I recently read this fascinating article in New Matilda which asked why are we still working? With the advent of technological advances our need to work had been predicted to reduce. Yet the reality for most of us is that it has increased. And even though it concentrates on Australian conditions the article neatly dovetails in part with my post from yesterday and how the local real estate market has caused much of the problem.
From the article:
As long ago as 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by now, people in technologically advanced societies wouldn’t need to work much at all. When Keynes said this, advances in technology were yielding extraordinary increases in productivity. The implications seemed obvious. If it took less time to produce what we needed, surely we’d work less.
It turns out that for much of the 20th Century average working hours in developed countries steadily fell. Then, around the 1970s, the trend plateaued. In some countries, it reversed and working hours began to climb again. This occurred at the same time women were entering the workforce in great numbers so total workforce participation also increased.
In Australia, by the new millennium, many full time employees were working more than their grandparents had.
The same result clearly applies to New Zealand. And even though technology increases were greater than had been anticipated why did the need for most people to work increase?
One theory was that as our desire for more and more material goods increased so did our need for money.
Gary Becker observed that our appetite for material goods has expanded along with our ability to produce them. Instead of working less hours, we opted for bigger houses with more gadgets, which we replace more often.
This process has been fuelled by a deluge of marketing, which persuades us to consume things we previously didn’t recognise a need for.
Another theory was that as productivity and automation increased in the well paying jobs the benefits were not distributed. Instead there was a vast proliferation of service industry jobs that only seemed to exist to provide work.
Consider this. Productivity growth has stalled in Australia. How can this be? Technology hasn’t stopped advancing. The time we should be winning back through productivity gains must be getting reabsorbed.
Productivity returns are highest in capital-intensive industries like mining and manufacturing. As those jobs disappear, either replaced by technology, or lost altogether, the workforce moves into labour-intensive industries like hospitality and professional services. This dilutes the gains in the other industries.
At the same time, unemployment has been trending up since 2008. Young people especially, are out of work. The number of underemployed people, who would work more if they could, is also high. More jobs are casual.
Increasing longevity has also played its part.
There’s another factor. Our lives are now longer relative to our working lives. We tend to start full-time work later, after years of study, and more of life is spent in retirement. Many jobless older people are struggling with the cost of living. Many would work more if they could.
Instead of everyone working less, what seems to be happening is that experienced workers, in professions which are still in demand, are working more, while the young, the old, and those with skills which no longer attract investment have difficulty finding work.
MIT academics Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson refer to this as the great decoupling. For many years, real GDP per capita and median income rose in tandem. Since the 1970s, wages as a percentage of GDP have fallen dramatically, while corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are now at their highest level, despite recurring economic shocks.
To put it simply, labour isn’t as important to growth as it used to be.
And things are not going to get better. Both the Australian Government and the New Zealand government are not even talking about the issue. Jobs will continue to be replaced by technology. Of course the state could be doing something but that would involve it adopting a larger role that would have to be paid for by increased taxes.
The terrible irony in this situation is that there is so much that needs to be done.
Among the underemployed graduates I personally know of, there is a psychologist, a soil chemist and a biodiversity specialist. Have we run out of things to do in the areas of mental health, agriculture and the environment?
What we don’t have, apparently, is sufficient money to invest in making full use of the talent that is available to face these challenges.
Why? What failure of collective enterprise could result in this absurd incongruity?
Capital, like technology, is largely blind to human need. Capital goes where the profit is. If there was profit in healing minds and saving species, some of it would go there. While there is more profit in alcohol, gambling and deforestation, more of it will go there.
The article then contains a call to collective action.
If a healthy society is something we want, we have to act collectively. Since few people are active major shareholders, for the time being that task tends to fall to governments.
Whether enacted via direct spending, or by creating incentives for private investment, government initiatives are funded from collective surplus – in other words, tax revenue or borrowing against future earnings increases. Despite political spin to the contrary, our tax is low compared to the OECD as a proportion of GDP.
The great decoupling has coincided with rising inequality. Those with money to invest get rich. Those with only labour to sell miss out. Capital doesn’t like to pay for labour, and it doesn’t like to pay tax either.
The article then comments on real estate investment.
Nevertheless, one group of people enriched themselves through property investment, pushing up the value of real estate around the country in the process. Another group of people became affluent with nothing more than a job that paid super and a home in a good location.
With commodity revenue pouring in from overseas, it was easy to believe we had discovered some kind of magic prosperity formula. But the surplus generated from commodities mostly wasn’t invested back into productive activity. Instead it was turned into tax cuts and other benefits. These had broad electoral appeal but favoured the wealthy, and encouraged further speculation.
The real estate boom didn’t make the country richer. Nor did it make housing more accessible. It simply transferred wealth from one group of people to another. In the process, it put a basic need out of reach of many, including young people, and diverted investment from the productive economy. It also lured a huge number of Australians into precarious debt.
The next passage deals with the future for the young and applies just as strongly to New Zealand as it does to Australia.
The current trend points to a time when a young graduate might start adult life with a HECS debt, go into credit card debt on a part-time job and a free internship, and eventually get into massive debt to own a flat her grandparents could have bought with ease.
She might even find a job in financial services, if they haven’t all been automated. It’s the sector that helps wealthy people turn their money into more money. It’s also where ordinary people go to borrow money for a house.
The basic problem is clearly identified as debt. Not government debt which in New Zealand even now is manageable despite 7 prolifigate years of National rule but private debt where each week many ordinary people pay the banks interest for the benefit of created loans.
Debt is profitable. Even during the great decoupling, as productive jobs disappear, and real wages fall, it’s proven possible to harness the aspirations of ordinary people for profit, without any of the effort or intelligence required for developing new productive capacity, by simply enticing a greater proportion of personal income into servicing debt.
And the solution? Essentially things have to change.
Change has come, whether we like it or not. If we respond intelligently, taking advantage of the potential we have developed through our education system, we may very well end up working less, but not in a divided society, with many of us struggling to survive.
Labour through its Future of Work Commission is leading a discussion of these issues. This Matilda article provides a neat snapshot of the problems and the potential solutions to this most difficult of issues.
Good gravy Mr Savage why are you making us think so hard on a Sunday?
Go out and get 18 holes under your belt.
I’m no longer confident “labour” is a useful lens for policy formation, since we are now so de-unionised and deregulated it’s really hard to see how big change is possible. Even inside 2 terms from 2017.
I’m as pessimistic that we will pull away from our addiction to real estate capitalism. Other than through the state essentially printing houses and grossly subsidizing them in one form or other.
We have to look to where policy is still possible. Otherwise tracking all these changes to automation etc is somewhat academic.
And after you’ve done 18 holes, crack open something cold and shut the freaking computer.
Only poor people need to work in jobs. Jobs produce profit for shareholders etc. If there are not enough poor people, then there’s a danger the whole profitable market shebang and the culture that underpins it, falls over or fades away.
So find ways to keep enough people poor and engaged.
Fashion…inbuilt obsolescence…speculation to put necessary stuff (like houses for us or food for many in other countries), financially, just out of reach.
Maybe unnecessarily privatise health and other stuff like education – just so that people need to earn a crust to avoid potentially unpleasant consequences (and cream the profit).
Invent nonsense jobs like human resources management positions and cake layer in a pile of lower/middle management positions anywhere and everywhere you can (and cream the profit).
Keep the culture of ‘job as source of dignity’ ticking along nicely and keep creaming that profit.
I’ve thrown this example often, but it bears repeating. 15 people with secure material well-being, successfully paying off 18 mortgages, putting substantial savings aside and all from working on average 8 hours per week each in remunerative activity. That was an actual existing reality and there is absolutely no reason why that can’t be a reality for everyone (assuming we’re stupid enough to want to preserve the nonsense that’s the market economy).
Why 18 mortgages? Are three of the 15 aspirational for a weekend bach? That could be afforded under the old system too and how we enjoyed those baches in the hols.
Sorry greywarshark, that should have read 18 houses – not 18 mortgages. Collective ownership model (housing collective) tied to a worker’s collective that operated from the same location.
Invent nonsense jobs like human resources management positions and cake layer in a pile of lower/middle management positions anywhere and everywhere you can (and cream the profit). I’ve thought about that before. Just as middle class people in third world countries often have vague roles within the military, our lot have similarly vague roles within the corporate structure. In both cases the roles are often as much social positions as jobs, and help to maintain a sufficient number whose interests are tied to those of the regime.
And make getting a benefit dependent on employment that doesn’t exist. I guess that’s what our current Labour party means when they say they’re the party for the workers. Dickheads.
Of course we could go back to a more ‘socialist’ times. I recall working for a govt department (infrastructure) in the 70s and always said the place could easily run on half the staff. The pay was modest, not much above minimum wages at the time, but work conditions great, good training, safe, secure, good friends, holidays, sick time etc. We wouldn’t become rich, but it was good times and well run, be it somewhat overstaffed, but better perhaps than having more on the dole. Then came rogernomics and ruth richardson eras. Efficiency and cost cutting the name of the game.
