The Right is winning the bullshit media narrative
Last weekend saw a continuation of right wing parties coming out with inane policy announcements that make a media splash without any hard questions being asked.
Economy
superannuation
National panics with Kiwisaver announcement as polling crashes
National’s recent Kiwisaver announcement, expected to cost $110 million a year, only pays back some of the savings from its erlier Kiwisaver cuts expected to save $610 million a year, and appears to be signs ofincreasing panic.
Yes Test Before Getting NZ Super
Superannuation is the ultimate Don’t Go There of New Zealand politics. But unless this benefit becomes means tested rather than subsidises rich asset-hoarding old people, it is going to sink every other part of the government.
National Wants to Increase Retirement Age to 67
If Luxon and Willis go ahead with it as a policy platform for the 2026 election, and win, a raise in the age of entitlement for national superation will most likely be implemented.
Reasons for Optimism
We’re good, but we know we want better leadership.
NZ: No jobs, expensive housing, time to leave
It gets rather depressing reading the statistics on National’s induced recession as they steadily push New Zealand into stagflation. The Reserve Banks unplanned OCR decision last week wasn’t a hopeful sign. We’re in for a few years of a National led and created recession. Get out while you still can
Superannuation policy becomes political
National’s promise to increase the age of retirement and likely cuts to Cullen fund contributions and state Kiwisaver payments have been seized on by Labour as evidence that National does not care about ordinary people.
Luxon’s first year
Chris Luxon marked the anniversary of his becoming National leader this week by showing that he is that out of touch he had no idea what the single rate of superannuation is.
The time that Roger Douglas was right
Roger Douglas may have caused New Zealand a lot of harm through his policies and actions but there was one occasion where if a policy he had helped to introduce had been retained New Zealand would be a much better place.
Is This The New State We Want?
The New Zealand state is gaining power again, but is it what we want?
Todd Muller is Simon Bridges with less personality
Todd Muller has announced a front bench that resembles a National Party front bench from 30 years ago. And his first live interview on national television did not go as well as he hoped.
National tacks right
National has released its economic policies for the next 12 months and they have a decidedly backward feeling about them.
MAFS National Style*
National is grooming the voters for another dirty ACT.
Suck it up political sleazers.
Winston Peters has launched a legal fishing expedition to identify who exactly breached privacy on his superannuation over payments. A problem that he shares with about 50 thousand other pensioners. Unlike them, his problem wasn’t trying to find money to repay it. It was that the breach was deliberately timed to be a classic dirty politics ploy, almost certainly by National, in the leadup to the recent election. I wish him good fishing.
The Herald reverts to type
John Armstrong has come out in the Herald swinging wildly and claiming without evidence that Jacinda Ardern’s campaign has stalled, and criticized her policy positions but because he thinks they are only a bit better than National’s.
Peters in super trouble
Newsroom and Newshub have broken a story about Winston Peters receiving, for the last 7 years, a single person’s super payment that he was not entitled to because he was living with an (undeclared) other person. Peters denies this but has already payed back the excess from an “innocent mistake”.
Dear Izzy
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.
2040? The robots will have taken over
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.
English a shambles
English isn’t going to be very happy when he opens the papers this morning.
English proposes raising age of super to 67 (eventually)
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.
English puts super back on the line
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.
Time for cross party accord on super
English is not making the same stupid pledge as Key, to let superannuation consume the future. Time for a cross party accord. Take it off the table as a political football and solve the damn problem.
Employers failing Kiwsaver obligations
In a sign of just how stressed our economy is: “Inland Revenue is chasing employers for unpaid KiwiSaver contributions worth tens of millions of dollars.”
National costs you $100,000 from your retirement fund
If you’re an average worker the actions of the National government have reduced the value of your KiwiSaver fund at retirement by about $100K.
The great big list of John Key’s big fat lies (UPDATED)
How many more lies will John Key tell today in his so-called State of the Nation address? Virtual chocolate fish to whomever guesses the closest number.
Destroying a savings culture
Key: “The removal of the $1,000 kick-start contribution will not make a blind bit of difference to the number of people who join KiwiSaver.” Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.
The myth of “Retirement Savings”
Advocates of Kiwisaver and other funded “retirement savings” schemes perpetuate the fundamental misunderstanding that “conventional” in New Zealand’s case “neo-liberal” economists, speculators, finance companies, politicians and those with a lot of share holding wealth in non-productive enterprises like to perpetuate.
Superannuation and Government forecasts
National has again refused to consider doing anything about the future of Superannuation. Yet its policies of increasing Crown debt, stopping contributions to the Cullen Fund and attacking Kiwisaver have made a discussion about the future of superannuation more important than ever.
Who needs $4.8 billion anyway
Yesterday a report from the NZ Super Fund (the Cullen fund) provided further evidence of National’s economic “genius”. We could have used the $4.8 billion that they just chucked away.
Sale of social housing stock won’t save costs
Hamilton City Council currently has plans to sell of its remaining pensioner housing stock. It already sold off a block of them in 2012. Of those sold, only 12 out of 53 units are available for seniors to rent at affordable rates. This is because 27 were sold as there was no social service provider able to buy them. So now Council want to sell the rest.
Labour’s Kiwisaver announcement
Labour has released its Kiwisaver policy. Kiwisaver will now be universal for all workers except those earning less than a to be set level. Contributions will be gradually increased. The $1,000 Kick-start and government contribution of up to $521 a year will be retained and will apply to all new enrollments
Labour please take note.
The more that National publicly adopts “left wing” “socialist” party policies, such as “free” medical care for children under 13, keeping the retirement age as it is, and balancing the budget, the more they rise in the polls.
The retirement age debate
Labour’s current policy to gradually increase the age of retirement is a fiscally appropriate response to the pressures that will result from the baby boomer bulge in the population approaching retirement. But is it the right thing to do?
UBI (2) Why should we push for a UBI? (Universal basic income).
Why a UBI?
Firstly. To overturn some paradigms:
That a great many people should lead poor and constricted lives, so a very few can be rich.
That ordinary people are disposable economic production units.
UBI
New Zealand was once considered one of the best places on earth to live. It could be again …
Labour shoot themselves in the foot, again!
Just when you begin to think Labour are looking like a Government, one of the has-beens from the Rogernomics era, again! shows that they have NFI how to get elected and they are still clinging desperately to the Neo-liberal paradigm.