Posts by mark taslov
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OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to mark taslov,
Which are all beautifully miserable sob stories in their way. We hear the entitlement of exiled ‘90s borrowers and we notice the dearth of 30-40 year olds in our society. We could, as Toby Manhire suggested, prioritise the immigration of more refugees to New Zealand, to take up the slack, like a revolving door. But what of this missing generation, the 30,000+ student loan defaulters? The prospect of returning with any of this overdue entails threat of arrest, court action, collection and then the privilege – as Susan pointed out – of competing with Australians – to whom our Government dole out interest free student loans without their having to endure a day in the compulsory education sector. We do have enough well educated people, they’re just not all here, and we’re offering very little in the way of incentive for them to return, while offering considerably better to those brought in to replace them. Factor in the other 970,000 New Zealanders living overseas and it becomes quite clear that money is not the issue here, neither is attracting people. The issue is – or at least until very recently was – retaining our population.
30,000+ people? What is that? That’s more than a full Nelson, that’s a Whanganui back in the day, and while New Zealand was twittering away about whether to include an ‘h’, a population roughly that size chose to ‘flee’ New Zealand with the money and the bag. Flee with their millions, buy a mansion in Brazil, puffing Cubanas, set for life – is how some would portray it; A conspiracy of the ‘90s crew, despite only 4413 borrowers having debt of more than $100,000, including 967 who owe more than $139,999. So what prompts a small New Zealand city to defect with insufficient funds? Are these 30,000+ idiots? 30,000+ ungrateful wretches? 30,000+ New Zealanders whose only dream in life was screwing New Zealand out of a few thousand dollars before scooting off to Nirvana? What is actually going on in our compulsory education to produce 30,000+ New Zealanders – who for want of a better term – would do over our country? Loosely, that’s exactly the borrowers’ objective, at least that’s how it appears to have been portrayed by Government Ministers over successive administrations.
Is there a possibility that this exodus was not motivated solely by greed? Perhaps it could have been prompted not so much by a glut of something negative but more by a lack of something positive, for example; opportunity. Could lack of opportunity be the reason at least some borrowers left? Has lack of opportunity ever been an issue? Was sufficient opportunity available to graduates through the 1990s? To what extent did opportunity feature in the economic model and policy implemented? And not to overstate things, because there were opportunities around: Tom Oliver had the option of working in a cannery full time only to turn it down. An Art Literature major with an IQ of 143 could have made good in the cannery, working his way up to cannery manager and repaying his student loan within twenty solid years, ample time to prepare for a life after his financial graduation. Unfortunately, following his academic graduation Tom felt he was better than all that, and no doubt the Art Literature Department played its own role to in heightening his ambition – he like so many others fled, to opportunity.
Buddy, if you stay and work in NZ like some people chose to do you do pay “something”. The whole point is that no one is chasing the loan doddgers overseas but sticking it to people who have been honest, paid and stayed in NZ to work for shit pay and try and pull this country out of the hole it is headed into.
Immigrant – kiwiblog
Many of those who stayed have been empowered by their student loan experience, it has provided a sense that we have contributed, but in some cases this has also led to a derisive attitude to those who haven’t, to those who have for whatever reason been unable to. While not an unusual outcome given the nature of our education and socialisation: “I put up the tent, I lit the fire and I raised the flag and you did nothing! Nothing!” it does rather miss the point that to some extent the New Zealand based borrower was in part afforded the opportunity by the absence of the overseas defaulter. Subtract 30,000 people from a workforce the size of New Zealand and you’re bound have more chance of nabbing that job, these defaulters are similarly skilled, it was in acquiring these similar skills that they amassed these loans.
Of more than 700,000 borrowers, about 101,000 live overseas. Overseas borrowers owe about $2.67b, of which $411.5m is overdue. Bear in mind that it is common for debts to be http://www.studentloan.org.nz/blog :400% – 800% higher than the actual amount borrowed, a far cry from any inflationary accumulation. All up about 1,000,000 New Zealanders live overseas. That’s not just a statistic, that’s a phenomenon, that’s the population of Auckland circa ‘82 give or take. Are any of them employers? Could they be pursuing the same opportunities in New Zealand? Could they be providing the same opportunities in New Zealand? At what point does Government interest and action in this economic area, specifically the area of creating opportunity, become a priority? When does this lack of provision in the way of policies gear to providing greater opportunity, for all New Zealanders – not just for those of us employed at Fonterra – tip the scales and start to become a significant impediment to getting ahead – not just to those who would choose to leave but to those who would – if they could – return here?