I see the numbers working in my old infrastructure job now only a tiny fraction what it was. Everything is run down, much outsourced to lowest tender, less safe, zero training, minimal security, every hour accountable. Most are now hating their jobs but with few real options to improve. They’re told they are lucky to have a job.
Now we’re older, I see that perhaps that slightly ‘less efficient’ 70s govt run workplace really had merits. At least people were employed, safe, well trained and had a purpose. Today, those same people are working longer for similar wages, little security. Disposable. There only for the rich offshore shareholders to extract that last ounce of profit. Not the bold promises new technology was supposed to provide.
I suspect the efficiencies means more for the company owners and shareholders, less for the rest of us. Soon, we’ll follow the US and Russia into more an oligarchy state where we, the workers, are but like serfs as in England of old. At least they knew who their real ‘masters’ were. Still poor working conditions and wages, but the expectations were at least clear.
Let’s hope my grandchildren or their children, do better but suspect it may mean the pitchforks coming out first, as it has before.
NZ is worse off now that we have sold off Telecom (formerly Post Office), Electricorp (formerly Ministry of Energy), BNZ, and the Ministry of Works.
The sales were a pointless exercise in neoliberal ideology. Having artificially fragmented our tiny markets for these essential services hasn’t caused efficiencies, it has allowed private interests to siphon vast profits from taxpayers. What a f*cking rort.
The sales were a pointless exercise in neoliberal ideology.
And more than that, they were theft from the commons. Transfer of wealth from the public to a tiny percentage of the private.
(And Labour still won’t commit to a programme of recovery, or re-nationisation. Unfortunately once the TPP is enacted it will all be academic as the TPP will render any nationalisation impossible due to threat of legal action.)
Pretty sure that Telecom, before the govt sold it, had changed a lot and was pushing forward with major upgrades in services and how it ran the various businesses (that also was before the govt fucked up the infrastructure ownership). Can’t really compare pre-80s telcos with current ones, the technology and culture means the industries are completely different from each other.
Now, if you’d compared NZPost back then and NZPost now, I’d have to say NZPost now is a company on a mission to be sold off. It operates as if it really doesn’t want customers, they’re an annoyance that have to be fitted into the business model. Which takes us back to the original comment. We could run core services as actual services, rather than as profit-generating businesses that see service as an expendable variable.
hi detrie,
well said.
i hear what you are saying, i would add that one of the many intangibles from the 70s organization you described is; the off spring of those ‘underemployed’ workers seeing their parent(s) going off to work.
I filled out Labour’s Future of Work Commission survey. It was a very odd survey and like many of the kind they had a lot of bias in areas and sadly I do not feel that it will produce any meaningful incites for Labour.
Good post though and I really think that is a very important question – why are people working harder than before and making it difficult to make ends meet?
Personally I think it is neoliberalism and globalism.
The ‘trickle down’ has not happened. Instead the obsene profits are used to reward the executives at the top and shareholders. Workers are told they are lucky to have a job, let alone being given a rise to keep place with the cost of living.
Immigration is used to keep a steady supply of competition and low wage work force. Social welfare is cut so that that option is not viable for most. Jobs are now not able to cover peoples expenses. It is happening all over the world. Here is a good article from the USA>
“Welcome to the “1099 economy”: The only things being shared are the scraps our corporations leave behind
Companies can hire and fire perma-lancers at will. Is it any wonder the middle class is vanishing before our eyes?”
Productivity has increased hugely in the last 30 years but real wages have remained static. That is due to a) regressive taxation favouring capital over labour b) unfair labour laws c) a culture of corporate excess at the executive level d) the growth of easy credit and consequent debt burdens e) transnational corps leading to a race to the bottom of the labour market
It’s called class war, but that’s not acceptable in polite company.
The old class war may be over: the new politics of class is just beginning. The widening fracture between the wealthy elite and the rest is a huge threat to our social fabric…
Given the widening distance (economically, socially and geographically) between the super-rich and the rest of us, the solidifying barriers to entry into the upper echelons of professional and business employment, and the growing acceptability of demonising members of the “precariat” with the very least resources, the 21st century is likely to be marked by increasingly disruptive challenges to the social fabric. The old class war may be over: the new politics of class is only just beginning.
“we opted for bigger houses with more gadgets, which we replace more often”
This line of thinking blames the working class for problems created by the marketing idustry and companies obsessed with shortterm profit which can only be ensured by making crap which breaks down/artificial demand for the latest newest “upgrade”.
Another documentary for those who still have some holiday time on their hands:
The Lightbulb Conspiracy. Which IIRC has an interesting item on printers having a machine code page count, which when it reaches 18,000 pages stops the printer from working.
With house prices escalating as they have over recent decades – those who can scrape up enough cash for a deposit would be “foolish” not to buy. The mathematics of the investment seem speak for themselves. Either they continue to pay rent (and in doing so help pay off some one elses mortgage, or they bite the bullet and pay off their own with the expectation that should they sell in the future the price of the house will have increased sufficiently to cover the outstanding mortgage and their equity will have increased.
Of course this plays into the trading banks hands very well. They have been given the license to create almost as much money as they want and to reap rewards accordingly. With the acquisition of a huge sum of credit and the so-called “security’, in the form of a house, the price of which, one hopes, continues to appreciate, one is now able to extend that credit to purchase more goods – cars, the latest TV, throw away the old gizmo and buy a new one, (why not two!) and so on. The first problem with all this is one has to somehow or other pay for it – eventually. So “I owe I owe – so off to work I go!
The second problem is that with a growing world population and working population the competition for paying employment is increasing – And that has a direct effect on just how much one can demand in the way of renumeration – along with the apparent ever increasing price of housing largely forced up by the banks making money so readily available.
We need to rethink our whole economy and finance system and that is a world wide problem. The only other result will be a world wide crash of immense proportions similar to the great depression.
As the investment banker interviewed here says “If there is one rule in the city – you can’t make money out of nothing – except just this once we think we might!”
Have to agree with you Macro we need to rethink the finance system. First agasint the wall should be the the out of control derivatives market. The following graphic is a good illustration as to how f’d up things have become…
Re Richard Christie 3.1.1
This stealing/transfer from the commons comes to my mind so often when i hear the latest exploits from the Nasties and sometimes from Labour. The removal of crofters from Sutherland in Scotland because sheep and wool were the new gold rush saw small uneconomic units in crofts emptied of people and amalgamated. That drove many Scots to emigrate. The conditions and attitudes they fled from are being exhibited here.
The conditions that workers came here to avoid are creeping into our lives, and will continue all the way to great tragedy unless NZ people rise and get a Charter as they did in Britain with a statement of what they need for life to be livable. There was a swell of opinion in Britain when the Tolpuddle Martyrs who started a southern agricultural labourers union were sent as convicts to Australia, such that great sums of money and pressure was raised to have them returned. And more was available to buy the tenancy of a farm to give them the living the Chartists and wellwishers felt they deserved. The landed class continued to distrust and isolate them though.
How many wellwishers do we have in NZ towards our fellows? They are in their thousands, but what number thousand? They will have to declare their care, come forward and work together for betterment. Labour supporters have lost power over their leaders, who are stuck with superglue. But those supporting Labour themselves need support, as they have the vital numbers to do something.
I’m thinking that political thinkers of the left variety have to prop up Labour, and at the same time get alternatives going. Get behind a group of left thinking parties that will coalesce and work together for the good of the country and not just for their own particular sector of progressive policy, dissing all others. I think we have to accept that Labour will never live up to its name again, and will be at the margins of needed activity and policy. But if that is accepted, then if my premise is right, we need to not criticise much. Criticising when you want and expect improvement as a result is reasonable, but when that can’t be gained, then just helping them through their hoops would be the best move. Creating controversy for the Nasties to inflate is self-defeating.
If the Greens don’t fire you, adopt another NZ-thinking party, don’t waste time on single issue stuff. If we can get a left coalition in then we can get some things done which the people want, including medical marijuana and working conditions and hours, and trains that run, and some kindness and understanding to one another while we budget wisely where we can get the most bang for our buck, which will cut down on some of the authoritarian memes that are madly continued, like more people in prison etc. And always remembering that we have the USA, UK, and other life-denying cultures ready to use us for their scientific experiments, thinking Monsanto, Chinese eugenic plans.
Commoning is fundamental to the working class, even if capitalism has convinced many of us otherwise. “[V]arious forms of commoning, some traditional and some not, provided the proletariat with the means of survival in the struggle against capitalism. Commoning is the basis of proletarian class solidarity, and we can find this before, during, and after both the semantic and the political birth of communism.”
