Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, June 1st, 2010 - 23 comments
The neoliberal dinosaurs at Anti-dismal have presented their defence of National’s privatisation agenda by responding to my post “Privatisation: the facts”. Their responses offer an insight into the neoliberal mind – asset stripping is good, it’s fine to get ripped off when selling assets, and who cares that the ‘mums and dads’ line is bollocks, the rich deserve the assets more.
Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, May 31st, 2010 - 11 comments
After 15 months, just 10km of the 2000km John key Memorial Cycleway has been built at 3 times the budgeted cost. I’d like to see Goff take Key up on his offer of a ride on his recession-busting national cycleway. They’d be done in half an hour. Key’s flagship policy was always a joke and, now, everyone’s laughing. Come next year, voters are going to look at this record and say ‘on yer bike, John’.
Written By: - Date published: 12:47 pm, May 30th, 2010 - 19 comments
National’s second budget has induced a lot of inflation – 5.9% over the next year. Interest rates on term deposits are just 4.4%. Collectively, New Zealand’s savers will be $2.3 billion worse off in a year’s time than they are now, thanks to the Budget. The flipside is the real value of mortgages will fall. Borrowers win and savers lose. I thought English said he was encouraging savings.
Written By: - Date published: 8:14 am, May 30th, 2010 - 38 comments
I knew that disasters in rich white countries get much more media than disasters anywhere else. I knew that oil was a dirty business. None the less, this article on the real costs of cheap oil surprised me.
Written By: - Date published: 3:48 pm, May 29th, 2010 - 77 comments
Audrey Young reports that Paula Bennett has once again abused the trust and power that is given to her as a minister in her campaign to paint all beneficiaries as bludgers. I don’t know anything about this family. But if this family is not entitled to their benefit then Bennett should do her damn job and get them off it. If they are entitled then she shouldn’t be accusing them of being bludgers.
Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, May 27th, 2010 - 122 comments
For her own petty political purposes, Paula Bennett has put Natasha Fuller through hell. Now (finally) the Privacy Commissioner has asked Bennett to apologise to Fuller for the damage she caused and pay her $15,000. Predictably, this awful person has refused. Paula Bennett, you are a disgrace to your office and a disgrace to New Zealand.
Written By: - Date published: 11:13 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 75 comments
Here’s a graph of tax week’s tax swindle. I can’t do the property tax/rent increase part but here’s the net weekly effect of the income tax changes and the GST hike. These numbers match up with those provided by Treasury. The first 1.2 million taxpayers get less than a dollar a week. The first 3 million (of 3.4 million) get an average of $4.24 a week. The top 100,000 average $105 a week.
Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 7 comments
Seeing as the theme of the day has been inequality and class war, this video from the Daily Show is very appropriate. Interesting to see that in the US the Right is running the same ‘lucky ducky‘ line about the poor who are supposedly getting it easy because their incomes are so low they don’t […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:16 am, May 25th, 2010 - 35 comments
Pointing out that a “rich get richer” budget is going to increase inequality in NZ seems to be making the Nats uncomfortable. Bill English tries to simply deny the facts. DPF tries to divert attention to “social mobility”. Lame efforts in both cases. The truth is that inequality isn’t on the Nats radar. They simply don’t care.
Written By: - Date published: 11:39 pm, May 24th, 2010 - 74 comments
The Right claims that people who aren’t on high incomes are just lazy and need to work harder, and, so, are undeserving of a fair deal. It’s insulting, it’s false, it’s just another excuse for maintaining the wealthy’s privileged position. Most people who work long hours are on low and middle incomes. And there are hundreds of thousands of low income Kiwis wanting more work.
Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, May 24th, 2010 - 84 comments
We don’t expect the state highway network to turn a profit but we know it contributes enormous value to our economy.Airports, seaports, and telecommunications network add more to the economy than just the profits of the companies. Same with rail. But what will come as a surprise, given the Right’s constant attacks, is that Kiwirail will also be making a $4 billion profit in the next decade.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, May 24th, 2010 - 41 comments
I love that John Key is so desperate to show some progress on his memorial cycleway that he’s even going along to the opening of cycleways that aren’t funded with its money. On Sunday he showed up at the opening of a cycleway in Oamaru. The cycleway was funded by the council and NZTA. The recession has been over for a year – not a single job has been created, no cycleway built.
Written By: - Date published: 6:51 am, May 24th, 2010 - 30 comments
Tories claim that tax cuts “cause growth” in the economy – they “grow the pie”. But it’s rubbish. No honest review of the long term historical picture can sustain the claim. Tax cuts don’t cause growth.
Written By: - Date published: 11:25 pm, May 23rd, 2010 - 30 comments
There’s some mean little barbs hidden in the Budget. National has abolished a tax rebate for redundant workers that helps you out if you are made redundant and your payout pushes you into a higher tax bracket. It’s a petty mean-hearted attack from an increasingly rightwing government. In fact, this insult to hard working Kiwis is an exact repetition of what they did in 1992.
Written By: - Date published: 12:44 pm, May 23rd, 2010 - 94 comments
The other day, we had a satire guest post about ‘thank the rich day’. Michael Laws appears determined to out do us: “On Thursday, this Key/English administration decided to abandon the pretence that we are an egalitarian society, or that we should ever attempt to be so. The wealthy are the wealthy because they merit that status, was the prime minister’s underlying message.”