$800,000 salaries for top city staff the market rate, says mayor
When did taking a $400,000 paycut and providing 8 more jobs stop sounding like a good idea? When did “Good for the economy” become synonymous with ”Good for the people”, and how is that working out? These two things are quite definitely not the same, one need only open one’s eyes a couple of degrees to see that this machine is in dire need of an overhaul. The empty store fronts along the main streets of Hastings, Wairoa, Waipukurau tell us this. The youths gathered outside the Pack n’ Save sifting smokes, the fried out Herbal High vagrants wandering glassy eyed, uttering obscenities, are all in their way by products, traceable back to actual policy. This is not a success story.
When did becoming a councilor, generally speaking, cease to be primarily about being a stand up citizen and become more of a career? Could it have been around the same time we collectively decided that athlete or media personality were desirable qualifications for managing our communities, most probably also around the same time the cost of photocopying and stapling a LIM together breached the $100 barrier. We, our country, are not providing enough real opportunities for real people, and this has been the case for quite some time. Was 30,000+ overseas defaulters part of the game plan or were our policy makers taken unawares? Has a New Zealand Government willfully implemented a polilcy entailing the prospect of issuing 30,000 arrest warrants, funding 30,000 court dates? Did voters vocally express a pressing need for less police officers keeping the roads safe and a dramatic increase in Government legal costs? What has happened to the governance of our country in the mean time?
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OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to mark taslov,
Maybe they had a gun to their head too. If they were happy to take the money, they should be happy to pay it back.
I had my student loan for 20 years - why should anyone who has blatantly avoided making repayments get a free ride?ShaunL – stuff.co.nz
Obviously no one puts a gun to the head of our young borrowers, but just how universally pragmatic are these expectations we have placed on our younger generations? What guarantee does the lender, our Government, offer to assist borrowers in securing incomes above the repayment threshold? Does our country offer jobs or voluntary work opportunities – as is the case in other countries - specifically geared to assist those borrowers who are unable to meet the threshold and make repayments?
The same students and young graduates will hopefully understand economics 101 – a taxpayer funded, interest free handout is simply not affordable.
Elaycee - Kiwiblog
Economics 101 has never been a compulsory prerequisite to soliciting a student loan. Neither is evidence of collateral. You go in with nothing you come out with less + interest. Our Student Loan System, and for that matter most student loan systems hinge on the unfounded assumption that the borrowers will not merely be physically and mentally capable of full time work, but furthermore that they will be financially responsible, endowed with a reasonable portion of common sense and that they will be fully cooperative in meeting their obligations. While for the most part our criticisms of defaulters focus almost exclusively on the latter i.e that defaulters are evading responsibility by choice, and though this convenient scape-goating fits snuggly within the narrative of a Government led by a self-made millionaire, it does largely fly in the face of the reality; New Zealand is a welfare state, where jobs were not available to all, since well before the Loan System was even implemented. The risks the lender faced were self evident from the outset, there were bound to be losers, this is fundamental to the nature of capitalism.
Certainly there were those under 25s who managed to secure allowances by entering into marriages of convenience, but has anyone in the Student Loan System ever enjoyed a truly free ride? Yes foreign nationals need only qualify as permanent residents and be in the country for 3 years in order to qualify for a student loan which they could quite easily later evade the repayment of by returning home, but even so, would this qualify as a free ride? Three years in New Zealand is the price paid.
In March 1993 Susan Isherwood received her first installment of a loan that would reach $50,000 by her graduation in 1998, In the years she’d been studying the loan had accrued interest of 8.2% in 1993, 7.2% in '94, 7% in '95, 9% in '96, 8.4% in '97 and 8.2% in '98. Desperate to repay this and unable to find appropriate full time work in New Zealand in order to make a dent in that loan while based here, she went overseas in 2001. Interest on Susan’s student loan was 8% in 1999, 7% from 2000-06, 6.9% in '07, 6.8% in '08, 6.7% in '09, 6.8% in '10, 6.6% 2011-12, 6.4% in '13, 5.9% in '14, 5.5% this year. As of 2015, when adjusting for inflation, and without adding the interest following graduation, Susan’s Student Loan would be about $70,000. As things are with interest and penalties, Susan currently owes the IRD $160,000.
