Over the last couple of months two potential crises have been unfolding in two very different countries. Greece and America both looked to be in danger of defaulting on their huge debts and triggering a cascade of disastrous consequences. The situation is still unfolding…
According to a recent report, disadvantaged NZ youth are at the “bottom of OECD league”. The report recommends various interventions in schools. The recommendations completely miss the point, because the problem is not in the schools, the problem is in society.
Back in October 2010 the Nats were quick to claim credit for low inflation. No doubt they will be just as quick now to accept the blame for inflation at a 21 year high.
Labour have started setting out a bold, fair and plausible policy framework for the election. Rumours of their tax policy have generated more interest and excitement than anything the National government has done in the last three wasted years.
A conservative council in the UK sacked it’s entire workforce and offered them their jobs again the next day if they accepted a […]
What keeps John Key & Bill English too busy to comment on their own government’s dismal performance, but not so busy that they can’t comment on absolutely anything to do with Labour?
John Key was elected promising to stop the exodus to Australia. He has failed. More and more Kiwis, especially the young, are leaving. And is it any wonder?
The snows haven’t come and the ski industry is in trouble. Is it a “cruel blow” from mother nature?
Are we “roaring out of recession”? No. Is there an “aggressive recovery”? No. What’s going wrong? The problem is that the Nats are squeezing the life out of the economy.
John Clarke and Bryan Dawe calculate the cost of the European debt crisis…
The Nats haven’t got a clue how to run a successful country, and most of the things they do try just make matters worse. We’re drifting…
The CTU’s Economic Bulletin: The 2011 Budget was a victory of story-line over needs… The Budget has no plan to put right New Zealand’s social and economic imbalances, and does little to start cutting back the overseas private debt… The Budget of a thousand cuts put debt and deficits ahead of people’s needs and a plan for the future.
Renaming, merging and splitting agencies is what a government does when it wants to look busy but has no ideas.
Hard to believe it has only taken two and a half years for National to get to this point.
Good old fashioned benefit bashing. Another electoral battle line has been drawn – arm yourself with the facts!
This government’s got a real talent for manufacturing crisis to suit them. The debt disaster is a classic – in order to get out of debt we have to cut public spending to the tune of almost $1billion and sell assets.
No Right Turn on National’s spin about “Mum and Dad investors”.
This story didn’t get any big headlines. This story slipped by almost completely under the radar. But it’s a very important story. Much more important for New Zealand’s development than the smoke and mirrors of the do-nothing budget.
Last week we had National’s budget and Labour’s conference. A chance for both parties to set out their ideas for the future. National’s do-nothing budget went down like a lead balloon, while Labour started setting out promising new policy. Looks like the 2011 election campaign will be a contest between ideas and schoolboy mockery.
Prominent scientist Sir Paul Callaghan thinks Kiwis are choosing to be poor. I reckon he’s right too, but we probably disagree about the reasons.
Cartoonist Guy Body in The Herald, with one of those pictures that is worth a thousand words…
John Armstrong is highly critical of the sub-zero budget: “The Budget has displayed a degree of cynicism one would expect from a Government in its third term, not its first”…
As I think you can tell from the budget speech, that Bill English is quite a funny guy…
So, today is Budget day. The big stuff has all been pretty well signposted, tinkering with KiwiSaver, Working for Families, and student loan eligibility. The devil will be in the details of all the cuts that get made to try and limit the damage in health and education.
It has been great to see Labour’s statements on how they would approach Budget 2011. But, as is often the case at this stage of the electoral cycle, it is the Greens who are laying out their alternative budget ideas in the most detail.
Apparently the budget will forecast strong growth in GDP and wages, and a return to surplus within a few years. Sounds good? Well yes, but it is all based on purely hypothetical “projected growth”. Wishful thinking from Treasury analysts with a three year record of being wrong wrong wrong.
The run up to the budget has all been about cuts. How many? How deep? Like lemmings we’re accepting National’s framing, and marching even faster to our economic doom. But, there is an alternative. Instead of slashing spending, we can raise government income. Here’s how.
John Key is whinging about how labour isn’t focusing on the “big issues”
But he and his government have been avoiding the big issues for years.
That’s not surprising given how badly they do on these big issues. But it’s still pitiful to see them whinging about it.
Key’s pre-budget speech was hugely uninspiring and mis-leading.
Cunliffe rips his claims apart.
Expansionary austerity is the idea that cutbacks in government spending can stimulate economic growth. Empirical evidence shows that it doesn’t work. Current experience shows that it’s not working in Britain, and it isn’t working here. Like “trickle down economics” this favourite of the political Right is not so much a theory as a deluded fantasy.
John Key says that the government can’t help Kiwis who are struggling with rapidly rising costs. Rubbish. There’s plenty that they could be doing. If they wanted to…
The Kea “Census” of expat Kiwis is under way. Unfortunately it coincides with government plans for a Crackdown on student loan repayments. Instead of chasing our expats for an entirely hypothetical return, we should be reaching out to them, embracing them, making them welcome back home.
Back in October last year the Nats, in a sea of bad news on the economy, latched on to the low inflation rate as something that they could claim “credit” for. No doubt they will now be just as ready to accept blame for the worst inflation rate in 20 years. Almost half of this figure is driven by the Nats’ GST increase…
1000 economists have written to the G20, about to meet in Washington, and to Bill Gates, asking for a tax on financial transactions known as a Tobin tax after its originator, or a Robin Hood tax as it is known in the US. 4 New Zealanders are among the 1000; Prue Hyman, Stefan Kesting, Peter Conway, and Petrus Simons. Good on them.
ChrisH has been goaded to write this post by a couple of Jim Mora panels last week, which created a stronger than usual temptation to throw the radio out the window. Here he writes a scholarly polemic castigating the implied or explicit assumptions of the people involved in these panels.
Bill English managed to cause quite a fuss this week with his claim that New Zealand had a “competitive advantage” due to factors like our low wage economy. Another of the factors that English cited was how “pragmatic” the public are as the Nats ram through their economic changes…
Protest action by Greenpeace has disrupted prospecting activities in the Raukumara Basin by Brazilian petrochemical giant Petrobras. John Key has come out swinging for Big Business, and wants to send in the navy to sort out the protesters. But Greenpeace has it right. We shouldn’t be drilling for oil…
