Posts by Rich of Observationz
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
You could *try* and do that, but you'd receive a $4k tax bill, with penalties.
Anyone can try anything, it's succeeding that matters.
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Plenty of countries have hugely baroque systems of indirect taxation and seem to survive. Our system might give NZ lots of neo-liberal brownie points, but it's a lot harder to see how it's actually delivered any of the promised economic benefits.
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Got a timeline on that, Rich?
If I did, I'd get wealthy from it.
But how long can growth over 5% be sustained, especially when China makes pretty much all the consumer goods the developed world can use or afford and said developed world is getting poorer by the day? Not to mention how sustainable it is to have a third of the population as aspirant city dwellers and the rest as dirt-poor peasants. Or the whole issue of how China gets enough resources to keep going.
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I would prefer that it is used with the agreement of opposition parties; but fat chance of that I guess
In many countries, that’s a requirement (the US senate doesn’t even curtail debate at all without a 60% supermajority - hence that many votes are needed to pass any contentious measure).
I wouldn’t go that far, but I’d suggest that to avoid the full select committee process, a supermajority should be required.
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People do realize, I hope, that when China slumps, all the fiscal responsibility in the world isn't going to help a lot. We didn't escape the worst of the financial crisis through being clever, but because we've got a solid buyer for our commodities.
When that goes away, there'll be bank collapses all over Aussie (and consequently, here). Best bet would be to grow Kiwibank and try and ring-fence the fallout from a dairy slump to those that made all that money from the boom.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Paul Campbell,
The only thing about that is that the world will keep using aluminium. If Tiwai Pt closes, then the production may be taken up by a fossil fueled smelter in China or Australia and world CO2 production will actually increase.
It can be seen as a way of exporting sustainable electricity.
We can actually get to 100% sustainable electricity (including Comalco) just by building *some* of the identified, current technology renewable sources, which would stand us in very good stead for future crises. Selling the power companies takes us in utterly the wrong direction, of course.
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There are sections of the NZ populace where welfare is a way of life and is intergenerational
Farming, the banks, Telecom, Air NZ - that sort of thing? You did mean corporate welfare - the really expensive kind?
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I don't really believe in pre-funding. If 25% of the population are going to be retired, the other 75% will have to produce the goods and services they consume.
A big pile of money doesn't change that. Sure, in theory some things can be imported, and others can switch from working in export industries to service industries, but is that really going to be sustainable? What's more likely is that inflation will balance things out by wiping out the reserves and leaving us back at square one.
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That is the only thing historically that has led to the kind of transformation that could allow us to retire at 50
Why can't we just use other people's research? Berners-Lee's research was done in Switzerland and mostly paid for by the EU, but all nations benefited depending on their abilities to exploit it commercially (at which the US took an early lead).
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“old people are stupid amirite?”
Hey, I'm in my late 40's and I can *feel* my brain starting to decay. By 65, I doubt it'll be functional enough to make sensible voting decisions.