Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, April 12th, 2014 - 405 comments
There’s a lot of media attention on the negotiations between Mana & The Internet Party (TIP). Mana aims to link with some other parties. Some high profile people are scheduled to speak to Mana. Is Dotcom’s focus on his poor childhood genuine or a PR strategy? [Update#2: Sunday, NZ Herald – green light for negotiations]
Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, April 12th, 2014 - 28 comments
All inequality measures are not equal. The GINI Coefficient is widely used but it doesn’t show the impact of vast increases in inequality between the richest and poorest Kiwis; it doesn’t show increasing experiences of hardship: it can mask vast inequalities in wealth & asset ownership.
Written By: - Date published: 9:32 pm, April 9th, 2014 - 27 comments
The levels of hypocrisy of John Key and National are astounding. Nanny State, borrowing’s bad, too many public servants… all while doing far more of their supposed “crimes” than any government previously.
Written By: - Date published: 4:28 pm, April 9th, 2014 - 13 comments
Local bodies points out a couple more of the National government’s sad-sacks. For some strange (but obvious) reason a warmish market for milk powder doesn’t do much for NZ apart from destroying our environment. English’s taxcuts for his wealthy mates have destroyed the fiscal base of the government and done nothing to cause any investment in the productive and employable parts of our economy. Tim Groser has also made an artform of making NZ worse off.
Written By: - Date published: 3:55 pm, April 9th, 2014 - 11 comments
When looking at Simon Bridges – a purported government minister. You have to remember that he is damn sloppy even for a politician. But oh so typical of his usual muppet behaviour is that he wasn’t aware that he was opening up our biggest forest park for oil and gas exploration. Of course it could just be National’s bulldoze anything for a little immediate profit….
Written By: - Date published: 7:36 pm, April 8th, 2014 - 46 comments
The 18th of September 2014 is a big day.
On that day, people living in Scotland will decide if they want to become citizens in a nation that will have reclaimed its sovereignty.
Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, April 8th, 2014 - 210 comments
Today’s NZ Herald editorial joins Paula Bennett’s beneficiary-bashing stunt, asking for flying privileges to be cut, & denying there is a lot of poverty in NZ- a view from the privileged part of NZ’s inequality gap.
Written By: - Date published: 9:46 am, April 7th, 2014 - 15 comments
Images from today’s mainstream media news: tales of class, crime, drugs, disasters…… and jet-setting beneficiaries.
Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, April 7th, 2014 - 24 comments
Gamble Big’ rather than ‘Think Big’ should be this National Government’s mantra.Opening up huge areas of our land and territorial waters for open slather oil and gas exploration is a gamble on so many levels. When many countries like Denmark are actively chasing a sustainable, clean energy future, this government is throwing all its hopes on a big strike of fossil fuel.
Written By: - Date published: 8:56 am, April 6th, 2014 - 83 comments
Auckland Against Poverty protest the Young Nats Ball and Paula Bennett’s war on the poor. Steven Joyce is cynical about the polls. A Stuff poll shows everything that is wrong with the media’s poll beat ups.
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, April 4th, 2014 - 53 comments
Mana Party candidate Annette Sykes has been developing an effective organisation in her electorate. Her speech at the TPPA rally laid out its threats to livelihoods in the Bay of Plenty. Her views on the Internet Party will be listened to when discussed by the Mana Party.
Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, April 3rd, 2014 - 22 comments
All of us, in our diversity, can make a big impact this election year. Time to end the “neoliberal” tyranny! Crime stats are celebrated masking the continuing impact of income & social inequalities. Rogernomics fractured gender politics & rape crisis intiatives.
Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, April 3rd, 2014 - 40 comments
Two days after the IPCC has warned us of the threat posed by climate change and Simon Bridges has announced a huge block offer of parts of New Zealand and much of its territorial water. This will include the pristine waters off Auckland’s west coast, home of Maui’s dolphin. In a world that has to address its consumption of petroleum you have to question if it is worth the risk.
Written By: - Date published: 6:56 am, April 3rd, 2014 - 33 comments
A government is carrying out a crash-program of privatization without a mandate. It is desperate to sell, so it sets the price of the shares artificially low, and loses $1.5 billion in a single day. No, this isn’t New Zealand (yet) – its the UK:
Written By: - Date published: 6:24 am, April 3rd, 2014 - 52 comments
When so-called iwi leaders condemn teachers for daring to highlight the massive failings of the New Zealand education system for Maori children in case the minister of Education might be embarrassed, then they show themselves up as a sad and pathetic group for whom the warm embrace of government has become more important than the needs of their own children and grandchildren. Just who the hell do they think they are, trying to hide the truth of New Zealand’s failed policies just because the international community is in town?
Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, April 1st, 2014 - 48 comments
The Kapiti Expressway is one of the National government’s RONS projects: it makes no sense economically. It is destructive to the environment and the local communities. The NZTA is attempting to run roughshod over ancestral lands, including that of writer, Patricia Grace. She is taking a stand.
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 1st, 2014 - 88 comments
We can now put a dollar figure – a conservative, probably-underestimated figure – on the cost of domestic violence to New Zealand business. That’s due to a report commissed by the Public Service Association, released yesterday in conjunction with a Member’s Bill from Green MP Jan Logie which will change our law to protect victims […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, March 31st, 2014 - 84 comments
A high proportion of Kiwis know that there is too big an income inequality gap. Economic power & media discourse too often work to maintain such inequalities. How can knowledge and understandings be changed via the media, social media and creative political action?
Written By: - Date published: 2:07 pm, March 28th, 2014 - 63 comments
Tomorrow Today: Support the important Day of Action across NZ against the TPPA – the TPPA is anti-democratic, pro-corporate & will make life harder for ordinary Kiwis; Support the NZEI demonstrations in Auckland & Wellington, for a living wage, for an excellent public education system, against poverty that undermines education. [Update: photos & reports]
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, March 27th, 2014 - 24 comments
On this day in 1984 a suitcase bomb was left in the Wellington Trades Hall. At 5:19 it detonated, killing Ernie Abbott, the caretaker. The bomber has never been caught, despite a massive police investigation and a reward of $50,000 offered for information. We don’t even really know why the Trades Hall was targeted – […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, March 25th, 2014 - 48 comments
There has been a long struggle by the Problem Gambling Foundation & others against SkyCity & the powerful and secretive Pokie Trusts. The government has tended to support the trusts, while maintaining their distance from them. The defunding of the PGF is the latest chapter in the struggle.
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, March 25th, 2014 - 38 comments
Radio New Zealand has reported that power disconnections have soared at the same time that WINZ hardship grants have plummeted. Simon Bridges has suggested that it is the power companies fault. The Government should be blaming increasing poverty and inadequate WINZ hardship grants instead.
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, March 23rd, 2014 - 35 comments
I’ve been thinking about politics, assumptions, and justice. I sat in on a recording of The Egonomist on Friday – thanks for having me there, guys! – and we discussed some of the issues and reactions to Sarah Wilson‘s articles on WINZ, specifically the backlash from people who insist that Sarah must be a liar, […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, March 22nd, 2014 - 47 comments
Big (US) Pharma has been the leading lobbyist that has shaped the TPP, followed by corporates in the following industries; Hollywood, automobile, textiles, dairy. This makes the TPP a major threat to the interests and well-being of Kiwis. Good reasons to take part in next Saturday’s Day Of Action (29 March 1pm) across NZ.
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, March 21st, 2014 - 15 comments
“Rockstar economy”? Let’s hear it for another chorus of,”There is no depression in New Zealand”! Demographia reports on absolute food and housing poverty for too many Kiwis. Simon Collins reports on the ethnic inequality gaps & high rates of Maori imprisonment.
Written By: - Date published: 7:06 pm, March 20th, 2014 - 4 comments
From an environmental economics perspective, mining is a wealth transfer, shifting public wealth (minerals) into private profits of mining companies. Along the way, it creates jobs, but it is basically spending capital. When the resources run out or become unprofitable to extract the jobs disappear and a regional economy geared solely to resource extraction withers and dies. NZ First wants to change that.
Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, March 20th, 2014 - 26 comments
One of the more irritating traits of National politicians is their bone-headed and short-term obsession about being rentiers selling raw and lightly processed raw materials offshore. Sure it is great in the short-term for the seller of the rights to those raw materials, but it does little to nothing for the other 4+ million people […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, March 19th, 2014 - 9 comments
Taiwanese legislature occupied. Could be news…
Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, March 17th, 2014 - 60 comments
No Right Turn reacts to David Cunliffe’s speech on Friday. “…one thing is clear: we need to move our economy away from a focus on milk. Our environment can’t sustain it, and its not delivering for anyone other than a narrow class of wealthy farmers.” “… rich economies have multiple sources of income. And they consciously develop them through industrial policy.”
Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, March 17th, 2014 - 8 comments
Simon Collins article on reducing inequalities for Māori & Pacific people. Māori and Pacific youth have become significantly disadvantaged in employment. However, the article supports charter schools, without examining how such neoliberal intitatives are ultimately damaging for Māori & Pacific people.
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, March 16th, 2014 - 38 comments
An interview provides an insight into Russel Norman’s working class background & frugal, anti-consumerist outlook. Combines well with Metiria Turei’s working class background – which has motivated her campaign against child poverty and inequality.
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