Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 7:23 pm, June 19th, 2012 - 83 comments
The Herald reports that Tony Ryall said Labour had a history of privatising state owned assets back in the 1980s and early 90s. Ryall was elected to Parliament in 1990 – and it was a National government that privatised the BNZ and Tranzrail. Ryall’s a phony. National’s asset sales programme is a dog.
Written By: - Date published: 5:34 pm, June 19th, 2012 - 4 comments
The right may talk up the virtues of self-responsibility, but when it comes to the failure of the Key government to achieve even modest targets, there’s always someone else to blame. It’s all Labour’s fault, or it’s all because of the earthquakes, or it’s all because of Europe.
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, June 19th, 2012 - 81 comments
Independent energy analyst Molly Melhuish is putting out some facts that Tony Ryall will not find comfortable: we pay on average 28.1c per kWh from private companies and 24.79c per kWh from state owned companies. Why is the asset sales process being rushed through parliament, before Treasury can analyse Molly Melhuish’s research?
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, June 19th, 2012 - 11 comments
National are shelving their plan to get out of deficit by 2014/15 – their only goal left, with the Brighter FutureTM shelved. No to stopping the exodus to Australia, stopping high unemployment, getting better public services, fixing our current account deficit, returning to growth, proper ECE funding (and Adult and Community Education at all), better training for teachers, keeping ACC fair, not cutting frontline staff, promises to not raise GST and more, all on the altar of surplus in 2014/15.
Now what do they stand for?
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, June 19th, 2012 - 15 comments
The last time Treasury did an economic and fiscal update outside of its use two-per-year schedule, was December 2008, the depth of the recession. So, it’s telling that, just 4 weeks after the Budget, Treasury is looking at doing a revision of its numbers. One thing is certain, National’s last economic (actually, fiscal) promise- surplus in 2014/15 – is out the window. So, what’s National’s goal now?
Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, June 19th, 2012 - 8 comments
Key’s ditched the surplus target that was so important a month ago – yet another casualty on the way to the brighter future. The Queen may have asked him why he didn’t see European contagion coming. Shearer is right – Europe is an excuse for a government that has run out of ideas. Labour does have a fresh approach – we need to hear more.
Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, June 18th, 2012 - 21 comments
The Nats like bang on about benefit fraud, are they just as keen to go after tax evasion by the super-rich?
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, June 16th, 2012 - 12 comments
Between 1 and 2 thousand people turned out in Dunedin today to march in protest at the National government’s plan to sell our assets.
Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, June 16th, 2012 - 137 comments
For 10 years, the IRD has been investigating the tax dealings of the country’s 250 richest people and their 7,500 companies and trusts. It turns out they had underpaid $500m of tax with hundreds of millions more in dispute. If you and I went into a government office and stole $10,000 of stuff, we would go to jail. But ripping us off for $500m was all just a mistake, apparently.
Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, June 16th, 2012 - 56 comments
Austerity has failed in both the UK and NZ. But at least Cameron’s Conservatives have the wit to realise it, and the courage to act.
Written By: - Date published: 3:54 pm, June 15th, 2012 - 11 comments
Iain Lees-Galloway has been leading an admirable campaign to keep Palmy North’s Capital Connection.
His latest effort is to have petition (online & offline versions) to present to Parliament at the end of the month. It has to be then, because it’s expected that the government (through NZTA) will cut the service in July or August.
Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, June 15th, 2012 - 14 comments
National has reduced the multifaceted, extremely complex job of economy management to a simple bookkeeping goal: a surplus, whatever its size, by 2014/15. Treasury came to the party, projecting a $200m, 0.08% of GDP, surplus for 2014/15 in the Budget. Now, the Reserve Bank’s projected a 1.1%, $2.5b deficit. Oops.
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, June 15th, 2012 - 17 comments
Most Kiwis won’t be able to afford to pay to buy what we already own when National sells our assets. When they sold Contact, only 5% of us got shares. You know who will buy the shares. Not your working families. Not Key’s new army of the unemployed. It’ll be the people who won big from National’s tax cuts. Now, to add insult to injury, Key is looking at making you and me pay a bonus to these people.
Written By: - Date published: 5:04 pm, June 14th, 2012 - 33 comments
National rushed its Asset Sales Bill back into the House today. Stephen Joyce argued that it was to reduce debt, deepen capital markets, and invest in schools etc. One-off asset sales asset increase debt and if schools depend on flogging off more assets, we won’t get many more before the assets run out. The real reason for the sale is the middle one. Asset sales produce huge windfall capital gains for the buyers. They should be taxed.
