Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, September 29th, 2011 - 39 comments
Have you heard of Occupy Wall Street? If you are one of the 99%, you should have…
Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, September 29th, 2011 - 23 comments
National did not cope well yesterday when their economic record was held up to the light. John Key was all at sea as he tried to dismiss new statistics showing 47,000 jobs have been lost under his watch. He cited instead another statistical series, which he has previously rejected when it showed 56,000 more people are unemployed under National.
Written By: - Date published: 4:10 pm, September 27th, 2011 - 48 comments
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, September 27th, 2011 - 28 comments
If New Zealand’s economy could be powered by empty promises and pollyanna-ish optimism, then John Key would have the best economic record in the country’s history. Actually, he has one of the worst. Vernon Small today mocks Key’s unwillingness to put a downer on the RWC vibe by confronting the emerging global crisis.
Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, September 27th, 2011 - 6 comments
Happiness surrounds us in our lives; our music tells us to be happy, our facebook profiles suggest we’re always happy, and most of us have a willingness to work for material happiness. Yet happiness is a subject often missing from political discourse in our country, suppressed by talk of dairy and the dollar which dominates the halls of Parliament.
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, September 27th, 2011 - 55 comments
One of the big stories last night was the anti-VSM protest at Auckland Uni. Was it the last one we will see in NZ? That would suit the Nats very nicely – sheep will be so much easier to fleece…
Written By: - Date published: 3:25 pm, September 25th, 2011 - 43 comments
On Friday the government announced a law change that opens the door to a whole world of cheap contract labour now available to anyone producing short projects like advertisements, tv episodes or parts of movies in New Zealand.
Many of the industry locals who will be most hurt by this are the same ones who were banging the drum against actors and for international producers during the Hobbit dispute. Ironic, huh?
Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, September 24th, 2011 - 126 comments
John Key explains how the economy is all just a business confidence trick. Apparently businesspeople just need to believe a bit more.
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, September 23rd, 2011 - 53 comments
As most of the headlines this morning focus on the crumbling world economy, it was interesting to hear Bill English on RNZ. Among various inane comments there was one interesting gem, when English called for higher taxes…
Written By: - Date published: 6:07 pm, September 22nd, 2011 - 30 comments
So here we are then. “Roaring out of recession”. Or – not.
Written By: - Date published: 8:09 am, September 22nd, 2011 - 58 comments
It’s a bit of a worry that the PM seems to be clueless about the complexity and interdependence of the world economy. Bill English needs to take him aside and paint him a picture.
Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, September 21st, 2011 - 53 comments
Economist Paul Krugman argues that governments the world over need to wake up to the fact that they’ve been trying to solve the wrong problem.
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, September 20th, 2011 - 38 comments
Two news snippets yesterday seemed to me to capture the essence of John Key PM. First, his response to recommendations about super, and second his prognostications on the Christchurch insurance market.
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, September 19th, 2011 - 49 comments
We’re going to need a lot of innovation to survive the coming decades. Today’s innovation is a simple modification that at least doubles the energy output of a wind turbine. Brilliant.
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, September 17th, 2011 - 64 comments
The warnings on the economy are coming thick and fast now, both globally and nationally.
Written By: - Date published: 12:21 am, September 17th, 2011 - 31 comments
Denmark has ended the 10-year reign of the right supported by the anti-immigration Muslim-baiting Danish People’s party. The Social Democrats headed by their first woman PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt will move away from the right’s favoured austerity and spending cuts to more investment in education, welfare and infrastructure. Austerity isn’t working in Britain, and Denmark is worth watching for all kinds of reasons.
Written By: - Date published: 6:16 pm, September 15th, 2011 - 198 comments
It turns out that the high price of milk is your fault. No – really.
Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, September 14th, 2011 - 64 comments
The other day, Irish covered the odious comments from liquidator/columnist Damien Grant calling unskilled people ‘commodities’. That was in the context of a pretty flimsy attack on Gareth Morgan and Susan Guthrie’s ‘Big Kahuna’ tax plan. Yesterday, Morgan and Guthrie responded to Grant’s attacks. The Jackal says Morgan and Guthrie have it right.
Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, September 13th, 2011 - 70 comments
The Child Poverty Action Group has released yet another shaming report on child poverty in NZ. The Nats’ cuts to Working for Families are making matters worse. If the election doesn’t return a Labour government, then we’re going to have three more years of inaction punctuated by brief ritual hand-wringing over each new report.
Written By: - Date published: 9:55 pm, September 12th, 2011 - 94 comments
Big time businessman Damien Grant thinks we’re either rich or irrelevant commodities. And Granny Herald thinks it’s reasonable to give him a platform to preach this vile social darwinism. Suddenly the careless deaths of Kiwi workers and the systemic poverty of so many of our children becomes less surprising.
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, September 12th, 2011 - 47 comments
National promised to close the wage gap with Australia, and stop the flow of people across the ditch. Instead they’ve not just massively increased the wage gap and the number of people fleeing the country, they’re now forcing our best and brightest out.
Written By: - Date published: 6:05 pm, September 10th, 2011 - 12 comments
I’ve just read Vernon Small’s piece today and I actually learned things from it, other than opinions plucked out of thin air by the author. Small explains the fiscal and economic challenges now existing that the next government will have to cope with and, with a nod and wink, tells us National is going to push out its date for getting back to surplus.
Written By: - Date published: 5:38 pm, September 10th, 2011 - 67 comments
John Armstrong wants Labour to come out radically different after the Cup. Having refused to cover Labour’s skills package or its mining policy, he’s suddenly interested in policy. He wants Labour to suddenly adopt league tables and forget the 39% tax rate. Armstrong genuinely doesn’t seem to get it. Parties of the Left don’t pick and swap policies on a whim.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, September 9th, 2011 - 72 comments
I/S at NoRightTurn on the Gisborne mother and baby who were turned away by three government agencies when she sought help: “People who go to WINZ needing help should get it. Instead, this woman was told to fuck off, thanks to service cuts and a deliberate policy of limiting costs by imposing bureaucratic barriers to access.”
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, September 8th, 2011 - 8 comments
IHC workers won a lengthy court battle to have the work they do overnight (so-called ‘sleepover’ shifts) recognised as work worthy of the minimum wage. The $300m in backpay they were due would have bankrupted IHC. The government, so keen to bailout corporate mates, refused to help. Now, the workers have given us, taxpayers, a $200m break on their debt.
Written By: - Date published: 9:13 pm, September 7th, 2011 - 6 comments
Respected Financial Times journalist Martin Wolf argues that the last thing we need in a world of excess saving is for creditworthy governments to cut their borrowing. He presents evidence that shows that fiscal deficits are helpful not because they return the economy to swiftly to health but because they promote the (required) painfully slow healing. If the debt diagnosis is wrong then so is the asset sales cure.
Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, September 7th, 2011 - 17 comments
If electricity assets were part privatised, future governments couldn’t make the kind of reforms that National made earlier this year because of the need to consider private investors’ rights. Pretty simple, eh? Tell that to Hekia Parata. Bill English has his head in the sand on the effect of falling markets and can’t guarantee Kiwi ownership.
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 pm, September 6th, 2011 - 7 comments
Robert Reich writes about the impact of growing inequality in the United States. He has a graphic that shows the effects over the past hundred years. As the US and Europe come closer to their Niagara fall, the logic is compelling. Edmund Burke’s saying that those who don’t know their history are destined to repeat it comes to mind.
Written By: - Date published: 5:28 pm, September 6th, 2011 - 19 comments
Treasury has now adopted their masters’ political line on income statistics. The latest Treasury MEI uses average after-tax wages to argue that an average worker is better off by 2% since October 2010. In real terms the average worker’s gross wage less inflation means they are 1% worse off. The average of $50,000 a year is a long way above the median wage as indicated by the 2009 IRD distribution figures. In reality a few are hugely better off, some are ok, and most are still worse off.
Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, September 6th, 2011 - 63 comments
Once again recent headlines prompt me to ask if in 2008 we really chose a brighter future after all.
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