The Standard

Economy

Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour

Categories under Economy

Social mobility policies do not address poverty

Written By: - Date published: 12:20 pm, July 15th, 2015 - 27 comments

Excellent work by RNZ, following up on previously redacted documents to expose this sham.

Parnell Ponzi; When are National going to Act on Housing?

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, July 15th, 2015 - 176 comments

National need to act now to end the housing crisis. The market has failed and doing nothing is going to blight the future of Kiwis. The answer is easy. End speculation, build houses. But do National have the guts to do the right thing?

Phil Quin resigns from Labour

Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, July 14th, 2015 - 390 comments

Phil Quin: “I cannot, however, belong to an organisation that considers racial profiling fair sport. It really is that simple. I will rejoin once this or any future leader publicly repudiates such tactics.”

#ThisIsACoup

Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, July 14th, 2015 - 137 comments

Twitter has responded to the savage terms of the deal that Greece has signed with other EU countries by the mass use of the hashtag #ThisIsACoup.

My Daddy Was Killed at Work

Written By: - Date published: 9:11 pm, July 13th, 2015 - 12 comments

Can you help us share this clip?  It’s powerful and about the reality of workplace deaths for families that suffer them. The health and safety law going through the Parliament will betray these families if it is changed as the Government is proposing.

NRT: This is wrong

Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, July 13th, 2015 - 49 comments

“Auckland’s median house price rising a record 26 per cent to $755,000 over the past year..”. This is what a bubble looks like: when your house “earns” a top-end salary just by existing. And its a perfect example of why we need a capital gains tax.

Twyford Responds

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, July 13th, 2015 - 325 comments

Labour’s Housing Spokesperson Phil Twyford responds to accusations of racism and points to the way forward. The Labour Party will limit foreign speculation, build affordable houses and replenish the State Housing stock.

Helen Kelly

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, July 13th, 2015 - 19 comments

helen-kelly

Not the “end to zero hour contracts” you were looking for

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, July 12th, 2015 - 30 comments

Who would have suspected that Michael Woodhouse would be completely ineffectual in cracking down on zero-hour contracts?

China Crisis

Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, July 12th, 2015 - 199 comments

Good on Labour for saying what needed to be said. Can they, the Greens and NZ First save the next generation of Kiwis from being tenants in our own land?

Includes Bonus Seinfeld reference!

The state of state houses

Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, July 12th, 2015 - 17 comments

The data for the trial Warrant of Fitness scheme for state houses from last year was recently (finally!) released. 80% of them need serious work. 22% didn’t have functioning bathroom and toilet doors. What is going on?

Auckland property buyers

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, July 11th, 2015 - 436 comments

The big story this morning is Labour’s analysis of Auckland property purchase data.

Another #Keyfib about Kiwisaver

Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, July 10th, 2015 - 42 comments

The treasury release of budget policy advice suggests that John Key’s claim that changes to Kiwisaver would not have any effect on participation numbers was, ahem, erroneous.

GFC 2 in the oven: trillion dollar bailouts

Written By: - Date published: 7:06 am, July 10th, 2015 - 26 comments

Trillion dollar bank bail outs, interest rate apartheid and GREXIT. The ingredients for GFC 2 and another round of shock capitalism are quietly simmering. Graphic is of what US$1B looks like in printed notes.

The Canterbury rebuild

Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, July 9th, 2015 - 20 comments

The Canterbury Rebuild grinds on with news that CERA is to be replaced by a new entity dubbed Regenerate Canterbury.  But is a name change all that is required?

Rashbrooke on poverty in NZ and UK

Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, July 9th, 2015 - 15 comments

Max Rashbrooke has a major article in The Guardian today looking at poverty in NZ and the UK, and what each country can learn from the other.

The surplusgoround

Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, July 8th, 2015 - 56 comments

The on again off again surplus is on again. Key will be kicking himself for telling us all that we’re not interested in this artificial target.

Slash Greek debt now!

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, July 8th, 2015 - 222 comments

Europe must agree to slashing Greece’s debt so that economic growth can begin again. Germany should understand this better than most.

Deconstructing the government’s report card

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, July 7th, 2015 - 11 comments

The government has awarded itself a nice report card. Let’s take a closer look.

Common People; Yanis Varoufakis is all Class.

Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, July 7th, 2015 - 81 comments

The Greek Finance minister has unexpectedly quit. He had already said he would resign if the referendum was lost; nobody expected that he would go after such a stunning win. But it was the strategically correct thing to do. Why can’t some of the veterans in the NZ Labour Party take the hint?

Lets restrain those damnfool knights eh?

Written By: - Date published: 10:52 pm, July 6th, 2015 - 20 comments

“THE struggle has been long and arduous. But gazing across the battered economies of the rich world it is time to declare that the fight against financial chaos and deflation is won. In 2015, the IMF says, for the first time since 2007 every advanced economy will expand.”. But lets restrain the damn fool ideological idiots from screwing it up. Like Bill English and his damn stupid taxcuts…

An idea that could catch on

Written By: - Date published: 12:50 pm, July 6th, 2015 - 51 comments

banks-rubbish

Bill English’s groundhog decades

Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, July 6th, 2015 - 45 comments

Bill English is a strange denizen of National’s Wellington groundhog set. He keeps repeating the wet dreams that have been tried three times now and come up as failures each time. On Q&A yesterday he played with some silly numbers about dairy, ignoring the damage that it and National’s obsessive focus on the past has done on the resilience of our  export economy.

School lunches – Key vs data

Written By: - Date published: 7:11 am, July 6th, 2015 - 29 comments

Key claimed that the number of hungry kids in schools was limited to “the odd one or two”. Everyone knew it was nonsense. Now a survey by the New Zealand Principals’ Federation indicates the true extent of the problem.

The Greek referendum

Written By: - Date published: 5:00 am, July 6th, 2015 - 302 comments

Update: the No vote is predicted to win a resounding victory with 61% support of the total valid vote.

Toil and Trouble.

Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, July 5th, 2015 - 46 comments

In the hope of some informed comment…

That one time Government almost did something decent for workers

Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, July 4th, 2015 - 41 comments

There was this one time when the Government understood that workers coming into NZ to help rebuild Christchurch were very vulnerable to exploitation. 

There never was a rockstar

Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, July 4th, 2015 - 92 comments

We’ve just seen the weakest quarterly growth in two years, and economists are warning of possible recession. The NZ economy needs to be fundamentally reshaped.

Nick Smith; Thick as a Short Plank?

Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, July 3rd, 2015 - 25 comments

National’s Nick Smith appears to have misled Parliament over the illegal export of Kauri logs. Thankfully for Smith, it’s nothing to do with the rumours swirling around who is responsible for the loss of our irreplaceable heritage timber, but more to do with the Minister’s inability to understand a clear and explicit piece of legislation.

Greece – damned if they do

Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, July 2nd, 2015 - 124 comments

Secret documents seen by The Guardian describe just how bad things will be for Greece if they accept the demands of the IMF / “troika”.

New Powers to Ministers to screw Iwi

Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, July 2nd, 2015 - 25 comments

The Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill allows designated Ministers to sell off state houses. Currently Housing New Zealand has no such power. Interestingly however this Government could introduce a Bill with criteria to enable sales to be signed off by the CE of Housing New Zealand but instead they are seeking that power for themselves. But within it there is a fishhook for iwi. UPDATE: comment from Turei and response from Bennett