. (Although some of those would be disputed – many have some form of private ownership and investment). When compared to the number of countries that have market economies as their political preference, perhaps that tells a story in itself. But those DS countries have far from eliminated inequality. Venezuela has substantial inequality. Ecuador rejected socialist policies in favour of the free market, affirmed again earlier this year. And so it goes on.
Ultimately it is mixed market economies that have been the most successful, with the democratic process determining the precise mix of state and private engagement.
Australian commentator claims that military occupation brought women's rights to Afghanistan; Jenny-May Coffin fails to challenge a single thing she utters.
Breakfast, TVNZ1, Tuesday 31 August 2021, 8:20 a.m.
Jenny-May Coffin assumed her most concerned face this morning and interviewed, via Skype, one Jane Caro, billed as a "social analyst" from the Hunter Valley, NSW. Jane Caro averred that women in Afghanistan had only had the chance to dress freely and live a full life in the last twenty years, thanks to the country "being occupied by the United States, and its allies like Australia." [1]
That is untrue. The secular Daoud government, which came to power in Kabul in 1978, instituted sweeping reforms, including especially equal rights for women and universal education. [2] The United States and Great Britain, instead of praising and supporting this, worked assiduously with extremist Muslim groups to embark on a campaign of terror and sabotage against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, for no other reason than that the Daoud government was endorsed by the Soviet Union. This U.S.-sponsored terror and sabotage started six months beforethe Soviets sent military aid to the beleaguered government.
Jane Caro either knew this, and was simply lying with her claim that women's rights only arrived with the U.S. military invasion, or she was ignorant of the very fact of the Daoud government, in which case she should not have been commenting on anything to do with Afghanistan. Instead of challenging Caro's nonsense, Jenny-May Coffin merely nodded gravely and tried to look concerned.
So you think that the U.S. decision in 1978 to organize and arm the extremist Muslim opponents of women's rights was the right one?
By the way, Scott Levi is almost as dodgy a source as poor old Jane Caro. This sentence from his potted history is a model of mendaciousness: “In the mid-1980s, the United States (and others) began to supply the Mujahidin with financial support and military equipment.”
In fact, as Scott Levi—but maybe not Jane Caro or Jenny-May Coffin—knows perfectly well, the United States was arming and supporting the Mujahidin long before the mid-1980s.
I tell you what, I'll do a post on the top 20 biggest US boots on the ground interventions and you can armchair your chinwags until the cows come home.
Well that post would read like horror story of fascist proportions, the only good place for American boots on the ground, would be in the ground buried deep deep down.
Yes, if the US military gave a shit about women and girls, it would have marched into the White House and arrested Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Also would have lined outside every abortion clinic in the USA and used lethal force on any Bible bashing bigot that even looked like they were going to harrass staff and patients.
If I understand the politics of Afghanistan correctly (doubtful) and to sufficient granularity (also doubtful), ISIS-K are to the Taliban what the Taliban were to the rest of the Afghan Mujahiddeen.
Really depends on the region within the "country". A lot of the problem is based on fixing "borders" that overlap multiple cultures and ethnic groups (for a given value of demographic granularity), and then expecting centralised policy and control.
Wait until we read about the US giving intel to the Taleban to target ISIL-K because that would hurt [insert country here's] influence in the region. Unthinkable now, but complex situations make strange bedfellows.
Today is September the 1st. It will be interesting to see if peace will prevail. Hopefully lessons from 1 September 1939 will be learnt. Interesting that America did not enter World War 2 until the bombing of Pearl Harbour 7 December 1941. America did support their allies with war supplies prior to Pearl Harbour.
US, Russia, China, India (to screw with the Pakistanis), Pakistan, Iran, and a couple of others all playing silly buggers with guns, bombs, money, and suchlike. Get as much power as they can to get resources and bleed the others while not bleeding too much oneself.
If a journalist's first instinct in recent days hasn't been to dig out a short, potted history of Afghanistan from somewhere on the web – they shouldn't be in the job. They'd do this because they'd know that we all live inside history – history is not 'was', but 'is'. They don't necessarily need to draw any particular conclusion about Afghanistan in the 1970's-80's from such a shallow dive – but you'd expect them to know some of the facts and be able to put them on the table as a challenge to an interviewee. I guess the mistake here is to believe that Jenny-May is employed as a journalist. She's not – this is breakfast tv and it's about having congenial hosts that are liked by a target demographic and deliver eyeballs to advertisers. A decent non-commercial tv channel might help.
So the coup is complete. National is now run by the evangelist right of the party.
From today’s NZH.
”Overall, the select committee reshuffle moves the caucus' liberal MPs to less powerful and less high profile committees.
In the case of Muller, the move is to be expected. Retiring MPs are often shuffled into less high profile roles.
Moving Willis from finance and expenditure is a significant step, given the committee's prominence, influence, and power.
Bishop's relative demotions are to be expected. His previous select committee positions were commensurate with his role as shadow leader of the house.”
The word is Evangelical and they aren't all one thing, just like adherents of the several other faiths and cultures elected to represent NZ in Parliament.
A culture change in National is badly needed — but not the current Trumpish path they seem to be heading down.
John Key seems to be the most recent example of a cult of personality, propped up by a cynical right wing establishment, attempting to appeal to the working class, but in reality doing a lot of underhanded stuff.
National is looking for another Muldoonish strong leader to bully NZ into submission. They are engaging in GOP style obstructionism and Fox news talking points with no basis in reality (aka. lies).
Someone with a media profile and who appears plausible? Mark Richardson would be my guess
Growing up in a suburb of Auckland heavily dominated by state housing, I remember the affection in which he was held by my parents friends and neighbours.
His Superanuation scheme would have been the saviour of NZ if Muldoon had not destroyed it, Local Bodies could borrow from it with very low interest rates.
I remember being proud of our Government and Kirk's stand against nuclear activity in the Pacific. Our lone frigate accompanied by a flotilla of concerned Kiwis.
" Local Bodies could borrow from it with very low interest rates.".
That is one of the main problems with all these schemes. You get a great big pool of money that is supposed to provide for the retirement income of the general populace and the thing that almost always happens is that politicians decide to try to use it to pay for schemes that simply waste the money.
I was never a great fan of Michael Cullen but at least he tried to keep the so-called Cullen Fund away from the reach of short-sighted politicians who saw it simply as a slush fund to pay for their fanciful dreams. Spend it on Public Transport, or cycleways, or anything else that they like the look of rather than on something that will build the value of the fund and actually provide a retirement income for people who are forced to belong to it. After all, those politicians will be long gone when people discover there is really nothing there to pay super people were promised.
The Muldoon scheme, although far too generous and starting at too early an age had a rational basis to it. Make it Universal and pay it out of current taxation. There is no incentive for political zealots to try and plunder the fund because there isn't one.
As most of the money paid to pensioners, is immediately spent back into the local economy, and it is a charge on a share of local resources especially current goods and services, PAYGO makes more sense. Same as it does with ACC.
Muldoon made sense on that one.
The idea that Labours super scheme would still be in existence now, without being plundered and/or privatised by the later Neo-liberals, as they did with almost everything else, is a nice fantasy.
Paying it out of the current taxation was the irrational part of Muldoon's scheme. The country's fertility rate had halved and stabilised. It was obvious that the boomers would be a large demographic bubble. Ignoring that amounted to intergenerational theft.
There are a lot of people who are moderately wealthy. They have enough to live on from other means and super is just extra for overseas holidays and alike.
Your thinking about retirement savings like an individual, you need to think about it like a government if you want to say something about super annuation.
The appropriate income for retirees is not determined by taxation revenue, its more or less what the govt thinks appropriate (as are taxation decisions). There are no hard fiscal constraints on these decisions, just a bunch of opinions on what is fair.
If you want an analogy imagine your household has a chore roster and a bunch of weekly privileges for participants. Last week you recorded 2 chores per member per day (which is like retirement payments, though its for chores) and you cancelled those at week end and handed out rewards (this is taxation). Now in your world you might think if there were more chores to do you would be financially unable to do them (even though your tax rate is 100%). But obviously in reality you can just record more chores next week, your not limited in what gets recorded, or if thats perceived as fair, and so on.
,"The finance industry have been creaming their pants, for a return to the halcyon days, before the tax rebates were removed from superannuation savings. When they got to play with our money for free, and the negative returns and high charges were ignored, because of tax payer subsidies. Egged on by the neo-liberals who prefer the elderly, the unemployed and the sick to starve in the streets, as an incentive to scare working people into accepting starvation wages, while they continue to get 17% increases in wealth, the finance industry is dreaming of getting more of their sticky hands on our wealth, with private super funds. Since the 70's they have been constant in the meme that we cannot afford super. A meme that has been driven entirely by the self interest of those, who are too wealthy to need super and too mean to pay taxes, and a greedy finance industry. Unfortunately, it is true, that if you repeat bullshit often enough, even those who should know better come to believe it. We cannot afford super is code for, "we should leave our elderly to beg on the streets". So that wealthy people can pay less tax and the finance industry can again lose our savings for us".
Surely in your opinion too if you think it needs a wealth tax to make it work. That is not something Muldoon would have considered. Muldoon was reckless, and not just with this.
It was later Governments who replaced taxes on the better off, I paid 63% top rate, with GST on the poor.and there were inheritance and other wealth taxes since removed.
Oh, so you are talking higher paye and inheritance not a comprehensive wealth tax.
There was also free tertiary education and universal student loans and help to buy your first house and lots of other stuff. If all those settings had been left in place we would still have been in the shit once the boomer bulge came through to retirement age. Muldoon ignored this because it would not be his problem. He could have set up a Cullen Fund back then to deal with it, but he didn't.
The requirements to live, for people who can no longer work, do not change whether it is paid for by, "savings" current taxes or Government super funds.
We eieither allocate enough resources for the elderly to live from current production and services, or we leave them to live in poverty.
Private "savings" including Government funds investing in things that don't increase capacity are the most expensive way to provide for super, as there is always extra creamed off by outside interests. From current taxes is the cheapest way.
As is making it universal.
Muldoon was right on this one, even though he was wrong in so many others
If you want to keep it then a good place to start would be to acknowledge that Muldoon was reckless in not taking account of the boomer demographic bulge and that this has made it unfair for younger generations. But just disregarding that does not put you in a strong position.
Muldoon had many failings, but Universal Super wasn't one. It shows that a UBI is a necessary and humane response to the unrestrained capitalism that has ruined the lives of working Kiwis for a generation.
The other issue is whether it's cheaper to go near-universal or regularly audit everyone's income – including "non-wealthy" people who pay a peppercorn rent to live in the mansion of a family trust, etc.
And the repercussions of a system that lets people in need be declined because they didn't keep up with the paperwork.
I saw a smug old coutt on tv the other night 89 years old living the life in the mount, reckoned he didnt need super but took it because it was his right, now hes had 29 years of super so hes only only probably 10 ish years away from getting super for as long as he worked. Given the age was 60 when he would have received it .
Did his work, including what he does in retirement contribute to society?
I know another who retired at 60 with the Muldoon pension. He continued and still does, carry on with his former job, social work and remedial reading for school kids. At 90 he teaches, unpaid, carving and remedial reading at the local school. He would not be able to do this without the pension.
I have know way of knowing that, I know an 86 year old who crowed to me how little tax he had paid in his life, very wealthy man he is , paid alot of interest to banks though, he said.
