“We’re doomed” was Private Frazer’s inevitable response to any crisis in “Dad’s Army”. One might stray into such despondency when considering the external context in which New Zealand finds itself, then considering what we are doing as a nation to respond. Nigel Haworth looks at where we are at.
As a programmer, I’ve had a lot of experience with working from home for work, last time was about 13 years ago. Yesterday we got shifted to working from home. The toolkit has changed a lot even in the last few years. What is going to be interesting for me is to see how companies disperse their employees out in the same way over this pandemic – that will be a real test of productivity.
Being compared to Trump has got to hurt. And shouldn’t there be consequences when a PM flat out lies to the country on the state of the economy?
In the warm afterglow of the huge wage increase for health care workers the case for addressing NZ’s creaking low-wage economy is getting some recognition (along with the effect of immigration on wages).
Our “business leaders” are doing an objectively poor job. Perhaps instead of insulting Kiwi workers as “pretty damned hopeless”, Bill English should be taking aim at these captains of industry.
Boring stuff about boring old jobs and wages.
The Productivity Commission has a new report out which looks at changes in the labour income share, or LIS, from 1978 to 2010. […]
New figures show that the wage gap with Australia is still increasing. National has nothing to offer but useless policies and excuses, while the captains of industry trot out the old productivity lie again.
As I predicted in this post last year, productivity has risen sharply in the latest stats but for all the wrong reasons.The Herald gushes “NZ employers squeeze more out of fewer workers” but that’s fundamentally wrong. We’re getting less out of even fewer workers. “Labour input” fell 4.3%, while GDP fell 0.8%. Why anyone would think this is a Good Thing is beyond me.
The Nats have upped the minimum wage by 25 cents. An increase of 1.9% that doesn’t even keep up with inflation of 4% and is thus a minimum wage cut. On cue a tame economist opines that wage growth can only happen if we achieve productivity growth first. The only problem with this excuse is that over the last several decades productivity has grown significantly, and wages haven’t followed…
Well the productivity task force is reporting back today and some of their ideas have been forward released. As we expected they are […]
Like here in New Zealand, unemployment continues to climb in America. And one of the results is soaring productivity. (sources: 1,2) But wait, […]
The Government’s 2025 ‘productivity’ taskforce led by Don Brash will almost certainly come up with all the same old failed ideas that got […]
Gordon Campbell has a great piece over at Scoop about Treasury’s latest ideological outburst and the resurrection of Don Brash. He points out […]
A few weeks ago the NZPA reported that the Government had agreed to establish a taskforce to “work on ways to close the […]
Key’s speech to the CTU today showed an interesting inight into how he thinks you lift wages. NZPA reports: He said it was […]
Key reckons he could bring down inflation by targeting ‘low quality’ government spending. How? To counter inflation, you need to increase productivity. Inflation […]
