Hard News: On Ideas
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I doubt though that Dr Brash will suggest anything to improve our robot density, since his concept of increased productivity is the "flexibility" to work longer for less.
"Flexibility" in this case is a euphemism for union-crushing.
An interesting story by Brian Fallow in the Herald today notes that Treasury research suggests that a key problem isn't the efficiency of the labour market, but "capital shallowness" -- a failure by business to make productive capital investment.
A few good starting points would be in order:
* a new DFC, or otherwise an expansion of the VIF.
* re-instating the R&D tax credits.
* a "McMansion tax" - better and more targeted than a CGT."recommend things Australia have done/are doing to help their productivity"
Like discover more uranium.
And the equivalent for NZ would be an oil strike in the Great South Basin.
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On the productivity matter, the taskforce will fail for a number of reasons:
- nobody has the political courage in this country to wean the masses from their love of real estate investment and consumer credit. We'll never have strong investment in plant and technology until that happens. In the unlikely event it recommends sensible action be taken, the government will probably ignore it.
- Our R&D sector is underfunded. The Nats' scrapping of the R&D tax credit was a step backwards.
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<And I personally wouldn't want to be in a government that took on the Mother and apple pie sector that is nursing.>
I don't think they care that much if Joe and Mrs Soap can't get a hospital bed when desperately needed. They themselves of course just go private. Isn't the general idea to wear down public medicine until it too is privatised? Let's face it, public hospitals have, even after nine years of Labour, never recovered from the savaging of the Richardson/Shipley years.
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you CAN'T increase productivity in the health sector by getting to work harder or longer.
I understand that. The problem is that Bill English doesn't, and thinks you can keep squeezing blood out of that stone.
All i can say is that he better get used to wiping his own arse when he's old - because no-one is going to want to do it for him.
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And I personally wouldn't want to be in a government that took on the Mother and apple pie sector that is nursing.
The government forced the junior doctors into strike action mid-2008.
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And play the pre recorded Patsy Questions!
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Oops in relation to competent DJ streamlining Parliament
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Thanks to thouse who have explained this "increased productivity" thin so clearly. I've been puzzling over it for a few days, every time it gets mentioned on Morning Report.
"Increased productivity is just more output for the same input"
So this is like saying the car will go farther and faster on the same amount of petrol, yes?
Even with my limited knowledge of auto-mechanics, I believe that you need a qualified mechanic to tune your car to perfection, investment in new filters, carburettor, spark plugs and whatnot, good tyres and alignment, among other things, to make that happen. Plus you need good driving skills and habits.
Why would anyone believe that Brash is the man that could make this happen. With his stewardship of the Reserve Bank, isn't he one of the drivers that got us in this mess?
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I'm sure a competant DJ could replace 80% of the house in the debating chamber..
Well, they could certainly replace Paul Hutchison (or is it Chris Auchinvole), with his pre-hersed plummy "ohhhhh..." whenever English digs up the "latest" from 20 years ago.
Alternatively, we could just have a tape of hooting chimpanzees. It would be about as enlightening.
(And yet, I will watch Question Time again today, in the vain hope of seeing somethign interesting...)
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I'm with Sacha on this.
Give a kiwi a spade, and he'll return 10 hours later bathed in sweat with a few sacks of spuds worth US$200.
Give an Aussie a spade , and he'll spend the morning reading the paper and arguing about the footy over smoko, then after a leisurely pub lunch and a punt on the 2:15 at Randwick, he'll dig a hole and pull out a $2000 gold nugget before knocking off for the day.
Hence Aussie workers are ten times more productive than NZers.
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Why would anyone believe that Brash is the man that could make this happen. With his stewardship of the Reserve Bank, isn't he one of the drivers that got us in this mess?
party, but the real culprit is Bill Birch.
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Isn't the general idea to wear down public medicine until it too is privatised? Let's face it, public hospitals have, even after nine years of Labour, never recovered from the savaging of the Richardson/Shipley years.Isn't the general idea to wear down public medicine until it too is privatised? Let's face it, public hospitals have, even after nine years of Labour, never recovered from the savaging of the Richardson/Shipley years.