The Cullen fund is just as much a political football as anything used on local government. Thats why the National government makes a repeated point of not paying in and the Labour a point of paying in.
This comes to a head when its (presumably) eventually drawn down to reduce the budget deficit caused by demographic shifts, at which point we get to see who in govt likes having a pool of money up for investment to back their profitable investors rhetoric.
We should not of course mistake it for savings because (as is more obvious these days) the govt can't really save in the currency it issues, and just gets the RBNZ to issue more spending as needed anyway. Apparently it even likes to keep 'saving' while also having urgent spending needs anyway (like its borrowing to fill up its savings account) demonstrating that the saving aspect of this is just something for the plebs to believe.
Returns on the Cullen fund are much more than the cost of borrowing or printing and have been right through the life of the fund.plus the tax take from the profitable investments are higher than the contributions.
Just what is the marginal cost of printing, btw? Seems to be basically zero since its all electronic these days and if it wasn't then that cost can be printed in (I will claim borrowing is similar enough).
So it turns out that the govt is good at investing profitably given a cost of funds which is up to them. In fact as I highlighted this is just a gimmic to convince the plebs that the govt is a worthy funds manager. Well you appear to be convinced anyway.
Nic just printing money is not the answer to everything.The $30 billion of QE given to our banks recently to keep liquidity in the financial sector worked in that area but has lead to the banks funding only safe investment causing massive inflation in the housing market and massive increases in bank profits.
Thats not how QE works. People who say QE causes house price inflation, and actually understand QE are making a counterfactual of the country running a lockdown with no wage subsidy support. That could easily have caused a recession and associated house price slump, but its obviously not something you do as govt to target house prices. If the govt doesn't do QE (or any of their more unusual self funding options) but still does the wage subsidy, then they would pay more for their deficit (and less to themselves) but house prices would have jumped just the same, with the same people having the same access to wage subsidy and period of incentive to jump into the market. Ultimately the recent buyers decide what level of price rises they will borrow, this is not centrally planned.
It is certain that banks could have done the same lending with or without QE, their lending is basically constrained by the stream of credit worthy customers coming in the door, nothing more.
Having got that out the way, you seem to support the use of QE to stuff funds into the Cullen fund, rather than not using as much of the self funding mechanism. All I'm highlighting is that the self funding mechanism is always there, so any fiscal constraints (or prudent investor policies) you impose on the country are always voluntary and self imposed. Sometimes you may do things voluntarily for the marketing, sometimes this is called virtue signaling.
Nic When you have a recession looming bank deposits dry up bank lending becomes harder to get. Govts buy all the banks bad and poorly performing debt as in a recession businesses stop paying loans and Bill's the banks stop loaning to businesses ,banks struggle to borrow money to lend deposits dry up.so govts print money and lend it to banks , at the moment •25% so the govt profits .In exchange the reserve bank takes over banks under performing loans freeing up the banks to lend to safer clients .The banks during these times are preferring to lend for bricks and mortar than to businesses as business loans are far riskier.
So around the world where QE is being used house prices are inflating because it's easy to get a loan on an asset that is rising and can be repossessed in any mortgagee sale as opposed to a business ,creating house price bubbles around the World.
If govt printed money to fix productivity problems ie housing shortages I would be ok with that but even that needs careful managing as we see in NZ ,we have shortages of construction materials ie timber for construction and Labour for construction so causing inflation .
It's easy to believe that pressing a button and printing billions can solve problems instantly but it rarely does and when it works iit s in times of low inflation and no supply constrictions.
Your model of bank lending is demonstrably wrong. In practice, including in NZ banks don't face a reserve shortage constraint and its part of official policy that they won't. Thats what the OCR is about, as long as a bank is in good standing it can always (if the interbank market doesn't do it cheaper) borrow reserves from the RBNZ (at the OCR) should it need to in order to settle. As long as Paul Volker isn't central bank head then the bank can still pass on the interest rate difference there profitably.
We need another basis for additional bank credit drying up in this case. Of course this is obvious enough, during a recession you look a lot harder at a potential borrowers income and adjust the assessment of likely repayment. It also helps if there is a security attached to the loan, like a house.
This also explains why doing QE in spades has never worked as advertised, e.g the largest monetary policy intervention in history was unable to avoid a recession in the US (and other countries).
Of course NZ didn't escape from conventional policy very far so you should be contrasting QE against NZ recession (due to lack of lockdown fiscal policy intervention to offset domestic saving rate increases) because those are the alternatives the govt considered. In considering NZ I would say it worked so far, and with a bit of luck this lockdown it will keep working (the obvious point being its actually the sufficient fiscal policy working, even if the NZ govt was only willing to do that when self lending via QE).
Indeed yes. Norm was of course strongly opposed to allowing freer access to abortion and to homosexual law reform. If he had lived, and he could have easily still be head of the Parliamentary Labour Party right through to the early 1990's I don't think you would have seen the progress that was achieved after he died.
That would, I suspect, have been more in line with the attitudes of the union-led, traditional, Labour Party than some of the people in leadership roles today.
Unfortunately "Progress" in the 80's also included a fire sale of precious state assets and irresponsible deregulation, leading to the crash of '87 and an extended recession
You're right, mistakes were made. But painful as it was, the transformation of the economy in the 1980's was absolutely necessary. The strength of our economy since, and it's resilience to an array of economic and natural shocks since, is evidence enough.
FFS. Are their really people who still believe that myth.
The ,"reforms" that bought us from level pegging with Oz to 30% behind were a self inflicted disaster!
Some things had to go, such as the ,”social welfare for sheep” though noting that farming subsidies cost almost as much now. And the taxes on nascent industry such as the caravan tax.
You seem to be confused. The reforms of the Labour government in the 1980's transformed the NZ economy from a controlled economy that was close to defaulting on it's overseas obligations to one that has survived multiple economic and natural shocks. Our businesses compete with the very best in the world, and our economic performance has attracted numerous accolades.
Ultimately the decision is the peoples. Since 1984, the only governments elected have maintained the broad thrust of the reforms of the 1980's. The floating exchange rate, lower personal taxes, GST, monetary policy, independence of the RB the list is long and those reforms have served us well.
By the way no party has actually given us a choice in rolling back the Neo-liberal ," unfortunate experiment".
Even when we voted Labour out after only two terms because of our only self inflicted recession, And the destruction, National continued with it.
The only one of the people that did it, who had the guts to admit they were wrong was Bolger.
Never mind the fucking Reserve Bank Act, which punishes those of us who keep the country going with higher interest rates whenever wages and the economy shows signs of getting off the ground.
There are good reasons why voters wouldn’t have a bar of the party of those who carried out the reforms, ACT, until memories have faded of what they did.
Meanwhile we still get unthinking BS that you have just repeated, trying to justify destroying so many lives, by pretending it was "necessary".
On at least one policy, the nats explicitly lied: Lockwood Smith signed a pledge to cancel the nascent student loan scheme when campaigning, then skyrocketed fees and expanded the loan scheme while minister for education. That's the one I remember, there were no doubt other instances where the nats promised one thing and did the opposite. Not, like, weasel words. Explicit lies.
The student loan scheme was not not introduced until 1992. And it was certainly not part of the economic transformation Labour engineered in the 1980's.
As opposition education spokesman in 1990, Smith promised to remove the Labour Government's tertiary tuition fee of $1250, if elected. Once in office, he kept this promise on a technicality: he shifted the burden of charging fees for courses from the government to the institutions, who then had to charge even higher tuition fees due to decreased government funding.
Not so sure about the "technicality" bs, either: his signed pledge never said who charged the fee. His government increased student fees, the liar. I guess that's why there's no footnote for the "technicality" claim.
It's also real stretch to conflate tertiary fees with wider monetary reform when considering voter preference. The economic reforms were introduced at pace almost immediately upon the election of the Lange government in mid 1984. The tertiary sector reforms were not introduced until the late 1980's. The only election the Lange government won on the back of the economic reforms was in 1987, at which both major parties increased their % of the popular vote, Labour by 5%.
quick look at your link: "The standard tertiary fee was created." When? 1989-1990.
That was a major increase in course costs and the threshold for user pays. Who cares if the govt continued to pay some. It should pay all, for a variety of reasons.
It's also real stretch to conflate tertiary fees with wider monetary reform when considering voter preference.
Fair call, that's just the issue that was important to me at the time. Is it the only policy about which they lied (or, to use tory spin, used a "technicality")? Well:
The National Party was performing strongly — its leader, Jim Bolger, spoke repeatedly of "the Decent Society", saying that the reforms were doing significant damage to the social fabric of the country.
"Are you talking about the actual website that was developed in a mixed economy, or the infrastructure and protocols that were developed with US government funding?"
Actually I wasn't specifically thinking about the website, but I'll take that. Here's what happens when roblogic puts a comment up:
1. R types his comment on a device device designed and built by private enterprise.
2. R types his comment in a word processing/capture system designed and built by private enterprise.
3. R sends his message via a connection a medium called the internet, which is a collaborative creation of public and private actors.
4. R's message is transmitted via a communication medium in which the infrastructure and distribution is owned and operated by private enterprise.
5. R's message is displayed on a website that has been built by private enterprise.
Steve Wozniak would not approve of this bullshit. You're conveniently ignoring the essential role of public education, laws that protect intellectual property, the role of publicly funded NASA and CERN in kickstarting Silicon Valley, the assembly at Foxconn in China, supply chains that are dependent on infrastructure and the rule of law, public libraries, state funded electricity and telecoms networks (especially in NZ), public toilets, a public health system (without which I would probably be dead)
What is the use of a bunch of fucken bankers from Wall St or the City of London in any of that? Capitalists are worse than useless, they are a drain on productive society
what rot, on both counts. The internet is built on the back of US govt research, and the WWW was invented by employees at a govt run research consortium. Heck, even today not all companies are necessarily "private enterprise" – Huawei comes to mind.
As for the elections, in 1993 the will of the people was a Labour-alliance govt, and in 1996 the majority of people voted for parties that had promised an end to the National govt. Now we can debate whether Winston or Anderton screwed the deal, but don't go thinking Bolger continuing as PM was the people's decision (on a majority level). It wasn't even the wish of the majority of people who voted NZ1.
Literal tomes have been written about the elections in the 1990s and what polling and electoral returns indicated about what the people wanted vs what they got.
As for singing the praises for the free market, DARPA still created the internet, and CERN still developed HTTP just like 3m wouldn't be making velcro without NASA $$$.
We have enjoyed decades of prosperity as a result of those changes. If things were so bad, the changes would have been reversed. Successive Labour and National governments have kept the basic mechanisms of those changes in place.
"Meanwhile Democratic Socialist/ Actual Socialist, rather than totalitarian countries that say they are socialist, regimes are our most succesful States to date."
And yet you can;t name one. There are actually not many 'Democratic Socialist' states. Venezuela's one. And among that list, I'd hardly describe them as 'our most successful states to date'.
"Have a look at the proportion living in poverty and their GDP"
In 1989, in the death throws of socialism in the USSR, poverty was 20%. In the USA at the same time it was 12%. Socialism destroys everything in it's pathway. Freedoms. Economic prosperity. People.
As deluded as the US republicans. Whose views you are parroting.
Why did I know Venezuala would be mentioned. Neo-liberal apologists need a new script. They always forget to mention their low tax, small state nirvana's Haiti, or Somalia.
