Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 11:54 am, June 9th, 2011 - 40 comments
Fire at will was meant to help young people into work, wasn’t it?
Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, June 9th, 2011 - 32 comments
National’s election plan is becoming clear. They are going to put a lot of nasty stuff on the table and trust that people love Key’s smiling face so much they will still vote National. If they win, they will take it as a mandate to do everything they’ve said, and more. The latest election policy is more attacks on our work rights.
Written By: - Date published: 2:13 pm, June 8th, 2011 - 21 comments
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, June 8th, 2011 - 29 comments
Do you remember back in the day when Bill English didn’t want to put any money into the Cullen Fund? Remember how we were smugly told that borrowing to save was foolish? Well, since then the Cullen Fund has made a fortune and, we know learn, the government has been borrowing to build up savings for the Christchurch rebuild.
Written By: - Date published: 6:25 am, June 8th, 2011 - 69 comments
Is it just me, or is Sue Bradford working harder, and getting more media coverage than all of the Greens put together? She’s not just campaigning for beneficiaries. Yesterday Bradford came out with a strongly worded attack on the Greens’ positioning for the November election.
Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, June 7th, 2011 - 217 comments
John Key “thinks” that parents on the DPB are “breeding for a business”. Now his government is testing the waters for a eugenics program, to single out these undesirables and forcibly control their fertility.
Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, June 6th, 2011 - 19 comments
Net International Investment Position is how much New Zealand owes foreigners and foreigners own of New Zealand assets minus the reverse.
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, June 6th, 2011 - 68 comments
All of a sudden National and ACT are sounding vaguely sensible on crime and prisons. There seems to be a golden opportunity to reach a cross party consensus, and get some evidence driven policy and practice in this area. Who is going to make the first move?
Written By: - Date published: 12:05 pm, June 5th, 2011 - 36 comments
Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, June 3rd, 2011 - 7 comments
The CTU’s Economic Bulletin: The 2011 Budget was a victory of story-line over needs… The Budget has no plan to put right New Zealand’s social and economic imbalances, and does little to start cutting back the overseas private debt… The Budget of a thousand cuts put debt and deficits ahead of people’s needs and a plan for the future.
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, June 3rd, 2011 - 29 comments
Oh dear. Only two weeks after its Budget 2011 economic forecasts were released, Treasury is already warning they are too optimistic. In their defence, they say the forecasts were settled in April and growth prospects have got worse since then. Well, you’re not much of a forecaster if you can’t see that happening in the middle of an oil shock.
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, June 2nd, 2011 - 41 comments
National has announced plans to privatise ACC’s work account. Currently, they don’t have the numbers to get it through the House. ACT won’t vote for it because its not completely rabid and the Maori Party won’t vote for privatisation. So, this becomes another election issue: another bloody good reason to vote National out.
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, June 2nd, 2011 - 35 comments
Like the ACC, Pharmac is a Kiwi institution that delivers benefits to everyone at a lower cost than other countries. National has got ACC on the butcher’s block. We must make sure that Pharmac doesn’t follow.
Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, June 1st, 2011 - 41 comments
Renaming, merging and splitting agencies is what a government does when it wants to look busy but has no ideas.
Hard to believe it has only taken two and a half years for National to get to this point.
Written By: - Date published: 2:54 pm, May 31st, 2011 - 61 comments
Good old fashioned benefit bashing. Another electoral battle line has been drawn – arm yourself with the facts!
Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, May 31st, 2011 - 55 comments
This government’s got a real talent for manufacturing crisis to suit them. The debt disaster is a classic – in order to get out of debt we have to cut public spending to the tune of almost $1billion and sell assets.
Written By: - Date published: 6:35 am, May 31st, 2011 - 87 comments
Elect a Labour-led government. Create 100K jobs.
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 pm, May 30th, 2011 - 131 comments
Having wrecked the economy and put tens of thousands of workers on the dole queue John Key is now planning to give them another kick in the guts by cutting their benefits.
And of course that’ll help drive wages down too.
To anyone that lived through the 1990’s this bullshit should be very very familiar by now.
Written By: - Date published: 11:36 am, May 30th, 2011 - 37 comments
A Herald poll asked people their views on raising the retirement age. Surprisingly, support was strong – 52.3% think the issue needs addressing. National whines the country is broke so they have to cut public services and sell assets, but super for 65 year olds alone costs $625 million a year. Will any party have the courage to take on super?
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, May 30th, 2011 - 85 comments
Labour’s Chris Hipkins has the inside word: On Wednesday this week, Nick Smith is going to announce what amounts to the effective privatisation of a large part of ACC. You won’t hear the word privatisation uttered from his lips, he’ll use all sorts of other words like ‘competition’ and ‘market discipline’, but privatisation it will be.
Written By: - Date published: 2:41 pm, May 28th, 2011 - 23 comments
No Right Turn on National’s spin about “Mum and Dad investors”.
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, May 27th, 2011 - 66 comments
A new organisation, the Coalition for Social Justice, is calling for a march in Auckland tomorrow.
Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, May 27th, 2011 - 14 comments
This story didn’t get any big headlines. This story slipped by almost completely under the radar. But it’s a very important story. Much more important for New Zealand’s development than the smoke and mirrors of the do-nothing budget.
Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, May 26th, 2011 - 15 comments
Remember when John Key was promising that he would seek a mandate from the people at the election before starting to sell public assets and cutting Kiwisaver. It was only a week ago. And he’s breaking his promises already: the Kiwisaver cuts actually kick in on July 1, and the privatisation process is underway.
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, May 26th, 2011 - 62 comments
Last week we had National’s budget and Labour’s conference. A chance for both parties to set out their ideas for the future. National’s do-nothing budget went down like a lead balloon, while Labour started setting out promising new policy. Looks like the 2011 election campaign will be a contest between ideas and schoolboy mockery.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, May 25th, 2011 - 22 comments
*Key says that we will get to vote on his Kiwisaver cuts in the election. Truth is, they passed the law last week and the tax credits are cut from July 1. *What’s up with the dodgy Kiwibank numbers? Plans for sale? *The govt is importing World Cup workers while 270K are jobless. *Key’s jokes falling flat with pissed off voters.
Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, May 25th, 2011 - 24 comments
The response to two recent posts here at The Standard have shown what a contentious topic the minimum wage is. So it’s timely that yesterday saw the release of the CTU’s summary of research on Minimum Wage and Jobs.
Written By: - Date published: 6:27 am, May 25th, 2011 - 86 comments
National are bleating about Labour’s Research & Development tax credit – largely because as they have no economic plan of their own, so they can only talk about other parties’. But Labour’s R&D tax credit is in fact part of what’s desperately needed to get our economy moving in the right direction.
Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, May 24th, 2011 - 7 comments
Steven Joyce has been forced into a embarrassing back-down on giving a regulatory holiday to companies who won contracts for the Government’s Ultra Fast Broadband plan. But MrSmith wonders if leaving it up to Commerce Commission is going to be any better given its poor record under National.
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, May 24th, 2011 - 33 comments
Here’s a stunning headline from the Herald on the glamour of working at SkyCity casino:
Flea collars for SkyCity staff
Perhaps next they could introduce compulsory de-lousing baths at the end of each shift?
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