Darkhorse writes amazingly insightful economic pieces on his ‘How Daft’ blog (the title gives you a clue as to what he thinks of the current state of affairs). The neoliberal experiment has been an abject failure by any rational measure. And there are alternatives. Darkhorse has given us permission to syndicate his posts, the originals are here.
High levels of unemployment in NZ are both a condemnation of the Nats’ bungling of the economy, and a reality check on their perpetual grandstanding beneficiary bashing.
While we the public distract ourselves with trivia like car crushing, and focus on other important matters like asset sales, the TPPA which is quietly unfolding in the background is actually the most important ongoing political issue. It has potentially disastrous implications for our sovereignty and our future.
A draft agreement has been negotiated for the Rio+20 summit that starts today, but anyone who cares about the future of our planet should be disappointed. The expert panel of nobel laureates, scientists and ministers’ call to ‘seize the moment’ has largely gone unheeded, as the agreement is full of empty promises and lacking in concrete commitments.
National are shelving their plan to get out of deficit by 2014/15 – their only goal left, with the Brighter FutureTM shelved. No to stopping the exodus to Australia, stopping high unemployment, getting better public services, fixing our current account deficit, returning to growth, proper ECE funding (and Adult and Community Education at all), better training for teachers, keeping ACC fair, not cutting frontline staff, promises to not raise GST and more, all on the altar of surplus in 2014/15.
Now what do they stand for?
Austerity has failed in both the UK and NZ. But at least Cameron’s Conservatives have the wit to realise it, and the courage to act.
Austerity: another great idea brought to you by the same people who got us into this mess. But some economists are able to think outside the orthodoxy: There Are Real Alternatives. See you at The Voyage.
The “tradeable” sector is still shrinking. The property market is heating up again. We need a capital gains tax now.
Labour are pushing for an enquiry into how Treasury oversight of the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme was so poor that it has cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. Bill English can’t be allowed to hide this under the plus Treasury carpet, so his lack of oversight of Treasury isn’t shown up.
Just as a quick update on my pre-budget Spin v reality about a Government that has the worst growth record of any since before Michael Joseph Savage, and has a 52% increase in unemployment despite more than 1,000 NZers leaving for Australia each week.
A couple of good BBC articles: what have the Romans done for us? and can we have a society that doesn’t depend on us becoming ill with our fatness? And Kim Hill’s excellent interviewee Steve Keen.
National don’t have faith in Kiwis, or our skills and education, our Kiwi ingenuity. Nope, they think the only way to wealth is farming – which can’t be expanded, tourism – which provides low value jobs, and resource exploitation – of oil, gas and minerals unfound. They’re banking on us hitting the jackpot, because they can’t think of any real way of providing a future for our country.
An excellent column from Bryan Gould, and a picture of working families in financial distress. Something to ponder, as we await the zero budget.
Don’t blame Greece: if you change nothing, nothing changes. National’s problems are their own to solve, but they don’t have the guts to look at the big problems in New Zealand’s economy. 0.6% growth in total over the last 3 years – less than population. But National only tinkers and distracts, as our brightest and best head to Aussie.
National have become a very adept PR machine. While not adept at running the country, they’ve become great at running statistics. John Key […]
Last Budget, National promised 36,000 jobs in the year to March 2012. We got 20,000. They promised 1.8% growth. We got 1.1%. They promised a $9.8 billion deficit. Now, it’s heading for over $12 billion. Ready for a repeat on Thursday?. English will say last year’s failures were all someone else’s fault. Key will grin and make some weak jokes, the beakbenches will hoot and holler. But will anyone outside National be smiling this time round?
Remember ‘ambitious for New Zealand’? Remember ‘brighter future’? National used to at least say they wanted to do something significant. At what point did all that get replaced with ‘surplus by 2014/15’? Key and National have $70 billion a year to play with to better this country, and the best thing they can come up with is making sure government operating revenue exceeds operating spending by about half a percent in three years time.
Unemployment’s up, wages are flat, retail and export prices in freefall. Last budget National promised 4% this year – it’s 1%. But never fear, the brighter future is just around the corner – again. Key says growth will be strong in 2013/14 -2 years from now. Does anyone still believe him?
We’re in a second mini-recession/stall since the Great Recession began in 2008. As in 2010, oil prices ramped up and growth petered out. Now, oil prices have dropped back a little. But the moment the economy shows mild signs of life, they’ll be back up again. Short periods of weak growth, oil price shocks, recessions – sounds like the cycle peak oil economists have predicted for years.
Behold the economic genius of John Key.
Ruth Richardson has forced every subsequent policy to be sized up for ‘fiscal responsibility’. I’d like them to be sized up for ‘social responsibility’ and ‘environmental responsibility’ as well.
We know that giving SkyCity more pokie machines will mean more problem gamblers, more crime. The Right says it’s worth it for the convention centre. But the official numbers show that’s a dog and we would pay for it in the long-run. It’s not one side of this equation that is bad for New Zealand, it’s both.
Another “Zero budget” has been signaled. Some commentators think it’s a bold move. I beg to differ.
The “fiscally neutral” tax cuts never were neutral at all, and a lower than expected tax take is hitting the government’s books. But Key is still out there repeating the lie.
Bernard Hickey has a great piece in the Herald on Sunday that you shouldn’t miss.
Plenty of high-profile bad news headlines for the Nats. At least it takes the focus of the boring old economy.
Barack Obama will be breathing a sigh of relief after David Farrar endorsed his call to end oil subsidies. It seems the 3rd oil price spike in 5 years is getting the attention of even the Right. Something, they’ve got an inkling, is wrong and rising petrol prices are here to stay. Pity that, on the cusp of revelation, Farrar opts for the security blanket of neoclassical economics.
Recently, an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal describing how CEOs around the world spend their time. The article drew on data from a larger study, the Executive Time Use Project . This project relied on reports of time use by CEO’s personal assistants; making it more accurate. It came across my usual reading and I thought I might share some of the findings with you.
Hey John – where’s our “Brighter Future”? Hey National voters – was this what you voted for?
Tax revenue is down, blowing a big hole in all the government’s financial projections. The Nats are in trouble and instead of looking for solutions, they’re looking for excuses.
Nationals bungling on the economy continues to damage NZ. Even their misguided state sector job cuts have failed to make significant savings…
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Bollard says the NZ-Aus income gap may not be as large as suggested – but what about the incompetence gap?
The Nats want to replace public service jobs with computerised systems. They claim that this will improve service and save money. Quite apart from the folly of destroying jobs in the current economy, they are likely wrong on both those claims.
Capitalism is good. Globalisation is good. It’s political orthodoxy. But is it matched by economic reality? Perhaps not. Recent pieces by Bernard Hickey and Gordon Campbell give us plenty to think about…
Steven Joyce’s piece on Tuesday was a transparent and hypocritical attempt to frame political opponents negatively, and soften us up for more asset sales, mining, deep sea drilling and the like. Thing is, it’s the Nats with their misguided austerity cuts who are the real nay-sayers holding the country back.
