Wages dropping under Key, as promised

Written By: - Date published: 11:26 am, February 3rd, 2010 - 28 comments
Categories: class war, john key, Media, same old national, wages - Tags:

Remember how John Key said he “would love to see wages drop“. You might remember the big corporate media refused to run it, and the head of APN held an emergency meeting with Key then pressured the journalist who had reported the comments to retract them, which he would not do, and then APN published a retraction anyway. Well, guess what, wages are dropping and the smile on John Key’s face just keeps getting bigger. Every dollar less paid in wages is a dollar more to his rich mates, after all.

Tomorrow, we’ll hear how much worse the job situation has got (remember journos, look at the jobless number, not unemployment, for the full story). Wages down, jobs disappearing. I’m waiting to see what John Key and Bill English will deliver in the Budget to reverse this but, frankly, I don’t expect there’ll be anything apart from more pointless stunts like the cycleway.

And for those of you who still don’t understand that falling wages is all part and parcel of National’s agenda, you need to learn a little history.

28 comments on “Wages dropping under Key, as promised ”

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  1. fizzleplug 1
    3 February 2010 at 11:44 am

    And you guys say he does nothing! haha

  2. PT 2
    3 February 2010 at 11:45 am

    big surprise were in a RECESSION, you remember the one labour did nothing about but just spent more government money, what a dick

    • Mr Magoo 2.1
      3 February 2010 at 11:53 am

      So that makes two parties that did nothing then??

      Guess we better all move down the list and see what the next biggest party would have done…

      ahh..I see here…

      The greens released a very comprehensive policy idea on the “green new deal”. Some very good ideas for increasing job numbers and saving the planet at the same time.

      Was very much worth looking at….

      Shame about the fact that parliament is stacked with a very vocal “anti-green” or “anti-planet” movement eh??

      • lukas 2.1.1
        3 February 2010 at 12:05 pm

        Shame about the fact that parliament is stacked with a very vocal “anti-green’ or “anti-planet’ movement eh??

        ahhh… no. The only party in parliament that does not agree with AGW is ACT, all the others do and have policy in place showing that. Sure, most here will say that the Nat’s policy is rubbish, but it is still pro-AGW and could hardly be described as “anti-green” or “anti-planet”.

        • Bright Red 2.1.1.1
          3 February 2010 at 12:31 pm

          It took a weak ETS and replaced it with a mockery of an ETS.

        • Draco T Bastard 2.1.1.2
          3 February 2010 at 1:50 pm

          …but it is still pro-AGW

          No, it’s not. It’s just saying that it is to get elected. To spell it out in terms you understand – they’re lying.

          • lukas 2.1.1.2.1
            3 February 2010 at 2:18 pm

            “No, it’s not. It’s just saying that it is to get elected. To spell it out in terms you understand they’re lying.”

            No. If they did not believe in AGW, they would not have put any ETS in place.

            If they are just saying that they believe in AGW for they sake of getting elected, it is a silly move, there are many polls out there now showing a growing number of people who do not believe in AGW.

            • Pascal's bookie 2.1.1.2.1.1
              3 February 2010 at 2:27 pm

              nah lukas.

              We have international obligations under Kyoto. Pulling out of those would hurt trade. The Nats needed to do something, so what they did was ensure that taxpayers rather than polluters pick up the bill.

              • lukas …
                3 February 2010 at 2:30 pm

                regardless of who pays the initial bill (at the end of the day, taxpayers will end up paying for it as businesses would be stupid not to pass on the cost or at least recover it), it can not be classed as “anti-earth”. It is doing something. An “anti-earth” policy would be ACT’s policy of doing nothing.

              • Pascal's bookie …
                3 February 2010 at 2:37 pm

                Lukas, would their less polluting competitors raise their prices as well? Or do you think they would just steal their competitor’s customers?

              • Pascal's bookie …
                3 February 2010 at 2:47 pm

                <It is doing something

                Sure, but it is not doing the sort of thing someone that gave a shit about AGW would do. National’s ETS is aimed at meeting our global commitments to Kyoto. That’s a separate question to doing something about AGW.

                What will National’s ETS do other than raise the money to pay for carbon credits? Where are the incentives for our big polluters to reduce their polluting?

              • Mr Magoo …
                3 February 2010 at 3:24 pm

                Lukas, your failure to understand the basics of the free market is astounding??

