Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 7:24 am, July 14th, 2011 - 107 comments
Generally, no-one likes taxes, but Labour’s polling shows Kiwis are surprisingly receptive to capital gains tax. Head to head with National asset sales plan, the choice was clear: 55% prefer CGT vs 32% privatisation. In a contest of economic plans, Labour wins hands down. Even John Whitehead agrees. All English can do is scaremonger about the 35% debt ceiling.
Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, July 13th, 2011 - 57 comments
Russel Norman put a dagger into John Key yesterday in question time asking whether a series of national and international economic authorities really wanted to “put a dagger through the heart of growth” with a CGT. Key can waffle and whine all he likes, but he can’t avoid the truth of Australia’s enviable growth record with CGT.
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, July 13th, 2011 - 34 comments
We can expect a lot of economic rhetoric in the lead up to November from our political leaders. What does history suggest with respect to two key economic indicators: production and employment?
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, July 13th, 2011 - 19 comments
Written By: - Date published: 7:06 am, July 13th, 2011 - 98 comments
Key used to get away with spouting whatever kind of nonsense he liked. Not any more. His hysterical scaremongering on the subject of capital gains tax seems to have been a step too far. The teflon is long gone, and Key has cried wolf too often.
Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, July 12th, 2011 - 14 comments
After coming to office, National cried ‘crisis at ACC’ as an excuse for raising levies, cutting cover, and privatisation. Suddenly, the ‘crisis’ has disappeared and good ol’ National is cutting your ACC levies, back to where they were before National raised them. Now, just forget who put them up in the first place, and tick the blue box in November.
Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, July 12th, 2011 - 24 comments
Capital gains is a good policy that build’s the credibility of Labour’s economic and fiscal plan. Labour’s brilliantly run pre-launch has sparked interest and discussion. The destruction of John Key’s economic credibility has been a welcome side benefit. And it is a blow, Vernon Small points out, that Key has inflicted on himself.
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, July 12th, 2011 - 112 comments
A feasible plan to power 100 percent of the planet with complete renewables exists. This plan excludes Nuclear and Biofuels, which the Scientific American authors of this plan also considered to be ultimately unsustainable technologies as well. Instead this plan revolves around Wind, Water and Solar – WWS
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, July 11th, 2011 - 12 comments
Paediatrician Professor Innes Asher has written an open letter to the Welfare Working Group lauding their aims, but warning that their recommendations will harm children. Child Poverty Action Group and Every Child Counts have endorsed the letter, bringing with them a considerable number of academics and other experts in the fields of child health and […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, July 11th, 2011 - 160 comments
We keep getting told that government is the problem and that the private sector is the answer. But the reserve bank numbers clearly show that it is the problem. When are the private sector going to deal with their burgeoning debt levels?
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 pm, July 10th, 2011 - 6 comments
The Tax Working Group canvassed the many reasons why New Zealand should have a capital gains tax, before rejecting it by majority decision on the basis it was too complex and hard to administer. According to Auckland University’s Professor Craig Elliffe and Chye-ching Huang this is not borne out by the example of South Africa’s successful introduction of a CGT in 2001. Surely if the South Africans can make such a tax work our officials can too.
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, July 10th, 2011 - 56 comments
The genius of Labour’s (not yet official) capital gains tax is not just the policy itself but the way it has picked the public mood. Support has been near-universal. The Left loves the fairness aspect – workers won’t be subsidising landlords anymore. The Right loves the implications for capital allocation, interest rates, and the exchange rate. The Nats look isolated and hysterical.
Written By: - Date published: 6:57 am, July 10th, 2011 - 6 comments
Yesterday, hundreds of parents protested cuts to early childhood education on Queen St and gave Phil Goff a 60,000 signature petition to take to Wellington. 1000 people in the Octagon called on the government to consider Kiwi jobs when awarding contracts. What is wrong with the priorities of this government that puts tax cuts ahead of kids and job?
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, July 9th, 2011 - 69 comments
We are going to have to have this debate some time. Maybe it will be possible now that Labour has shown how to stare down supposed “electoral suicide”.
Written By: - Date published: 5:09 pm, July 8th, 2011 - 60 comments
Even Bill’s readers like the CGT…
Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, July 8th, 2011 - 66 comments
It has been a rare and sincere pleasure to see National walk straight into a trap carefully laid by Labour. Goff and his team haven’t even publicly confirmed their capital gains tax policy but proponents to the Left and Right are winning the pre-launch media framing for them, while Key’s contradictory ranting is undermining his credibility.
