Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, March 3rd, 2011 - 70 comments
We’ve heard figures of $20 billion damage from the Christchurch quakes, $5 billion uninsured for the government to cover. Now, Key has given an estimate of the lost economic output this year – $12 billion, 6% of GDP. He says that will mean $5 billion less government revenue – a hole the size of the defence and law and order budgets combined. updated
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, March 3rd, 2011 - 62 comments
Farrar says it’s ‘ghastly’ to discuss how to pay for rebuilding Christchurch, since the obvious answer is by reversing the tax cuts rich people like him have pocketed. Well, I think how the poor eastern suburbs of Christchurch have been ignored is ghastly. Fortunately, resilient communities are organising themselves, without government.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, March 2nd, 2011 - 43 comments
To get enough oil for global demand requires expensive technologies, and expending more energy. If the price is too low those investments won’t be feasible, meaning not enough production. But too high and the world can’t afford it and we enter global recession. The ‘goldilocks’ in the middle is shrinking, to a knife edge. It’s the same story with food and metals.
Written By: - Date published: 11:31 pm, March 1st, 2011 - 147 comments
I’m really pissed off that politics has come into the Christchurch earthquake so quickly. But make no mistake, the Nats are pursuing a strongly ideological agenda. They’re using the quake as cover for radically cutting important policies and making other extreme decisions, while preserving the tax cuts for the rich. It’s called the Shock Doctrine.
Written By: - Date published: 11:44 pm, February 28th, 2011 - 96 comments
The tax system we currently have is a relic of the pre-IT age. In the days of manual clerk-handled accounts, it was impractical to reconcile tax accounts more than once a year. The introduction of PAYE in 1958 was welcomed as it eliminated the need for ordinary people to find the cash for a large […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:12 pm, February 28th, 2011 - 129 comments
Tapu Misa’s latest piece in the Herald is just so right I can’t really add anything to it. She nicely sums up the Welfare Working Group’s message: “We’re not saying it’s your fault you can’t get a job. We’re just saying you’re a malingering freeloader who’s not trying hard enough.”
Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, February 28th, 2011 - 93 comments
Unless a leader is horribly neglectful in the wake of a disaster, like Bush after Katrina, I don’t think there is any grounds to criticise them for the immediate disaster response, which is largely out of their hands anyway. But the policy response that follows is a legitimate topic for political debate. And I’m worried about Key’s.
Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, February 28th, 2011 - 20 comments
Concurrently Christchurch’s second big quake, the effects of two other shocks are beginning to ripple through our country. Food prices are putting basics out of reach and this week will see another big petrol price hike. All three of these shocks will require us to pool our resources and redirect them to rebuilding resiliently.
Written By: - Date published: 3:58 pm, February 27th, 2011 - 28 comments
The coming welfare reform is less a welfare policy and more another industrial relations policy in drag.
That’s because it won’t just be beneficiaries that suffer under this new regime but the majority of Kiwi workers too.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 26th, 2011 - 79 comments
Last week, Treasury issued a press statement saying it had commissioned research on the impact of governments’ fiscal stimulus packages, now published in the influential publication the Economic Journal. One article, “Tax policy for economic stimulus and growth”, had this to say:
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, February 25th, 2011 - 67 comments
I read a book a while back that was set in the near future after what it called the ‘Domino recessions’ – successive oil shocks had created a series of economic and political crises, each one before the world had recovered from the previous recession. As the second oil shock in three years hits, that scenario looks to be coming to true.
Written By: - Date published: 7:16 am, February 24th, 2011 - 158 comments
There’s a hard truth to NZ politics at the moment. It’s not one people like to think about.
But it helps to be reminded every now and then: everything is a lie.
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, February 23rd, 2011 - 183 comments
The Welfare Working Group wants to get poor women to breed less by giving them free long-term contraception. Sure, this is all an ‘Overton window‘ exercise but eugenics? Seriously? Trying to stop one ‘undesirable’ strata of society from breeding is one step from forced sterilisations. Has the Right reverted 80 years?
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, February 22nd, 2011 - 26 comments
National’s grand plan for the economy in the age of peak, peak food, and climate change: give tax cuts to the rich and take from the poor. It’s classic Nat class war. They want to force 100,000 people off the benefit in the ludicrously long time-frame of 10 years. But they won’t be creating any jobs so other workers will be displaced and wages will be forced down.
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, February 22nd, 2011 - 89 comments
Aucklanders – the fight back against the worst recommendations in the Rebstock report starts now. Join us – Auckland Against Poverty – in a picket, 2pm today outside Work & Income, Sel Peacock Dr, Henderson.
Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, February 22nd, 2011 - 34 comments
With the TPP being negotiated in secret today the signs from John Key are that he’s planning to sell us down the river.
But given the way he sold out our work rights to Warner Brothers we shouldn’t be surprised.
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 pm, February 21st, 2011 - 55 comments
Look past the tattered remains of Brand Key and the Nats have not changed in the past 20 years. They still don’t have a clue how to create a wealthier New Zealand but they know how to hurt people. As in the 1990s, they are falling back on bashing people who are jobless through no fault of their own. This clip from ‘In a Land of Plenty’ deserves to be watched again.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 21st, 2011 - 9 comments
Overnight carers have won the right to be paid at least the minimum wage for time when they are not working and free to sleep, as well as when they need to provide care to their charges in the middle of the night. In reaction, National appears set to legislate away the basic right that when you’re at work you get minimum wage.
Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, February 21st, 2011 - 26 comments
The Salvation Army has a Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit that comes out with some very well researched material. Their State of the Nation is compelling reading and their fear of the government’s welfare proposals coming out tomorrow speaks volumes.
Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, February 21st, 2011 - 97 comments
We know from history, and from our own recent experience, that tax cuts don’t cause growth. Privatisation and public service cuts don’t do us any good either. What does cause growth? Public spending. What’s more, public spending is much more efficient than the private sector too…
Written By: - Date published: 10:41 pm, February 20th, 2011 - 6 comments
On a day when I’ve heard of 3 smaller businesses shutting down due to National’s economy, Big Business too is waking up to the flaws in National’s ways. The push through, don’t consult, override the wishes of the people mentality even chafes the corporates when it’s not in their favour.
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, February 20th, 2011 - 67 comments
Hunger and malnutrition are stalking New Zealand families. Hundreds of thousands are just one shock – whether an illness, or a large bill – from not being able to afford basic food. This is not good enough in our land of plenty. Multi-millionaire John Key doesn’t empathise. To him poverty is a moral failing but he’s seriously out of touch.
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, February 20th, 2011 - 32 comments
Whitcoulls has been here since forever — “one of New Zealand’s most famous and enduring retail chains”. But the chain is in big trouble, and it’s sad to watch the ongoing wreck. Let’s hope that Whitcoulls can be saved before hundreds more workers and families in NZ lose their livelihood to the moribund economy.
Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, February 19th, 2011 - 24 comments
The limo issue reveals everything wrong with the Key government in microcosm: greedy, elitist, hypocritical, liars. Against the background of the failing economy, it’s one hell of a bad look. But in monetary terms, it pales in to comparison beside their decision to cancel Cullen Fund contributions, which has now cost $334 million.
Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, February 19th, 2011 - 54 comments
Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn compares the bailout of SCF investors with the Nats’ threat to change the law to deny some workers the minimum wage.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, February 17th, 2011 - 125 comments
John Key says if you’re having trouble getting by on your income it’s due to your ‘lifestyle choices‘. Key has given himself at least $23,000 in tax cuts and had a $7,500 rise with our borrowed money. He has the worst economic record of any PM in 80 years: 86,000 more jobless Kiwis, falling incomes. And this bastard blames Kiwi families for their poverty.
Written By: - Date published: 6:44 am, February 17th, 2011 - 59 comments
While those with $1500 to spend will be enjoying the world cup up close the rest of us have to pay for it.
Somehow it seems appropriate the game that once symbolised New Zealand’s classless society is now only available to the wealthy few at the expense of the many.
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, February 16th, 2011 - 14 comments
Under Labour, when there was effectively full employment, there were still 1,700 people who had been continuously on the dole for over 4 years. I was prepared to accept most of these were ‘bludgers’. Turns out I was too cynical. Paula Bennett found only 658 were ineligible. Werewolf has an excellent article busting more benefit myths.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, February 16th, 2011 - 35 comments
Because it’s failed ideology prevents it from leading job creation, National came up with ‘Community Max’. Pointless make work schemes have flourished. At the end, more participants are back on the dole than would have been if they had never left. A waste of time and money. Just like boot camps with a higher reoffending rate than home detention.
Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, February 15th, 2011 - 28 comments
Democracy doesn’t suddenly magically appear as though from a conjurers hat. We know that, right? So why are revolutions seeking democracy D.O.A?
Written By: - Date published: 11:43 pm, February 14th, 2011 - 53 comments
Look at the international media these days and what do we see? Oil prices rising due to peak oil. Extreme weather events due to climate change. Rising food prices due to peak oil increasing production costs, climate change destroying crops and resource depletion. And, in the most exposed countries, governments falling in revolution.
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