The removal of peasants from the land and their transformation into proletarians dispossessed of ownership of the means of production required a centuries-long battle of outlawing these traditions while building fences and jails. As the old rhyme notes,
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But lets the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The privatization of the commons saw the rise of prisons, the police, and the creation of criminal codes defining crime as anything that offended propertied interest. One of Stop, Thief!’s most interesting chapters details Karl Marx’s transformation from liberal lawyer to revolutionary in his writings and research on the illegality of collecting firewood in German forests.
As can be expected, the clods of the Right will do whatever they can to write your piece off as mere junk mail.
However, the smug Greens that run this Standard Org Blog (by sheltering under the long history and very creditable success of Labour, including Clarke and Cullen) will continue to slag off the Labour Party as less than excrement.
One of your commentators refers to Labour as dickheads. It is not just a case of Why are We Working so Hard? Why are we saddled with the Greens so filthy and so depressive? No wonder they gather so few harmless followers.
They are the great depressives in politics . Nothing to offer anyone but abuse.
I hope your Article is widely read Micky Savage. A pity your fellow Greens won’t disseminate it widely.
Observer I am a proud member of the labour party! This is why I pushed the future of employment stuff because the party are on the right track in relation to this. But some of my best friends are green and the left has always had a loud passionate and somewhat tortured reltationshib between the different groupings.
Further to my thoughts on Labour. Present Labour is like a wealthy old aunt who has an uncertain temper and a sarcastic tongue but when she needs you you help her out.
She is family and in the end there might be some good come out of it, she mighn’t leave all her money to the Cats Home.
And read Observer (Tokoroa) for an example of the stultified thinking about politics among many. It’s like reading something from the 1900s.
The NZ Labour Party is somewhat incoherant on this topic.
For instance: certain Senior Labour MPs still think that the retirement age needs to be raised, and that workers need to be made to work longer and harder into their greying, worn out years.
Even as there are far too few decent paying, secure jobs for young Kiwis.
It’s illogical. Labour’s incoherence, in my opinion, comes from a combination of a lack of future vision, and a lack of willingness to break new ground.
IMO what needs to happen: the 4 day 32 hour working week at $20/hr minimum wage needs to be made standard, and penalty rates reintroduced for anything over that.
The magnitude of the challenges being faced is growing by the day. As is the gap between what is needed and what is currently being thought about in the Thorndon Bubble. And yep you are quite right, there needs to be a deliberate and planned transition. A transition which is given political impetus by Kiwis who can imagine something other than National and Labour’s minor ineffectual tinkering with the status quo.
It is the trouble with globalisation, the multinationals will then scuttle off to the country that does not have a minimum wage so the production of their stuff is cheaper.
yes their plan is to have wages and standards throughout the western world converge on the lowest common denominator.
This strategy of theirs has been obvious for 20 or more years. Just look at NAFTA.
The ruling class, left and right, Republican and Democrat, National and Labour, are all supporters of globalisation and neoliberalism as an unchangeable fact of life.
That is why we hear so much about apparently, those in the BRICS countries are ‘so happy’ about their lot in life, and they are ‘greatful for what they have’, and that ‘we should learn a few things from them’.
The powers that be more or less want to drag living standards in the west down to the level of the BRICS countries – no labour standards, unions, welfare net, or even decent housing.
fwiw, i have just resigned from my job, cooking in a wonderful rural cafe.
i am nearly 50 and have known my employer since she was 6 (she is now 27), and am a close friend of her dad.
i am fortunate to have had a lovely 21 yr old Chef, and it has been satisfying to have been involved in her development in the last year.
i have struggled with the lack of unity within a very young, small workforce.
most of the empolyees look up to the boss, are a cousin or just don’t wanna rock a boat. btw the boss spent the last 6 months working in the outback of oz and hasn’t worked any shifts.
for the last 3 months we have been understaffed on the busy shifts (sat and sun) generally by one or two people.
i dont view the skipper as evil, money hungry or ‘corporate’ minded.
it just seems to be the way of the world.
the staff rise to the occasion, the public tolerate the wait time and the shift ends and the next one will start the next day.
anyhow, i’ve had enough, worked too hard, too often. i plan (after helping a friend to develop his cafe’s outdoor area- cob pizza oven, bbq etc) to go into early childhood education/childcare.
back to the bottom in terms of wages, but i’d rather be in the sandpit than do another gluten free french toast.
Probably a fairly typical NZ small business except for the absentee boss.
S/he seems to be losing interest. It happens. Might be an opportunity to go into a partnership if the cafe is still making $$$
hi ropata,
i think you are spot on in the losing interest.
it is doing good $.
funny you mention the partnership thing.
it has not ocurred to me before.
i have started, run and sold a hospo business in the past.
that has made me gunshy of doing it again, however…
i am dead keen on the idea of a worker run business.
just when i was comfortable with the idea of some relaxed wage slavery in childcare, you plant the seed of a potentially beautiful future.
The trend to longer working hours – and also working harder and faster – is now well-entrenched in capitalism. Since the end of the long postwar boom (late 1940s to early 1970s), there has been no new, sustained boom and theer is no sign of one emerging. So the prospect of us working less hours, particularly over our lifetime, is not anywhere in sight.
Moreover, the trend now is also to raise the retirement age.
Additionally, being productive is a negative in our current system, it becomes a cost, wait that’s crazy.
selling a house to an overseas buyer should expand the currency supply, as currency is only representative of value and not of value itself.
So new money into the system, expansion of supply introduced as debt at OCR, you could look at this as a tax, but a tax above the supply : expansion =100% with interest/tax of OCR above expansion, placed on top, crazy. Our debt grows inline with growth, the harder we work, the more we produce the worse the overall debt becomes, flawed system or by design?
The above is exactly the same for all school leavers entering the workforce, all new created value in the system, the government, even before the banks play their fractional reserve games have consigned the country to debt slavery.
The regulation of currency supply is based on GDP, but using a debt mechanism and banks to introduce the currency is as a debt is wrong,
I used to think the universal income crowd was crazy, (the money for nothing ideology, but change that slightly to invest and profit and here we are)
You could increase money supply via the tax system, and direct payment of government services, it’s all in place, credit citizens inline with GDP increases, instead of an ever increasing debt, you have an ever increasing wealth creation, you know, like an investment.
Economy increases, currency expanded as a dividend( not debt) citizens share in economic growth directly, then spend that money in the local economy creating a feedback loop, things only get better.
Maybe constraints on exports/imports, pretty much opposite of Globalization,
Treasury does not adjust OCR as a tool to control inflation as it was designed, seem to do the opposite, they need watching.
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Briefly this morning: Nicola Willis rules out charities tax or any tax hike to reduce budget deficit. She’s focused instead on spending cuts. There are 1,000 at-risk kids without a social worker, NZ Herald reports.Housing shortages are a factor in high-risk sex offenders being put out early into uncontrolled community ...
Truly, these are tough times for our nation’s leaders. In future, how on earth are they going to find the sort of money they’ve been happy to throw at landlords, tobacco companies, and wealthier New Zealanders ever since they got elected? On Defence, how are they going to find those ...
A couple of months ago now I wrote a post about the new set of discount rates government agencies are supposed to use in undertaking cost-benefit analysis, whether for new spending projects or for regulatory initiatives. The new, radically altered, framework had come into effect from 1 October last year, ...
Huawei dominates Indonesia’s telecommunication network infrastructure. It won over Indonesia mainly through cost competitiveness and by generating favour through capacity-building programs and strategic relationships with the government, and telecommunication operators. But Huawei’s dominance poses risks. ...
Democracy and the liberal tradition have long been seen as among the most basic tenets of the American way of life. They are also the main reason the West has for the past 80 years ...
Nicola Willis continues to compare the economy to a household needing to tighten its belt to survive. Photo: Getty Images The key long stories short in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, April 29 are: Nicola Willis today announced a cut in the Government’s new spending ...
The Herald had another announcement today about a new solar farm being officially opened - this time the 63MW Lauriston solar farm in Canterbury. It is of course briefly "NZ’s biggest solar farm", but it will soon be overtaken by Kōwhai park at Christchurch airport (168MW) and Tauhei (202MW), both ...
I woke this morning to the shock news that Tory Whanau was no longer contesting the Wellington mayoralty, having stepped aside to leave the field clear for Andrew Little. Its like a perverse reversal of Little's 2017 decision to step aside for Jacinda - the stale, pale past rudely shoving ...
In a pre-Budget speech this morning the Minister of Finance announced that this year’s operating allowance – the net amount available for new initiatives – was being reduced from $2.4 billion to $1.3 billion (speech here, RNZ story here). Operating allowance numbers in isolation don’t mean a great deal (what ...
Of the two things in life that are certain, defence and national security concern themselves with death but need to pay more attention to taxes. Australia’s national security, defence and domestic policy obligations all need ...