If,as one of your fellow parrots accepted, that the degree of socialism in a country is determined by the State share of the economy. Venezuala is less Socialist than the USA, which has a State share over 40%. Of course the problems with Venezuala have nothing to do with any sort of ism. But simply the USA "squeezing their economy until it bleeds". Because the USA cannot afford to have an example on their door step, of a country which puts it's people, not it's billionaires, first.
You still forgot to tell me what the percentage living in poverty in Russia was from 1917 compared to 1960.
You could also look at the USA from the 1950's when they had Socialist policies like the GI bill, the reason behind their explosion of innovation after WW2, and 90% taxes on millionaires, compared with their current decline and steep increase in people living in poverty, since their equivalent of Rogernomics
That seems a hyperbolic judgement, if indeed "In 1989, in the death throws of socialism in the USSR, poverty was 20%." Only the most one-eyed ideologue could equate ‘20% poverty’ to "detroys everything", but maybe I'm misinterpreting your evidence and/or PoV?
Democratic socialism might attempt to if not reverse then at least put the brakes on the unsustainable concentration of (ludicrous levels of) wealth in capitalist 'societies'. Who really believes this concentration of wealth is a net benefit to society?
If one aspires to extreme wealth then go for it – whatever floats your yacht. But it seems so pointless and short-sighted – an own goal.
Why poverty in New Zealand is everyone's concern
Liang describes poverty as a "heritable condition" that perpetuates and amplifies through generations: "It is also not hard to see how individual poverty flows into communities and society, with downstream effects on economics, crime and health, as well as many other systems. Loosen one strand and everything else unravels."
A Kete Half Empty Poverty is your problem, it is everyone's problem, not just those who are in poverty. – Rebecca, a child from Te Puru
It's been great for the vast majority of New Zealanders. Labour pulled us kicking and screaming into the real world. Without them, we would have been buried by the increased globalisation that followed.
in the "real world" people co-operate to build a nation, they don't let pinstriped beancounters destroy the society they built with great cost and effort, and sell it off to corporate vultures
capitalism is an unsustainable model that measures everything in terms of dollars, but places no value on what really matters
the disgrace of Ron Brierley epitomises what those fuckers did to NZ
NZ's economic changes in the 1980's rebalanced the mixed market away from being dominated by state intervention to a greater degree of free market involvement. Capitalism will evolve, but it is firmly entrenched across the world, including in those countries in which command economics had failed. It is sustainable, and it isn't going away.
what planet have you been on? the global economy has been melting down, it was already massively unbalanced by QE and now Covid has been an opportunity for bankers to loot the public purse on an unprecedented scale
To prevent the collapse of the financial system, the FRS is launching a new program of measures worth $4 trillion. As a result, the sum spent on supporting the US economy in 2020 will exceed the scale of Quantitative Easing (QE) in 2008-2014.
"what planet have you been on? the global economy has been melting down, "
No, it really hasn't. Capitalism self corrects. It is an evolving model, and in virtually every country in which it is deployed it is simply one of two components of a mixed market economy.
"Of course, you can basically eliminate the working class from statistics if you take "averages". The top 10% wealthiest socioeconomic strata owns over 50% of the wealth so yes "kiwis are getting wealthier" might be true in a very stupid and selfish way, but all the gains are going to a tiny elite few.
We could have a discussion about inequality, sure. But I was addressing Stuarts specific claims.
Good grief no. I'm not arguing rising inequality is a good thing. I'm simply saying that rising inequality does not mean the majority of people are not better off. Free market policies have been an important contributor to lifting large numbers of people out of poverty around the world. It seems almost churlish to argue against the economic progress NZ has made using similar policies.
Yes even Marx observed the power of the profit motive. But he also recognised that capitalism corrupts democracy and causes widespread suffering & oppression of workers, and financial crashes
BTW the industrial revolutions of China and Russia were state driven and lifted people out of poverty more effectively than strategies based on wage slavery and attacking workers
"But he also recognised that capitalism corrupts democracy and causes widespread suffering & oppression of workers, and financial crashes"
Capitalism co-exists with democracy. Capitalism lifts people out of poverty. It is alternatives, socialism most notably, that enslaves people. It is no coincidence that most obvious socialist economies have been accompanied by totalitarian regimes.
"BTW the industrial revolutions of China and Russia were state driven and lifted people out of poverty more effectively than strategies based on wage slavery and attacking workers"
Russia is proof positive that state commanded economic progress is unsustainable. In both Russia and China, the most progress towards economic freedom and prosperity has come with the adoption of the free market.
Remember to, it was Stalin who drove the industrial revolution in Russia. He also just happened to have killed up to 20 million of his fellow citizens (depending upon which historian you believe).
I wasn't talking about painful political revolutions and bloodshed. But if you want to go down that track, capitalism is responsible for colonisation and mass impoverishment of billions, ongoing slaughters, and the destruction of life itself by insane profit driven policies that rely on destroying rainforests and filling the Earth with oil pollution
It is a cancerous ideology that cannot be sustained.
Socialism is democracy in action, the clue is in the name. Decisions are made for the good of society not only in the interests of a remote aristocracy
"It is a cancerous ideology that cannot be sustained."
So you've been arguing. On a forum invented within a free market economic system.
"Socialism is democracy in action, the clue is in the name. Decisions are made for the good of society not only in the interests of a remote aristocracy"
Tell that to the close to 100m people killed in communist/socialist regimes.
On a forum invented within a free market economic system.
Are you talking about the actual website that was developed in a mixed economy, or the infrastructure and protocols that were developed with US government funding?
A silly comment. By the same token I must assume that capitalists support fascist warmongering and mercantile Empires plundering the wealth of nations and genociding the natives
"A silly comment. By the same token I must assume that capitalists support fascist warmongering and mercantile Empires plundering the wealth of nations and genociding the natives"
You claimed that under socialism "Decisions are made for the good of society…". That's a nonsense claim when you consider the lessons of history. Historians estimate around 100m people lost their lives in those societies.
In most socialist regimes, individual freedoms are ruthlessly repressed. Religious and political liberty is stamped out, in fact socialism destroys the human spirit, and in the end that is at the heart of why it fails.
Meanwhile Democratic Socialist/ Actual Socialist, rather than totalitarian countries that say they are socialist, regimes are our most succesful States to date.
Or they were until so many bought into the "free market", low tax, Globalist religion.
Even the USA exists courtesy of the largest State funded welfare organisation on earth. Their military. Without that State funded transfer of wealth they would collapse. Which is why they need the constant wars with Eastasia and Westasia.
"Srylands statement of course comes from the laffer curve idea.
That expansion of Government provision of services always displaces the private sector.
If that was really the case then you would expect the countries with extremely large State shares in the economy to be the worst off. Which is obviously not the case.
Countries with large State investment in the economy are the most successful. Some States manage with no private sector at all. (Not what I would recommend though).
Every one from Singapore to Norway, Germany and Denmark.
Countries which have high State spending either/or both percentage wise or per capita.
How are your low tax, small Government countries doing? Srylands".
If you insist that The Soviet Union was "Socialist" however. Have a look at the proportion living in poverty and their GDP, compared with the UK in 1917? as against the same comparison in 1960?
Indeed have a look at the rise in proportion living in poverty in NZ, from the time of your great Neo-liberal “Reforms”..
With our wretchedly incompetent treasury wonks that's probably mostly true – one trick ponies on their best days.
Had they a ghost of a clue about how to do their job however, policies would have been very different – and we'd have recorded growth in excess of real estate inflation occasionally.
No-one is lining up to hire NZ's 'economic miracle' workers, in fact they're a global joke.
The fundamental changes to the economy in the 1980's prepared our economy for globalisation and competing with the world. It was a significant driver on our shifting trade reliance on the UK.
No-one is lining up to hire NZ's 'economic miracle' workers, in fact they're a global joke.
You are quite wrong. Our economy is far from perfect, but for a relatively small economy, the management of our economy by successive governments has been recognised internationally.
And yet our supposed miracle workers never achieve growth over 3% (underlying inflation), much less produce the 'rising tide that lifts all boats' which was the excuse for all their cruel and ineffectual policies.
NZ finance ministers are not recruited by the IMF or the World Bank – even with the politics those institutions prefer a plausible veneer of competence – they are lucky if they can get a job at Woolies.
It is fair to describe NZ's reigning economists as conservative, backward, myopic, and regressive – and since you seem to be their fanboi, you suffer by association.
It is one of life’s little ironies that Muldoon has been redeemed, not by his own miserable efforts, but by the inadequacy of his successors.
"NZ finance ministers are not recruited by the IMF or the World Bank"
Hardly a robust way of assessing NZ's economic reforms. But as a certain irony, one of the 'fanboi's' of NZ's economic performance is none other than the IMF's Christine Lagarde, Lagarde was the MD of the IMF, and was the Minister of Finance in France.
She is currently President of the European Central Bank. Since 2011 she has been in the top 10 of the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. In the last couple of years she has been at number 2, second only to Angela Merkel. That is one impressive lady.
Hardly a robust way of assessing NZ's economic reforms
Oh I agree – the increased wealth of median NZers would be the obvious data point, but of course that's seldom reported – being negative.
But this was your shoddy criterion – the views of foreign colleagues:
the management of our economy … has been recognised internationally
The peers of the Chicago Boys in Chile were reasonably satisfied with them – it was the people they robbed and impoverished that were obliged to put them in prison where they and their Rogergnomic colleagues belong.
So that was a transitionary period over two governments in which median wealth did increase.
"…the views of foreign colleagues…"
I never mentioned 'colleagues'. I'm referring to informed international critique. Which includes one of the people who fit YOUR criteria of moving from a FM position to employment with the IMF!
Oh really – "informed international critique is it?"
Let's see some then – and it had better be critical, not yet another empty paen to the fallen gods of mammon.
You are the fellow trying to justify the epic failure which is Rogergnomics – well, as your neoliberal kin put it:
Show us the money!
Most expensive electricity in the world
Fastest growing inequality in the OECD
Most expensive housing relative to income
You and your corrupt economist fellow travellers have a truckload of explaining to do – and frankly, we don't want any more excuses – only the improved outcomes they’ve lied about for getting on for four decades now.
The time for excuses is over – they are only ever a plea in mitigation – they don't exculpate the fraud that was perpetrated on NZ, that you for some reason are exerting yourself to defend.
Of course, you can basically eliminate the working class from statistics if you take "averages". The top 10% wealthiest socioeconomic strata owns over 50% of the wealth so yes "kiwis are getting wealthier" might be true in a very stupid and selfish way, but all the gains are going to a tiny elite few.
You still have fundamentally failed to substantiate your claim, that NZ is better off for the imposition of Rogergnomics.
That massive raft of corruption fundamentally pivoted the NZ civil service away from its core functions, to chase spurious crap.
So there is more expensive electricity somewhere – big whoop – your clowns still massively increased the price for ours, further emiserating our poor oppressed and cheated citizens.
You massively increased inequality – never mind the rest of the world, the lazy unproductive speculator class cleaned up here, massively eroding productivity – and this was the work of supposedly professional economists? For shame!
And your property piece is nonsense – fudged by the insertion of a square meterage factor that is neither here nor there. The crucial feature of housing is not its meterage, but that owner occupiers are able to escape rental costs which a landlord class inflate pretty much as and when they chose.
Home ownership is lousy in NZ now – you have taken us back to 1951 levels.
