Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
So. If you’re too poor to afford house insurance and you’re left homeless by an act of god, the government won’t help you.
But if you’re rich enough to own a farm, then one year you get hit by an act of god, the government will come running to your aid.
“I also want to pay a special acknowledgement to my friend and deputy, Bill English. What a great job he is doing as Finance Minister. He’s delivered two Budgets that have steered New Zealand out of recession and put the economy firmly back on track to grow and create jobs”. Or has he?…
The suspension of normal democratic processes in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake should be an occasion to pause for thought in the light of likely future events.
The latest GDP figures are awful. the Reserve Bank had predicted 0.9% growth in the June Quarter. It came in at 0.2% – far worse than anyone expected and slower than population growth. The Key Government’s reaction? Deny there’s a problem and spin, spin, spin.
Parliament unanimously made Gerry Brownlee dictator. Apparently, this was necessary to save Christchurch. But are Dictator Gerry and Bob ‘the Rebuilder’ (wonder how long it took Kevin Taylor to come up with that one) actually delivering for the people who need it the most? Not if the anger in poor Christchurch suburbs is anything to go by.
A recent article in Canada’ MacLean’s magazine on the decline of public services in the US bears sobering links to what is happening in New Zealand. For three decades the neo-liberals have worked to starve public services to death with tax cuts for the rich. Now, the US is facing the consequences. New Zealand is on the same path just a little behind.
According to the ODT government MP’s are going to be travelling around the country trying to convince New Zealanders that their plan to cut taxes for the rich isn’t actually a plan to cut taxes for the rich at all.
A UMR poll just out asked 750 Kiwis if workers should have the right to appeal if they think they are unfairly dismissed within the first 90 days of employment. 80% said yes. That’s a damning rejection of National’s Fire at Will law, which the government wants to extend to every new worker. Will Key and Co listen? Fat chance.
John Key says he supports the teachers and junior doctors’ claims for a pay rise ‘but we simply don’t have the money’. Yet Key who is borrowing half a billion dollars this year for tax cuts for the wealthiest 9%. It isn’t a question of what the government can afford. It’s who matters to National – the rich do, teachers and doctors don’t.
The second of 6 in a series summarising the argument of The Spirit Level. This post examines how inequality affects mental and physical health.
First posted on the excellent Beyond Resistance blog: While the dust settles and Christchurch recovers from the 7.1 earthquake, people have begun to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. But for many working class people this is not so easy. Those most affected by ‘natural disasters’ are those already on the margins of despair.
In the Today in Politics column in the DomPost there’s a snippy little piece about the Fairness at Work submissions. The CTU reckons around […]
Not content with destroying education to get at teachers, now National are after your health to get at doctors and nurses.
The feds want the OCR frozen.
But that’s not a sustainable answer for exporters.
It’s time to look at better ways of controlling inflation.
Continental Philosopher Slavoj Zizek talks about ethical buying and charity and the contradictions they entail. I’m not sure I agree with him (I […]
Here are the reasons for tomorrows strike from a member of the PPTA (Post Primary Teachers Association) in a guest post. The Ministry of Education has rejected them all.
You’d have to expect the spinners for the government to carefully ignore these issues in favour of their usual simplistic meaningless dogwhistling messages. That is the level they’d prefer that kids are educated to.
John Banks’ team really jumped the shark yesterday with their bizarre ‘poll tax’ attack on Len Brown. Banks claimed Brown was proposing a Thatcher-style poll tax to fund the Supercity instead of rates. Of course, Brown is proposing no such thing – he is saying we should look at replacing rates with income tax. Desperate, Banksie, desperate.
Treasury has released its preliminary report on the economic impact of the Christchurch earthquake. GDP will be down up to 0.8% this quarter but after rebuilding net GDP for the next two years ends up 0.8% higher than it would have. Great! Let’s knock down Hamilton too and get a GDP boost! Actually, we’re just seeing the limits of GDP as a measure of wealth.
Teachers are striking on Wednesday.
But there’s not a lot of information about why.
That’s an information void the government will fill if the PPTA doesn’t.
To have power and independence, any country needs a solid economic base. That’s even more true of superpowers/empires. To secure their economic sovereignty they need the raw materials and markets of less powerful countries. They reinforce their economic sovereignty by taking others’. China does it by buying up whole supply chains.
“The Spirit Level” is a book with a simple message: An unequal society is a sick society. It’s a message that has the right wing running scared, and trying to dodge the issue by pretending that they believe in “equality of opportunity”. But across society there’s no such thing…
The Government has announced it intends to push through emergency legislation to expedite the rebuilding of Christchurch. The urge to put things back the way they were is only natural in the wake of a huge physical and psychic shock but shouldn’t we have a think about how we want Christchurch rebuilt before we let anyone go ahead willy-nilly?
If you have some time to spare this Saturday morning, check out the documentary “Overdose” – The story of the greatest financial crisis we will ever see… The one that is on the way.
It was heartbreaking this morning to read of the worsening conditions in Christchurch’s poor suburbs, where damage assessments are only just now being done and aftershocks are accumulating more and more problems on already vulnerable communities. So, this picture sent in by a reader caused a bit of a bemused smile (click title for big version).
There seems to be confusing in National’s camp about further attacks on workers rights.
Unfortunately this tallies with rumours they’re planning big changes in a second term.
Fran O’Sullivan claims inside knowledge of the bailout plan may have given some investors the inside running.
That’s reminiscent of the headstart some investors got in ’84 when the dollar was devalued.
And it’s one more reason we need a public inquiry into the bailout.
86 workers have been fired from Kaiapoi New World, which will be closed for a year due to quake damage. This is exactly why the government should implement the kind of scheme I outlined where the government steps in to supply the full wages of workers who can’t work due to the quake, funded by delaying the tax cuts for the rich.
Fran O’Sullivan joins us in asking why the Government was so quick to completely bailout the South Canterbury Finance investors yet is so miserly with quake victims. The Right cries ‘moral hazard’ when it comes to helping out quake victims; we didn’t hear that over SCF. Fortunately, we can help those in need and avoid creating moral hazards.
Here’s an interesting rant. I’m not going to link to it, because I want you to spend a moment trying to work out who (which raving leftie blogger?) is the author. So read it, and make your guess, then Google for the answer…
The unions, business, and Phil Goff have all gritted their teeth and called the Nats’ $15 million wage subsidy scheme for small quaked-affected businesses ‘a start’. The problem is, it’s likely to be the end. This scheme will leave workers and employers severely out of pocket, killing businesses and jobs.
There’s been some frankly bizarre talk about the earthquake being an economic boon for the country. I guess the Right is just desperate for anything to improve the economy under National. So, I thought it would be worthwhile going through the economic ramifications of the earthquake from the immediate effects to long term.
Christchurch needs a more ambitious rescue package than has been announced. Relying on EQC and insurance payouts is not enough. I would cancel the top bracket tax cuts due to come into force in a month saving half a billion dollars for a real economic revival plan The first step would be to grant emergency bridging funding to businesses closed by the quake so that they can continue to pay their workers
It’s been nearly two years now of Paula Bennett declaring that the unemployment crisis is over. Yesterday, she put out a press release titled ‘More than 6,000 beneficiaries find jobs in August‘. Wow, 6,000 in a month, pretty good. But Bennett must have been hoping we wouldn’t read beyond the title. The fact is that 900 more people went on the dole than came off it. The total number of beneficiaries just keeps climbing.
Unite Union’s Christchurch office has been flooded with phone calls and text messages from worried workers in post-earthquake Christchurch.