The Coalition of Chaos is at it again with another half-baked underwhelming scheme that smells suspiciously like a rerun of New Zealand’s infamous leaky homes disaster. Their latest brainwave? Letting tradies self-certify their own work on so-called low-risk residential builds. Sounds like a great way to cut red tape to ...
Perfect by natureIcons of self indulgenceJust what we all needMore lies about a world thatNever was and never will beHave you no shame don't you see meYou know you've got everybody fooledSongwriters: Amy Lee / Ben Moody / David Hodges.“Vote National”, they said. The economic managers par excellence who will ...
The Australian Defence Force isn’t doing enough to adopt cheap drones. It needs to be training with these tools today, at every echelon, which it cannot do if it continues to drag its feet. Cheap drones ...
Hi,Just over a year ago — in March of 2024 — I got an email from Jake. He had a story he wanted to tell, and he wanted to find a way to tell it that could help others. A warning, of sorts. And so over the last year, as ...
Back in the dark days of the pandemic, when the world was locked down and businesses were gasping for air, Labour’s quick thinking and economic management kept New Zealand afloat. Under Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson, the Wage Subsidy Scheme saved 1.7 million jobs, pumping billions into businesses to stop ...
When I was fifteen I discovered the joy of a free bar. All you had to do was say Bacardi and Coke, thanks to the guy in the white shirt and bow tie. I watched my cousin, all private school confidence, get the drinks in, and followed his lead. Another, ...
The Financial Times reported last week that China’s coast guard has declared China’s sovereignty over Sandy Cay, posting pictures of personnel holding a Chinese flag on a strip of sand. The landing apparently took place ...
You might not know this, but New Zealand’s at the bottom of the global league table for electric vehicle (EV) chargers, and the National government’s policies are ensuring we stay there, choking the life out of our clean energy transition.According to the International Energy Agency’s 2024 Global EV Outlook, we’ve ...
We need more than two Australians who are well-known in Washington. We do have two who are remarkably well-known, but they alone aren’t enough in a political scene that’s increasingly influenced by personal connections and ...
When National embarked on slash and burn cuts to the public service, Prime Minister Chris Luxon was clear that he expected frontline services to be protected. He lied: The government has scrapped part of a work programme designed to prevent people ending up in emergency housing because the social ...
When the Emissions Trading Scheme was originally introduced, way back in 2008, it included a generous transitional subsidy scheme, which saw "trade exposed" polluters given free carbon credits while they supposedly stopped polluting. That scheme was made more generous and effectively permanent under the Key National government, and while Labour ...
In the week of Australia’s 3 May election, ASPI will release Agenda for Change 2025: preparedness and resilience in an uncertain world, a report promoting public debate and understanding on issues of strategic importance to ...
The news of Virginia Giuffre’s untimely death has been a shock, especially for those still seeking justice for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Giuffre, a key figure in exposing Epstein’s depraved network and its ties to powerful figures like Prince Andrew, was reportedly struck by a bus in Australia. She then apparently ...
An official briefing to the Health Minister warns “demand for acute services has outstripped hospital capacity”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāThe key long stories short in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Monday, April 28 are: There’s a nationwide shortage of 500 hospital beds and 200,000 ...
We should have been thinking about the seabed, not so much the cables. When a Chinese research vessel was spotted near Australia’s southern coast in late March, opposition leader Peter Dutton warned the ship was ...
Now that the formalities of saying goodbye to Pope Francis are over, the process of selecting his successor can begin in earnest. Framing the choice in terms of “liberal v conservative” is somewhat misleading, given that all members of the College of Cardinals uphold the core Catholic doctrines – which ...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 20, 2025 thru Sat, April 26, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a ...
Let’s rip the shiny plastic wrapping off a festering truth: planned obsolescence is a deliberate scam, and governments worldwide, including New Zealand’s, are complicit in letting tech giants churn out disposable junk. From flimsy smartphones that croak after two years to laptops with glued-in batteries, the tech industry’s business model ...
When I first saw press photos of Mr Whorrall, an America PhD entomology student & researcher who had been living out a dream to finish out his studies in Auckland, my first impression, besides sadness, was how gentle he appeared.Press released the middle photo from Mr Whorrall’s Facebook pageBy all ...
It's definitely not a renters market in New Zealand, as reported by 1 News last night. In fact the housing crisis has metastasised into a full-blown catastrophe in 2025, and the National Party Government’s policies are pouring petrol on the flames. Renters are being crushed under skyrocketing costs, first-time buyers ...
Would I lie to you? (oh yeah)Would I lie to you honey? (oh, no, no no)Now would I say something that wasn't true?I'm asking you sugar, would I lie to you?Writer(s): David Allan Stewart, Annie Lennox.Opinions issue forth from car radios or the daily news…They demand a bluer National, with ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Do the 31,000 signatures of the OISM Petition Project invalidate the scientific consensus on climate change? Climatologists made up only 0.1% of signatories ...
In the 1980s and early 1990s when I wrote about Argentine and South American authoritarianism, I borrowed the phrase “cultura del miedo” (culture of fear) from Juan Corradi, Guillermo O’Donnell, Norberto Lechner and others to characterise the social anomaly that exists in a country ruled by a state terror regime ...
In the week of Australia’s 3 May election, ASPI will release Agenda for Change 2025: preparedness and resilience in an uncertain world, a report promoting public debate and understanding on issues of strategic importance to ...
Chris Bishop has unveiled plans for new roads in Tauranga, Auckland and Northland that will cost up to a combined $10 billion. Photo: Lynn GrievesonLong stories short from Aotearoa political economy around housing, poverty and climate in the week to Saturday, April 26:Chris Bishop ploughed ahead this week with spending ...
Unless you've been living under a rock, you would have noticed that New Zealand’s government, under the guise of economic stewardship, is tightening the screws on its citizens, and using debt as a tool of control. This isn’t just a conspiracy theory whispered in pub corners...it’s backed by hard data ...
The budget runup is far from easy.Budget 2025 day is Thursday 22 May. About a month earlier in a normal year, the macroeconomic forecasts would be completed (the fiscal ones would still be tidying up) and the main policy decisions would have been made (but there would still be a ...
On 25 April 2021, I published an internal all-staff Anzac Day message. I did so as the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for Australia’s civil defence, and its resilience in ...
You’ve likely noticed that the disgraced blogger of Whale Oil Beef Hooked infamy, Cameron Slater, is still slithering around the internet, peddling his bile on a shiny new blogsite calling itself The Good Oil. If you thought bankruptcy, defamation rulings, and a near-fatal health scare would teach this idiot a ...
The Atlas Network, a sprawling web of libertarian think tanks funded by fossil fuel barons and corporate elites, has sunk its claws into New Zealand’s political landscape. At the forefront of this insidious influence is David Seymour, the ACT Party leader, whose ties to Atlas run deep.With the National Party’s ...
Nicola Willis, National’s supposed Finance Minister, has delivered another policy failure with the Family Boost scheme, a childcare rebate that was big on promises but has been very small on delivery. Only 56,000 families have signed up, a far cry from the 130,000 Willis personally championed in National’s campaign. This ...
This article was first published on 7 February 2025. In January, I crossed the milestone of 24 years of service in two militaries—the British and Australian armies. It is fair to say that I am ...
He shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.Age shall not weary him, nor the years condemn.At the going down of the sun and in the morningI will remember him.My mate Keith died yesterday, peacefully in the early hours. My dear friend in Rotorua, whom I’ve been ...
The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the week’s news with regular and special guests, including: on news New Zealand abstained from a vote on a global shipping levy on climate emissions and downgraded the importance ...
Hi,In case you missed it, New Zealand icon Lorde has a new single out. It’s called “What Was That”, and has a very low key music video that was filmed around her impromptu performance in New York’s Washington Square Park. When police shut down the initial popup, one of my ...
A strategy of denial is now the cornerstone concept for Australia’s National Defence Strategy. The term’s use as an overarching guide to defence policy, however, has led to some confusion on what it actually means ...
Photo by Beth Macdonald on UnsplashKia oraCome and join us for our weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat with myself, and regular guests climate correspondent and on climate ...
The IMF’s twice-yearly World Economic Outlook and Fiscal Monitor publications have come out in the last couple of days. If there is gloom in the GDP numbers (eg this chart for the advanced countries, and we don’t score a lot better on the comparable one for the 2019 to ...
For a while, it looked like the government had unfucked the ETS, at least insofar as unit settings were concerned. They had to be forced into it by a court case, but at least it got done, and when National came to power, it learned the lesson (and then fucked ...
The argument over US officials’ misuse of secure but non-governmental messaging platform Signal falls into two camps. Either it is a gross error that undermines national security, or it is a bit of a blunder ...
Cost of living ~1/3 of Kiwis needed help with food as cost of living pressures continue to increase - turning to friends, family, food banks or Work and Income in the past year, to find food. 40% of Kiwis also said they felt schemes offered little or no benefit, according ...