I guess it's a hard thing for corrupt public servants to understand, but a fundamental baseline is that you are supposed to leave the country better than you found it.
"So there is more expensive electricity somewhere – big whoop – "
The point is you have made a number of claims in this exchange that are simply false. That's either sloppy of dishonest, and pretty much discredits anything else you say.
Nothing. Every one of the things you cite were built as part of the governments investment in a mixed market economy. And paid for out of taxes generated by the private sector.
Yes we don't really have Democracy. Which is a shame.
If we did, the “Unfortunate experiment” which you are spruiking for, would have been nipped in the bud in 1993 if not 1987, when the foolishness of it was apparent..
Tricledrown, if you are reading this, here's how to get your commenting privileges back:
reply to this comment.
next time you open a TS page, look at the Replies tab in the right hand side (on a computer), and you will see a reply from me.
reply to my comment.
Do this each time you come to TS.
If you can do this, I will then talk you how to get your commenting privileges back.
Mods have spent a lot of time this year trying to get you to respond to moderation comments. The reason you can't comment at the moment is because you failed to respond in June and I got sick of chasing it up.
Hi Td. There's a long history of problems with your commenting. There are two to look at right now.
you don't use the Reply list, so when we moderate you are missing our messages. The first thing I need to know is if you understand how to use it. Please reply to this comment and let me know. If you don't know how to use it, that's ok, I can tell you, but I need to know if you do or don't.
please look at this comment https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-31-08-2021/#comment-1812844 and see how there is a typo in the user name. This means the system treats you as a new user and holds back your comment for approval by a mod. This creates work for the mods. It has been explained to you many times. Please reply to this comment tell me what device you are using. I will try and help you figure out what is going wrong.
I f 'd up again I have serious disabilities with impaired eyesight and have only barely one finger on my typing hand 1 finger on the other so it's very hard to get things right all the time.
Starting to look like Trudeau miscalculated calling a snap election. Not that suprising really I'm sure voters aren't that impressed given they're in the midst of their 4th wave and it looks very much like it was called because polls had his party thinking they would get a majority.
thanks everyone. Next test: write a comment, post it, then edit it and send it to Trash (delete it). Post a second comment telling me you've done that. Cheers.
ok, so you know how to swap between the two. Desktop give the Reply tab, Mobile allows commenting. This has been a problem for a while, I'll bring it up with lprent again.
This covid lockup has had to be the most tedious yet, longer mentally than any of the others to date. The 'novel' corona virus is proving anything but, 'tedious and tiresome' corona virus I am finding. I wondered about how we might shape the present and future covid responses. Auckland has carried much of the burden on lock downs, far more than any other region. They have the majority of MIQ facilities and have been hardest hit in the 3 lockdowns post the big one last year.
For that matter I wondered when Auckland is under level 4 or 3, and a level higher than other provinces, whether it's fair to add an extra 1% gst to transactions in other provinces that could be funneled to Auckland businesses to help pay rents and wages until such time they dropped to level 2. So when there are unequal level 4 and 3 lockdowns imposed regionally, the regions at a higher alert level receive some form of relief payments. Funded by a 1% in GST in regions at a lower alert level, eg level 2. The regions that can return to some semblance of normality provide economic relief for the hardest hit areas.
In terms of any purpose built or purpose adapted future MIQ facilities. Seems to me time some other provinces did some of that heavy lifting. Maybe time to locate dedicated facilities in Dunedin or Christchurch or Palmerston North. The Central and Southern regions can have a turn doing the work. Palmy seems a reasonable option. A military airport that can take large jets and a reasonably sized city with health facilities.
I am more miserable than I have been in years. Solitary confinement & isolation are psychological torture. L4 is some OTT bullshit. I feel for those who are dying alone because of these inhumane conditions
Stay in there, Roblogic. Thanks for your kind words the other day. Poetry and music, playing the blues, help when the black dog starts barking. Just been reading some of my verse, written when going through treatment for cancer.
One sonnet, written as I travelled to Picton on my way to resume radiation therapy for prostate cancer ends.
"Sorrow is for the present, /waiting to proceed from known past/ to a future not yet seen or sensed.
Present sorrow, prescient pain, / Fear is human of unknown gain.
Definitely agree about spreading things out – especially away from urban concentrations.
Find a nice picturesque area, and build a 500+ room facility with decent airflow control and the ability to separate cohorts. Do spa areas, tennis courts, gyms, all that shit. Have it store medical supplies like PPE. Run it as a hotel with close access to skifields etc, and use it as a quarantine or evacuation facility if we need one. Heck, it might even make money as a hotel.
Most people living near a big city travel in and bounce back on the same trajectory.
Travelling through Auckland is a small percentage. Met people at Akld hospital that travelled from Whangarei for treatment. Auckland serves Northland in many ways still.
"Can you demonstrate another nation with a median house price to median income ratio in excess of 20?"
That measure is valid, but it does have the problem of not including changes in interest rates. I have looked and can't find any long term comparisons based on median measure, which is surprising considering I would have thought it was a meaningful measure.
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Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
In 1995, Sally Clark went out on her own in a bold and unorthodox attempt to join an illustrious group of equestrian riders conquering the world. In the days of glovebox road maps, brick cell phones, and the hit song How Bizarre, Clark refused to follow Sir Mark Todd, Blyth ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Beaglehole, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago niphon/Getty Images The number of people accessing medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Aotearoa New Zealand increased significantly between 2006 and 2022. But the disorder is still under-diagnosed and ...
To celebrate the start of New Zealand music month, we look back at the best local tuneage that managed to weasel its way into Hollywood productions. There’s nothing quite like the thrilling zap of recognition when New Zealand weasels its way into a glamorous Hollywood production. Crack open a Tui ...
People trust other people more than institutions. So how can the media gain that trust through journalists without losing what’s important about the institution? Anna Rawhiti-Connell reflects on two years of curating the news for The Bulletin.Amonth ago, armed cops descended on my neighbourhood as calls to “lock your ...
Opinion: PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are a class of thousands of man-made chemicals used widely in everyday consumer items such as textiles, packaging, and cookware, popular for their water, grease and stain-repellent properties. However, the very properties that make PFAS so attractive to manufacturers are also what ...
NONFICTION 1 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)’ This is the hottest book in New Zealand, number one with a bullet in its first week, selling more than any overseas title, and demand is so huge that it’s already been reprinted. A ...
The anxiety levels in west Auckland from simultaneous level 4 lockdown and a flood require free distribution of 6 deep chocolate marijuana cookies to everyone.
The chocolate is fine, but the weed is illegal no matter the need.
But this is my old neighborhood, and waking up the news today was hard and sad.
Difficult interview for Grant Robertson on One ZB. Poor bloke is spinning like a top. Why didn't Hipkins front for this?
Grant Robertson denies that the Government delayed vaccine shipment (newstalkzb.co.nz)
Encouraging news in the midst of considerable catastropfizing over vaccine supplies:
And here’s an interesting ‘conversation’:
WA premier climbed into that stupid comment from popup Scotty.
WA's aren't living in caves and have a mining economy keeping Oz going thanks to effective border controls.
Lets all play covid weakest link with the country appears the scomo play backed by wuperts media.
"That seems a hyperbolic judgement, "
Mildly..
The fundamental problem with socialism is that it contradicts the most basic human instincts. Ultimately the self contradictions contained within it's ideology begin to eat away from within, and the state is then forced to introduce draconian measures to ensure it's ongoing survival. The evidence is the array of socialist states that have broken down under the weight of failing economies and brutal authoritarianism.
Socialism failed in the 20th century, and it is failing in the 21st century. At best it is an illustration of why we should never give the state any more power than is necessary to ensure the worst excesses of the free market are curtailed.
As to inequality – there was (and remains) substantial inequality in socialist countries. Much of this was hidden by poor record keeping, and took many forms.
There are nine democratic socialist countries currently. (Although some of those would be disputed – many have some form of private ownership and investment). When compared to the number of countries that have market economies as their political preference, perhaps that tells a story in itself. But those DS countries have far from eliminated inequality. Venezuela has substantial inequality. Ecuador rejected socialist policies in favour of the free market, affirmed again earlier this year. And so it goes on.
Ultimately it is mixed market economies that have been the most successful, with the democratic process determining the precise mix of state and private engagement.
Australian commentator claims that military occupation brought women's rights to Afghanistan; Jenny-May Coffin fails to challenge a single thing she utters.
Breakfast, TVNZ1, Tuesday 31 August 2021, 8:20 a.m.
Jenny-May Coffin assumed her most concerned face this morning and interviewed, via Skype, one Jane Caro, billed as a "social analyst" from the Hunter Valley, NSW. Jane Caro averred that women in Afghanistan had only had the chance to dress freely and live a full life in the last twenty years, thanks to the country "being occupied by the United States, and its allies like Australia." [1]
That is untrue. The secular Daoud government, which came to power in Kabul in 1978, instituted sweeping reforms, including especially equal rights for women and universal education. [2] The United States and Great Britain, instead of praising and supporting this, worked assiduously with extremist Muslim groups to embark on a campaign of terror and sabotage against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, for no other reason than that the Daoud government was endorsed by the Soviet Union. This U.S.-sponsored terror and sabotage started six months before the Soviets sent military aid to the beleaguered government.
Jane Caro either knew this, and was simply lying with her claim that women's rights only arrived with the U.S. military invasion, or she was ignorant of the very fact of the Daoud government, in which case she should not have been commenting on anything to do with Afghanistan. Instead of challenging Caro's nonsense, Jenny-May Coffin merely nodded gravely and tried to look concerned.
[1] https://www.theage.com.au/national/get-rid-of-the-prisoners-by-shooting-them-australian-commandos-tell-of-war-crimes-20190910-p52prl.html
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/05/asia/gallery/afghan-women-past-present/index.html
Check out all those women and children flying back into Kabul at the moment. Not.
And those mighty drivers of female liberation: the mighty Communist coup in 1978. Then the late 1979 Soviet invasion. Female liberation!
History of women's rights in Afghanistan:
https://origins.osu.edu/print/67
So you think that the U.S. decision in 1978 to organize and arm the extremist Muslim opponents of women's rights was the right one?
By the way, Scott Levi is almost as dodgy a source as poor old Jane Caro. This sentence from his potted history is a model of mendaciousness: “In the mid-1980s, the United States (and others) began to supply the Mujahidin with financial support and military equipment.”
In fact, as Scott Levi—but maybe not Jane Caro or Jenny-May Coffin—knows perfectly well, the United States was arming and supporting the Mujahidin long before the mid-1980s.
I tell you what, I'll do a post on the top 20 biggest US boots on the ground interventions and you can armchair your chinwags until the cows come home.
Well that post would read like horror story of fascist proportions, the only good place for American boots on the ground, would be in the ground buried deep deep down.
Yes, if the US military gave a shit about women and girls, it would have marched into the White House and arrested Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Also would have lined outside every abortion clinic in the USA and used lethal force on any Bible bashing bigot that even looked like they were going to harrass staff and patients.
Capitalism believes in equal rights for all people groups to be ground into the dust
Do you think the US can work with the Taliban when it comes to diplomacy?
A line has been drawn militarily between the US and the Taliban after 20 years.
What position do you think ISIS-K will have in Afganistan?