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, July 8th, 2011 - 78 comments
Yesterday’s Morning Report interview with Sydney Morning Herald economics correspondent Peter Martin was a real gem. The picture of capital gains tax that emerges is one of simplicity, fairness, and closing loopholes. No wonder the Nats hate it.
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, July 7th, 2011 - 126 comments
The landlords’ lobby group is making a lot of noise over Labour’s, still unannounced, capital gains policy. They say rents will go up, the supply of housing will fall, and it won’t stop house prices bubbles. Examining those claims shows that there would be little impact on rents while housing bubbles would be reduced and home ownership would be more affordable.
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, July 7th, 2011 - 11 comments
The right’s leadership resembles a merry go round of disgraced old white failures. Brash, English, Shirtcliffe, Douglas had their time at the front, were disgraced. Now they’re back. Thompson was fired for his appalling behaviour but got a payout. He’ll be back in due course. While Brash says he’d welcome baby ID stealer Garrett back to Parliament.
Written By: - Date published: 6:03 am, July 7th, 2011 - 153 comments
Labour have started setting out a bold, fair and plausible policy framework for the election. Rumours of their tax policy have generated more interest and excitement than anything the National government has done in the last three wasted years.
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, July 6th, 2011 - 59 comments
A conservative council in the UK sacked it’s entire workforce and offered them their jobs again the next day if they accepted a 5.4% pay cut. This is direct fallout from the Global Financial Crisis of course – that monumental greed-made disaster caused by bankers and financial institutions and the bail out of which costs […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:33 pm, July 6th, 2011 - 11 comments
The Nats are all in favour of pay equity for women. Or so they say. But their actions speak louder than their words.
Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, July 6th, 2011 - 10 comments
What keeps John Key & Bill English too busy to comment on their own government’s dismal performance, but not so busy that they can’t comment on absolutely anything to do with Labour?
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, July 6th, 2011 - 18 comments
There’s an odd contradiction in right-wing ‘thought’. On the one hand, they’re Randian heroes, the wealth creators, modern day Atlases who support the world while ‘parasites’ try to take their wealth and bring them down. On the other hand, they’re victims who need subsidies and special treatment. Fed Farmers CEO Conor English embodies the contradiction.
Written By: - Date published: 6:06 am, July 6th, 2011 - 330 comments
The buzz around the traps is that Labour will be announcing a capital gains tax next week. The journos are already calling it a bold move and John Key is ranting hysterically. That Labour’s winning the media battle is great but, more importantly, this is a much needed policy: it is fair, it is good for the economy, and it will pay for good policies.
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, July 4th, 2011 - 2 comments
John Key’s government celebrated KiwiSaver’s 4th birthday on July 1 with cuts to your entitlements. (Zet mentioned this here, but this is my take…)
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, July 3rd, 2011 - 41 comments
Bravo France, the first country in the world to ban fracking. But for every step forward in this world, we seem to take two steps backwards…
Written By: - Date published: 2:52 pm, July 2nd, 2011 - 69 comments
In the Herald today, Mark Lister says the lack of investment in the productive economy is due to the favourable tax treatment of housing. On Thursday, Brian Fallow wrote how Kiwis are being shut out of home ownership by investors who see capital gain from housing as an easy win, and workers’ taxes effectively subsidise property investors who pay none.
Written By: - Date published: 1:16 pm, July 1st, 2011 - 26 comments
From today, the government’s contribution to your Kiwisaver has been cut in half. ‘What?’, you say, ‘Didn’t they say that would only come in if they got re-elected?’ Yeah, nah. They were lying to you. From today on, the government contribution is a maximum of $10 a week. Remember, this was the central plank of National’s savings budget.
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, July 1st, 2011 - 71 comments
Treasury has confirmed that National’s plan to sell public assets would need foreigners to buy a lot of the shares because domestic demand would be too small for the government to make as much money as it is counting on. Forget ‘mum and dad investors’, the big buyers would be foreign sovereign wealth funds.
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 30th, 2011 - 81 comments
Two years ago, this government sparked the biggest protests in a generation when it tried to open up the most precious parts of our conservation estate to mining. The policy got canned but the agenda has continued below the surface. Now, 100 DoC staff have been sacked while the MED unit for oil drilling and mining will nearly double its staff.
Recent Comments