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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Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
Flag-bearing duties were shared between boxer David Nyika and Black Ferns Sevens captain Sarah Hirini in Tokyo three years ago. Triple Olympic medallist in boardsailing, Barbara Kendall was the first female flag bearer in Atlanta in 1996. Since 2004, the flagbearers have worn a kākahu (cloak) as they led ...
Why are we working so hard? 
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New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...17 hours ago
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...23 hours ago
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...1 day ago
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...1 day ago
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...1 day ago
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...1 day ago
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Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...1 day ago
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced $802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...1 day ago
Open access notables Could an extremely cold central European winter such as 1963 happen again despite climate change?, Sippel et al., Weather and Climate Dynamics: Here, we first show based on multiple attribution methods that a winter of similar circulation conditions to 1963 would still lead to an extreme seasonal ...2 days ago
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Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...2 days ago
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Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Care report in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...2 days ago
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...2 days ago
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...2 days ago
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...2 days ago
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...2 days ago
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry published its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...2 days ago
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...3 days ago
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...3 days ago
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...3 days ago
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...3 days ago
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive: Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...3 days ago
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloitte report for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...4 days ago
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...4 days ago
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’s Oliver LewisScoop: Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...4 days ago
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announced the Board of Te Whatu Ora- Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...4 days ago
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...4 days ago
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...5 days ago
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...5 days ago
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...5 days ago
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...5 days ago
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...5 days ago
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...5 days ago
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...5 days ago
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National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Order image, ...6 days ago
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...6 days ago
Hi,We’ll get to the horrific world of male diet influencers (AKA Beefy Boys) shortly, but first you will be glad to know that since I sent out the Webworm explaining why the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was not a false flag operation, I’ve heard from a load of people ...6 days ago
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...1 week ago
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...1 week ago
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...1 week ago
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...1 week ago
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...1 week ago
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...1 week ago
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...1 week ago
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...1 week ago
Waiting In The Wings: For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...1 week ago
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSA announced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...1 week ago
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...22 hours ago
The Government’s move to dilute child poverty targets is a reminder that it is actively choosing to preserve hardship for thousands of households. ...2 days ago
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...16 hours ago
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins says the coalition government is unfairly targeting Māori: "Each week they find new ways to keep Māori down." ...33 mins ago
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...6 hours ago
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...6 hours ago
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...13 hours ago
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...21 hours ago
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.