Update: Bill went through 61-59 – 2 opposed from Maori Party. Cushion?
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 14th, 2012 - 79 comments
David Cunliffe went to the lion’s den yesterday with a speech telling a meeting of Kensington Swan’s receivership and liquidation lawyers that there would be a lot less work for them under Labour but saying “the Labour Party is not your enemy. Your enemy is inefficiency, corruption, and the wastage of both public and private wealth. Your enemy is a cosy corruption that helps a few friends of the government get very rich at the expense of the community.”
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, June 14th, 2012 - 34 comments
Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, June 14th, 2012 - 26 comments
Five to fifteen years of economic turmoil. Peak oil. Climate change. For “Western” / OECD countries it’s time to start creating a world based on a different kind of growth.
Written By: - Date published: 3:13 pm, June 13th, 2012 - 49 comments
The Asset Sales Bill will be back in Parliament for its second reading tomorrow.
It’s a further abrogation of due procress, as it comes back 5 weeks early, curtailing proper scrutiny.
Written By: - Date published: 3:56 pm, June 12th, 2012 - 40 comments
Announced this morning before Question Time in Parliament that John Judge will be replaced as Chair of ACC on a temporary basis by Paula Rebstock. Judge is going to chair the ANZNational Bank; Rebstock has been chairing the advisory body to WINZ. It will be interesting to see which bits of the culture get changed and if there is any benefit to ACC claimants.
Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, June 12th, 2012 - 5 comments
Times are tight, right? You’ve probably been told that when your boss says you can’t have a pay rise that keeps up with inflation. Yeah, well. It seems that doesn’t apply to managers. The largest jump in median weekly income has been for managers – twice the change across all workers. In hourly terms, no-one is keeping up with inflation. Welcome to the brighter future.
Written By: - Date published: 7:09 am, June 12th, 2012 - 191 comments
On Superannuation Key is in a very strange position indeed, where keeping his word is doing him more harm than breaking it. It’s a disaster for the country.
Written By: - Date published: 1:48 pm, June 11th, 2012 - 9 comments
New Zealand has been enjoying a long period of uninterrupted sunlight, and this looks likely to continue until at least 2014. The abundance of light can be attributed to prudent and sensible economic management by government, and the implementation of sound fiscal and monetary policies.
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, June 11th, 2012 - 22 comments
When Righties say we can’t afford to support solo mums, what do they think we can afford instead?
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, June 9th, 2012 - 30 comments
You don’t usually see it stated as succinctly as this.
Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, June 9th, 2012 - 372 comments
Austerity: another great idea brought to you by the same people who got us into this mess. But some economists are able to think outside the orthodoxy: There Are Real Alternatives. See you at The Voyage.
Written By: - Date published: 6:56 am, June 7th, 2012 - 35 comments
The Budget was released on May 24th and Treasury’s numbers are already proving to be wrong. It’s not just a laughing matter. When you’ve got a government making its decisions based on a arbitrary, binary bookkeeping target: surplus by 2014/15 – yes/no, then you’re going to get problems when your chief bookkeeping agency doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.
Written By: - Date published: 3:58 pm, June 6th, 2012 - 192 comments
Last year John Key said that the poor and those on benefits had made lifestyle choices. If they budgeted properly, they’d be fine. Things aren’t fine, and they’re getting worse, which is why a 40-yr-old DPB Mum in Christchurch – facing an $80/week rent increase, because Key hasn’t done anything about Christchurch’s housing shortage – has had to resort to the lifestyle “choice” of prostitution.
Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, June 6th, 2012 - 15 comments
Like the character, Nick Taylor, in the movie, ‘Thank You For Smoking’, self-styled “Oil lobbyist”, David Robinson is a highly paid apologist for the fossil fuel lobby. But even he says he wouldn’t want fracking in his neighbourhood.
Written By: - Date published: 5:33 pm, June 5th, 2012 - 80 comments
The news out of Europe, China and Australia is looking worse by the day. What’s coming at us doesn’t look pretty. I was about to do a post saying I hoped someone in Labour was doing some scenario planning and was very pleased to see today that Parker’s eyes are open.
Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, June 5th, 2012 - 18 comments
Hey John – where’s our “Brighter Future”? Hey National voters – was this what you voted for?
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, June 5th, 2012 - 32 comments
The “tradeable” sector is still shrinking. The property market is heating up again. We need a capital gains tax now.
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