Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 7:43 am, February 13th, 2015 - 37 comments
Drought has been declared for a huge region of the South Island. Weather extremes are going to be the new normal – why aren’t we adapting?
Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, February 12th, 2015 - 103 comments
The focus group results are in and John Key is backing off from the Government injecting further money into the SkyCity convention centre.
Written By: - Date published: 5:00 pm, February 12th, 2015 - 92 comments
Zero-hour contracts are the perfect illustration of when “flexibility” in employment relations goes all one way.
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, February 12th, 2015 - 91 comments
Another big tax evasion scandal with links to NZ. Don’t expect the government to spend any time looking in to this.
Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, February 11th, 2015 - 18 comments
This morning the Salvation Army released their state of the nation report – A Mountain All Can Climb. It is mixed news, and most coverage has focused on the impact of the housing crisis.
Written By: - Date published: 4:25 pm, February 10th, 2015 - 6 comments
Sir Edmund Thomas will discuss this topic in Wellington at Connolly Hall, Guildford Terrace, tomorrow Wednesday 11th at 5:30pm. All welcome – see synopsis – if you would like to come please register here.
Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, February 10th, 2015 - 76 comments
Eighteen months ago Stephen Joyce said about the Sky City Convention Centre deal that anything not written down was not happening. It appears that he was wrong as John Key softens us up for more public money being spent on a private convention centre.
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, February 10th, 2015 - 61 comments
The Salvation Army has all but ruled out being involved in the Government’s Social Housing unless it is provided with capital. And if divestment occurs it considers that tenants should have a role in governance of the houses they live in.
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, February 9th, 2015 - 37 comments
We are in the process of locking in inequality through the intergenerational ownership of housing, thus squeezing more and more mobility out of society.
Written By: - Date published: 2:13 pm, February 5th, 2015 - 76 comments
The social democracy of my youth has radically collapsed into our current culture of individualism, privatisation and personal greed.
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, February 5th, 2015 - 49 comments
The Productivity Commission has a new report out which looks at changes in the labour income share, or LIS, from 1978 to 2010. The labour income share is described in the report’s summary as: The labour income share (LIS) measures the split of national income between workers who supply labour and the owners of capital. […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, February 5th, 2015 - 9 comments
Darien Fenton at Jobs That Count brings us the details of the fight for decent pay and conditions at Talley’s meat processing plants
Written By: - Date published: 2:27 pm, February 4th, 2015 - 40 comments
We need a much better analysis of what kinds of jobs and conditions are out there in NZ, crude figures are not telling us enough.
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, February 1st, 2015 - 26 comments
Written By: - Date published: 11:51 am, January 31st, 2015 - 27 comments
“The Government’s continuing attempts to divest itself of state housing overlook the enormous benefits to society which these homes produce in alleviating severe housing shortages. They were built up by successive generations of New Zealanders, and to “sell them off” under the pretence of efficiency is a disservice to all of us, whether we’re homeowners or renters.”
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, January 30th, 2015 - 163 comments
A by-election is imminent – so how does Labour win in a safe National seat?
Written By: - Date published: 1:34 pm, January 28th, 2015 - 43 comments
The choice is clear.
Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, January 27th, 2015 - 33 comments
Rob Salmond has a bite at Eric Campton’s rather ideologically naive ideas about balancing up the GST playing ground between local and overseas retailers. Rather than not doing anything about it as Eric suggests and leaving local retailers flailing. Why not just make it simple as local collection of GST?
Written By: - Date published: 8:16 am, January 27th, 2015 - 250 comments
Greece has voted to reclaim its future from the banks.
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, January 26th, 2015 - 63 comments
The scale of the housing affordability crisis, particularly in Auckland, is now unmistakable. Not only do individual families suffer as home ownership increasingly moves beyond their reach, but the impact on social cohesion and on the fair distribution of resources is becoming more and more damaging. The rising cost of buying a house is without […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, January 26th, 2015 - 43 comments
George Monbiot wrote recently on how Canadian and United Kingdom public media reporting on corporate news are hopelessly pro business and lacking in any sort of balance. And how the volume of articles concerning environmental issues is declining. Is it the same in New Zealand?
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, January 23rd, 2015 - 109 comments
Fracking has created a short term oil glut. That’s bad news for climate change. Could we at least find a silver lining in this carbon cloud, or will it be business as usual?
Written By: - Date published: 3:45 pm, January 22nd, 2015 - 30 comments
That’s as in spat. Characteristic. Richard Smith of Naked Capitalism questioned her Samoan fiduciary company fronting for a company delisted from GXG Markets, a small European exchange. It’s an interesting story, and Smith promises more to come from GXG about New Zealand if not Odgers.
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, January 21st, 2015 - 12 comments
Falling numbers yes, but falling through the cracks.
Written By: - Date published: 6:59 pm, January 20th, 2015 - 150 comments
Sometimes a simple graph is much more eloquent and powerful than a whole lot of words …
Written By: - Date published: 4:25 pm, January 20th, 2015 - 20 comments
I/S – “the Financial Markets Authority knew about almost 4,000 crimes and never bothered to prosecute any of them”…
Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, January 20th, 2015 - 131 comments
Yesterday it was announced that Auckland is the ninth least affordable city in the world requiring 8.3 times their average wage to buy a home. Reducing regulation hasn’t worked, otherwise more than 20 homes would have been built under the 2013 fast track accord. The problem is a shortage of affordable housing.
Written By: - Date published: 4:22 pm, January 19th, 2015 - 37 comments
An interesting milestone in inequality is about to be passed.
Written By: - Date published: 4:36 pm, January 17th, 2015 - 38 comments
This the time of year when papers are thin and economic prognostications abound as the pop-star economists from banks and brokers look to raise their public profile. In 2013 the same Cameron Bagrie gave us the “rock-star” economy, this year apparently in Wellington we can all be part of the “movie-star” economy. Such puffery is […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, January 17th, 2015 - 62 comments
The evidence is surely mounting that the remedies to recession proposed by orthodox policy have failed.
The whole basis of monetarist policy is revealed to be a charade.
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, January 16th, 2015 - 136 comments
The continued rise of rheumatic fever is an indictment of our society.
New figures show that there is no quick fix for diseases of poverty.
Your move, National.
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