If I understand the politics of Afghanistan correctly (doubtful) and to sufficient granularity (also doubtful), ISIS-K are to the Taliban what the Taliban were to the rest of the Afghan Mujahiddeen.
I meant to say ISIL-K. This group came from Syria and Iraq and Pakistan kicked them out.
I think Pakistan is the country which will have influence in Afganistan.
Really depends on the region within the "country". A lot of the problem is based on fixing "borders" that overlap multiple cultures and ethnic groups (for a given value of demographic granularity), and then expecting centralised policy and control.
Wait until we read about the US giving intel to the Taleban to target ISIL-K because that would hurt [insert country here's] influence in the region. Unthinkable now, but complex situations make strange bedfellows.
Today is September the 1st. It will be interesting to see if peace will prevail. Hopefully lessons from 1 September 1939 will be learnt. Interesting that America did not enter World War 2 until the bombing of Pearl Harbour 7 December 1941. America did support their allies with war supplies prior to Pearl Harbour.
WW2 isn't the model.
"The Great Game" is. SSDCentury.
US, Russia, China, India (to screw with the Pakistanis), Pakistan, Iran, and a couple of others all playing silly buggers with guns, bombs, money, and suchlike. Get as much power as they can to get resources and bleed the others while not bleeding too much oneself.
If a journalist's first instinct in recent days hasn't been to dig out a short, potted history of Afghanistan from somewhere on the web – they shouldn't be in the job. They'd do this because they'd know that we all live inside history – history is not 'was', but 'is'. They don't necessarily need to draw any particular conclusion about Afghanistan in the 1970's-80's from such a shallow dive – but you'd expect them to know some of the facts and be able to put them on the table as a challenge to an interviewee. I guess the mistake here is to believe that Jenny-May is employed as a journalist. She's not – this is breakfast tv and it's about having congenial hosts that are liked by a target demographic and deliver eyeballs to advertisers. A decent non-commercial tv channel might help.
They will be to busy planing which country next to invade
So the coup is complete. National is now run by the evangelist right of the party.
From today’s NZH.
”Overall, the select committee reshuffle moves the caucus' liberal MPs to less powerful and less high profile committees.
In the case of Muller, the move is to be expected. Retiring MPs are often shuffled into less high profile roles.
Moving Willis from finance and expenditure is a significant step, given the committee's prominence, influence, and power.
Bishop's relative demotions are to be expected. His previous select committee positions were commensurate with his role as shadow leader of the house.”
The word is Evangelical and they aren't all one thing, just like adherents of the several other faiths and cultures elected to represent NZ in Parliament.
A culture change in National is badly needed — but not the current Trumpish path they seem to be heading down.
The National Party is what the GOP was to Trump?
Here’s a little quiz question for you all: who is the NZ Trump?
John Key seems to be the most recent example of a cult of personality, propped up by a cynical right wing establishment, attempting to appeal to the working class, but in reality doing a lot of underhanded stuff.
National is looking for another Muldoonish strong leader to bully NZ into submission. They are engaging in GOP style obstructionism and Fox news talking points with no basis in reality (aka. lies).
Someone with a media profile and who appears plausible? Mark Richardson would be my guess
Yes, he ticked a few of the boxes, but he’s gone, isn’t he? Please tell me that John has left the building.
Edit: Mark Richardson is just a boy, politically speaking.
Nicky Hager is pretty sure it's not JuCo, so that's a positive
Nicky Hager: Five reasons why Judith Collins won’t be prime minister | The Spinoff
Today is 47 years since the death of Norman Kirk.
Growing up in a suburb of Auckland heavily dominated by state housing, I remember the affection in which he was held by my parents friends and neighbours.
Yes. One of our greatest Leaders.
His Superanuation scheme would have been the saviour of NZ if Muldoon had not destroyed it, Local Bodies could borrow from it with very low interest rates.
Good on you for reminding us of Big Norm.
I remember being proud of our Government and Kirk's stand against nuclear activity in the Pacific. Our lone frigate accompanied by a flotilla of concerned Kiwis.
" Local Bodies could borrow from it with very low interest rates.".
That is one of the main problems with all these schemes. You get a great big pool of money that is supposed to provide for the retirement income of the general populace and the thing that almost always happens is that politicians decide to try to use it to pay for schemes that simply waste the money.
I was never a great fan of Michael Cullen but at least he tried to keep the so-called Cullen Fund away from the reach of short-sighted politicians who saw it simply as a slush fund to pay for their fanciful dreams. Spend it on Public Transport, or cycleways, or anything else that they like the look of rather than on something that will build the value of the fund and actually provide a retirement income for people who are forced to belong to it. After all, those politicians will be long gone when people discover there is really nothing there to pay super people were promised.
The Muldoon scheme, although far too generous and starting at too early an age had a rational basis to it. Make it Universal and pay it out of current taxation. There is no incentive for political zealots to try and plunder the fund because there isn't one.
Saving for super has always been an oxymoron.
As most of the money paid to pensioners, is immediately spent back into the local economy, and it is a charge on a share of local resources especially current goods and services, PAYGO makes more sense. Same as it does with ACC.
Muldoon made sense on that one.
The idea that Labours super scheme would still be in existence now, without being plundered and/or privatised by the later Neo-liberals, as they did with almost everything else, is a nice fantasy.
Paying it out of the current taxation was the irrational part of Muldoon's scheme. The country's fertility rate had halved and stabilised. It was obvious that the boomers would be a large demographic bubble. Ignoring that amounted to intergenerational theft.
The "intergenerational theft," meme started by those who want to privatise super, is self serving bollocks.
Where do you think pensioners spend the money they get. And who benefits from the resulting employment and economic activity?
https://thestandard.org.nz/the-myth-of-retirement-savings/
Wealthy people receive super too.
They do.
Which is why we still have it.
Though, in a just world they would be paying much more in tax than they receive in super.
There are a lot of people who are moderately wealthy. They have enough to live on from other means and super is just extra for overseas holidays and alike.
Which is an argument for wealth taxes, not for removing or cutting universal state super.
We were discussing whether Muldoon's scheme was rational, it wasn't.
Your thinking about retirement savings like an individual, you need to think about it like a government if you want to say something about super annuation.
The appropriate income for retirees is not determined by taxation revenue, its more or less what the govt thinks appropriate (as are taxation decisions). There are no hard fiscal constraints on these decisions, just a bunch of opinions on what is fair.
If you want an analogy imagine your household has a chore roster and a bunch of weekly privileges for participants. Last week you recorded 2 chores per member per day (which is like retirement payments, though its for chores) and you cancelled those at week end and handed out rewards (this is taxation). Now in your world you might think if there were more chores to do you would be financially unable to do them (even though your tax rate is 100%). But obviously in reality you can just record more chores next week, your not limited in what gets recorded, or if thats perceived as fair, and so on.
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.com/2012/06/on-new-zealands-retirement-income.html?m=1
,"The finance industry have been creaming their pants, for a return to the halcyon days, before the tax rebates were removed from superannuation savings. When they got to play with our money for free, and the negative returns and high charges were ignored, because of tax payer subsidies. Egged on by the neo-liberals who prefer the elderly, the unemployed and the sick to starve in the streets, as an incentive to scare working people into accepting starvation wages, while they continue to get 17% increases in wealth, the finance industry is dreaming of getting more of their sticky hands on our wealth, with private super funds. Since the 70's they have been constant in the meme that we cannot afford super. A meme that has been driven entirely by the self interest of those, who are too wealthy to need super and too mean to pay taxes, and a greedy finance industry. Unfortunately, it is true, that if you repeat bullshit often enough, even those who should know better come to believe it. We cannot afford super is code for, "we should leave our elderly to beg on the streets". So that wealthy people can pay less tax and the finance industry can again lose our savings for us".
In your opinion.
Surely in your opinion too if you think it needs a wealth tax to make it work. That is not something Muldoon would have considered. Muldoon was reckless, and not just with this.
In Muldoons time there were wealth taxes.
It was later Governments who replaced taxes on the better off, I paid 63% top rate, with GST on the poor.and there were inheritance and other wealth taxes since removed.
Oh, so you are talking higher paye and inheritance not a comprehensive wealth tax.
There was also free tertiary education and universal student loans and help to buy your first house and lots of other stuff. If all those settings had been left in place we would still have been in the shit once the boomer bulge came through to retirement age. Muldoon ignored this because it would not be his problem. He could have set up a Cullen Fund back then to deal with it, but he didn't.
You are not understanding the point.
The requirements to live, for people who can no longer work, do not change whether it is paid for by, "savings" current taxes or Government super funds.
We eieither allocate enough resources for the elderly to live from current production and services, or we leave them to live in poverty.
Private "savings" including Government funds investing in things that don't increase capacity are the most expensive way to provide for super, as there is always extra creamed off by outside interests. From current taxes is the cheapest way.
As is making it universal.
Muldoon was right on this one, even though he was wrong in so many others
From my perspective you don't get the point. You just sound like another entitled boomer to me.
Thanks for the unthinking meme.
It has fuckall to do with generations. And everything to do with the wealthy screwing people in all generations.
Memes like that are just playing into their hands.
I will get super anyway. Provided my health after decades of shift and manual work lets me last that long.
I want it to be there for future generations.
I know if we give it up now, they will never get it back.
Which is why I fucking well fight for it. Along with decent wages and working conditions for those coming after me.
If you want to keep it then a good place to start would be to acknowledge that Muldoon was reckless in not taking account of the boomer demographic bulge and that this has made it unfair for younger generations. But just disregarding that does not put you in a strong position.
Muldoon had many failings, but Universal Super wasn't one. It shows that a UBI is a necessary and humane response to the unrestrained capitalism that has ruined the lives of working Kiwis for a generation.
Yes we can afford it, and morally we must do it.
https://thestandard.org.nz/support-for-raising-retirement-age/#comment-335490
The other issue is whether it's cheaper to go near-universal or regularly audit everyone's income – including "non-wealthy" people who pay a peppercorn rent to live in the mansion of a family trust, etc.
And the repercussions of a system that lets people in need be declined because they didn't keep up with the paperwork.
I saw a smug old coutt on tv the other night 89 years old living the life in the mount, reckoned he didnt need super but took it because it was his right, now hes had 29 years of super so hes only only probably 10 ish years away from getting super for as long as he worked. Given the age was 60 when he would have received it .
How much tax is he paid and is paying?
Did his work, including what he does in retirement contribute to society?
I know another who retired at 60 with the Muldoon pension. He continued and still does, carry on with his former job, social work and remedial reading for school kids. At 90 he teaches, unpaid, carving and remedial reading at the local school. He would not be able to do this without the pension.
I have know way of knowing that, I know an 86 year old who crowed to me how little tax he had paid in his life, very wealthy man he is , paid alot of interest to banks though, he said.
Winston Peters took the pension didn't he?
A most interesting post.
The Cullen fund is just as much a political football as anything used on local government. Thats why the National government makes a repeated point of not paying in and the Labour a point of paying in.
This comes to a head when its (presumably) eventually drawn down to reduce the budget deficit caused by demographic shifts, at which point we get to see who in govt likes having a pool of money up for investment to back their profitable investors rhetoric.
We should not of course mistake it for savings because (as is more obvious these days) the govt can't really save in the currency it issues, and just gets the RBNZ to issue more spending as needed anyway. Apparently it even likes to keep 'saving' while also having urgent spending needs anyway (like its borrowing to fill up its savings account) demonstrating that the saving aspect of this is just something for the plebs to believe.
