Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Che Tibby,
i earn over the threshold for payment of the levy, and i’m ok with that.
mind you, it’ll likely just take me back to where i was before the tax cuts anywho…
Likewise, and I'd be happier still if they'd reverse the cuts and impose a levy. I cannot achieve the efficiencies that accrue to bulk spending by spending the money myself, any I can't just make voluntary contributions to the IRD, fuck-wit responses to Sam Morgan's father's observations about how little tax he pays notwithstanding.
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Right, now that I have an appropriate thread:
Craig, without rehashing arguments on whether or not Auckland gets its fair share (I don't consider having projects dropped on us by central government to be a contribution!), if Auckland is under-performing economically, as repeatedly alleged by our PM and Minister of Finance, why would you restrict funding to the one part of the country that can truly make a difference to the tax income to pay for the recovery? We've been described as "an anchor" and "a handbrake" (evidence-free assertions, but they help my case), so if we're holding back the economy surely it's good for Christchurch's recovery to help Auckland's economic performance improve?
Also, Auckland's going to be getting refugees. A friend and her fiancée are accommodating nine of them in a house bus, and those refugees are looking for work in their new home. They're not here temporarily, they're leaving Christchurch. They will not be alone, and Auckland's going to get the lion's share because it's the biggest city. If we're struggling now, how much worse will it be if we have a 1% population jump in the space of a few weeks?
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Idiot Savant,
And in extremis form lynchmobs
Totally. A strong economic argument for not gouging is, “If I price in all the demand signals (gouge, in the layman’s English), it’s entirely possible that those who are now priced out of the market, or who feel that their own needs are not served by my pricing-out of those at the bottom of the market, will respond by advising me of their displeasure (fucking me and my shit up, in the layman’s English) rather than seeking an alternative supplier.”
Also, as others have said and ignoring basic human psychological motivators around altruism, observed economic practice says that the short-term gain to be had from gouging (because, let’s face it, the decision to gouge is not about economic factors relating to rationing supply and countering demand, it’s all about making money) will be thoroughly negated by the long-term impact on the business once things return to normal. The market has a memory of players’ behaviour, and if the only way to counter the memory is to discount heavily, whatever extra profit was made during the hey day of the crisis will be lost to reduced profits over a much longer period in the future. Potentially the business will be destroyed as a result of the market response to pricing decisions.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
a fairly unexceptional if debatable business column
Any other time I wouldn't have blinked. It was, as you say, unexceptional (on any analysis of the overall message). But attaching that particular barrow to this particular set of circumstances at this point in time was just naff, IMHO.
It could've waited a couple of weeks and been a little less raw without being any less pertinent. The economic repercussions of what's happened to Christchurch will be with this country until the babies born in its immediate aftermath are in at least primary school and probably well beyond, so it wouldn't have mattered a jot if Fran had left well alone until the middle of next month.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
So long as it’s done respectfully, I don’t think it’s inappropriate to discuss the political implications of how we move forward at this point.
However, as we well know, political discussions in PAS tend to veer toward the disrespectful. And in the circumstances, I don't think it's fair to put highly-charged debate into a thread that's mostly meant to be about the human side. Not everyone wants to see it.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Russell, could we please get a thread for the political dimensions. Coz my response to Craig, whilst polite and to-the-point, is not definitely appropriate for this thread.
We’re running out of places to take the other side of this tragedy, and some of us would much rather discuss that than the human element because detachment is how we deal with this shit.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And in fairness, FranO was calling on Key "to review the extent of his Government's tax-cuts, which are being funded through borrowing and not healthy surpluses"
I'd give her a little more credit if that had been the first suggestion, rather than the tail end of a bunch of spending cuts and general right-wing douchery.
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And at the risk of inducing apoplectic fits in the PAS populace, Fran O'Sullivan odiously uses Christchurch's misfortune to demand cuts to the already-unbalanced funding that Auckland receives from central government and generally push her right-wing barrow.
Warning, link may trigger spontaneous acceleration of cranial structures into solid objects. -
Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
I’m sure Matthew Poole has something to say on this and is way better informed than me
Not really, actually. I'm watching this one from Auckland, with no insider knowledge currently available. I know one of the Team Leaders for CCC's USAR team (RT 11) and he's been in the emergency operations centre since Tuesday afternoon, but he's too busy for me to even think about trying to find out how it's going.
One really big plus, inasmuch as there were any pluses from the event, is that September was a thorough test of large-scale, multi-agency response. And it was apparently found a little wanting in terms of getting everyone to place nice when there were three adjacent declared local disasters. That was definitely one of the motivators for the national emergency, taking care of all the little fiefdoms that exist and are fostered, but was also something that, five months and probably countless debriefs and post-mortems down the track, has doubtless been improved dramatically.
So, really, NZ's been incredibly lucky with how this has come about. We got a casualty-free full-scale incident on which to practice a real multi-agency response and find out where it needed work, and that was sufficiently far in advance of the current situation that the lessons had time to be determined and passed around. With that done, and now with the benefit of a truly unified management structure all the way into the Beehive, we're probably better-placed than any disaster zone in history to handle the response.
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Hard News: Welfare: Back to the Future?, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
I guess that would rule out Wellington for, well, pretty much anything critical.
Ideally, yeah. Certainly anything unique and new. Having Parliament there is good only for jokes about getting rid of all the politicians, especially since all the agencies of the Executive have little choice but to have their headquarters in close proximity to Parliament.