Hi,Perhaps in 2025 it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the CEO and owner of Voyager Internet — the major sponsor of the New Zealand Media Awards — has taken to sharing a variety of Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to his 1.2 million followers.This included sharing a post from ...
In the sprint to deepen Australia-India defence cooperation, navy links have shot ahead of ties between the two countries’ air forces and armies. That’s largely a good thing: maritime security is at the heart of ...
Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Broadcasting, Tākuta Ferris, and MP for Tāmaki Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, are demanding the Government significantly increase its investment in Whakaata Māori in Budget 2025. The call comes following the release of the network’s 2025 Social Value Report at an event today, attended by MP ...
The National Party’s announcement to reinstate a total ban on prisoner voting is a shameful step backwards. Denying the right to vote does not strengthen society — it weakens our democracy and breaches Te Tiriti o Waitangi. “Voting is not a privilege to be taken away — it is a ...
Nicola Willis announced that funding for almost every Government department will be frozen in this year’s budget, costing jobs, making access to public services harder, and fuelling an exodus of nurses, teachers, and other public servants. ...
The Government’s Budget looks set to usher in a new age of austerity. This morning, Minister of Finance Nicola Willis said new spending would be limited to $1.4 billion, cut back from the original intended $2.4 billion, which itself was already $100 million below what Treasury said was needed to ...
Right‑wing ministers are waging a campaign to erase Māori health equity by tearing out its very foundations. ACT’s Todd Stephenson dismisses Treaty‑based nursing standards as “off‑track distractions” and insists nurses only need “skill and a kind heart,” despite clear evidence that cultural competence saves lives. Health Minister Simeon Brown’s funding cuts, hiring ...
The Green Party has renewed its call for the Government to ban the use, supply, and manufacture of engineered stone products, as the CTU launches a petition for the implementation of a full ban. ...
Te Pāti Māori are appalled by Cabinet's decision to agree to 15 recommendations to the Early Childhood Education (ECE) sector following the regulatory review by the Ministry of Regulation. We emphasise the need to prioritise tamariki Māori in Early Childhood Education, conducted by education experts- not economists. “Our mokopuna deserve ...
The Government must support Northland hapū who have resorted to rakes and buckets to try to control a devastating invasive seaweed that threatens the local economy and environment. ...
New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s Bill that would ensure the biological definition of a woman and man are defined in law. “This is not about being anti-anyone or anti-anything. This is about ensuring we as a country focus on the facts of biology and protect the ...
After stonewalling requests for information on boot camps, the Government has now offered up a blog post right before Easter weekend rather than provide clarity on the pilot. ...
More people could be harmed if Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey does not guarantee to protect patients and workers as the Police withdraw from supporting mental health call outs. ...
The Green Party recognises the extension of visa allowances for our Pacific whānau as a step in the right direction but continues to call for a Pacific Visa Waiver. ...
The Government yesterday released its annual child poverty statistics, and by its own admission, more tamariki across Aotearoa are now living in material hardship. ...
Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. – SPECIAL REPORT: By Michelle Fahy The Australian counter-drone weapons system seen at a weapons demonstration in Israel recently is actually just one of a few that were sold by the Canberra-based company Electro Optic Systems (EOS) and sent through its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra It used to be de rigueur for the prime minister and opposition leader to turn up to the National Press Club in the final week of the election campaign. But now Liberal leaders are not ...
Broadcasting Standards Authority New Zealand’s Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has upheld complaints about two 1News reports relating to violence around a football match in Amsterdam between local team Ajax and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv. The authority found an item on “antisemitic violence” surrounding the match, and another on heightened security ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ang Li, ARC DECRA and Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne Across Australia, communities are grappling with climate disasters that are striking more frequently and with ...
Opposition MPs say the government's plan to remove voting rights for prisoners is "ridiculous", but it has been welcomed by the Sensible Sentencing Trust. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Cornell, Research Fellow, Flinders University shutterstockbeeboys/Shutterstock It would be impossible at this stage in the election campaign to be unaware that housing is a critical, potentially vote-changing, issue. But the suite of policies being proposed by the major parties largely ...
Unless your workplace is already utopia – and we haven’t come across one yet – there is a good reason for all union members to come to this hui. Union members and delegates from many different unions and workplaces have told us why they and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra Daria Nipot/Shutterstock Australia’s headline inflation rate held steady at a four-year low of 2.4% in the March quarter, according to official data, adding to the case for ...
Our targets aren’t ambitious enough. Supported by seven independent experts, we’re arguing that the targets are not aligned with what’s required to limit warming to 1.5°C, and the Commission didn’t carry out its analysis in the way the law ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Micah Boerma, Researcher, School of Psychology and Wellbeing, University of Southern Queensland Nitinai Thabthong/Shutterstock One of the highlights of the school year is an overnight excursion or school camp. These can happen as early as Year 3. While many ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Edwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University SvetlanaVV/Shutterstock Something tells me US president Donald Trump would love to be a Roman emperor. The mythology of unrestrained power with sycophants doing his bidding would be seductive. But in fact, ...
It is an unjustifiable limit on the electoral rights of New Zealand citizens that will disproportionately harm Māori, writes law lecturer Carwyn Jones.The government has announced that it intends to resurrect the ill-conceived, Bill of Rights-breaching blanket ban on prisoner voting. This policy was previously implemented by a law ...
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on April 30, 2025. Locked up for life? Unpacking South Australia’s new child sex crime lawsSource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xanthe Mallett, Criminologist, CQUniversity Australia Melnikov Dmitriy/Shutterstock It’s election time, which means the age old ...
“The promise was for this to be revenue neutral, to reduce congestion and improve efficiency. But if the funds can be spent elsewhere, we’ll call it what it is—another tax.” ...
With just a few days to polls-time, Ben McKay joins Toby Manhire to chat about the Albo v Dutto denouement. This Saturday Aussies will (compulsorily) head to the polls. At the start of the year, Labor under Anthony Albanese was staring down the barrel of defeat and the first one-term ...
Palestinians do not have the luxury to allow Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small, but important, step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed, writes Dr Ilan PappéANALYSIS:By Ilan Pappé Responses in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Collins, Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle Loquellano/Pexels Did you start 2025 with a promise to eat better but didn’t quite get there? Or maybe you want to branch out from making the same meal every week ...
“New Zealand is now running the worst primary deficit of any advanced economy. Net core Crown debt has exploded from $59 billion in 2017 to a projected $192 billion this year.” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert G. Patman, Professor of International Relations, University of Otago GettyImagesGetty Images Is it possible to reconcile increased international support for Ukraine with Donald Trump’s plan to end the war? At their recent meeting in London, Christopher Luxon and his British ...
John Campbell’s new TVNZ+ docuseries is a gripping and unsettling look at how Destiny Church has amassed money and power – and why its growing aggression should alarm us all.As I sat down for dinner with my fiancée last Friday night, we faced the age-old question of deciding what ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: Graci Kim, author of new middle grade novel, Dreamslinger.On 7 April Graci Kim announced on her social media channels that she wasn’t going to be touring the ...
Access Community Health support workers will strike from 12-2pm on Thursday, 1 May - International Workers’ Day - the same day as senior doctors and Auckland City Hospital’s perioperative nurses will also walk off the job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monica Gagliano, Research Associate Professor in Evolutionary Biology, Southern Cross University Zenit Arti Audiovisive Earth’s cycles of light and dark profoundly affect billions of organisms. Events such as solar eclipses are known to bring about marked shifts in animals, but do ...
By Reza Azam Greenpeace has condemned an announcement by The Metals Company to submit the first application to commercially mine the seabed. “The first application to commercially mine the seabed will be remembered as an act of total disregard for international law and scientific consensus,” said Greenpeace International senior campaigner ...
No good thing ever lasts and this week, the Samoan call was lost to the corporate world forever. Everybody’s heard a cheehoo before. Certainly if you’ve ever been in the vicinity of two or more Samoans, you’ll have heard one whether you wanted to or not. It soundtracks every sports ...
The largest iwi in Aotearoa has yet to settle its Treaty claim. As debate continues, Pene Dalton makes the case for clarity and courage. And settlement. Ngāpuhi is the largest iwi in Aotearoa, with over 180,000 people connected by whakapapa – and our population is growing. That growth brings pride ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Clune, Honorary Associate, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney While many Australians have already voted at pre-poll stations and by post, the politicking continues right up until May 3. So what’s happened across the country over the past five weeks? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Briony Hill, Deputy Head, Health and Social Care Unit and Senior Research Fellow, Monash University Kate Cashin Photography According to a study from the United States, women experience weight stigma in maternity care at almost every visit. We expect this experience ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magnus Söderberg, Professor & Director, Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research, Griffith University Christie Cooper/Shutterstock In an otherwise unremarkable election campaign, the major parties are promising sharply different energy blueprints for Australia. Labor is pitching a high-renewables future powered ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paula McDonald, Professor of Work and Organisation, Queensland University of Technology Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock US President Donald Trump declared earlier this year he would forge a “colour blind and merit-based society”. His executive order was part of a broader policy directing the US ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Garrow, Editorial Web Developer This federal election, both major parties have offered a “grab bag” of policy fixes for Australia’s stubborn housing affordability crisis. But there are still two big policy elephants in the room, which neither side wants to touch. ...