Back in ’99 I phoned IRD to tell them I’d be going to China and to explain that I’d be earning the then equivalent of about NZ$500/month and I couldn’t see how I’d be able to make the minimum repayments. I was told, tough, you have to pay anyway. About 6 months later a friend got a job on the outskirts of Shanghai earning about the same. She’d phoned IRD and had been told she could apply for some financial hardship thing and get off the compulsory repayments.
This caught my eye Chris because although it’s quite likely that I am mistaken, as far as I can see looking over various student loan statements there were no penalties in ’99. As far as my own student loan statement shows there was no Annual Obligation/ Assessment until March 2008 and likewise no Late Payment Interest/ Penalties until the same date – introduced following the ‘Amnesty’ near the tail end of the Labour Government’s final term, I assume.
In late 2013, overseas “defaulter” Stu Jack, perplexed by the threat of arrest, made a Financial Hardship application. Living in a developing country, earning the
average wage there of about $5000 p/a - equal to the annual $5000 repayment requirement on his loan - he was unable to afford to meet his repayment obligations, and thus accruing penalties in addition to interest. Based on his circumstances he assumed his hardship application would be successful, this would have entailed these penalties and his outstanding overdue obligations being wiped.Unfortunately Stu had for two years been married to a local who, prior to their relationship, had quite understandably accrued life savings in order to cope with the lack of welfare system, lack of free healthcare and lack of superannuation in her country of birth. Though alarm bells rang when Stu first read through the application noting that it also requested that he provide financial records for his wife in addition to his own, staff at the IRD reassured him that his spouse’s finances would not be taken into consideration except to calculate total household costs.
A month later Stu was forwarded a PDF notifying him that not only had his hardship application been declined but that as he had failed to meet his obligations, he was required to pay roughly $36,000 without further notice or face legal action or collection.
He was not being penalised for his own earnings but the savings of his spouse. The savings of a foreigner earmarked for – what few may deem – superfluities; such as admission to hospital in a country with a prepay health system and the convenience of keeping that IV connected after the fact. Stu was penalized for marrying a local with good fortune enough to have a safety net in place, or more to the point, Stu’s spouse - who all things considered the money actually belonged to – was being penalized for marrying a New Zealander with an outstanding student loan.
Essentially, New Zealand Student Loan borrowers are being threatened with legal action from the IRD unless foreign spouses repay the IRD. As a worst case, foreign spouses are possibly also threatening divorce from New Zealanders rather than fork over foreign savings to the New Zealand Government. Money that could pay for vital medical care in countries where none is freely provided is being targeted for repossession by the IRD in order to repay NZ Student loans. As a nation have jumped to shark. The borrower, faced with the prospect of returning home and still being unable to pay off the loan and in turn being arrested at the border if ever trying to leave the country again would obviously be in a quite the fix.
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OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to Keith Ng,
STUDENTS LOANED
Having had some time to reflect and do some research I thought I’d come back to this topic:
Pretty sure I had to sign something to get a student loan. Marginally sure that something said that it was a loan, and that I had to pay it back
Most Remarkable for me about this response Keith is that for all intents and purposes you appear to have solved the Global Financial Crisis in one fell swoop, you have at the very least minimized the impact quite substantially, those borrowers should have simply paid back their mortgages, problem solved. Less remarkable is just how widespread this type of opinion with regards to Student Loans is, with this opinion you are most certainly not alone.
While hesitant to make too much of a comparison between Government Student Loan systems and the private "subprime" and adjustable-rate mortgages of the mid naughties, it’s possibly worth noting that while public sentiment largely contends that at least partial fault for the GFC lies with Big Business’s targeting of vulnerable borrowers, this contrasts starkly with the widespread opinion that unmanageable Student Loans are for the most part the fault of borrowers who have, it would seem, targeted our vulnerable Government.
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Few, if any, would be game enough to dispute that these are ‘loans’, but respective interpretations might diverge when it comes to the expectations of borrowers. Just as you have interpreted:
it was a loan, and that I had to pay it back
Many 1990s borrowers who were fortunate to stumble on the Student Loan stall when cruising the various clubs during O’ week might have just as justifiably interpreted their new contracts to read that they as borrowers will only be required to make installments when earning over the repayment threshold. This was a key selling point for many. Whether borrowers managed to pay all or none of the loan back, StudyLink went to lengths to stress that if the borrowers were earning below this threshold then they were required to repay nothing at that point in time.
you chose to sign those contracts. you did not have to study or you could have found another way to pay for those loans (through a bank maybe).
