Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, March 20th, 2017 - 54 comments
No Right Turn: “The real barrier to National … acting on this is because that “no-one owns water, first come, first served” policy disproportionately benefits one group and allows them to profiteer from a public resource while destroying its value to others. That group is farmers – and they donate to the National Party.”
Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, March 20th, 2017 - 128 comments
Multinationals exploit our tax laws to pay no tax in NZ. Matt Nippert has been doing great work on this, and his latest this weekend on Apple is a powerful example. Planned changes to our laws don’t go far enough. We need to fix this. What’s the downside? What’s the delay?
Written By: - Date published: 8:06 am, March 19th, 2017 - 32 comments
What if our production methods were designed to produce health, beauty, and permanence?
Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, March 18th, 2017 - 66 comments
If, instead of macho posturing (like the “War on P”), we wanted to actually tackle substance abuse, we would be looking at what actually works. Interesting case study in Iceland.
Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, March 17th, 2017 - Comments Off on TS Book Club this Sunday
We will be discussing Small is Beautiful – Economics as if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher.
Written By: - Date published: 2:26 pm, March 15th, 2017 - 9 comments
Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, March 15th, 2017 - 27 comments
Married couple, increase after tax $8.36 a fortnight each or $4.18 each a week!!!!! Disposable Income, 0.5971428 each a day !!!! Goes up on April 1st, how the hell did they arrive at this sum?
I find out.
Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, March 15th, 2017 - 37 comments
The idea of free market efficiency is not nearly as powerful or universal as its (often fanatical) proponents would have us believe. The sorry state of the USA’s health system is yet another compelling example of its limitations.
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, March 14th, 2017 - 38 comments
There are no surpluses in NZ right now, not in any real sense. There is only debt, negative externalities and deferred costs.
Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, March 13th, 2017 - 73 comments
Never mind the record debt, the dropped contributions to the Cullen fund, the housing crisis, rising poverty, the deteriorating health system, the costs of quake rebuilds, the filthy water, the need to prepare for climate change – never mind all that, have an election bribe!
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, March 12th, 2017 - 198 comments
“And when I saw that article in the NZ Herald this morning , in light of whats been happening to so many New Zealander family’s having to sleep in cars and the like over the past few years – I thought ”FUCK IT !!”… Im going to say something.”
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, March 8th, 2017 - 93 comments
The IMF warns that our household debt is far too high, as desperate tenants start raiding the Kiwisaver accounts to pay the rent.
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, March 8th, 2017 - 53 comments
Bill English’s new super plan falls between 2 stools. The super cost crisis that he’s trying to summon up, is before 2040 if it exists. The solution was the Cullen Fund. By 2040 you’re just adding yet another Baby Boomer cost onto GenX and the millenials, and there’s going to be a shortage of jobs anyway, without adding 65 & 66 year-olds to our dole queues.
Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, March 8th, 2017 - 73 comments
A new report has some really interesting findings on the gender pay gap. Paula Bennett engaged in a bit of grandstanding, but it rings completely hollow given National’s history on the issue.
Happy International Women’s Day.
Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, March 7th, 2017 - 43 comments
English isn’t going to be very happy when he opens the papers this morning.
Written By: - Date published: 4:08 pm, March 6th, 2017 - 123 comments
In what seems to have been a panicked reaction to a disastrous series of interviews, English has just announced that the age of eligibility for super will rise from 65 to 67, phased in from 2037.
Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, March 6th, 2017 - 3 comments
I/S at No Right Turn: “This is where National’s cuts and austerity have taken us: to a place where Corrections tortures and abuses people because it is the “cheapest” way of managing them.”
Written By: - Date published: 11:14 pm, March 4th, 2017 - 47 comments
First they came for the budgeting services. Now we know that every social service agency has to provide clients’ private personal data to the Ministry of Social Development or get no funding. Apparently it’s essential to Bill English’s much-touted and little understood “social investment” strategy, which is sounding more like something out of Orwell’s 1984. […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, March 4th, 2017 - 93 comments
In what was apparently a pretty dire interview on The Nation this morning, Bill English dropped one bombshell, possible changes in superannuation. For the record I think English is right on this. For a change.
Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, March 4th, 2017 - 82 comments
A recent UN report highlights the waste of treating homes as commodities. It should sound awfully familiar in the NZ context.
Written By: - Date published: 9:31 am, March 2nd, 2017 - 9 comments
Apparently we are this desperate for IT workers. Probably not quite the angle they were looking for, but I guess it did get attention…
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, March 1st, 2017 - 29 comments
Two very contrasting opinion pieces on racism, housing, jobs, and the immigration debate.
Written By: - Date published: 6:37 am, March 1st, 2017 - 44 comments
English will be worried that he got hammered like this, when Key got away with all sorts of insults and lies. And if you think your fellow Kiwis are useless workers you’re doing it wrong.
Written By: - Date published: 3:08 pm, February 28th, 2017 - 15 comments
Under the new standards we have up to a 1 in 6 risk of serious infection at the times that we actually swim in rivers, and Smith is trying to hide this fact by fudging around with year-long averages. David Parker’s analysis yesterday was bang on.
Written By: - Date published: 11:26 am, February 28th, 2017 - 7 comments
Off the Track is the 10th State of the Nation report from The Salvation Army’s Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit. Many of the markers routinely analysed for the report currently suggest we are not heading in the best direction for New Zealand as a whole. The Auckland Fabians have a lecture by Alan Johnson on the report on Thursday in Auckland.
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, February 28th, 2017 - 10 comments
Bill blames the blowout in emergency housing grants on the “hidden homeless”. Hidden only from those who will not see. Hidden only from a government that deliberately chooses for political reasons not to collect the relevant data.
Written By: - Date published: 6:50 am, February 28th, 2017 - 176 comments
Some folks Bill knows are telling him stuff and he’s basing immigration policy on it. The facts say otherwise. Bill English is full of shit and it’s time that more media called him on it.
Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, February 27th, 2017 - 52 comments
The Government’s estimate of the extent of the housing crisis has recently been shown to be totally out of touch and to add further pathos it is counting kiwi families urgently housed in motels in tourism statistics.
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, February 27th, 2017 - 58 comments
I’m used to hearing some pretty pathetic excuses out of the National government. But this will really take some beating.
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, February 26th, 2017 - 10 comments
An excellent piece by Pike River mum, Sonya Rockhouse, in today’s Sunday Star-Times. The full article is here, but here are some of the most important points…
Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, February 26th, 2017 - 115 comments
With the right in ascendancy throughout the Western World what does the left do to change this?
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