Why are we working so hard? 
Completed reads for April: The Gospel of Thomas, by Didymus Jude Thomas The Gospel of Mary (fragmentary) The Gospel of Judas The Infancy Gospel of James The Gospel of Peter The Stranger’s Book (fragmentary) Obviously a very quiet month in terms of reading. In fairness, real life and ...5 hours ago
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler As readers of this Substack will know, I've been increasingly concerned about the destruction of one of America’s greatest competitive advantages: our university research system. Recently, the Trump administration announced that they were going to cut university overhead rates to ...10 hours ago
Indonesia’s low-key rejection of reported Russian interest in military basing in Papua says more than it appears to. While Jakarta’s response was measured, it was deliberate—a calculated expression of Indonesia’s foreign policy doctrine of non-alignment, ...11 hours ago
Back in 2018, Aotearoa was in the midst of the Operation Burnham inquiry. During this, it emerged that key evidence was subject to a US veto under an obscure and secret treaty. Part of the Five Eyes arrangement, this treaty was referred to by a number of different names in ...16 hours ago
I hate to sound the alarm, but New Zealand’s economy is teetering on the edge, and Finance Minister Nicola Willis is wielding her austerity axe with a reckless abandon that could plunge us into a prolonged recession. The 2025 Budget, with its brutal $1.1 billion reduction in baseline spending, is ...17 hours ago
Crime Pays for the PoliticiansThis morning, Paul Goldsmith, the Minister who wants Te Reo Maori scrubbed, announced that prisoners who are serving terms of less than 3 years be barred from voting. From left, Police Minister Mark Mitchell, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith & Mental Health Minister Matt DooceyNZ’s Electoral Review ...17 hours ago
Well, I can't see and I can't hearThey've burnt out all the feelingsAnd I never been so crazy, and it's just my second yearFour walls, wash basinFour walls, wash basinFour walls, wash basin, prison bedSongwriter: Don Walker.The coalition parties are mulling the austerity budget they will soon put to the ...17 hours ago
Trump Kills A Sure-Thing In Canada, the Conservatives fell from a 21 point lead a few months ago to a decisive loss yesterday. The Canadian Liberals are ~ 2 to 3 seats short of a majority, which means PM Mark Carney but will still need to work through opposition parties ...18 hours ago
I spoke last night with Simplicity Chief Economist and Head of Policy about the Government's latest budget policy tightening, the risks for infrastructure investment and a potential dampening of GDP growth.He points out that the Government has cut capital expenditure so far in the current financial year, rather than ...20 hours ago
Briefly this morning: Nicola Willis rules out charities tax or any tax hike to reduce budget deficit. She’s focused instead on spending cuts. There are 1,000 at-risk kids without a social worker, NZ Herald reports.Housing shortages are a factor in high-risk sex offenders being put out early into uncontrolled community ...21 hours ago
Truly, these are tough times for our nation’s leaders. In future, how on earth are they going to find the sort of money they’ve been happy to throw at landlords, tobacco companies, and wealthier New Zealanders ever since they got elected? On Defence, how are they going to find those ...1 day ago
A couple of months ago now I wrote a post about the new set of discount rates government agencies are supposed to use in undertaking cost-benefit analysis, whether for new spending projects or for regulatory initiatives. The new, radically altered, framework had come into effect from 1 October last year, ...1 day ago
Nicola Willis continues to compare the economy to a household needing to tighten its belt to survive. Photo: Getty Images The key long stories short in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, April 29 are: Nicola Willis today announced a cut in the Government’s new spending ...2 days ago
Perfect by natureIcons of self indulgenceJust what we all needMore lies about a world thatNever was and never will beHave you no shame don't you see meYou know you've got everybody fooledSongwriters: Amy Lee / Ben Moody / David Hodges.“Vote National”, they said. The economic managers par excellence who will ...2 days ago
The Big Six at 6am on Tuesday, April 29Politics news by NZ Herald: Tory Whanau exits Wellington mayoral race, reveals why she's not running again & RNZ: Tory Whanau quits Wellington mayoral raceHealth news scoop by Marc Daalder for Newsroom Pro-$: Weekly data reveals scale of Govt’s waiting list crisis.’ ...2 days ago
When I was fifteen I discovered the joy of a free bar. All you had to do was say Bacardi and Coke, thanks to the guy in the white shirt and bow tie. I watched my cousin, all private school confidence, get the drinks in, and followed his lead. Another, ...2 days ago
Australia Shows The WayAustralian media and their investigative journalists have published two articles on the Atlas Network’s modus operandi in recent weeks:‘Copied the MAGA model’: The ‘grassroots’ lobby group funded by some of Australia’s richestHow Atlas Network amassed a global network of free market think tanks and reached into Australia ...3 days ago
An official briefing to the Health Minister warns “demand for acute services has outstripped hospital capacity”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāThe key long stories short in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Monday, April 28 are: There’s a nationwide shortage of 500 hospital beds and 200,000 ...3 days ago
When I first saw press photos of Mr Whorrall, an America PhD entomology student & researcher who had been living out a dream to finish out his studies in Auckland, my first impression, besides sadness, was how gentle he appeared.Press released the middle photo from Mr Whorrall’s Facebook pageBy all ...4 days ago
Would I lie to you? (oh yeah)Would I lie to you honey? (oh, no, no no)Now would I say something that wasn't true?I'm asking you sugar, would I lie to you?Writer(s): David Allan Stewart, Annie Lennox.Opinions issue forth from car radios or the daily news…They demand a bluer National, with ...4 days ago
In the 1980s and early 1990s when I wrote about Argentine and South American authoritarianism, I borrowed the phrase “cultura del miedo” (culture of fear) from Juan Corradi, Guillermo O’Donnell, Norberto Lechner and others to characterise the social anomaly that exists in a country ruled by a state terror regime ...4 days ago
Chris Bishop has unveiled plans for new roads in Tauranga, Auckland and Northland that will cost up to a combined $10 billion. Photo: Lynn GrievesonLong stories short from Aotearoa political economy around housing, poverty and climate in the week to Saturday, April 26:Chris Bishop ploughed ahead this week with spending ...5 days ago
The budget runup is far from easy.Budget 2025 day is Thursday 22 May. About a month earlier in a normal year, the macroeconomic forecasts would be completed (the fiscal ones would still be tidying up) and the main policy decisions would have been made (but there would still be a ...5 days ago
He shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.Age shall not weary him, nor the years condemn.At the going down of the sun and in the morningI will remember him.My mate Keith died yesterday, peacefully in the early hours. My dear friend in Rotorua, whom I’ve been ...6 days ago
Hi,In case you missed it, New Zealand icon Lorde has a new single out. It’s called “What Was That”, and has a very low key music video that was filmed around her impromptu performance in New York’s Washington Square Park. When police shut down the initial popup, one of my ...6 days ago
Photo by Beth Macdonald on UnsplashKia oraCome and join us for our weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat with myself, and regular guests climate correspondent and on climate ...6 days ago
Cost of living ~1/3 of Kiwis needed help with food as cost of living pressures continue to increase - turning to friends, family, food banks or Work and Income in the past year, to find food. 40% of Kiwis also said they felt schemes offered little or no benefit, according ...7 days ago
Hi,Perhaps in 2025 it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the CEO and owner of Voyager Internet — the major sponsor of the New Zealand Media Awards — has taken to sharing a variety of Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to his 1.2 million followers.This included sharing a post from ...7 days ago
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Good gravy Mr Savage why are you making us think so hard on a Sunday?
Go out and get 18 holes under your belt.
I’m no longer confident “labour” is a useful lens for policy formation, since we are now so de-unionised and deregulated it’s really hard to see how big change is possible. Even inside 2 terms from 2017.
I’m as pessimistic that we will pull away from our addiction to real estate capitalism. Other than through the state essentially printing houses and grossly subsidizing them in one form or other.
We have to look to where policy is still possible. Otherwise tracking all these changes to automation etc is somewhat academic.
And after you’ve done 18 holes, crack open something cold and shut the freaking computer.
Im over in Oz and I tend to be an early riser. Best way to start the day is to browse the interweb and try and say something about what I found …
Only poor people need to work in jobs. Jobs produce profit for shareholders etc. If there are not enough poor people, then there’s a danger the whole profitable market shebang and the culture that underpins it, falls over or fades away.
So find ways to keep enough people poor and engaged.
