Posts by Rob Stowell
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@Ian- yes, Laurel is me sis. I was a few years behind her at school. Small town, Chch, eh?!
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Bush was never at risk of prosecution
Except in southern Vermont. It was a stunt, ok, but go the home state! People tend to forget about American socialism (fair enough- it's hardly defined recent world history:)). And until the tax breaks for billionaires 'filibuster' the media has tended to overlook Vermont and America's socialist senator.
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Re: the "universal student allowances" - 1976 til what- 1989? Gosh, how short that time seems now. I had no idea how lucky I was :)
And I'd wager most of the student body were unaware how much we owed Muldoon. He got scant credit for it from students!
Only fits in the tail end of the 'boomer' demographic though, and rather more of the next lot, whatever we are sposed to call them. -
With petrol hitting the $2 mark, we’ll hear plenty more this year. And some linking of high petrol prices with extended recession.
How much of our daily economics/lives are based on cheap energy? Dr Haywood didn’t get to that part of his terrific series on ‘energy and civilisation’ but I got the impression he was hinting at an analogy between Rome:slaves/Us:petrochemicals. :-( -
It’s a flow on from declining incomes – baby boomers also earn proportionately less now than they used to, but they mostly have assets that have grown.
Maybe that's a factor. But mostly growing wealth disparity is a 'flow-on" from trickle-down economics, a series of deliberate decisions to move a lot of taxation from the wealthy towards the middle and lower incomes. Accompanied by a move towards 'user pays' for social services.
At the risk of repeating myself :) if you look at the top tax brackets in most western countries right up through the 70s, you see rates of taxation that are almost nowhere to be found now. 66% in NZ was the top rate, I think. In the US I believe it went into the 70's. UK into the 90% range.a hand-operated printing press in the room at the bottom of the tower with the observatory dome on top
One of my very earliest memories is waiting for dad and hiding in the little alcove under those stone stairs. And of the printing press, which I think he shipped out from Vermont. Excess baggage be damned :)
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
@Geoff: you were a star of AMST :)
I will ask mum about any neighbouring Max's, just to make sure he came to a fitting end. -
it doesn’t seem to point the finger at individuals, which is what you’re reacting to there.
Nah, not reacting to the finger-pointing at all. Just having a slow day at the desk, and a short outing for a couple of the hobby-horses :)
And yeah, our relative wealth has declined, but our absolute wealth since the 80's hasn't, its risen. I get your general point about the decline of western economies, and it's largely valid. But there's another factor at play: wealth distribution in NZ- and the UK and US- is now much less equitable.
There may be a generational element to this- Kyle makes some good points. (Certainly the housing market is nuts :))
But the difference between poor- boomer as much as any generation- and rich- is considerably wider. -
prior to 1970
Gosh. I though it went back to the 50s. My mistake. Certainly from 1970 through the late 80s. Not so much 'comfortable' (always less than the dole, for example) but certainly adequate.
I remember him as a thoroughly nice guy & a poet of no small ability
Dad would be chuffed :)
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There was a 'universal student allowance', back in the day. Getting an A or B bursary added a little to it, but not much. You just had to be eligible and pass enough courses to keep it.
Individuals are not responsible for the fact that NZ has become steadily less wealthy over the last 30 years, despite the steady increase in wealth of those who were working age before then. It’s a phenomenon that covers most of the First World.
I don't think this is true, at all. What has happened is that in the last 30 years (since the Reagan, Roger, Thatcher, Friedmanite 'revolutions') the wealth inequality gap, which had been steady since WW2, extensively and fairly rapidly widened. GDP has grown albeit a little fitfully; median wages haven't.
And the gap between rich and poor (and between rich and 'average') is still widening. Easy to forget the post-war years did feature very high tax rates for the wealthy in most Western economies. (I seem to remember the Beatles paying about 98%!)
That's changed entirely. Lots of evidence/discussion of this... but noone much of anywhere (including the Clark govt here) seriously reversing the trend (working for families was a small move in that direction, but missed both beneficiaries and those without children).
One slight by-product of the almost complete hegemony of monetarism, trickle-down and user-pays in the political and public discourse, is a small but significant move towards looking at marxist/socialist ideas. Whatever one thinks of Marx' prescriptive politics, his analysis of the ways capital works is still often spot on. -
Hard News: Media 2011, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Yeah. Web 1.6 or whatever, I like ALD a lot, as an every few days skim through. And sometimes I’ll get a host of interesting stuff, and it’ll take out the morning :)
Dutton could be infuriating, and I’m not convinced by his scholarship in Phil of Art. But the skeptics society got a lot from him, and that’s another grand legacy.