Returns on the Cullen fund are much more than the cost of borrowing or printing and have been right through the life of the fund.plus the tax take from the profitable investments are higher than the contributions.
Just what is the marginal cost of printing, btw? Seems to be basically zero since its all electronic these days and if it wasn't then that cost can be printed in (I will claim borrowing is similar enough).
So it turns out that the govt is good at investing profitably given a cost of funds which is up to them. In fact as I highlighted this is just a gimmic to convince the plebs that the govt is a worthy funds manager. Well you appear to be convinced anyway.
Nic just printing money is not the answer to everything.The $30 billion of QE given to our banks recently to keep liquidity in the financial sector worked in that area but has lead to the banks funding only safe investment causing massive inflation in the housing market and massive increases in bank profits.
Thats not how QE works. People who say QE causes house price inflation, and actually understand QE are making a counterfactual of the country running a lockdown with no wage subsidy support. That could easily have caused a recession and associated house price slump, but its obviously not something you do as govt to target house prices. If the govt doesn't do QE (or any of their more unusual self funding options) but still does the wage subsidy, then they would pay more for their deficit (and less to themselves) but house prices would have jumped just the same, with the same people having the same access to wage subsidy and period of incentive to jump into the market. Ultimately the recent buyers decide what level of price rises they will borrow, this is not centrally planned.
It is certain that banks could have done the same lending with or without QE, their lending is basically constrained by the stream of credit worthy customers coming in the door, nothing more.
Having got that out the way, you seem to support the use of QE to stuff funds into the Cullen fund, rather than not using as much of the self funding mechanism. All I'm highlighting is that the self funding mechanism is always there, so any fiscal constraints (or prudent investor policies) you impose on the country are always voluntary and self imposed. Sometimes you may do things voluntarily for the marketing, sometimes this is called virtue signaling.
Nic When you have a recession looming bank deposits dry up bank lending becomes harder to get. Govts buy all the banks bad and poorly performing debt as in a recession businesses stop paying loans and Bill's the banks stop loaning to businesses ,banks struggle to borrow money to lend deposits dry up.so govts print money and lend it to banks , at the moment •25% so the govt profits .In exchange the reserve bank takes over banks under performing loans freeing up the banks to lend to safer clients .The banks during these times are preferring to lend for bricks and mortar than to businesses as business loans are far riskier.
So around the world where QE is being used house prices are inflating because it's easy to get a loan on an asset that is rising and can be repossessed in any mortgagee sale as opposed to a business ,creating house price bubbles around the World.
If govt printed money to fix productivity problems ie housing shortages I would be ok with that but even that needs careful managing as we see in NZ ,we have shortages of construction materials ie timber for construction and Labour for construction so causing inflation .
It's easy to believe that pressing a button and printing billions can solve problems instantly but it rarely does and when it works iit s in times of low inflation and no supply constrictions.
Your model of bank lending is demonstrably wrong. In practice, including in NZ banks don't face a reserve shortage constraint and its part of official policy that they won't. Thats what the OCR is about, as long as a bank is in good standing it can always (if the interbank market doesn't do it cheaper) borrow reserves from the RBNZ (at the OCR) should it need to in order to settle. As long as Paul Volker isn't central bank head then the bank can still pass on the interest rate difference there profitably.
We need another basis for additional bank credit drying up in this case. Of course this is obvious enough, during a recession you look a lot harder at a potential borrowers income and adjust the assessment of likely repayment. It also helps if there is a security attached to the loan, like a house.
This also explains why doing QE in spades has never worked as advertised, e.g the largest monetary policy intervention in history was unable to avoid a recession in the US (and other countries).
Of course NZ didn't escape from conventional policy very far so you should be contrasting QE against NZ recession (due to lack of lockdown fiscal policy intervention to offset domestic saving rate increases) because those are the alternatives the govt considered. In considering NZ I would say it worked so far, and with a bit of luck this lockdown it will keep working (the obvious point being its actually the sufficient fiscal policy working, even if the NZ govt was only willing to do that when self lending via QE).
+1. When Labour lived up to its name.
https://youtu.be/kvIqHFBofx8
a song to remember being on topic from ebony
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DJv_DfMZ7jU
please fix your email address typo on next comment.
And the last of the real Labour party.
Indeed yes. Norm was of course strongly opposed to allowing freer access to abortion and to homosexual law reform. If he had lived, and he could have easily still be head of the Parliamentary Labour Party right through to the early 1990's I don't think you would have seen the progress that was achieved after he died.
That would, I suspect, have been more in line with the attitudes of the union-led, traditional, Labour Party than some of the people in leadership roles today.
Unfortunately "Progress" in the 80's also included a fire sale of precious state assets and irresponsible deregulation, leading to the crash of '87 and an extended recession
You're right, mistakes were made. But painful as it was, the transformation of the economy in the 1980's was absolutely necessary. The strength of our economy since, and it's resilience to an array of economic and natural shocks since, is evidence enough.
FFS. Are their really people who still believe that myth.
The ,"reforms" that bought us from level pegging with Oz to 30% behind were a self inflicted disaster!
Some things had to go, such as the ,”social welfare for sheep” though noting that farming subsidies cost almost as much now. And the taxes on nascent industry such as the caravan tax.
You seem to be confused. The reforms of the Labour government in the 1980's transformed the NZ economy from a controlled economy that was close to defaulting on it's overseas obligations to one that has survived multiple economic and natural shocks. Our businesses compete with the very best in the world, and our economic performance has attracted numerous accolades.
Ultimately the decision is the peoples. Since 1984, the only governments elected have maintained the broad thrust of the reforms of the 1980's. The floating exchange rate, lower personal taxes, GST, monetary policy, independence of the RB the list is long and those reforms have served us well.
Bollocks.
By the way no party has actually given us a choice in rolling back the Neo-liberal ," unfortunate experiment".
Even when we voted Labour out after only two terms because of our only self inflicted recession, And the destruction, National continued with it.
The only one of the people that did it, who had the guts to admit they were wrong was Bolger.
Never mind the fucking Reserve Bank Act, which punishes those of us who keep the country going with higher interest rates whenever wages and the economy shows signs of getting off the ground.
There are good reasons why voters wouldn’t have a bar of the party of those who carried out the reforms, ACT, until memories have faded of what they did.
Meanwhile we still get unthinking BS that you have just repeated, trying to justify destroying so many lives, by pretending it was "necessary".
On at least one policy, the nats explicitly lied: Lockwood Smith signed a pledge to cancel the nascent student loan scheme when campaigning, then skyrocketed fees and expanded the loan scheme while minister for education. That's the one I remember, there were no doubt other instances where the nats promised one thing and did the opposite. Not, like, weasel words. Explicit lies.
Decision of the people, my arse.
The student loan scheme was not not introduced until 1992. And it was certainly not part of the economic transformation Labour engineered in the 1980's.
Maybe it was fucking fees then.
yup:
Not so sure about the "technicality" bs, either: his signed pledge never said who charged the fee. His government increased student fees, the liar. I guess that's why there's no footnote for the "technicality" claim.
Fees for tertiary education did not begin with the 1980's reforms. And after the reforms, the government continued to fund a large slice of the cost. So you might get third time lucky?
It's also real stretch to conflate tertiary fees with wider monetary reform when considering voter preference. The economic reforms were introduced at pace almost immediately upon the election of the Lange government in mid 1984. The tertiary sector reforms were not introduced until the late 1980's. The only election the Lange government won on the back of the economic reforms was in 1987, at which both major parties increased their % of the popular vote, Labour by 5%.
quick look at your link: "The standard tertiary fee was created." When? 1989-1990.
That was a major increase in course costs and the threshold for user pays. Who cares if the govt continued to pay some. It should pay all, for a variety of reasons.
Fair call, that's just the issue that was important to me at the time. Is it the only policy about which they lied (or, to use tory spin, used a "technicality")? Well:
Did fuckall about that, didn't they.
"Did fuckall about that, didn't they."
And yet they were re-elected in 1993 and 1996.
Well, the first was under FPP, so they got an outright majority of seats with 1/3 of the vote (52% voted for Labour or the Alliance), and the second relied on them going into coalition with a party that only 15% of whose voters wanted them to keep national in power.
Again, decision of the people? Bullshit.
"Are you talking about the actual website that was developed in a mixed economy, or the infrastructure and protocols that were developed with US government funding?"
Actually I wasn't specifically thinking about the website, but I'll take that. Here's what happens when roblogic puts a comment up:
1. R types his comment on a device device designed and built by private enterprise.
2. R types his comment in a word processing/capture system designed and built by private enterprise.
3. R sends his message via a connection a medium called the internet, which is a collaborative creation of public and private actors.
4. R's message is transmitted via a communication medium in which the infrastructure and distribution is owned and operated by private enterprise.
5. R's message is displayed on a website that has been built by private enterprise.
…etc.
"Well, the first was under FPP, so they got an outright majority of seats with 1/3 of the vote…"
Which was still more than any other party got.
".and the second relied on them going into coalition with a party that only 15% of whose voters wanted them to keep national in power."
Which they could do because they won 34% of the party vote compared with the next party who only won 28%.
Steve Wozniak would not approve of this bullshit. You're conveniently ignoring the essential role of public education, laws that protect intellectual property, the role of publicly funded NASA and CERN in kickstarting Silicon Valley, the assembly at Foxconn in China, supply chains that are dependent on infrastructure and the rule of law, public libraries, state funded electricity and telecoms networks (especially in NZ), public toilets, a public health system (without which I would probably be dead)
What is the use of a bunch of fucken bankers from Wall St or the City of London in any of that? Capitalists are worse than useless, they are a drain on productive society
what rot, on both counts. The internet is built on the back of US govt research, and the WWW was invented by employees at a govt run research consortium. Heck, even today not all companies are necessarily "private enterprise" – Huawei comes to mind.
As for the elections, in 1993 the will of the people was a Labour-alliance govt, and in 1996 the majority of people voted for parties that had promised an end to the National govt. Now we can debate whether Winston or Anderton screwed the deal, but don't go thinking Bolger continuing as PM was the people's decision (on a majority level). It wasn't even the wish of the majority of people who voted NZ1.
"The internet is built on the back of US govt research, and the WWW was invented by employees at a govt run research consortium."
That may have been it's origins, but then:
As the network grew, the Department of Defense began to find it difficult to know who even was using the network; this gave rise to serious concerns over security. Therefore, in the early 1980s, researchers and the private sector took over much of the development and expansion of the Arpanet, which then became the internet. During this period of innovation, developers and inventors typically turned over their technology to the public domain.
"As for the elections, in 1993 the will of the people was a Labour-alliance govt"
You don't know that, simply because that was never explicitly on the ballot.
"…and in 1996 the majority of people voted for parties that had promised an end to the National govt."
More people voted for National than any other party. More people supported that party's policies than any other party.
Literal tomes have been written about the elections in the 1990s and what polling and electoral returns indicated about what the people wanted vs what they got.
As for singing the praises for the free market, DARPA still created the internet, and CERN still developed HTTP just like 3m wouldn't be making velcro without NASA $$$.
Bored now, others can play with this tool.
The Greens have offered an alternative economic policy for several elections. What’s the highest vote % they have obtained?
What's the % of people who voted for successive governments to flog off State assets?
Bugger all.
And yet your rogernome mates sold everything, including Grandma and the kitchen sink.
