Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, July 17th, 2012 - 12 comments
Right now 28 miners are stuck down a Waihi mine with a fire causing noxious gases. 15 people are being decontaminated at Tiwai Point after an ‘incident’. At 3.30am the driver of a truck-trailer loaded pressurised cylinders died after crashing into Bulls RSA – probably asleep from the fatigue 24% of truck drivers suffer from […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, July 17th, 2012 - 62 comments
Even John Key is now admitting that the asset sale program is facing a serious legal challenge, and that delays in the sales are likely. Any such delay would have several implications…
Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, July 16th, 2012 - 19 comments
Darkhorse writes amazingly insightful economic pieces on his ‘How Daft’ blog (the title gives you a clue as to what he thinks of the current state of affairs). The neoliberal experiment has been an abject failure by any rational measure. And there are alternatives. Darkhorse has given us permission to syndicate his posts, the originals are here.
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, July 15th, 2012 - 27 comments
Old rich man, Don Brash, arch-advocate of private property rights, arguing against the property rights of iwi because they’re Maori. He says we shouldn’t have race-based ownership. No-one’s arguing for that. Iwi are arguing for the contract they signed with the Crown to be honoured. You would think a rightwinger would be the first to support that.
Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, July 15th, 2012 - 5 comments
I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: the bread & butter line, bankers, racism and the corporate speak of John Key.
Written By: - Date published: 9:47 pm, July 14th, 2012 - 7 comments
I joined Mighty River Power today. They offered me $150 incentive payment, no contract and a cheap rate. But couldn’t help wondering – am I part of a push to up their user numbers in preparation for sale? So the numbers look good on the books, even if people (like me) might not stay? What will happen to the share price when lots of users leave after the Government’s flogged 49% off?
Written By: - Date published: 11:54 am, July 14th, 2012 - 32 comments
The Government has binned part of the Northern Wellington Corridor ‘Road of National Significance’ – the four-lane expressway between Otaki and Levin that would have cost $400m. The government’s not getting enough road tax revenue and they had already cut all other transport funding to the bone – so something had to give. But it’s just the start.
Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, July 13th, 2012 - 10 comments
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett caused outrage when she suggested somehow banning child abusers from having children. The suspicion at the time was that this was a desperate and cynical attempt to distract the public from the deeply unpopular plans to increase class sizes.Now, thanks to FYI, the public OIA site, that interpretation looks to be the case.
Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, July 13th, 2012 - 82 comments
John Key has been running round repeating that no one owns water. He’s just being cute with semantics. What is the effective difference between owning water, and owning water rights?
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, July 12th, 2012 - 33 comments
Today’s DomPost says David Parker’s recent speech “criticised National for failing to boost imports and control housing prices.” That didn’t sound like David Parker. Sure enough he had put his finger on the real problem, the government’s failure to boost exports. Key’s reported “putdown” was Labour is “a joke.” One thing is certain, New Zealand’s ever-receding “brighter future” is no joke. I’d like to see the DomPost put it right. Tell us all what Parker actually said, then let us decide which party is the joke.
Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, July 11th, 2012 - 27 comments
A compelling summary of the mess that capitalism has got us in to. Reprinted with permission from Truthout.org. Read it!
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, July 11th, 2012 - 70 comments
Are you keen to buy shares in Mighty River Power with a dividend return of 4% pre-tax? You can beat that in the bank, and paying off debt is a far better use of money. But say you’re still keen. What about the threat of Mighty River losing water rights or having to pay for them – will you buy in with that unresolved? Only nutters would take Key’s offer with that up in the air.
Written By: - Date published: 12:29 pm, July 9th, 2012 - 7 comments
As the Sir Graham Latimer and the Maori Council launch their bid to halt asset sales in the Waitangi Tribunal, the grassroots campaign is gathering steam too. This Saturday is to be a National Day of Action.
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, July 9th, 2012 - 47 comments
Darkhorse writes amazingly insightful economic pieces on his ‘How Daft’ blog (the title gives you a clue as to what he thinks of the current state of affairs). The neoliberal experiment has been an abject failure by any rational measure. And there are alternatives. Darkhorse has given us permission to syndicate his posts, the originals are here.
Written By: - Date published: 1:58 pm, July 7th, 2012 - 13 comments
In our current system, we give men like Bob Diamond the immense power to create money. Need it be so? The Positive Money movement wishes to change that, and give that power back to Government. The first Labour Government used the power to create a better NZ – we could do that again.
