Throughout my time being active in politics, people have discussed the rise of Neo-Liberalism and the free market that occurred throughout much of the world from the late 1970s onwards. Yet few seem to really understand the reasons for this significant shift in economic policy at that time, which continues to shape our society today.
82-year old polymath Michael Hudson is my favourite economist. He currently lectures in China to million-strong audiences. His latest book is The Destiny of Civilisation: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism. His latest article is well worth a read.
Not content to stay in the North Atlantic, NATO is shortly about to reveal in Madrid its next ten-year plan to contain China. Jacinda Ardern will be there, who knows why. Are we nailing our colours to a flag at half-mast?
Jacinda Ardern said yesterday that everyone is over Covid. She is right. We all want this to end.
Chloe Swarbrick has requested that the government help Auckland central’s restaurants. But in a post Covid pre climate change world this is not going to help.
Labour are doing the things about the housing crisis they said they would. It’s not working.
In seven or eight days from now, the dutiful lackeys of the NZ government and the public health dept they direct, are set to come after every child in NZ between the ages of 5 and 12 with injections of m-RNA to hand.
New Zealand is seeing a strong, business-led recovery. But what will we do with this success?
A brief analysis of power.
ANZ Bank has just announced a $1.92 billion profit for the year to September 30, 2021. This is about 1% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.
In the coming months Fortress New Zealand will be dismantled. What will take its place?
Speaking of contagion, China is dealing with an outbreak of real estate market ebola.
Barry Soper and the Property Council are up in arms about proposals to ensure that all commercial tenants should only pay a fair proportion of their rental if their use of the premises has been affected by responses to the Covid pandemic.
New Zealand has one of the most concentrated and oligopolistic economies in the world, and also one of the least commercially protected societies. […]
UK billionaire Richard Branson has won the rich man’s pissing competition by being the first billionaire into space even though 12 months ago he was urgently seeking Government grants while at the same time paying no tax because of his tax residency status.
On Monday, RNZ reported that “Chinese Communist Party spies are infiltrating New Zealand universities”. Our guest poster views this thin and anecdotal ‘investigative’ reporting with deep suspicion. Was any of this activity was reported to the proper authorities. Or is it just the usual paranoia / racist dog-whistling or a paid story?
We need less presumed hold over Team New Zealand, and more encouragement of more spinoff businesses that make their way in the world.
Yesterday Minister of Labour Michael Wood led the announcement of a policy that conceivably could do more to address the decline in workers wages and conditions over the past 40 years than anything else tried recently.
The New Zealand government has just increased its loan to Air New Zealand to a $1.5 billion total, and there’s a catch.
Merchant Banker Troy Bowker has accused the Government of engaging in Socialist wealth redistribution ideology by not extending to landlords a state supported loan guarantee scheme and by implementing relatively modest wealth redistribution measures.
Did anyone notice Russia and China signing up to a treaty to form a common base on the moon?
The bright-line test is a red herring and does nothing to deter housing speculation.
Expecting a bit much aren’t you? We haven’t had that since Muldoon. At least he had them. The kind of people now asking for a plan were those who complained about governments that “interfered with the sacred ‘free market’” and screamed about “central planning”, “picking winners”, “protectionism” etc. They prefer just getting cheap labour to give the illusion of economic growth. And build a cycleway!
Senior business leaders have called for more openness and clarity from the Government on its plan for getting New Zealand to “COVID normal”. But have failed to say what they would do to contribute or what they are doing to help.
Foundational Capital and Growth Capital, and what we should be doing with both.
Are our main cities becoming too big for a single civic promenade, and is the multicellular world of mall dominance just the way things are developing?
The world has been watching, mostly with amusement, as some redditors have brought a Wall Street merchant bank to its knees, by buying stocks in a company, GameStop who has seen better days and whose business model is antiquated.
Without much fanfare, Minister Robertson has used 2020’s crisis to bury the historic scourge of monetarism and within it the excuses of the governments that used it as a pretext to sell off our key government income generators.
In yet another study academics at the London School of Economics have concluded that trickle down leads to higher income inequality but do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment.
During a week in which two Covid vaccines have been announced there is disturbing news coming out of Australia where a new more potent strain of the virus has appeared in South Australia.
This government must demonstrate that it has the ability to lead the New Zealand economy where it has stated it wants it to go. It does not want more headlines like the average house in Auckland now being priced at $1 million.
We need to get the Labour government to focus on decreasing inequality and poverty in all its forms and effects. The new government needs to show that Labour has changed the country for good. Otherwise there’s no reason to vote for them in 2023.
The 2020 election was more than just a victory for Labour and more than a crushing defeat for the National Party (New Zealand’s main centre-right political party). This result marks a significant watershed in New Zealand politics which will likely have implications long after this parliamentary term.
Everyone has recently had an education on “Socialism” working in practice.
And a graphic illustration of the shortcomings, of under regulated “Free market” Capitalism, Globalism, tax cuts for the rich, and the mania for monetising everything in sight, and “running it like a business”.
There used to be a mantra in New Zealand politics that National were always perceived to be better managers of the economy than Labour. Until now.
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