                Businesses who try to clean up their act will quite often (NB: not always) be at a disadvantage to their polluting counterparts. This means that unless they can offset the capital investment it requires with energy savings or marketing then they will be unable to compete fairly.
                This means that there is now a perverse incentive to pollute.

                If you still need more explanation: “Our carbon bill will be a hell of a lot higher because companies have no incentive to reduce pollution”.

                Note my explanation assumes that you are like most of the right wing and don’t care if we are all burnt off the face of the planet in 100 years.

                National should and do know better on this.
                The reason their ETS is structured to make the tax payer pay a subsidy to polluters who have NO NEW INCENTIVE to reduce emissions.

                That is the complete opposite of what it was supposed to do.

                What I find hilarious is that most of you righties belly ache constantly about paying “too much tax” to help keep people out of 3rd world poverty but don’t bat an eyelid at paying extra for irresponsible companies to destroy the planet??!

                Sick and twisted does not even begin to describe it…

              • The Baron …
                3 February 2010 at 4:36 pm

                Not quite as astounding as your f*cked up usage of question marks in that first sentence, genius.

                ZING!

                Can I count that as a point, Felix – king of pointless point scoring?

              • Mr Magoo …
                3 February 2010 at 4:39 pm

                Yep! Must have won that one?

                The only argument you could come up with was over syntax? Not even a spelling error somewhere?
                I included them to give the impression of being incredulous’! I really could not give a #$%@ about anally retentive punctuation in a forum post –.

                Nice one though# Feel free to add something when you have something worth saying though…genius…???

              • felix …
                3 February 2010 at 4:58 pm

                Yep, that’s a point for you Mr Baron.

                Magoo leads 42 – 1.

            • Draco T Bastard 2.1.1.2.1.2
              3 February 2010 at 7:48 pm

              If they did not believe in AGW, they would not have put any ETS in place.

              They didn’t – they put a massive transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to the wealthy in place.

        • Mr Magoo 2.1.1.3
          3 February 2010 at 3:30 pm

          Rubbish.

          You are confusing a party that actually cares about the issue as opposed to a party that is chasing votes here.

          And no, I don’t believe that labour was much different on this issue. Better, but barely.

    • Lanthanide 2.2
      3 February 2010 at 12:00 pm

      Funny, I remember Labour starting up the Superannuation Fund, which has had another out-perfoming quarter and is credited as helping the government’s books not be so bad just now.

      You know, that same fund that Blinglish decided was too risky to invest in last year, when stocks were highly undervalued and excellent opportunities to buy?

  3. Rob Carr 3
    3 February 2010 at 12:38 pm

    Sorry I am not sure I see anything that could be considered anything but effects of recession on those graphs. Do you have the actual quarterly number for the last few years?

    • Rob 3.1
      3 February 2010 at 12:58 pm

      Exactly, we have reduced head count through the last year, our overall salary and wage expense has dropped as a result. The level of pay for the people still employed has not lowered.

      With these people who put this together, are they even in the work force?

  4. Bored 4
    3 February 2010 at 1:07 pm

    Marty, this is all very well, minor sectarian arguments over who gets the cash .in all of the replies are some basic assumptions like:
    * Wages have not / have grown.
    * That the wage number is an absolute, i.e it equates to cost of living, purchasing power, quality of life etc.
    * That who is in government actually makes a difference.

    You could debate this ad nauseum, I think we are missing the most basic point. Nothing on an upward trajectory in a closed system (i.e planet earth) is sustainable. Do the maths, get a spreadsheet and ask the cell below to multiply the one above by 1.03 (like a 3% growth rate, the kind of idea popular amongst economists, or a 3% wage rise ). Have a look at the time it takes to double, do some more .

    If you think our economic system clever or sustainable behavior, carry on. My point is that the whole problem of wage rises etc is indicative of a very sick system that is in denial of reality.

    • Draco T Bastard 4.1
      3 February 2010 at 1:58 pm

      Not just wage rises but it is certainly one of the symptoms of a sick economy. You you need to throw in interest, needed productivity increase (in actuality, just an increase in resources used) and inflation as well.

  5. George D 5
    3 February 2010 at 2:55 pm

    The graph of the 1990s needs to be understood with the caveat that it was the NZFirst Party who caused that uptick in 1997 and 1999. They’re a rotten bunch, but Winston has been strongly committed to decent working class wages. After all, it was he who negotiated the $12 minimum wage against the reluctance of the Labour Party.

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