Posts by George Darroch
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just fire this off before i exit for several hours - what about the income protection insurance idea?
The unemployment benefit is conceived as exactly that. It's just that it was deliberately lowered to the poverty level in the early 1990s (see Alastair Barry's still relevant In a land of plenty ) and never raised since, so we don't think of it in that way.
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Tom, you're being an arse now.
I am capable of turning off my tv or changing the channel if there is something on that I don't want to watch.
What I don't do is throw up my hands in horror when there is such an easy avenue to avoid footage that disgusts me.
What if we don't like either option, Stewart? Perhaps we'd like to watch the evening news without being dragged into a dungeon and recounted the horrors of a brutal murder, day after day after day.
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Might be tricky to sell politically
That's an understatement. Still, if we're going to think creatively, and look at what might work here....
George, that was bloody interesting. Thanks.
I've had a lot of years to refine these ideas. I'll have a few more, by the looks of things.
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Stephen, yes, indeed. I've had employers who didn't appear to care whether I was earning an income while I was their employee.
However, there are a good proportion of employers who do care enough to not want to put their employees out into the colld. There are also those for whom well publicised layoffs would damage their brand or create the perception that they're a company in financial strife.
So, not everyone, but I imagine enough to have some effect on productivity.
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What do you mean by liberal hiring policies? Liberal for employers? Employees? Both?
It's relatively easy to hire some, but it's also very easy to fire them. But since they're eligible for 80% of their former income for up to a year, up to particularly high income levels, it's not something employers are afraid to do. The high turnover in jobs (approx. 30% per year) is thought to drive much of the productivity, as people are slotted into the best places available. See Wikipedia's article on the concept for more information. I'm not an expert, just repeating what I know.
The thing is that both parts have to be in place together. If you simply make it easier to fire people, as this Government has done, you make people markedly less secure in their jobs, so they cling to them. That can have the effect of making the labour market less mobile, not more.
The system is also supported by Scandinavian headline tax levels. And they're in the middle of a continent. Not everything translates. But again, there's no reason why NZ couldn't adopt parts of the system. We weren't afraid to be the first in the world set in place a system that pays 80% of former income for up to a year in the case of accidental injury*.
Denmark is regularly ranked as among the happiest nations on earth, for a number of reasons, but a feeling of personal security is one of them. Angus is right that the system is under threat from the men who peddle fear, selfishness, and insecurity, and stir the pot of ethnic tensions. The same type who conspire to prevent such a thing from being considered here.
*mind you, this Government is determined to be the first in the world to remove such a scheme.
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Joe: Grab your Willy Wonka and tie a knot in it, because getting pissy is not helpful. Whether it is agreeable to your delicate sensibilities (or mine), it was exactly Ablett-Kerr's job try and establish reasonable doubt -- including questions about the reliability of prosecution evidence. Its not nice, but then again I've never been accused of murder either.
Craig, it may have been legal for her to do so, but that doesn't make it any less vile. It's our right to say so.
As for whether it's a good defense strategy? I imagine that it probably put Weatherston even more offside with the jury.
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I think Phil Goff's recent announcements on welfare policy show how disconnected the Labour Party was.
Not one of them seemed to realise that to qualify for the dole, you needed to be both excuciatingly poor and have exhausted all of your liquid assets. Having illiquid assets of any kind is looked on in a very negative manner. And then, when you get the dole ($180 per week, after a two week stand-down), you don't have enough to live on, and have to beg for rent or mortgage assistance. This is often given at levels which do not allow the unemployed to maintain their accomodation. You're quite quickly encouraged to sell your house.
Labour didn't get this. It still doesn't. I know a young woman on the unemployment benefit who dumpsters food, and sells the emergency food supplement in order to meet other essential costs.
You're also highly encouraged to take any job offered, regardless of whether you're skilled in other things.
The downside of all of this is that it harms New Zealand's productivity. People cling to their jobs more than they otherwise would, despite being ill suited to them and not utilising their full skill set. This is particularly the case in vulnerable sectors and those with high turnover. People know that going onto the benefit might see them shunted into the wrong job, and find it difficult to get back out. Employers are also more reluctant to offload staff, as they don't want to send their staff into poverty.
Denmark has some of the highest unemployment benefits in the world, but it also liberal hiring policies. As a result, it has one of the highest productivity levels in the world, while maintaining very low unemployment.
Paying higher unemployment benefits to raise productivity. There's an idea you'll never hear Brash countenance. Yet it's worth considering - we should be looking at all high wage and high productivity countries, and seeing what they differently, and what can and should be applied to New Zealand. I'm not saying we copy Denmark exactly, but we could do worse than ask these questions.
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And the equivalent for NZ would be an oil strike in the Great South Basin.
There are thought to be fairly large reserves of oil in the Great Southern Basin. The problem is that they're deep below a lot of ocean, and further amounts of rock, making extraction expensive. They're currently not a very profitable prospect.
If oil prices rise again and stay high for sustained periods you could see them becoming viable. But you'll probably need to wait for global output to fall or demand to rise substantially for that to happen.
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And then there's the growing dairy production in NZ where they feed the cattle with palm oil.
I wonder if that milk tastes soapy?
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I find it hard to imagine Contador having doped. The risks are simply too high, for a man who works as hard and consistently as he does.
A friend who does some work for WADA tells me that the race against new doping techniques isn't one they're doing well in. Where they're concentrating their efforts in monitoring blood profiles and the whereabouts of top riders.
If anyone has a right to be upset about the fans, it's the cyclists. After the most recent climb, I don't want to watch anymore. What other sport allows spectators onto the field of play, to hit, throw things at, and get in the way of, shoot the players, and cross the road fatally? It's an absolute debacle.