And how would the Richardsonites like it if a Labour Govt threatened to anti-trust or unbundle a privatised state asset, until its share price plummeted to junk bond status, then nationalised it?
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The government forced the junior doctors into strike action mid-2008.
That's a bit simplistic, Angus. A lot (and I'd argue most) of the blame for strike action should be laid directly at the feet of Deborah Powell, head of Contact Negotiation Services, and acting on behalf of the junior doctors. Her behaviour left a lot to be desired during negotiations. And it was a far cry from the constructive engagement of Ian Powell (Association of Salaried Medical Staff) who negotiated the settlement for the Senior Doctors without strike action.
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Well, they could certainly replace Paul Hutchison (or is it Chris Auchinvole), with his pre-hersed plummy "ohhhhh..." whenever English digs up the "latest" from 20 years ago.
I thought that noise emanated from Nick Smith and Tony Ryall.
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I thought that noise emanated from Nick Smith and Tony Ryall.
No, its definitely Hutchison or Auchinvole - that toffy voice is quite distinctive.
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I think it's a stretch to paint Brash's time as RB Governor as a major driver of our productivity issues. Happy to have the discussion as to whether the Reserve Banks ACT's focus on inflation control constrains growth, but I don't know that he personally took decisions that he wasn't made to by that focus (wage inflation being the obvious one)
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The prolific Gordon Campbell at scoop says what I think too:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL200907/S00236.htmPeter Conway at NZCTU has produced numbers to confirm that Aussie wages headed off into the distance in the ECA years-1991-99.
Privatise Treasury first indeed!
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It's too simplistic to say that Australians are wealthier because they have more natural resources.
They have always had ample mineral resources, but only in the last couple of decades have they pulled away from us in terms of per capita income.
We also have many resources. One of our problems is there aren't the capital markets or levels of investment in innovation we need to enable efficient exploitation of them.
And many weatlhier countries than us have fewer natural resources.
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John Key seems already to be trying to head off that possibility by declaring that "there's no point coming up with policies unless they're implementable". Declaring that your economic doctor will be ignored if he insists on acting crazy seems an odd way to start.
Not so much when you could predict the usual suspects were going to start squaling "privatization agenda" like insane parrots.
Meanwhile, if Phil Goff wants to float ideas, could he please ensure they don't have any holes in them when he pushes them out from the jetty?
Then again, why should he if the rather embarrasing hand job he received on Morning Report is going to be the kind of scrutiny received? Key would deservedly have been flayed for issuing the press release before the policy...
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The Progressive Bills Project just had its first bill drawn from the ballot.
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For all of Australia's wonderful natural resources, they can't drink gold and uranium. They are drying out and will have a real problem soon with finding enough water. So expect an invasion as we are still reasonably endowed with H2O. Will this help raise our GDP and per capita income? Maybe in the long run when every other country has dried out and poisoned itself. It's a long-term plan.
<quuote>Well, perhaps the taskforce could do with a member who won't quote Hayek like the Bible.</quote>
I saw Selma Hayek in a TV movie in the weekend. I'd quote her too - she is so sexy!
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Then again, why should he if the rather embarrasing hand job he received on Morning Report is going to be the kind of scrutiny received? Key would deservedly have been flayed for issuing the press release before the policy...
To be fair Craig, Key largely escaped unscathed after his monumentally empty promise late last year to provide a "rescue package" for people who lost their jobs because of the recession.
This is what he said back then, off the top of his head on Agenda:
"Some people will lose their jobs as a result of the downturn and we've got a couple of options: We either try and assist them in meeting their liabilities because we're confident in the medium term they'll get back into a job, or we just simply say they're high and dry."
He proposed the former. But that would now appear to be some distance behind the cycleway in the to-do list.
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Whoops, how do you spell <quuuuote> again?
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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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To be fair Craig, Key largely escaped unscathed after his monumentally empty promise late last year to provide a "rescue package" for people who lost their jobs because of the recession.
Rusell: ORLY? :) To be fair, you really think that a year ago we wouldn't have had a blaring lead about National's latest "flip-flop" and how could you trust these people to run a country when they can't manage a policy release...
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