Oldmoza – stuff.co.nz
So how did these 1990s borrowers qualifyl? Was there a minimum age limit? Were there minimum qualifications? Was a Guarantor required? Tom Oliver was 17 and recently diagnosed with clinical depression when the New Zealand Government lent him his first installment in March 1994, he had qualified for university with the minimum 3 C grades in his bursary exams and despite being underage no guarantor was required to solicit his loan. With a burgeoning drinking and cannabis habit the loan looked like an easy party for an out of control teen. Though he’d ideally still have had a year to complete at school, the 1993 Bursary exams pegged C grades at 49% and the scaling system of the time shifted his 29% calculus up to 49%. While private lenders would most probably steer clear of lending to a student whose qualifying scores (without scaling) were 35%, 29%, 31%, the New Zealand Government at the time was all about giving these kids the opportunity to sign these contracts. To any regretful borrower still lumbered with a loan solicited in that era, a recent headline might be of some comfort:
Editorial: Lower University Entrance pass rate a wake up call for system
Is this indication that recent changes to the qualification system might also entail more responsible lending practices? At the very least it could be taken as indicative of an intent - at least on the part of educators - to limit risk.Tom like many of us ‘qualified’ and voluntarily chose to sign those contracts, but it begs the question; to what extent would these types of lending practices - this bums on seats criteria for qualification - be deemed predatory, and for that matter, one may ask to what extent the Student Loan system, complied or continues to comply with this year’s Responsible Lending Code? That is despite this code being geared primarily towards the private sector. Tom was $7000 in debt to the Government by his 18th birthday and has never been in credit since. Tom’s parents earned $2500 over the Student Allowance threshold and weren’t willing to fund his university education. Despite any bravado, beyond any youthful excess this was not so much money reserved for books or reefers. For the most part the Government offered Tom this 7.2% interest loan so he could stay clothed, fed and housed, while providing allowances to his equally insolvent classmates free of charge and obligation.
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Though subsequently revised, within an hour of match completion last night Grant Elliott's wikipedia page began:
"Grant David Elliott (born 21 March 1979 in Johannesburg) is a New Zealand cricketer god."
Technicalities.
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Field of dreams.
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Hard News: Haphazardly to war, in reply to mark taslov,
The price of membership in the club.
Obviously Recognising that New Zealand is merely a client state may not be a comforting thought for many. It leaves us feeling impotent and ineffectual. This inadequacy might spill over into the way we approach other issues e.g. say our nation faced a huge binge drinking problem we might lose heart and give up the ghost. Instead of pouring resources into stemming the tide at its source we may instead resign ourselves to addressing contingent issues by throwing a couple of well toasted individuals onto the TV screen in a concerted effort to dissuade the drunk nation from frying whilst wasted.
Or say we as a nation faced an issue whereby 500 people were committing suicide annually, we may well hush it up, censor the media, and do so under the auspices of protecting the nation from the copycat effect. As if 500 deaths is some kind of notable success, as if the dependent incidents would somehow push a reasonable figure into the realms of the untenable.
With regards to this war, the core issue for me is not so much that (once again) our troops are being sent where and by whom and for what. The underlying question is how do we extricate ourselves from this club and/or these terms of membership.
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Hard News: Haphazardly to war, in reply to nzlemming,
So much for sovereignty.
It’s numbly reassuring to forget that just a few months back we were trying to make head or tail of the Operation Speargun/ Cortex kerfuffle following revelations that a low level NSA analyst had finger enough on the pulse of New Zealand’s Intelligence community processes to accurately name a program that had been considered for implementation by our own Government Communications Security Bureau, in that instance Key was bold enough with his “business case” response to freely admit to anyone paying attention just how compromised the sovereignty of our intelligence organizations is. On that note I do believe Key’s “price of the club” was once again one of his truer admissions.
