The unlucky New Zealand
The first New Zealand study to look at the effects of food hardship on pre-schoolers’ nutrition has found that nearly half of families struggle to access healthy food in their child’s first year of life.
Economy
poverty
Escape Velocity
In this series so far I’ve examined three of the four terms in the Kaya Identity, population, economic intensity, and energy intensity. It […]
Both sides reporting in the time of Trump
You would think that after the Trump years the media would be turning away from the reporting of “both sides” of an issue and in many cases they are. But there is a recent example of a hold out urging that extremist views should be given media attention.
Without the handbrake what should this Government do?
Welcome to 2021. This is the year for the Labour Government to be brave. What should it seek to achieve this year?
The Government’s finances are in very good shape
The Government’s finances are in remarkably good shape. Who would have predicted that dealing properly with a global pandemic would have had better results for the economy than timidly dealing with it and trying to ensure that economic activity continued? But by international levels our Government debt is already low and maybe now is the time to spend on vital areas such as poverty, climate change and the housing crisis.
National’s gonna National
On two issues, pill testing at music festivals and tax changes to address the housing crisis, National yesterday indicated that it will do what conservative parties do and oppose any meaningful change.
Time’s up Labour
It’s not possible to resolve New Zealand’s housing and poverty crises from within a neoliberal frame. Change is going to have to be driven from outside of parliament.
They Are Not Morons
Donald Trump will be back for another go at the Presidency in 2024. Progressives should underestimate the possibility of his winning. Unless the remaining centre-left generates strategies that are executed so well that people feel the difference good politics makes, the elements of populism arising again will stay ready like the elements of a bomb.
Capitalism’s end game
In Aotearoa New Zealand we are facing a new crisis. Not Covid, although the recent case of community spread is deeply concerning. The crisis is the value of houses.
COVID19 Vaccine and New Zealand’s K-Shaped Recovery
IF the discovery of a potential Covid vaccine looks like a new dawn, let’s not forget that this is the accelerating point of the K-shaped recovery New Zealand have been dreading. Our already rich are on the line heading upwards. They are getting richer because of a range of our Government policies.
Could the real Labour Party please stand up
We need to get the Labour government to focus on decreasing inequality and poverty in all its forms and effects. The new government needs to show that Labour has changed the country for good. Otherwise there’s no reason to vote for them in 2023.
Show us the plan Labour
Labour want to govern based in stability for all New Zealanders, but how does that work when your grand narrative has massive plot holes around ending poverty?
About that wealth tax
There are some issues to be ironed out, but this is the only thing I am seeing that attempts to resolve poverty in New Zealand rather than tinkering around the edges.
Landlord lobby group hopes National Government will ditch warm flat requirement
The NZ Property Investors Federation has proposed to its members they should hold off on making flats warmer and drier just in case there is a change of government.
Labour’s two tier welfare plans
As the covid crisis deepens Labour appear to be committed to entrenching the underclass and giving a helping hand to the middle class.
Will Jacinda Ardern meet her promise to transform?
Neoliberalism has run its course and displayed its profound inability to address inequality issues. It makes the poor get ever poorer while the affluent top 10% ticks of society get bloated and increasingly insufferable on untaxed capital gains. In 2017 Jacinda Ardern set a goal of bringing all children out of poverty within six years. So how is that going? And what are the next steps?
Fixing Unemployment – Zoom meetup Saturday 10am
Is it time to completely rethink how we deal with unemployment? We face a tsunami of job losses not seen in generations. Two ideas — social insurance and a job guarantee — are gaining prominence as ways to change how we deal with the problem. One provides income protection for those who lose employment, the other aims for something bolder: the elimination of unemployment. All welcome; register here.
Labour and the Greens on welfare
While Labour remain wedded to a neoliberal view of welfare as a necessary evil with deserving and undeserving poor, the Greens are standing up for the rights of all of us to live with dignity and have a meaningful standard of living.
Two Tier. Bull. Shit.
I thought we were “in this together” or some such?
Top ten things we have learned already
The top ten things that the Covid pandemic has taught us as a country.
The “Others”.
“Othering” has long been a staple of Governments that want to remain in power for the benefit of an Oligarchy, an “Elite”, a small ruling class, or the ones with, “the money”. Deflecting blame for economic and social issues on, an ethnicity, a class, the elderly, the poor, the young, the unemployed, young solo mothers, the disabled, immigrants, or any other convenient group that can be demonised. Very soon more of us may become the “others” we didn’t care about.
Running for cover
More 1% Americans are heading our way, according to Bloomberg. The Texas company building underground bunkers is getting more enquiries. They’re not running from the virus but fear the aftermath when the breadlines turn.
$1000 per person (recurring) NOW!
There’s a world where, apparently, people shake hands with other people all day. I don’t know that world. I couldn’t tell you the last time I shook some-one’s hand. And I suspect those who inhabit a world of hand-shakers have as little insight to my world as I do theirs. But in “one world”…
What the Government has done for beneficiaries
In Parliament this week Carmel Sepuloni outlined action being taken by the Government to implement the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group designed to improve the plight of beneficiaries.
Having us squabble over the welfare pie
When we hear a supposedly progressive economist talking about elderly people as decrepit, or rendering the elderly poor invisible, it’s time to revisit our moral compass.
Labour Conference
It’s a weird moment for the Labour Party at Conference this weekend.
Austerity – who should pay for the financial crisis?
Nick Kelly on UK austerity and who should have paid for the financial crisis.
Dog whistling Housing Corp tenants
National has announced that it will put an end to a “state house for life” if it gets into power next year. But its rationale is not only cruel but based on a faulty understanding of the local reality.
National’s plans to torment poor people leaked
National’s plans to torment poor people for political gain have been leaked.
Institutional poverty
Christchurch City Council have provided hundreds of social housing tenants with bubble wrap and a mop instead of insulating their houses.
National offers to help with housing crisis
On behalf of the National Party Judith Collins has offered to help Labour deal with the housing crisis, the one that National is responsible for.
New Child Poverty statistics will provide a sound baseline for reduction targets
Child Poverty Action Goup has provided comments about new child poverty measurements.
CGT as a Charitable Donation
Treat CGT like a semi-voluntary donation and give people a say in how it is spent.
Fair Pay Agreements
The Working Group on Wage Bargaining reform has reported back. Good news for the working poor, bad news for the filthy rich.
How To Get There 30/12/18
Welcome to TS’s Sunday think piece. It’s a blank sheet, a tabula rasa, waiting for your thoughts on the future and How To Get There.
Matt King goes full nut job
National MP Matt King has claimed that Stuff has been censoring comments that are critical of the Government and that an article expressing concerns about the run down of health infrastructure, the increase in child poverty, the use of private contractors to spy on us and the inability of NZTA to properly regulate WOF inspections is “left wing claptrap”.