Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
This country produces $200 billion of wealth a year. Yet half of adults have incomes less than $29,000 a year. 200,000 kids live in poverty, may in working families. A tiny few – the 1% – pocket the lion’s share. There is no justification. It is bad for society and the economy. Helen Kelly confronts the greed irrational of one rich family, the Talley’s, and how it’s hurting 1,300 poor working families.
Very interesting article on Stuff yesterday, about ex cop Martin Legge and the information that he has on the practices of the gaming industry in NZ. Someone is trying to sweep this case under the carpet. They shouldn’t get away with it.
John Key likes to trade on his experience as a, well, trader. You know, he’s the deal maker. The one to steer us through tough economic times, to get our exports growing. He understands the markets and that knowledge will benefit New Zealand. But, how well has he really done? Let’s start this series close to home for Key: the exchange rate.
Fran ‘sell it all’ O’Sullivan says the government’s case for selling Crafar farms “appears robust”. Well, she would say that. But, if you read it, you’ll see they’ve just done a half-arsed, perfunctory attempt to appear to abide by the law as defined by the Court while coming to the same decision on the same offer. It’ll be shot to pieces in Court.
Behold the economic genius of John Key.
Key’s selling our gambling law to SkyCity in return for a convention centre with no government capital contribution. But, MED says, we would be subsidising that convention centre with $10m for starters. Plus marketing costs. And, then, ongoing subsidies both if convention numbers fall short and as a kickback when it does host conventions.
A sad story in the Herald today of a man who got hooked on pokies. It has destroyed his family and relationships. He’s started ripping off clients at work. All to put money in the machines that SkyCity profits from. SkyCity has so many addicts customers it says it needs more machines. SkyCity is a cancer. We shouldn’t just stop its expansion. We should excise it.
In his speech yesterday, David Shearer talked about how wages have lagged productivity gains since the neoliberal revolution. Here’s what he was talking about:
As expected, the Nats kept on pushing until they got the answer that they wanted on the Crafar farms. A bit more of NZ has been sold out…
It’s a bit rich for Key to claim that there were no credible alternatives to the back-room deal with SkyCity when he shut down one alternative proposal and ignored four others. But now the facts are coming out. Key has “advised himself” into his worst public relations fiasco yet.
David Shearer’s delivered his second “Vision” speech. It’s good to hear he wants to lead a government that tackles inequality, wants proper jobs rather than casualised ones and our kids earning or learning.
When it comes to doing dirty deals with a casino, selling our law so that it gets a convention centre and more profits from gambling addicts, National’s willing to die in a ditch. But when there was an opportunity to save and expand our high-tech, high-skill manufacturing at Hillside simply by requiring government bodies to consider the costs and benefits of their actions on the whole country, not their narrow corporate interests, National did nothing.
You don’t get fat off the crumbs from someone else’s table and you don’t get rich by being someone else’s butler. So, why the Nats are so happy that Australia is sending a few call centre and cigarette jobs here, where wages are lower, I don’t know. We’ll be wealthier if we produce more wealth, more stuff of real value. Not if our competitive advantage is low wages and insecure jobs.
Back before John Key’s political nous deserted him (circa mid-November 2011), he would have run a mile from the dirty pokies deal with SkyCity. Instead, he’s claiming the dirty deal as his own and SkyCity’s chairman bragging about his access to Nat ministers. All to build a useless convention centre that will demand ongoing subsidies. Not worth the political capital.
Don’t know if you saw Ruth Richardson’s wee rant in the Herald yesterday. Never realised she was such a bad writer. That was awful. Just a bunch of catchphrases and insensitive mention of Christchurch so she could use earthquake metaphors. Her thrust seems to be that the social media age will make us all free-market libertarians. Couldn’t be more wrong.
Despite 22 member states signing the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, the EU’s parliament is looking like it might reject the treaty on the grounds of it curtailing civil liberties. The EU’s first rapporteur MP on the treaty resigned in protest at the plans. The second has now reported back: “The intended benefits of this international agreement are far outweighed by the potential threats to civil liberties.”
Yesterday we were treated to a bizarrely incoherent media blurt from SkyCity. I guess trying to defend the indefensible is taking its toll.