But hey, at least John Key made us chuckle
It has taken us decades to struggle out if the damage caused in the 80's and 90's.
Unfortunately so much of it is irreversable, or like the privatisations and power "reforms" to expensive to reverse.
We have enjoyed decades of prosperity as a result of those changes. If things were so bad, the changes would have been reversed. Successive Labour and National governments have kept the basic mechanisms of those changes in place.
Tell that to the Māori kids in Moerewa.
Idiot!
"Meanwhile Democratic Socialist/ Actual Socialist, rather than totalitarian countries that say they are socialist, regimes are our most succesful States to date."
And yet you can;t name one. There are actually not many 'Democratic Socialist' states. Venezuela's one. And among that list, I'd hardly describe them as 'our most successful states to date'.
"Countries with large State investment in the economy are the most successful."
You're confused. If they have high state investment, then they have an element of private sector investment. That's not socialism.
"Have a look at the proportion living in poverty and their GDP"
In 1989, in the death throws of socialism in the USSR, poverty was 20%. In the USA at the same time it was 12%. Socialism destroys everything in it's pathway. Freedoms. Economic prosperity. People.
Again you prove you have NFI what Socialism is.
As deluded as the US republicans. Whose views you are parroting.
Why did I know Venezuala would be mentioned. Neo-liberal apologists need a new script. They always forget to mention their low tax, small state nirvana's Haiti, or Somalia.
If,as one of your fellow parrots accepted, that the degree of socialism in a country is determined by the State share of the economy. Venezuala is less Socialist than the USA, which has a State share over 40%. Of course the problems with Venezuala have nothing to do with any sort of ism. But simply the USA "squeezing their economy until it bleeds". Because the USA cannot afford to have an example on their door step, of a country which puts it's people, not it's billionaires, first.
You still forgot to tell me what the percentage living in poverty in Russia was from 1917 compared to 1960.
You could also look at the USA from the 1950's when they had Socialist policies like the GI bill, the reason behind their explosion of innovation after WW2, and 90% taxes on millionaires, compared with their current decline and steep increase in people living in poverty, since their equivalent of Rogernomics
Poverty in the USA | Oxfam (oxfamamerica.org)
That seems a hyperbolic judgement, if indeed "In 1989, in the death throws of socialism in the USSR, poverty was 20%." Only the most one-eyed ideologue could equate ‘20% poverty’ to "detroys everything", but maybe I'm misinterpreting your evidence and/or PoV?
Democratic socialism might attempt to if not reverse then at least put the brakes on the unsustainable concentration of (ludicrous levels of) wealth in capitalist 'societies'. Who really believes this concentration of wealth is a net benefit to society?
If one aspires to extreme wealth then go for it – whatever floats your yacht. But it seems so pointless and short-sighted – an own goal.
It's been great for the 1% and their mission to plunder our public assets.
NZ is now the least affordable country in the OECD.
Rogernomics is a disgusting lie and a betrayal of all that Labour once stood for.
It's been great for the vast majority of New Zealanders. Labour pulled us kicking and screaming into the real world. Without them, we would have been buried by the increased globalisation that followed.
in the "real world" people co-operate to build a nation, they don't let pinstriped beancounters destroy the society they built with great cost and effort, and sell it off to corporate vultures
capitalism is an unsustainable model that measures everything in terms of dollars, but places no value on what really matters
the disgrace of Ron Brierley epitomises what those fuckers did to NZ
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/latest/96755666/housing-crisis-documentary-pulls-no-punches-on-eve-of-election
The "vast majority" I think you mean the top 10%. Everyone else has gone backwards.
The Side Eye: Inequality Tower 2018 | The Spinoff
"capitalism is an unsustainable model…"
NZ's economic changes in the 1980's rebalanced the mixed market away from being dominated by state intervention to a greater degree of free market involvement. Capitalism will evolve, but it is firmly entrenched across the world, including in those countries in which command economics had failed. It is sustainable, and it isn't going away.
what planet have you been on? the global economy has been melting down, it was already massively unbalanced by QE and now Covid has been an opportunity for bankers to loot the public purse on an unprecedented scale
https://twitter.com/ianpaulwright/status/1433079835514056705?s=20
"The "vast majority" I think you mean the top 10%. Everyone else has gone backwards."
Do you have any evidence that 90% of NZérs have 'gone backwards'? Increasing inequality can still mean everyone is better off.
Are you Don Brash?
"what planet have you been on? the global economy has been melting down, "
No, it really hasn't. Capitalism self corrects. It is an evolving model, and in virtually every country in which it is deployed it is simply one of two components of a mixed market economy.
capitalism looks good during the growth phase then it turns into a darwinian contest red in tooth and claw. no social conscience whatsoever
Four Reasons Civilization Won’t Decline: It Will Collapse – Resilience
"Of course, you can basically eliminate the working class from statistics if you take "averages". The top 10% wealthiest socioeconomic strata owns over 50% of the wealth so yes "kiwis are getting wealthier" might be true in a very stupid and selfish way, but all the gains are going to a tiny elite few.
We could have a discussion about inequality, sure. But I was addressing Stuarts specific claims.
Can you demonstrate another nation with a median house price to median income ratio in excess of 20?
https://www.reinz.co.nz/residential-property-data-gallery
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/labour-market-statistics-income-june-2021-quarter
Aint statistics grand!
"capitalism looks good during the growth phase then it turns into a darwinian contest red in tooth and claw. no social conscience whatsoever"
Economic systems don't have 'consciences'. That's the reason I would never advocate for unfettered capitalism.
"Are you Don Brash?"
Good grief no. I'm not arguing rising inequality is a good thing. I'm simply saying that rising inequality does not mean the majority of people are not better off. Free market policies have been an important contributor to lifting large numbers of people out of poverty around the world. It seems almost churlish to argue against the economic progress NZ has made using similar policies.
Yes even Marx observed the power of the profit motive. But he also recognised that capitalism corrupts democracy and causes widespread suffering & oppression of workers, and financial crashes
BTW the industrial revolutions of China and Russia were state driven and lifted people out of poverty more effectively than strategies based on wage slavery and attacking workers
"But he also recognised that capitalism corrupts democracy and causes widespread suffering & oppression of workers, and financial crashes"
Capitalism co-exists with democracy. Capitalism lifts people out of poverty. It is alternatives, socialism most notably, that enslaves people. It is no coincidence that most obvious socialist economies have been accompanied by totalitarian regimes.
"BTW the industrial revolutions of China and Russia were state driven and lifted people out of poverty more effectively than strategies based on wage slavery and attacking workers"
Russia is proof positive that state commanded economic progress is unsustainable. In both Russia and China, the most progress towards economic freedom and prosperity has come with the adoption of the free market.
Remember to, it was Stalin who drove the industrial revolution in Russia. He also just happened to have killed up to 20 million of his fellow citizens (depending upon which historian you believe).
I wasn't talking about painful political revolutions and bloodshed. But if you want to go down that track, capitalism is responsible for colonisation and mass impoverishment of billions, ongoing slaughters, and the destruction of life itself by insane profit driven policies that rely on destroying rainforests and filling the Earth with oil pollution
It is a cancerous ideology that cannot be sustained.
Socialism is democracy in action, the clue is in the name. Decisions are made for the good of society not only in the interests of a remote aristocracy
"It is a cancerous ideology that cannot be sustained."
So you've been arguing. On a forum invented within a free market economic system.
"Socialism is democracy in action, the clue is in the name. Decisions are made for the good of society not only in the interests of a remote aristocracy"
Tell that to the close to 100m people killed in communist/socialist regimes.
Are you talking about the actual website that was developed in a mixed economy, or the infrastructure and protocols that were developed with US government funding?
"100m people killed in communist regimes"
A silly comment. By the same token I must assume that capitalists support fascist warmongering and mercantile Empires plundering the wealth of nations and genociding the natives
"A silly comment. By the same token I must assume that capitalists support fascist warmongering and mercantile Empires plundering the wealth of nations and genociding the natives"
You claimed that under socialism "Decisions are made for the good of society…". That's a nonsense claim when you consider the lessons of history. Historians estimate around 100m people lost their lives in those societies.
Socialism destroyed the Soviet Union. In 1989, tens of millions of soviet citizens lived in poverty – around 20% of the population. (In 2018 it was 12%).
In most socialist regimes, individual freedoms are ruthlessly repressed. Religious and political liberty is stamped out, in fact socialism destroys the human spirit, and in the end that is at the heart of why it fails.
Sigh
Funny idea of what Socialism is.
Meanwhile Democratic Socialist/ Actual Socialist, rather than totalitarian countries that say they are socialist, regimes are our most succesful States to date.
Or they were until so many bought into the "free market", low tax, Globalist religion.
Even the USA exists courtesy of the largest State funded welfare organisation on earth. Their military. Without that State funded transfer of wealth they would collapse. Which is why they need the constant wars with Eastasia and Westasia.
Srylands? Or yet another Echo!
Open mike 04/08/2013 « The Standard
"Srylands statement of course comes from the laffer curve idea.
That expansion of Government provision of services always displaces the private sector.
If that was really the case then you would expect the countries with extremely large State shares in the economy to be the worst off. Which is obviously not the case.
Countries with large State investment in the economy are the most successful. Some States manage with no private sector at all. (Not what I would recommend though).
Every one from Singapore to Norway, Germany and Denmark.
Countries which have high State spending either/or both percentage wise or per capita.
How are your low tax, small Government countries doing? Srylands".
If you insist that The Soviet Union was "Socialist" however. Have a look at the proportion living in poverty and their GDP, compared with the UK in 1917? as against the same comparison in 1960?
Indeed have a look at the rise in proportion living in poverty in NZ, from the time of your great Neo-liberal “Reforms”..
There was no alternative?
With our wretchedly incompetent treasury wonks that's probably mostly true – one trick ponies on their best days.
Had they a ghost of a clue about how to do their job however, policies would have been very different – and we'd have recorded growth in excess of real estate inflation occasionally.
No-one is lining up to hire NZ's 'economic miracle' workers, in fact they're a global joke.
The fundamental changes to the economy in the 1980's prepared our economy for globalisation and competing with the world. It was a significant driver on our shifting trade reliance on the UK.
No-one is lining up to hire NZ's 'economic miracle' workers, in fact they're a global joke.
You are quite wrong. Our economy is far from perfect, but for a relatively small economy, the management of our economy by successive governments has been recognised internationally.
And yet our supposed miracle workers never achieve growth over 3% (underlying inflation), much less produce the 'rising tide that lifts all boats' which was the excuse for all their cruel and ineffectual policies.
NZ finance ministers are not recruited by the IMF or the World Bank – even with the politics those institutions prefer a plausible veneer of competence – they are lucky if they can get a job at Woolies.
It is fair to describe NZ's reigning economists as conservative, backward, myopic, and regressive – and since you seem to be their fanboi, you suffer by association.
It is one of life’s little ironies that Muldoon has been redeemed, not by his own miserable efforts, but by the inadequacy of his successors.
"NZ finance ministers are not recruited by the IMF or the World Bank"
Hardly a robust way of assessing NZ's economic reforms. But as a certain irony, one of the 'fanboi's' of NZ's economic performance is none other than the IMF's Christine Lagarde, Lagarde was the MD of the IMF, and was the Minister of Finance in France.
She is still going strong.