Fashion…inbuilt obsolescence…speculation to put necessary stuff (like houses for us or food for many in other countries), financially, just out of reach.
Maybe unnecessarily privatise health and other stuff like education – just so that people need to earn a crust to avoid potentially unpleasant consequences (and cream the profit).
Invent nonsense jobs like human resources management positions and cake layer in a pile of lower/middle management positions anywhere and everywhere you can (and cream the profit).
Keep the culture of ‘job as source of dignity’ ticking along nicely and keep creaming that profit.
I’ve thrown this example often, but it bears repeating. 15 people with secure material well-being, successfully paying off 18 mortgages, putting substantial savings aside and all from working on average 8 hours per week each in remunerative activity. That was an actual existing reality and there is absolutely no reason why that can’t be a reality for everyone (assuming we’re stupid enough to want to preserve the nonsense that’s the market economy).
Why 18 mortgages? Are three of the 15 aspirational for a weekend bach? That could be afforded under the old system too and how we enjoyed those baches in the hols.
Sorry greywarshark, that should have read 18 houses – not 18 mortgages. Collective ownership model (housing collective) tied to a worker’s collective that operated from the same location.
Invent nonsense jobs like human resources management positions and cake layer in a pile of lower/middle management positions anywhere and everywhere you can (and cream the profit). I’ve thought about that before. Just as middle class people in third world countries often have vague roles within the military, our lot have similarly vague roles within the corporate structure. In both cases the roles are often as much social positions as jobs, and help to maintain a sufficient number whose interests are tied to those of the regime.
And make getting a benefit dependent on employment that doesn’t exist. I guess that’s what our current Labour party means when they say they’re the party for the workers. Dickheads.
Of course we could go back to a more ‘socialist’ times. I recall working for a govt department (infrastructure) in the 70s and always said the place could easily run on half the staff. The pay was modest, not much above minimum wages at the time, but work conditions great, good training, safe, secure, good friends, holidays, sick time etc. We wouldn’t become rich, but it was good times and well run, be it somewhat overstaffed, but better perhaps than having more on the dole. Then came rogernomics and ruth richardson eras. Efficiency and cost cutting the name of the game.
I see the numbers working in my old infrastructure job now only a tiny fraction what it was. Everything is run down, much outsourced to lowest tender, less safe, zero training, minimal security, every hour accountable. Most are now hating their jobs but with few real options to improve. They’re told they are lucky to have a job.
Now we’re older, I see that perhaps that slightly ‘less efficient’ 70s govt run workplace really had merits. At least people were employed, safe, well trained and had a purpose. Today, those same people are working longer for similar wages, little security. Disposable. There only for the rich offshore shareholders to extract that last ounce of profit. Not the bold promises new technology was supposed to provide.
I suspect the efficiencies means more for the company owners and shareholders, less for the rest of us. Soon, we’ll follow the US and Russia into more an oligarchy state where we, the workers, are but like serfs as in England of old. At least they knew who their real ‘masters’ were. Still poor working conditions and wages, but the expectations were at least clear.
Let’s hope my grandchildren or their children, do better but suspect it may mean the pitchforks coming out first, as it has before.
NZ is worse off now that we have sold off Telecom (formerly Post Office), Electricorp (formerly Ministry of Energy), BNZ, and the Ministry of Works.
The sales were a pointless exercise in neoliberal ideology. Having artificially fragmented our tiny markets for these essential services hasn’t caused efficiencies, it has allowed private interests to siphon vast profits from taxpayers. What a f*cking rort.
The sales were a pointless exercise in neoliberal ideology.
And more than that, they were theft from the commons. Transfer of wealth from the public to a tiny percentage of the private.
(And Labour still won’t commit to a programme of recovery, or re-nationisation. Unfortunately once the TPP is enacted it will all be academic as the TPP will render any nationalisation impossible due to threat of legal action.)
Good point, the TPP will make the rogernomics theft practically irreversible.
TPPA = privatisation of NZ sovereignty.
I remember what it was like dealing with the NZ Post Office for telecommunications services and I’d rather shoot myself than go back.
Pretty sure that Telecom, before the govt sold it, had changed a lot and was pushing forward with major upgrades in services and how it ran the various businesses (that also was before the govt fucked up the infrastructure ownership). Can’t really compare pre-80s telcos with current ones, the technology and culture means the industries are completely different from each other.
Now, if you’d compared NZPost back then and NZPost now, I’d have to say NZPost now is a company on a mission to be sold off. It operates as if it really doesn’t want customers, they’re an annoyance that have to be fitted into the business model. Which takes us back to the original comment. We could run core services as actual services, rather than as profit-generating businesses that see service as an expendable variable.
hi detrie,
well said.
i hear what you are saying, i would add that one of the many intangibles from the 70s organization you described is; the off spring of those ‘underemployed’ workers seeing their parent(s) going off to work.
quietly i want to add, bring on the pitchforks.
A very thought provoking read.
I filled out Labour’s Future of Work Commission survey. It was a very odd survey and like many of the kind they had a lot of bias in areas and sadly I do not feel that it will produce any meaningful incites for Labour.
Good post though and I really think that is a very important question – why are people working harder than before and making it difficult to make ends meet?
Personally I think it is neoliberalism and globalism.
The ‘trickle down’ has not happened. Instead the obsene profits are used to reward the executives at the top and shareholders. Workers are told they are lucky to have a job, let alone being given a rise to keep place with the cost of living.
Immigration is used to keep a steady supply of competition and low wage work force. Social welfare is cut so that that option is not viable for most. Jobs are now not able to cover peoples expenses. It is happening all over the world. Here is a good article from the USA>
“Welcome to the “1099 economy”: The only things being shared are the scraps our corporations leave behind
Companies can hire and fire perma-lancers at will. Is it any wonder the middle class is vanishing before our eyes?”
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/29/the_sharing_economy_partner/
the capitalist class need people to work harder than before, for less than before, in order to maximise the economic surplus that they can skim off.
Old fashioned Marxian economic analysis makes the answer obvious and simple to understand.
Productivity has increased hugely in the last 30 years but real wages have remained static. That is due to a) regressive taxation favouring capital over labour b) unfair labour laws c) a culture of corporate excess at the executive level d) the growth of easy credit and consequent debt burdens e) transnational corps leading to a race to the bottom of the labour market
It’s called class war, but that’s not acceptable in polite company.
Hey Mickey looks like your namesake has just written an excellent book on this topic 😀
Mike Savage: Social Class in the 21st Century
“we opted for bigger houses with more gadgets, which we replace more often”
This line of thinking blames the working class for problems created by the marketing idustry and companies obsessed with shortterm profit which can only be ensured by making crap which breaks down/artificial demand for the latest newest “upgrade”.
Built in obsolescence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Another documentary for those who still have some holiday time on their hands:
The Lightbulb Conspiracy. Which IIRC has an interesting item on printers having a machine code page count, which when it reaches 18,000 pages stops the printer from working.
What is a “printer”?
With house prices escalating as they have over recent decades – those who can scrape up enough cash for a deposit would be “foolish” not to buy. The mathematics of the investment seem speak for themselves. Either they continue to pay rent (and in doing so help pay off some one elses mortgage, or they bite the bullet and pay off their own with the expectation that should they sell in the future the price of the house will have increased sufficiently to cover the outstanding mortgage and their equity will have increased.
Of course this plays into the trading banks hands very well. They have been given the license to create almost as much money as they want and to reap rewards accordingly. With the acquisition of a huge sum of credit and the so-called “security’, in the form of a house, the price of which, one hopes, continues to appreciate, one is now able to extend that credit to purchase more goods – cars, the latest TV, throw away the old gizmo and buy a new one, (why not two!) and so on. The first problem with all this is one has to somehow or other pay for it – eventually. So “I owe I owe – so off to work I go!
The second problem is that with a growing world population and working population the competition for paying employment is increasing – And that has a direct effect on just how much one can demand in the way of renumeration – along with the apparent ever increasing price of housing largely forced up by the banks making money so readily available.
We need to rethink our whole economy and finance system and that is a world wide problem. The only other result will be a world wide crash of immense proportions similar to the great depression.
As the investment banker interviewed here says “If there is one rule in the city – you can’t make money out of nothing – except just this once we think we might!”
Have to agree with you Macro we need to rethink the finance system. First agasint the wall should be the the out of control derivatives market. The following graphic is a good illustration as to how f’d up things have become…
http://money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization/
Re Richard Christie 3.1.1
This stealing/transfer from the commons comes to my mind so often when i hear the latest exploits from the Nasties and sometimes from Labour. The removal of crofters from Sutherland in Scotland because sheep and wool were the new gold rush saw small uneconomic units in crofts emptied of people and amalgamated. That drove many Scots to emigrate. The conditions and attitudes they fled from are being exhibited here.
