Posts by Kumara Republic
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I do think there's a strong case for at least temporarily taking the heat out of record net migration trends. Indeed, so do all Parliamentary parties with the exception of Act (so long as the leafy lanes of Epsom are left undisturbed, presumably) and possibly United Future. It's hugely incumbent on them in election year to do so by forming, as Keith noted, actual policies – and not via confusing statements about slashing numbers or empty headlines about arbitrary ceilings.
Every option has costs, every lever pulls on something else. And that includes doing nothing new at all. The more we can be honest and precise about that, the better we deprive racists and xenophobes of the initiative.
For ACT, immigration is really about how many Russian oligarchs & Trumpnik tycoons with Swiss accounts can park their tax-free dosh here. People have a right to kick up a stink when the financial benefits of immigration don't trickle down to them. On the other hand, a pissing contest to out-do Winston Peters - who's basically on Brexitrump power pills - serves no-one's interest. Migrants aren't the problem, rent-seeking dogma is the problem. Sadly it's far easier for politicians to target migrants than rent-seekers.
The Clark Govt awarded bonus points for migrants settling outside Auckland, which was a worthy measure but futile in the absence of a proper population/regional development strategy.
We do not say "Give me your huddled masses", but "Give me your educated and trained, so we don't have to educate and train ourselves".
Especially when those in the most dire need of a skills upgrade are the ones least able to afford it, or otherwise aren't suited to traditional tertiary study. And ignoring the problem has fuelled the Brexitrump bushfires. It's a sad state of affairs when it takes raising the drawbridge to force an increase in company-based training such as apprenticeships. Still, even before Trump pledged to restrict the number of H-1B's, Obama implemented a tech apprenticeship programme that was paid for with a levy on H-1B visas:
"The tech industry relies heavily on candidates with four-year college degrees, and if we continue to rely entirely on those candidates, we're never going to close the gap," Mazur says.
Among the fastest growing tech apprenticeship programs in the U.S. is Apprenti. Under the Obama administration, the Department of Labor in 2015 provided the funding that was used to create this pilot apprenticeship program through a grant that draws its money from fees paid for H-1B visas. Apprenti works with notable Washington tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, to get workers like Farrow into the industry.
New Zealand needs a programme like Apprenti. Yesterday.
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Access: Fighting seclusion with…, in reply to Sacha,
I mean senior DHB/MoH managers, not the treating team. They aren't doing a great job of communicating about the professional constraints faced. The Ministry's senior mental health advisor was a picture of caution when interviewed by RNZ.
Sometimes we wonder if the bad old CHE culture has lingered in one form or another.
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Speaker: Britain: the crisis isn't…, in reply to izogi,
Does the UK have any realistic appetite for reviewing its electoral system? Or is it highly content with what it has?
There have been electoral reform efforts in the UK for over 100 years. Seems there's been little progress made in that time.
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What if both the Blairite and Corbynite wings of UK Labour are in the gun? It could mean the unwelcome prospect of the UK turning into a Singaporean-style one-party democracy.
Worth noting that in 1964, 37% of UK Labour MPs came from the working class but by 2015 that had dropped to 7%. A trend that's likely been replicated throughout the Anglosphere by way of union-busting, globalisation and automation, among other trends.
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Seems those in actual economic distress aren't necessarily that hot on Le Pen the Younger, if this election issues chart is anything to go by.
From my basic French knowledge, here are the issues from top to bottom:
* Purchasing power
* Immigration
* Unemployment
* Terrorism
* Taxation
* Social inequality
* Insecurity (probably crime or culture rather than mental health, given Le Pen rated highest)
* Retirement/pensions
* Health system -
Hard News: Mike Moore: A pretty ordinary…, in reply to andin,
I dont know if I care when the 'turning point' was. These interviewee's arent suffering from their fucked ideas and decisions, but a lot of people still are and probably will for a long time to come.
I'm finding it hard to care about their change of heart. To me it just words they throw out there to try and make themselves look more caring, than they ever acted when they were in power
Mike Moore still seems unapologetic about his Third Wayism despite the Brexitrump tsunami. Meanwhile Bill Birch was on RNZ the other day, and he remains unrepentant - not just about the Employment Contracts Act, but also Think Big. He's simply gotten away with too much. Same goes for Ruth Richardson, and I suspect Jenny Shipley will be the same when her segment comes up.
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As a worker with late-diagnosed autism in a sector that's going a bit "rust-belt", I'm well-informed enough to find myself closest to the Sanders/Corbyn camp.
While Andrew Little has been making the right noises about the Future of Work and retraining displaced and obsolete workers, I really hope he can actually stay true to his platform instead of selling out and going "Tory-lite". And from what's been happening overseas, it's a formula that's run into diminishing returns.
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Hard News: Mike Moore: A pretty ordinary…, in reply to andin,
If Espiner's going for a theme in his interviews maybe it would be looking back with regret. Has he done three? It's all very nice for the interviewee to talk freely
Whatever constrained them before now?But we are living still with the consequences of these interviewee's , now regretted, decisions, choice of political direction.
As welcome as their change of heart is. There were a lot of other voices, for a long time prior, warning against where it would lead.
Do they now think what they did amounts to an abuse of power, or was it just more mind numbing bumbling humanity...The Great Recession might have been the turning point for the post-Cold War neo-liberal 'consensus' that the interview subjects adhered to in the past - just as the Oil Crises were for the Bretton Woods system - and more recently the Brexit vote and President Trump.
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Hard News: Mike Moore: A pretty ordinary…, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
Well after time, we know that is nonsense. Case in point: Japan, which has seen more public spending relative to GDP than any other nation in history while h’hold incomes and h’hold savings continue to shrink. Perhaps Moore was envisaging a future of perpetual current account deficits and the wonders of a monetary mechanism that enables the banking system to “lend into existence”. If he were, then he was spot on. But if he were suggesting that Keynesian policy is an option that govts can unleash when needed for the security and incomes of h’holds, economic history shows that he is wrong.
Japan's economic system has been perverted by "roads to nowhere" pork-barrel politics - much like the US military-industrial complex - which isn't the same thing as well-managed Keynesianism. When the existing neo-liberal bubble is bursting, and Keynesianism is denied a seat at the table, there's a very real risk of the sort of weak leadership that was the Weimar Republic after the 1929 Crash. Amidst the confusion, a loud demagogue with a squared-off mustache promised to make Germany great again. The rest, as they say, is history.
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Hard News: Mike Moore: A pretty ordinary…, in reply to James Littlewood*,
Since Rogernomics, about which Moore is both blase and defensive, the steady increase in power given to employers over workers has resulted in the ever growing increase in wealth inequality. Or, as he puts it, adding to Kirk's dictum: more people with nothing to lose.
When such people face barriers banding together and doing things like forming trade unions, there just happen to be more illiberal and destructive ways of monkey-wrenching the system. Such as Brexit and President Trump.
