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6:00 am, July 12th, 2026 - 17 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
https://www.greens.org.nz/tax_system_for_all – – – https://vote.nz/
The Greens currently have the only economically coherent set of policies.
The Coalition of Cockups; National is borrowing for tax cuts, while cutting every Government service and social wage apart from subsidies for the rich. ACT wants to get rid of, ironically, all but, the controlling to the lower classes, parts of Government. NZF has descended into a morass of Cookerdom.
Labour, of course, intends to continue Neo-liberalism with a slightly kinder face.
I had a look at their calculator and I would love to know what
"Total value of other assets you own that have a value over $50k each. e.g. Shares, art collections, vehicles, boats."
Does that mean that I can forget about declaring my car collection? I might have 500 of them which I rent out but since they are individually worth less than $50k I can ignore them when working out my tax.
Similarly if I had a vast art collection, a couple of thousand items but individually they are worth less than $50k I can also ignore them. Is that right?
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/vehicles-per-capita-by-country/
Are Kiwis still collecting cars? Surely we have enough already, although for some, The World is not enough. How much revenue would a 2.5% wealth tax bring in it Elon declared for New Zealand Aotearoa? I guess not that much, if he used his wealth to buy 20 million ordinary cars (not Teslas) – clever ol’ Elon 🙂
https://taxjustice.uk/blog/1000000000000-reasons-we-need-wealth-taxes-now/
https://yeehawtheboys.substack.com/p/economic-lunacy
It means if the total value of other assets you own is valued over $50k each.
For example:
If the total value of your car collection is valued over $50k
If the total value of your shares is valued over $50k
If the total value of your art collection is valued over $50k
It's quite easy these days to have a car valued over $50k!
Off hand, the average age of a New Zealand car is around 12 years old.
But yes, some new cars can be rather expensive.
Aldous Huxley said after a lifetime of thinking and adapting, and thinking and testing drugs on the mind, and thinking and overcoming sight problems, and writing and appearing on television and making videos on society and its direction; he said, that he was afraid that we would embrace being slaves.
It seems to me that we are so adaptable that we are on the way to that. We laugh at the cartoonists efforts and realise truths because they are clever witty and true, then disregard them and get on with whatever is our daily toil in our lives.
I saw a pic of a kakapo mother feeding her chick; is she more alive than me and most others? We have been cast out of Eden by being too cunning and avaricious, we are smart, wily and symbolic thinkers and can partition our minds, putting unproductive thoughts in a neglected corner; can we use our traits for good, with excess and callous disregard for others (homelessness, Palestine), under personal and national control?
If we are going to try we must do it now. We have to think about Aldous and John Wyndham et al and get cunning with our own brains, think smart for others as well as ourselves, and calculate likely outcomes; not just the dirge of decrees and ideology, cover that with scatology.
Yikes, Grey!
Centre yourself – yours will be unique, no one else's.
I think we are "cast out of Eden" because we shouldered the challenge to become gods. We've tried all manner or things – the artists, I believe, have come closest, but, no cigar. It ain't easy.
We are determined to en-soul something, anything. We've tried sculpture (David et al) literature (A rose is a rose is a rose…) painting ( Nu descendant un escalier…)
Now, it's AI. Got soul? Nah.
Mana, that's the path to follow, imo 🙂
Hi Merc – thought you meant Al – Gore. He had a go at shifting the USA but it's bum was too large and greasy from sitting down on oil wells etc and slipped out of his hands.
Music is the art to teach the young and everyone should have a skill at tootling the flute or… It requires personal concentration and practice, you can enjoy what you do for ever, join with others tootling etc. It also requires self-control, you get the benefit and most people admire it, only the lowest would dislike. And you can still play when you are 50 or so when the sports mad have got arthritis or such.
Once you have forced yourself to learn and play and perhaps read music, (some find their talent without), you can then learn further with respect for yourself and your own capabilities. So I think keep music high on your arts list. Singing is also good for men, Inia Te Wiata, Pene Pati, come to mind. (It seems that most of our leading male opera singers have Samoan or Maori part heritage.)
Mana to artists, chefs and a few good-enough saints, but mostly to mothers and fathers who first play god in creating a baby and then follow up with guiding the young one to personal achievement mixing in society and holding fast to an interior kindly, joyful, practical wisdom within a protean world.
The solution to Fermi's Paradox (Where is everyone?) may be that intelligence is a fatal flaw – leading inevitably, and universally, to the extinction of the intelligence species.
After all, a shark has not once pondered on whether there is life on Mars in 450 million years.
W.H.Auden's poem Moonlanding springs to mind.
Our apparatniks will continue making
the usual squalid mess called History:
all we can pray for is that artists,
chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it.
https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=181601
Amalgamation: the wheel nobody installed
by David Christensen and Amanda Knox of Delta Charlie
The cartoon itself is intricate and fascinating.
I hope some TS readers are enjoying coverage on TV of the Tour de France. Stage 8 today, ending at Bergerac.
Helicopter shots of beautiful countryside, complete with some chateaux and very pretty villages. Also lots of trees in their landscape.
Hot weather though (36 degrees) so hard on the riders. Commentator said it's 15 water bottles for each man from support crews.
I suspect that Roger Hallam is a bit mad by this point, but he’s not wrong
https://x.com/rogerhallamcs21/status/2075840771190657324
Ireland has set up a CO2 compression system to store renewable energy. I presume this is diurnal storage, not long term. No batteries. Might be refrigerant.
https://bsky.app/profile/bagleycartoons.bsky.social/post/3mqfi7od7322v
Australian economist Justin Wolfers on the economic absurdities of Trump's America.
His comments at the end about the price of a presidency are particularly chilling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Wolfers
^@tWig6
https://energydome.com/