Written By: - Date published: 2:46 pm, May 22nd, 2010 - 17 comments
Colin James makes a good point in his latest column which talks about the rightward shift this budget has created: Longer term, the Budget points to smaller government. Core spending is projected to fall from 35 per cent of GDP now to 28 per cent in the early 2020s. The last National leader to talk […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, May 22nd, 2010 - 16 comments
John Armstrong looks at the typical John Key-style punt that lies behind the budget.
Meanwhile Tracey Watkins has calmed down after the excitement of seeing the size of her tax cut and is questioning why Key is so afraid of anything but tightly managed media appearances.
Written By: - Date published: 11:56 am, May 22nd, 2010 - 41 comments
It’s interesting to see how Irish’s ‘rabbit from a hat’ metaphor has taken off for describing this Budget. Some, like Tracey Watkins, are even using it positively. She needs to have a bit more of a think about what the rabbit from a hat is. The rabbit itself is nothing special. In fact, in this case it’s a borrowed bunny, despite the media’s tendency to portray tax cut as costless.
Written By: - Date published: 6:27 am, May 22nd, 2010 - 38 comments
Amongst all the budget reaction, there is a group of people that I don’t understand. They are the small group who are very well off, and who are nevertheless exulting about tax cuts that give them a few tens of dollars a week. Is your allegiance really purchased so cheaply?
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, May 21st, 2010 - 109 comments
In 2008, Bill English was sprung secretly telling National members that he and Key would sell Kiwibank “‘eventually but not now”. After being caught out, English and Key categorically ruled out asset sales in the first term of a National government and said they would seek a mandate to make any sales in a second term.
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, May 21st, 2010 - 11 comments
In what it seems to think is an act of benevolence and economic genius, National has decided to borrow a pile of money, cut key public services, put up GST, and give me an extra $1000 a year. Will it make me work harder? Hell no. My partner and I are already paid plenty. If anything it will make us look at ways to reduce the amount we work.
Written By: - Date published: 12:52 pm, May 21st, 2010 - 9 comments
John Key’s “Don’t Be Jealous” Budget has done little to stop the European contagion from ravaging our sharemarket – at time of writing down 2.4% and still falling. The NZX company itself has dropped more than 5%, leading other significant losses by Fletcher Building, Sky City, and Contact Energy. Telecom is now down to an historic […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, May 21st, 2010 - 20 comments
There’s some useful scenarios to look at on the beehive’s tax site. They show how we all pay less tax, even after GST, and somehow the government also gets more tax. I love maths like that. But some of them seem to have something missing, so I thought I’d correct a couple of them…
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, May 21st, 2010 - 16 comments
Have you figured out what the Budget means for you? I’ve been looking at the media statements, reading the spin, deconstructing the commentators and trying to work out where it gets me as a parent with young children….
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, May 21st, 2010 - 11 comments
What does Treasury make of National’s economic plan according to the Budget papers? Here’s the outlook for when National is kicked out of office at the end of 2011: Workers’ share of the economy will have fallen from an already miserable 43.6% to 41.5%. GDP per capita will be lower when National leaves office than when they entered it. Real wages will drop 2%.
Written By: - Date published: 8:09 pm, May 20th, 2010 - 70 comments
Let’s get this straight. Borrowing a billon dollars for tax cuts while cutting services is not centrist.
Even if tax cuts go to middle and low earners too.
Meanwhile the opposition is MIA.
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, May 20th, 2010 - 18 comments
Finance Minister Bill English today announced tax cuts worth $340,000 for National MPs on their Parliamentary salaries alone. “I’m very pleased we could announce this gift, ah, fair alteration of the tax system. There was a real danger that New Zealand could have lost the services of such valuable, highly-skilled workers as Paula Bennett, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, Paul Quinn, and Melissa Lee
Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, May 20th, 2010 - 50 comments
The latest Roy Morgan poll makes for grim reading for the government ahead of what promsies to be an unpopular budget. Confidence in government is now bouncing between net 25% and 30% positive. That compares to 55% last October. Put that another way: 1 in 8 Kiwis have gone from having a postive view of this government to a negative one in the past half year, and it’s showing up in the party’s numbers.
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, May 20th, 2010 - 56 comments
Hone Harawira does not want to vote for the ‘don’t be jealous’ budget and he doesn’t think the Maori Party will be standing true to its principles or supporters if it does. Harawira sought permission to vote against the Budget. Tariana Turia, who is awfully comfortable in the back of her Crown limo, refused. Let’s hope Harawira has the courage cross the floor anyway.
Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, May 20th, 2010 - 23 comments
Giving the rich a bucket of your money, is about keeping valuable people (who must be rich, by definition) in this country, or closing loopholes (by make the cheat automatic), or was it about boosting growth through trickle down (which is like helping a dehydrated man by giving water to someone with an already full bladder and hoping they piss on him)? Whatever, just don’t be jealous, OK?
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 pm, May 19th, 2010 - 53 comments
The Nats thought they could spin anything. Even more tax cuts for the rich.
But they were wrong.
What rabbit will they pull out of the fiscal hat now? And who will fall for the trick?
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