Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Despite Labour seeing the country through the biggest public health threat seen in the last century and despite improving numbers of houses and a reduction in child poverty some on the left are buying into National’s despair lines. And the issues on which the next election will be fought are becoming clearer.
What would our society, communities and lives look like in New Zealand if we weren’t so reliant on fossil fuels?
You get to a point – and Ardern must be close – where the most you can do is hang on.
Can Labour win a third term? Here are some pathways up, and some pathways down.
Chris Luxon has admitted in National media that provision of assistance to the poor is “bottom feeding”.
There is only so much New Zealand and its government can do to soften the blows of the instability that are besetting the world. And the problem is without dramatic change New Zealand will remain one of the most car-addicted, petrol reliant societies on earth for several decades to come.
Christchurch Council has billed Destiny Church for traffic management fees relating to recent protests. For once I am firmly if reluctantly on the side of Destiny Church. Exercising the right to protest should not attract Council bills.
New Zealand’s sanctions on Russia have not stopped the war in Ukraine. They may have made our parliamentarians feel better, and Tony Blinken was quick to congratulate us on falling into line with the US “high-impact sanctions.” The language is combative, but the evidence shows sanctions do not work. They can have significant blow-back effects, particularly if not combined with effective diplomacy.
There has been the occasional criticism of Labour for not achieving enough progressive change by people who then propose supporting National. What are they thinking?
In six months time the world could be in a very precarious position.
Labour’s announcement of a temporary reduction in fuel excise duties and a halving of public transport fares ups the ante on the debate on how to alleviate hardship caused by overseas induced inflation.
To help the poorest amongst us during the current times of International hyper inflation National has come up with a list of tips to help them. But no money.
Chloe Swarbrick, the cost of living crisis, and what the economy is for.
For so called economic geniuses National sure struggles to understand how to properly cost fiscal policy. Its latest response to news that it proposed tax cuts would wipe out all discretionary spending in its first budget is to fudge the dates on which the cuts would be made.
National has proposed to reverse all tax changes implemented by Labour and claims that the cuts can be managed without damage to the state. But the figure it uses, $1.7 billion a year, includes income tax adjustments only and not the cost of the removal of other taxes.
New Zealand’s time as high end ingredients producer to the world has arrived. But it has big costs.
Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. For the twentieth century, it was The Limits to Growth.
Jacinda Ardern said yesterday that everyone is over Covid. She is right. We all want this to end.
Today February 15th is the 80th anniversary of the fall of Singapore in 1942, described by many as Britain’s worst military disaster. It was a massive strategic fail, and its effect is still powerful today, most notably with Australia’s lockstep with the US. Current British strategists don’t seem to have learnt a thing.
It sounds like the Industrial and Trades sector of the economy has had a significiant wage rise over the last year. While we wait for the wages stats data, this is an interesting indicator. The national median hourly pay in the sector is now $27 an hour, up $2 from 2020/21. But this isn’t just here, the world labour market is shifting just as the supply chains are.
Where will the votes come from to get Labour a third term?
Chloe Swarbrick has requested that the government help Auckland central’s restaurants. But in a post Covid pre climate change world this is not going to help.
The full text is worth perusing across multiple areas, but Prime Minister Ardern’s speech in Parliament yesterday gave useful hints about how the economy and climate change are being integrated into a single economic strategy.
With Ardern getting a good-old media beat-down, remember here’s how to change a country for good like no one else but Labour can.
The Government’s Covid 19 response, mainly via Reserve Bank measures, has enabled a mind-boggling increase in inequality, according to influential financial commentator Bernard Hickey. Covid response has saved multiple lives, but its refusal to simultaneously address inequality via taxes raises uncomfortable questions about how a leftist government has overseen a once-in-a-generation shift in wealth
With an Omicron surge appearing to be inevitable the importance of proper mask wearing has never been more important.
The entity making the most money out of threatening the Ukraine is the Russian Federation government itself. Follow the money.
In a welcome change Millionaires and billionaires worldwide are calling for governments to tax them more.
Labour are doing the things about the housing crisis they said they would. It’s not working.
In seven or eight days from now, the dutiful lackeys of the NZ government and the public health dept they direct, are set to come after every child in NZ between the ages of 5 and 12 with injections of m-RNA to hand.
The Helen Kelly biography by Rebacca Macfie provides a clear and intense overview of what has happened to New Zealand society over the past 40 years from a time of high union membership and equality to now where unions struggle and inequality is significant.
The Standard server is going down for a few hours later today for maintenance. Some of the drives in the archive array are getting old. The SSDs in The Standard array are showing wear. Needs a good vacuum – for which I mostly blame the cat….
What Starts off in Support of Alabama’s Miners turns into a homily from Beau on the power of getting community change going when and only when you have the organisational power to pull it off month after month after month.
Fear and loathing on both sides of the fence, or adaptation and resiliency? We do have some choices.
Ministers Wood, Shaw and Parker (Energy, Climate Change, and RMA reform respectively), must pull their eyes downward from the misty clouds of climate change and stuff multiple decades away and down into the jagged, shadowy deal-by-deal path of the transition to clean energy.
Key here is the resilience politics of greenies, DIYers and anarchists, where we just don’t wait for the government to act, we get on with and build the new ways ourselves.