The government has splurged $20m putting 3,300 unemployed people through 6 week-long military ‘boot camps’ ($6K each). Result: up to 3 years later, only 19% have jobs. Compares to the typical stint of unemployment of 12 weeks. Looks a lot like the Nats are pouring money into a programme that makes unemployment worse. out of sheer ideological idiocy.
The Right says selling all our stuff and letting the profits flow offshore is great. At least $2b of the asset sales programme will be bought by foreigners. But does overseas investment actually provide the benefits it claims? We don’t know because the government doesn’t monitor the outcomes. The Nats’ obsession with selling our stuff is ideological, without any evidence it’s good for the country.
Ports of Auckland management admit they gave Slater/Lusk the confidential employment details of a worker who criticised the bosses’ disastrous bargaining strategy. At least 2 other workers were victims of the same misdeed. CEO Tony Gibson needs to sack the senior staff responsible. If he can’t or won’t, he’s incompetent or complicit and ought to go himself.
When even your friends are telling you you’ve got it wrong, it’s time to reconsider. So Bill: the Employers Union (EMA) and Family First want Paid Parental leave. It’s not too expensive, it’s back by all childcare experts, and the cost is even delayed. Just do it.
It was a bad day yesterday for the ‘heavy hitters’ of the Collins faction, Slater and Lusk. First, Ports of Auckland admitted supplying them with a workers’ private details. Then, the smear on the Meatworkers that they had orchestrated with Talley’s was shot down by the SFO in record time. Finally, Michelle Boag gave them a public serve on RNZ, fueling civil war talk.
Ports of Auckland has called for facilitated bargaining.
How might this play out?
Vetoing extra paid parental leave doesn’t make social sense and it doesn’t make economic sense either.
Which is why National have said they’ll do it.
Slater/Lusk have been running a series of posts on the finances of the unions. Pretty weak stuff. All Slater/Lusk have proven is that they don’t understand the corporate structure of unions, they can’t read accounts, and they can’t do research. Still, you knew they were seeding something. And then came the Talleys’ complaint to the SFO about the Meatworkers’ Union.
As the Nats try to spin us into accepting another zero budget, focus is turning to 2 big holes that their policy decisions have created. First, the $1b+ a year spend on the low to negative value Roads of National (Party) Significance. Second, the $1b+ annual cost of the 2010 tax changes. That’s $2b+ that could be spent elsewhere, avoiding spending cuts without more borrowing.
The Rightwhingers are saying extending parental leave is too expensive. We’re talking about a tiny sliver of government spending – 0.2% to be precise. And a tiny fraction of what the government is borrowing. If money is really so tight, there’s plenty of poor quality decisions that National could reverse first.
Ruth Richardson has forced every subsequent policy to be sized up for ‘fiscal responsibility’. I’d like them to be sized up for ‘social responsibility’ and ‘environmental responsibility’ as well.
Revolution in Springfield 😉
If everyone earned the same amount (including babies) across the entire world, we’d each get about $USD10,000 each. So a family of four anywhere in the world would get about $NZD49,000. That figure makes world poverty pretty hard to stomach. It’s not that there’s not enough in this world – only that some people haven’t learnt to share.
We know that giving SkyCity more pokie machines will mean more problem gamblers, more crime. The Right says it’s worth it for the convention centre. But the official numbers show that’s a dog and we would pay for it in the long-run. It’s not one side of this equation that is bad for New Zealand, it’s both.
It’s the annual Easter ritual – a slap on the wrist for the many shops caught flouting the trading law.
Another “Zero budget” has been signaled. Some commentators think it’s a bold move. I beg to differ.
MrSmith looks at the massive expansion of aquaculture in the Marlborough Sounds that King Salmon is planning, aided and abetted by National’s ‘Environmental Protection’ Agency. King Salmon got a public hand-out when it was having trouble selling its product but now it wants more public property to make more salmon, the public gets no voice.
On Monday, Key said his tax cuts have been “literally fiscally neutral”. In Parliament yesterday, Russel Norman showed Treasury documents showing the 2010 tax changes were to forecast to cost $1.1b in 4 years, actually cost $1.1b in 9 months, and the cost has grown since. Key didn’t want to hear the Treasury numbers, instead waving some ‘billshit’ put together by the Finance Minister.
The “fiscally neutral” tax cuts never were neutral at all, and a lower than expected tax take is hitting the government’s books. But Key is still out there repeating the lie.