She is currently President of the European Central Bank. Since 2011 she has been in the top 10 of the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. In the last couple of years she has been at number 2, second only to Angela Merkel. That is one impressive lady.
Hardly a robust way of assessing NZ's economic reforms
Oh I agree – the increased wealth of median NZers would be the obvious data point, but of course that's seldom reported – being negative.
But this was your shoddy criterion – the views of foreign colleagues:
the management of our economy … has been recognised internationally
The peers of the Chicago Boys in Chile were reasonably satisfied with them – it was the people they robbed and impoverished that were obliged to put them in prison where they and their Rogergnomic colleagues belong.
"Oh I agree…"
Yet you used it as your chosen measure.
"…the increased wealth of median NZers would be the obvious data point, but of course that's seldom reported – being negative."
Why is that the 'obvious data point'? For starters, "data on wealth is far worse than data on income – the Government gathers a lot less data on wealth."
However I was able to find this comparison between 2015 and 2018:
"Median household wealth increased from $289,000 to $340,000. In 2015, 8.3 percent of Kiwis households had more than $1.5 million in net wealth; in 2018, 12.5 percent of Kiwi households were in that group. Fewer households held between $100,000 and $500,000 in wealth and more households held assets worth over $500,000."
So that was a transitionary period over two governments in which median wealth did increase.
"…the views of foreign colleagues…"
I never mentioned 'colleagues'. I'm referring to informed international critique. Which includes one of the people who fit YOUR criteria of moving from a FM position to employment with the IMF!
Oh really – "informed international critique is it?"
Let's see some then – and it had better be critical, not yet another empty paen to the fallen gods of mammon.
You are the fellow trying to justify the epic failure which is Rogergnomics – well, as your neoliberal kin put it:
Show us the money!
Most expensive electricity in the world
Fastest growing inequality in the OECD
Most expensive housing relative to income
You and your corrupt economist fellow travellers have a truckload of explaining to do – and frankly, we don't want any more excuses – only the improved outcomes they’ve lied about for getting on for four decades now.
The time for excuses is over – they are only ever a plea in mitigation – they don't exculpate the fraud that was perpetrated on NZ, that you for some reason are exerting yourself to defend.
"Let's see some then…"
I gave you one – someone you surely approve of because she is one of your chosen few – FM's who have 'graduated' to employment with the IMF.
You make a lot of claims yourself, Stuart. Few, if any, are supported by sources. So let's have a look at your latest claims:
"Most expensive electricity in the world"
Not even close.
"Fastest growing inequality in the OECD"
Not according to the OECD.
"Most expensive housing relative to income"
Wrong.
Of course, you can basically eliminate the working class from statistics if you take "averages". The top 10% wealthiest socioeconomic strata owns over 50% of the wealth so yes "kiwis are getting wealthier" might be true in a very stupid and selfish way, but all the gains are going to a tiny elite few.
Low income Kiwi households struggling with unaffordable housing, OECD report says | Stuff.co.nz
You still have fundamentally failed to substantiate your claim, that NZ is better off for the imposition of Rogergnomics.
That massive raft of corruption fundamentally pivoted the NZ civil service away from its core functions, to chase spurious crap.
So there is more expensive electricity somewhere – big whoop – your clowns still massively increased the price for ours, further emiserating our poor oppressed and cheated citizens.
You massively increased inequality – never mind the rest of the world, the lazy unproductive speculator class cleaned up here, massively eroding productivity – and this was the work of supposedly professional economists? For shame!
And your property piece is nonsense – fudged by the insertion of a square meterage factor that is neither here nor there. The crucial feature of housing is not its meterage, but that owner occupiers are able to escape rental costs which a landlord class inflate pretty much as and when they chose.
Home ownership is lousy in NZ now – you have taken us back to 1951 levels.
I guess it's a hard thing for corrupt public servants to understand, but a fundamental baseline is that you are supposed to leave the country better than you found it.
"So there is more expensive electricity somewhere – big whoop – "
The point is you have made a number of claims in this exchange that are simply false. That's either sloppy of dishonest, and pretty much discredits anything else you say.
Like your claim that Rogernomics "made the majority of New zealanders better off".
Oh please – lying doesn't concern you at all – you just endorsed Key's lie about ripping off state assets.
Besides, menkurt slave of the odious right, you have yet to show us the money – ie validated your dishonest position on Rogergnomics.
Show us some proof, my little cabbage, or come clean that you were lying all along.
"You're conveniently ignoring… "
Nothing. Every one of the things you cite were built as part of the governments investment in a mixed market economy. And paid for out of taxes generated by the private sector.
They are paid for out of work done, by everyone in society whether public or private.
Taxes and all Money, are just the way we decide to allocate resources.
"They are paid for out of work done, by everyone in society whether public or private. "
Yes, public servants pay tax. Your point?
Tax is a proportion of the earnings from the work someone does.
We allocate a part of our work earnings to pay for Government services.
It does not magically appear from private business, out of thin air.
"What's the % of people who voted for successive governments to flog off State assets? "
A lot, as it happens. In 2011, the Key government went to the election specifically promising asset sales. They received 48% of the votes.
Over 80% of New Zealanders polled, didn't want the assett sales to go ahead.
The idea that a Government is elected on just one policy, is rather comic.
"Over 80% of New Zealanders polled, didn't want the assett sales to go ahead."
We don't elect governments from opinion polls.
Yes we don't really have Democracy. Which is a shame.
If we did, the “Unfortunate experiment” which you are spruiking for, would have been nipped in the bud in 1993 if not 1987, when the foolishness of it was apparent..
Sooner or later NZ is going to punish a government that lies on that scale.
It won't be pretty – but it will be just.
Tricledrown, if you are reading this, here's how to get your commenting privileges back:
If you can do this, I will then talk you how to get your commenting privileges back.
Mods have spent a lot of time this year trying to get you to respond to moderation comments. The reason you can't comment at the moment is because you failed to respond in June and I got sick of chasing it up.
Ok Weka no problem I couldn’t reply because the box to type in comment wouldn’t open.
Hi Td. There's a long history of problems with your commenting. There are two to look at right now.
I f 'd up again I have serious disabilities with impaired eyesight and have only barely one finger on my typing hand 1 finger on the other so it's very hard to get things right all the time.
Thanks for letting me Td, we can work with that.
Can you please let me know if you can see the Replies tab on the upper right hand side of the page?
Starting to look like Trudeau miscalculated calling a snap election. Not that suprising really I'm sure voters aren't that impressed given they're in the midst of their 4th wave and it looks very much like it was called because polls had his party thinking they would get a majority.
Can someone please do me a favour. Reply to this comment, and I will put the comment in trash and see if I can bring it back again.
Hi Weka.
Only if you have magical powers on this site
thanks everyone. Next test: write a comment, post it, then edit it and send it to Trash (delete it). Post a second comment telling me you've done that. Cheers.
Done.
thanks solkta! Would you mind repeating that in Daily Review? Just the second test.
done.
thanks.
What I was trying to do doesn't work 🙁
Still cant paste links ph my ph.
Yes I can see your posts in replies
just to clarify, are you clicking on the Replies tab and seeing all the replies to you (not just from me)?
Yes but on most occasions it won't let me type a comment and has an icon box at the top of the comment box.Thanks for being patient and helpful.
are you on a desktop or a phone or a tablet/ipad?
Phone
If you scroll to the bottom of this page, can you see two links:
Which one are you using right now?
I am now on mobile ,I was on desk top to keep up with replies
ok, so you know how to swap between the two. Desktop give the Reply tab, Mobile allows commenting. This has been a problem for a while, I'll bring it up with lprent again.
In 'murica, they get thousands turning up to storm the halls of government.
Here in Nu Zillun we get one Karen outside the council office in Kaikohe.
The "passionless people" indeed!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/covid-19-coronavirus-delta-outbreak-northland-police-make-two-arrests-as-little-pockets-of-silent-protestors-gather-around-the-region/DG6WRRGG6WTNXHRWCIHKIBR4TI/
This covid lockup has had to be the most tedious yet, longer mentally than any of the others to date. The 'novel' corona virus is proving anything but, 'tedious and tiresome' corona virus I am finding. I wondered about how we might shape the present and future covid responses. Auckland has carried much of the burden on lock downs, far more than any other region. They have the majority of MIQ facilities and have been hardest hit in the 3 lockdowns post the big one last year.
For that matter I wondered when Auckland is under level 4 or 3, and a level higher than other provinces, whether it's fair to add an extra 1% gst to transactions in other provinces that could be funneled to Auckland businesses to help pay rents and wages until such time they dropped to level 2. So when there are unequal level 4 and 3 lockdowns imposed regionally, the regions at a higher alert level receive some form of relief payments. Funded by a 1% in GST in regions at a lower alert level, eg level 2. The regions that can return to some semblance of normality provide economic relief for the hardest hit areas.
In terms of any purpose built or purpose adapted future MIQ facilities. Seems to me time some other provinces did some of that heavy lifting. Maybe time to locate dedicated facilities in Dunedin or Christchurch or Palmerston North. The Central and Southern regions can have a turn doing the work. Palmy seems a reasonable option. A military airport that can take large jets and a reasonably sized city with health facilities.
I am more miserable than I have been in years. Solitary confinement & isolation are psychological torture. L4 is some OTT bullshit. I feel for those who are dying alone because of these inhumane conditions
Yeah, it's tough. You got someone to talk to over phone or video? It's not the same as face to face, but at least you get to use your voice.
Yeah just got off a Zoom call thanks. Feeling a bit better. Life is really out of balance right now
Stay in there, Roblogic. Thanks for your kind words the other day. Poetry and music, playing the blues, help when the black dog starts barking. Just been reading some of my verse, written when going through treatment for cancer.
One sonnet, written as I travelled to Picton on my way to resume radiation therapy for prostate cancer ends.
"Sorrow is for the present, /waiting to proceed from known past/ to a future not yet seen or sensed.
Present sorrow, prescient pain, / Fear is human of unknown gain.
Cheers Mac. You're a warrior poet.
Definitely agree about spreading things out – especially away from urban concentrations.
Find a nice picturesque area, and build a 500+ room facility with decent airflow control and the ability to separate cohorts. Do spa areas, tennis courts, gyms, all that shit. Have it store medical supplies like PPE. Run it as a hotel with close access to skifields etc, and use it as a quarantine or evacuation facility if we need one. Heck, it might even make money as a hotel.
Send 'em to Ripapa/Quail Island
Quarantine Barracks, Quail Island | discoverywall.nz
Why they want MIQ in urban areas is because hospitals are handy
Great way to piss off Invercargillites. A chopper ride (lol if they're lucky) is good enough for them, apparently.
It feels more tedious because of the unremmitting drumbeat of whinging about it. I quite like it.
Just thought I would check
Warkworth to Hamilton 178.3km
Warkworth to Kiataia 253km
Most people living near a big city travel in and bounce back on the same trajectory.
Travelling through Auckland is a small percentage. Met people at Akld hospital that travelled from Whangarei for treatment. Auckland serves Northland in many ways still.
virtually all Whangarei traffic goes thru Warkworth but yeah it is a bit shit when they have 0 community cases up North
"Can you demonstrate another nation with a median house price to median income ratio in excess of 20?"
That measure is valid, but it does have the problem of not including changes in interest rates. I have looked and can't find any long term comparisons based on median measure, which is surprising considering I would have thought it was a meaningful measure.