I can understand that when faced with these type of home truths about New Zealand’s lack of sovereignty in matters of intelligence/defence/ law that some might find it preferable to seek solace in alternate realities. Alternate to the reality where NZ sent troops to hunt a Saudi in the wrong ‘stan. Alternate to the reality where NZ’s refusal to send ‘troops’ to ‘raq in 03 was not so much the norm as a blip on our foreign policy radar. Alternate to the reality where less than 50 years back we were still paying in pounds shillings and pence, distinct from sterling only since 1933. Alternate to the reality where less than a hundred years back we were still a dominion and that’s still one our leading newspapers. Alternate to a reality where we scoff down the Colonel’s chicken while tuning into The Walking Dead in which a fella from Bath convincingly plays a Georgian police sheriff, a fella from Liverpool the Governor. Alternate to the reality where the nations ‘founding’ Treaty was signed by various Māori chiefs and representatives of the British Crown. Alternate to the reality where a retrial is afoot due to a New Zealand judgement against a New Zealander being quashed by one of highest courts in the United Kingdom.
As I look out over the balcony I see a new landmark has sprung up between the toitoi and the apodasmia similis. This monument has been erected to remind us of our history and of who we are. Hot on the heels of eons of no monuments here, this eyesore doesn't recall the early whalers who worked from KiniKini nor the many ships that have been wrecked negotiating these shallow waters, nor even does it recall that it was overlooking this very beach that Ruawharo, having left the waka Takitimu, decided to settle.
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Nice documenting Soon Lee, I had a wee chuckle at your description of the hold up at the traffic light. ‘Stop the Clock’ is my favorite.
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Speaker: Sex with the office lights on:…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Duncan Garner
Articles dealing with the legal implications aside, it’s been quite remarkable to see this glut of journalists lining up to hurl their neatly bundled journalistic reputations onto the bonfire – a show of hands to fill positions at Woman’s Day and the like.
Uploading to a Social media network used by 2.7m New Zealanders, for voyeurs to actively click on, is one thing. Making an editorial decision to go front page with this for days on end for the benefit of the rest of us is some next level shit.
Anyone who’s been cheated on knows its hard enough hearing that news from a friend let alone it being broadcast for all and sundry. Over a week later journalists are still going to lengths to rub salt into that wound.
Doing the deed in Parliament as a scrub is what it is, dishing the dirt on yourself rocking the coitus in Bowen House for an op-ed piece mid-career occupies a time and space beyond levels, it’s delightfully Al Pacinoesque: “This is where I work and this is where I FUCK!”. Many would save something that sensitive for the memoirs, but it would appear Garner’s balls are unstoppable. No doubt Slater is kicking himself.
All hot on the heels of the previous week’s Eleanor Catton kerfuffle, the average kiwi could be forgiven for overlooking a Waitangi day announcement by our dear PM confirming that he’s anti-black, or for simply forgetting that the prospect of New Zealand going to war looms imminent.
Still, to the journos, if actual news isn’t quite your style and you’d prefer to be offering opinions, dominating the national discourse with triviality, reaping those hits, stirring up saucy debate, dancing on the graves of marriages, relationships, and our public offices, then congratulations on these, your mighty and profound career defining ejaculations.
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Speaker: Sex with the office lights on:…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Oh, you mean the 1970’s where The Truth maliciously “outed” Marilyn Waring,
Specifically that 1970s when – technology lacking – this type of parasitic behaviour was more or less exclusively the domain of scumbag ‘professionals’, as opposed to a practice willfully emulated by hoards of amateurs for shits and giggles.
I certainly don’t mean to imply that – at our periphery – we as a species have ever been any less ugly, but it would appear that in various periods the general population have – for whatever reasons – been less inclined to pursue this ugliness ad nauseum.
Obviously the trends can’t evolve in isolation; the evolving technology functions as an outlet for antecedent desires just as the technology driven media stimulates them. Neither you nor I are old enough to comment with much authority on the ‘spirit’ of the 1970s, though our elders offer inklings. Grant’s anecdotes above, though more recent, paint a fabulously contrasting picture.
Why the 70s? Cellphones were widely adopted in the 80s, nothing more, I’m still working on reining in my quips. From my scant knowledge I can’t imagine many would single that decade out as any kind of high point for humanity.
As I know you well know, the media have long been prone to scraping the bottom of the barrel, since the get-go most probably, which is why I think you’re so right to go there Craig; where this kind of trash would once – I assume – have been almost exclusively “Truth” territory, it now seems to have ‘gone viral’; ripe pickings for more or less the entire MSM.
P.S I love your pic