The conditions that workers came here to avoid are creeping into our lives, and will continue all the way to great tragedy unless NZ people rise and get a Charter as they did in Britain with a statement of what they need for life to be livable. There was a swell of opinion in Britain when the Tolpuddle Martyrs who started a southern agricultural labourers union were sent as convicts to Australia, such that great sums of money and pressure was raised to have them returned. And more was available to buy the tenancy of a farm to give them the living the Chartists and wellwishers felt they deserved. The landed class continued to distrust and isolate them though.
How many wellwishers do we have in NZ towards our fellows? They are in their thousands, but what number thousand? They will have to declare their care, come forward and work together for betterment. Labour supporters have lost power over their leaders, who are stuck with superglue. But those supporting Labour themselves need support, as they have the vital numbers to do something.
I’m thinking that political thinkers of the left variety have to prop up Labour, and at the same time get alternatives going. Get behind a group of left thinking parties that will coalesce and work together for the good of the country and not just for their own particular sector of progressive policy, dissing all others. I think we have to accept that Labour will never live up to its name again, and will be at the margins of needed activity and policy. But if that is accepted, then if my premise is right, we need to not criticise much. Criticising when you want and expect improvement as a result is reasonable, but when that can’t be gained, then just helping them through their hoops would be the best move. Creating controversy for the Nasties to inflate is self-defeating.
If the Greens don’t fire you, adopt another NZ-thinking party, don’t waste time on single issue stuff. If we can get a left coalition in then we can get some things done which the people want, including medical marijuana and working conditions and hours, and trains that run, and some kindness and understanding to one another while we budget wisely where we can get the most bang for our buck, which will cut down on some of the authoritarian memes that are madly continued, like more people in prison etc. And always remembering that we have the USA, UK, and other life-denying cultures ready to use us for their scientific experiments, thinking Monsanto, Chinese eugenic plans.
100% grey, go to the top of the class.
Review of Linebaugh’s “Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance” …
To; MickySavage
You have put together a fine Article.
As can be expected, the clods of the Right will do whatever they can to write your piece off as mere junk mail.
However, the smug Greens that run this Standard Org Blog (by sheltering under the long history and very creditable success of Labour, including Clarke and Cullen) will continue to slag off the Labour Party as less than excrement.
One of your commentators refers to Labour as dickheads. It is not just a case of Why are We Working so Hard? Why are we saddled with the Greens so filthy and so depressive? No wonder they gather so few harmless followers.
They are the great depressives in politics . Nothing to offer anyone but abuse.
I hope your Article is widely read Micky Savage. A pity your fellow Greens won’t disseminate it widely.
Observer I am a proud member of the labour party! This is why I pushed the future of employment stuff because the party are on the right track in relation to this. But some of my best friends are green and the left has always had a loud passionate and somewhat tortured reltationshib between the different groupings.
To: MickySavage
For mine Micky, you are an excellent writer. Your content is superb too. How on earth you contribute so much amazes me.
I apologise for not knowing you are a member of the Labour Party. Your constructive approach to important issues should have alerted me.
You are doing a powerful task !
😀
Further to my thoughts on Labour. Present Labour is like a wealthy old aunt who has an uncertain temper and a sarcastic tongue but when she needs you you help her out.
She is family and in the end there might be some good come out of it, she mighn’t leave all her money to the Cats Home.
And read Observer (Tokoroa) for an example of the stultified thinking about politics among many. It’s like reading something from the 1900s.
The NZ Labour Party is somewhat incoherant on this topic.
For instance: certain Senior Labour MPs still think that the retirement age needs to be raised, and that workers need to be made to work longer and harder into their greying, worn out years.
Even as there are far too few decent paying, secure jobs for young Kiwis.
It’s illogical. Labour’s incoherence, in my opinion, comes from a combination of a lack of future vision, and a lack of willingness to break new ground.
IMO what needs to happen: the 4 day 32 hour working week at $20/hr minimum wage needs to be made standard, and penalty rates reintroduced for anything over that.
A PM these days can’t just stand up and decree this is how it shall be.
How does a society transform to that scenario.?
What’s your road map?
The magnitude of the challenges being faced is growing by the day. As is the gap between what is needed and what is currently being thought about in the Thorndon Bubble. And yep you are quite right, there needs to be a deliberate and planned transition. A transition which is given political impetus by Kiwis who can imagine something other than National and Labour’s minor ineffectual tinkering with the status quo.
john key decreed a brighter future BM are you saying he wasn’t being truthfully
It’s a brighter future for NatCorp™, YanKey™©, and their clients
It is the trouble with globalisation, the multinationals will then scuttle off to the country that does not have a minimum wage so the production of their stuff is cheaper.
yes their plan is to have wages and standards throughout the western world converge on the lowest common denominator.
This strategy of theirs has been obvious for 20 or more years. Just look at NAFTA.
The ruling class, left and right, Republican and Democrat, National and Labour, are all supporters of globalisation and neoliberalism as an unchangeable fact of life.
That is why we hear so much about apparently, those in the BRICS countries are ‘so happy’ about their lot in life, and they are ‘greatful for what they have’, and that ‘we should learn a few things from them’.
The powers that be more or less want to drag living standards in the west down to the level of the BRICS countries – no labour standards, unions, welfare net, or even decent housing.
fwiw, i have just resigned from my job, cooking in a wonderful rural cafe.
i am nearly 50 and have known my employer since she was 6 (she is now 27), and am a close friend of her dad.
i am fortunate to have had a lovely 21 yr old Chef, and it has been satisfying to have been involved in her development in the last year.
i have struggled with the lack of unity within a very young, small workforce.
most of the empolyees look up to the boss, are a cousin or just don’t wanna rock a boat. btw the boss spent the last 6 months working in the outback of oz and hasn’t worked any shifts.
for the last 3 months we have been understaffed on the busy shifts (sat and sun) generally by one or two people.
i dont view the skipper as evil, money hungry or ‘corporate’ minded.
it just seems to be the way of the world.
the staff rise to the occasion, the public tolerate the wait time and the shift ends and the next one will start the next day.
anyhow, i’ve had enough, worked too hard, too often. i plan (after helping a friend to develop his cafe’s outdoor area- cob pizza oven, bbq etc) to go into early childhood education/childcare.
back to the bottom in terms of wages, but i’d rather be in the sandpit than do another gluten free french toast.
Probably a fairly typical NZ small business except for the absentee boss.
S/he seems to be losing interest. It happens. Might be an opportunity to go into a partnership if the cafe is still making $$$
hi ropata,
i think you are spot on in the losing interest.
it is doing good $.
funny you mention the partnership thing.
it has not ocurred to me before.
i have started, run and sold a hospo business in the past.
that has made me gunshy of doing it again, however…
i am dead keen on the idea of a worker run business.
just when i was comfortable with the idea of some relaxed wage slavery in childcare, you plant the seed of a potentially beautiful future.
thanks.
Good on ya 😇
The trend to longer working hours – and also working harder and faster – is now well-entrenched in capitalism. Since the end of the long postwar boom (late 1940s to early 1970s), there has been no new, sustained boom and theer is no sign of one emerging. So the prospect of us working less hours, particularly over our lifetime, is not anywhere in sight.
Moreover, the trend now is also to raise the retirement age.
Here are a few things on both these subjects, which folk might be interested in:
Whatever happened to the leisure society?: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/whatever-happened-to-the-leisure-society/
Pensions and the retirement age – the problem is capitalism, not an aging population: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/pensions-and-the-retirement-age-the-problem-is-capitalism-not-an-aging-population/
wow, great discussion, and Op.
Additionally, being productive is a negative in our current system, it becomes a cost, wait that’s crazy.
selling a house to an overseas buyer should expand the currency supply, as currency is only representative of value and not of value itself.
So new money into the system, expansion of supply introduced as debt at OCR, you could look at this as a tax, but a tax above the supply : expansion =100% with interest/tax of OCR above expansion, placed on top, crazy. Our debt grows inline with growth, the harder we work, the more we produce the worse the overall debt becomes, flawed system or by design?
The above is exactly the same for all school leavers entering the workforce, all new created value in the system, the government, even before the banks play their fractional reserve games have consigned the country to debt slavery.
The regulation of currency supply is based on GDP, but using a debt mechanism and banks to introduce the currency is as a debt is wrong,
I used to think the universal income crowd was crazy, (the money for nothing ideology, but change that slightly to invest and profit and here we are)
You could increase money supply via the tax system, and direct payment of government services, it’s all in place, credit citizens inline with GDP increases, instead of an ever increasing debt, you have an ever increasing wealth creation, you know, like an investment.
Economy increases, currency expanded as a dividend( not debt) citizens share in economic growth directly, then spend that money in the local economy creating a feedback loop, things only get better.
Maybe constraints on exports/imports, pretty much opposite of Globalization,
Treasury does not adjust OCR as a tool to control inflation as it was designed, seem to do the opposite, they need watching.