Posts by Moz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to chris,
many students wouldn’t have the benefits of accommodation, electricity and food while studying.
And of course, if they weren't studying they wouldn't have those expenses.
You could argue that we should pay all students, even foreign students, enough to live on while they study, but I don't think that's this discussion. This one is all about the miracle of compound interest.
-
Hard News: Footpaths, not manifest destiny, in reply to linger,
adding a layer of muddle management (as Kiwis'd call it)?
Australia has a lot of that. We get five levels of elected representatives (except in Queensland where they only have four), and often competing bureaucrazies at state and federal level (public schools are mostly funded by the states, "private" ones get a lot of money from the federal govt. And so on). The "who pays for this road" discussion can to truly insane in places with council, state and federal authorities in different areas all having a dog in the fight. Any problem NZ has in that area gets a bonus "times 50% more layers of government" to complexity.
-
I was hoping for irony.
Sydney is a bad place to look for ideas, we have a right-wing state government that is privatising some of the rail (that is in Labour electorates), merging councils and using the interim "appointed managers" to privatise council assets and services, and so on. Many councils have right-wingers on board and some of them are terrifying, but ultimately powerless over the bigger forces that are making councils very hard to run effectively. Australia has a lot of "push the responsibility down but keep the funds" going on, and councils wear a lot of the impact.
-
Hard News: Footpaths, not manifest destiny, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
if you like spending several hours a day commuting to work. And spending 15 times average annual wages to buy a shack in a ghetto.
You only have to look at Christchurch to see how much better National are at these things. The rebuild has been appropriately paced, unhindered by bureaucracy and produced a result that Aucklanders could only dream of. It's just a pity they didn't take the path they took with the Canterbury Regional Council, really, or things could have been even better!
-
Speaker: The Spirit Level, in reply to B Jones,
what conventionally passes for the Christmas spirit,
I give you the voice of that great Christian scholar and gentleman, the former prime minister of Australia, the Right Honourable Tony Abbott:
Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.
I've never been poor and hope never to be, because I've seen what poor is like and I don't want to go there. And it is high on my list of "things we need systematic solutions to", so I vote and donate accordingly. Unfortunately I'm in a tiny minority with that stance. -
Hard News: Art with a job to do, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
New Zealand has grassy-green or snowy-white mountains. Australia has red peaks.
As a kiwi living in the land of the long brown cloud, that is one of the things that makes me go "what?" about the red peak design. I'm not at all in favour of any of the options given, including the current flag. But my contact with anyone in NZ is pretty limited, let alone their opinion of fringe issues like the current exercise. I've seen more "waste of time" comments than any actual discussion.
-
Hard News: Art with a job to do, in reply to Stephen R,
they're fighting for their existence. Between Turkey and ISIS, I suspect that if the Kurds just rolled over, many (most?) of them would be killed
I think the right to exist is a fairly important human right :) And also, many have already been killed by Turkey, the US and Iraq in very recent memory, with the support of the EU.
I'm more saying that the way they're organising and the governing structures they're using are an explicit statement of "our way". They're not just fighting to survive, they're fighting to survive as the people they want to be. And especially some of the women I've read are very much fighting not to be the dutiful little women that both Turkey and ISIS want them them to be, knowing full well that their various allies are not happy about that.
-
Hard News: Art with a job to do, in reply to B Jones,
Can anyone think what war could have reasonably been described as relating to women's rights?
I think it might be accurate to say that some individuals fought for women's rights and freedom, even though the war was about getting more for our masters.
Although I also think there's a good case for saying that the PKK/PYD army are fighting exactly for human rights and specifically women's rights. For example http://news.infoshop.org/anarchist-news/anarchy-in-kurdistan
-
Access: Is New Zealand Fair and Square?, in reply to Sam M,
How do they get around our minimum wage laws?
The first and easiest way is to ensure that prosecution requires a complainant. Then make it clear to potential complainants that they will be fired and blacklisted.
The second, and longer-term way, is to elect right-wing governments who will make it lawful. In this case, likely by a contract rate that was determined using generous circumstances which can then be applied to other situations.
I've done a lot of piecework rate work, and it's a very easy situation to get screwed in (it's also fairly lucrative manual labour at times if you're good, but employers work quite hard to avoid those situations). With fruit picking when there are multiple employers and a short picking season the pay tends to be good, but when growers consolidate so there are only a few employers the rates drop until only force labour can be used. Sorry, I mean "work for the dole" and "people trying to stay on the dole".
With circular delivery there are a lot of people being forced into "anything that counts as a job" by the dole office, and a lot of others who can't get the dole for some reason (lack of a PhD in 'dealing with bureaucracy' usually). It's better than begging, at least in theory, and it beats starving, so people do it.
-
Unfortunately the Australian experience suggests that things like CGT need bipartisan support or they'll be quickly undone after a change of government. New broad taxes are rarely popular, so it's an easy win to the incoming government to at least promise to get rid of it. The GST was bipartisan and well supported by the owning class, so it's hard to roll back. But the CGT and mining taxes not so much.
I suspect you'd need someone like Clark or Lange to bring it in, and possibly someone like them on the right so that the less-right wouldn't immediately roll it back. Although it might work if The Greens stuck to their guns on having it, forcing Labour to suck it up. Once it's bedded into the tax system it would become much hard for the party of "less tax" to borrow the money to repeal it (because increasing taxes isn't an option, duh)