Posts by HenryB
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
And annual inflation means that a zero spending increase is actually a cut in real terms.
It is inflation indexed.
But I thought the whole point of Keith's analysis was to show that what is proposed is a cut in real terms:
Putting this spending cap into Treasury's Fiscal Strategy Model, it shows that real per capita Core Crown expenditure (excluding NZ Super, finance costs, unemployment benefit, asset impairments and spending on natural disasters) will fall by 8.9% in 10 years.* To put that into perspective, that's roughly the Law & Order and Defence budgets combined, or a bit more than a third of the Health budget.
And did they `exclude NZ Super'? I thought the only benefit they made allowances for was the unemployment benefit - not unsurprisingly given that following the policy prescriptions that they are going to engage this is going to increase.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Angus Robertson,
When times are lean and there is less food to eat, some choose to eat less and live a more austere life.
I don't know. How much food would John Key's extra $1000 per week from the last round to tax cuts buy him? Sounds more like a recipe for obesity than anorexia.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Angus Robertson,
Never have I seen an example of Govt. actually saving money by reducing spending, please provide me with one.
Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Spain.
In a sense the first is a tautology, but if it isn't going to be that - and I guess the offer of the PIIGS as an example is done in that spirit - then I think it is still too early in this particular exercise in self-mutilation to tell whether it will actually work.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Angus Robertson,
The Nats got elected with a program of austerity and this is an austerity measure. Since Labour run on an anti-austerity platform when they get back in the restriction will obviously be lifted, but until then the Nats have a mandate to practice austerity.
Yes, the Nats did say they would have a cap on government expenditure... but the thing that makes this proposed legislation a bit smelly is their attempt to bind all FUTURE governments to their policy.
Not quite sure that NZ chose `austerity' either. After all, wasn't the slogan "A brighter future'? Some may enjoy a little bit of flagellation and the wearing of sack cloth and ashes - and where I spent my childhood and youth it was the kind of bright future recommended - but somehow I don't think that this was quite NZers had in mind.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
*this* fiscal gimmick hasn’t had a detrimental effect elsewhere, because the things you are thinking of (such as the the law in Colorado) are different.
Graeme, I have been trying - unsuccessfully - to find examples of where it hasn't had a detrimental effect. Needless to say, perhaps, nearly everything points to Colorado but are there other examples of legislated `tax and spend' limits?
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to BenWilson,
At this point, it’s up to you if you would like to spend the time to find out what the selection processes are in National
Didn't NBH give us a link which provided a fairly comprehensive discussion of this processs? And it may well take more than a couple of paragraphs to describe the process. Even the Labour Party ones take 2-3 pages and are fairly convoluted.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Tom Semmens,
who wrote this morning’s Herald editorial?
Seems that the Herald is becoming the mouthpiece for the ACT party - first endorsing charter schools and now this.... both of which have come in under the radar of the election campaign.
But what it does do is to confirm my sense that it is all very well to simply refer to the proposal as `symbolic' and easily repealable by an incoming government but I suspect that that will much harder to do than has been suggested. It also makes Keith's analysis which shows that the cap is not really a cap at all but actually a sinking lid even more necessary.
The Dompost also has an editorial endorsing charter schools (except for a brief mention of concerns about it being used for faith-based `outfits' and possible cherry-picking). Perhaps it will run one on the merits of fiscal caps soon.
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Just after the election Key said, I think, that under an FPP system, National would have got 65 seats and labour 35.
Under Supplementary Member - using the results from the night and assuming that the electorate seats would have split roughly in proportion to how they fell on Saturday night and also assuming that there would have been no incentive to support ACT or UF in their electorate seats - the results would have looked roughly something like this? Also assumes the retention of Maori Electorates and removal of threshold.
National 71 seats (56 electorate+15 list)
Labour 38 seatls (29 electorate + 9 list)
Maori 4 seats (4 electorate)
Mana 1 seat (1 electorate)
Greens 3 seats (3 List)
NZF 2 seats (2 list)
Cons 1 seat (1 list)Really not all that different from FPP in my view.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
But damn, Islander, remarkably efficient of you to slap on the black cap without bothering to be judge and jury first. Who needs to bother asking questions when you’ve already got all the answers?
Would this EQC story be the seed for a modernised NZ version of the The Borgias?
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There is a piece on the spending cap by Tim Watkin. General comment so far has seemed to suggest that this legislation is only going to be symbolic and something which another government can easily ignore if they so wished. This is probably right ... but I still have my qualms that it could be drafted in such a way as to make this less easy than one thinks.