Written By: - Date published: 10:29 am, July 7th, 2012 - 69 comments
The Nats have given up on catching up with Australia, and are content for us to become their low wage sweatshop instead. Their cheerleaders think it’s a great idea.
I beg to differ.
Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, July 6th, 2012 - 56 comments
You know how the Government is so skint, and absolutely much get back into surplus by 2014/15, that it has cut education at every level, cut conservation, cut home insulation, cut Kiwisaver, cut Working for Families .. etc etc. They even created a new super-ministry to cut costs. And what’s the first action of Mobie Dick? $2.2 million sunk into Aussie V8s.
Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, July 5th, 2012 - 22 comments
If “two-income families are increasingly worse off than single-income families were a generation ago”, then something is seriously wrong with our definition of “progress”.
Written By: - Date published: 9:27 am, July 5th, 2012 - 106 comments
The median household has $1700 in the bank – you couldn’t really term that savings, it’s operating cash. The Nats want us to fork out at least a grand a time to participate in each share float. That just doesn’t add up. Labour and the Greens are right, this isn’t an opportunity for ordinary people to invest, it’s a wealth transfer to the elite.
Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, July 5th, 2012 - 197 comments
The Nats are going to terminate the benefits of those who fail or refuse drug tests. I have a question…
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, July 5th, 2012 - 49 comments
Yesterday National pollster David Farrar excitedly quoted from a George Monbiot article saying peak oil isn’t happening. Two problems: 1) Farrar omitted to quote the bits of the article saying that the flipside of no peak oil would be runaway climate change. 2) the report Monbiot’s article is based on is written by an oil executive who claims we’ll stumble on endless cheap oil and all live happily ever after.
Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, July 4th, 2012 - 41 comments
High levels of unemployment in NZ are both a condemnation of the Nats’ bungling of the economy, and a reality check on their perpetual grandstanding beneficiary bashing.
Written By: - Date published: 11:14 am, July 4th, 2012 - 41 comments
$20 million. That’s how much Paul Reynolds pocketed during his disastrous 5 years as CEO of Telecom. You could have employed dozens of teachers and nurses over that period for that money. Instead, it all went to one man as the company he headed went down the toilet. What a broken system capitalism is. The kicker: the $1.75m goodbye gift, on which he got a $100,000 tax cut. Nice.
Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, July 3rd, 2012 - 9 comments
Tim Groser in the NBR: “Our enemies who are internal, will find one cow in one stream and feed it back to environmental activists in the developed world to be used to try to exclude New Zealand’s products and services in the ludicrous belief this will somehow help New Zealand.” Paranoid, much? And don’t you think the polluters are the problem, not the people who fail to hush it up?
Written By: - Date published: 8:51 am, July 3rd, 2012 - 15 comments
The only remaining possible legal threat to the Nats’ plans to sell off our power companies is a Treaty based claim to water rights or riverbeds.
Written By: - Date published: 10:06 pm, July 2nd, 2012 - 15 comments
Compliance is not high on the agenda for interest-rate rigging banks, who are even now resisting any further regulation. Tapu Misa has the full story, and the right approach in today’s Herald. Alex also puts his finger on the problem in his Telegraph cartoon.
Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, July 2nd, 2012 - 37 comments
The Exxon Mobil CEO now acknowledges that the world is warming, but claims that there will be an “engineering solution”. This glib reassurance is simply the next phase of Exxon’s well funded and carefully planned denier tactics.
Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, July 2nd, 2012 - 71 comments
So – what kind of person does well out of asset sales?…
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, July 2nd, 2012 - 9 comments
I/S at No Right Turn on Pita Sharples’ suggestion that Christchurch’s homeless squat in abandoned red-zone properties rather than sleeping in their cars.
Written By: - Date published: 10:42 pm, July 1st, 2012 - 14 comments
SST Business Editor Rob O’Neill said today: “There is a great deal of lip-service paid to “innovation” in business. What is not often acknowledged is how embedded innovation can be in manufacturing. Making stuff, or being able to talk freely with the people who do, can be a source of inspiration and great ideas for companies.” I got a lot of inspiration from Swedish Academic Goran Roos on this topic in Auckland on Friday. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has asked him to head up their manufacturing strategy next year. We could do with someone like him too.
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