Just back from a week’s holiday in Hawaii which, by virtue of colonisation and capitalism, became the 50th State of the USA in 1959. As a series of Pacific Islands, it sits quite uncomfortably within the union of States. For example, the department stores were full of winter clothes, including coats, but Hawaii has no winter, the only ‘seasons’ being rainy and not-rainy.
Inequality is a number one issue for Western countries like the US, UK Australia and New Zealand. It not the same as the poverty issue. The growth in extreme income and wealth differences has gathered momentum as tax-free gains accumulated at the top end compound asset values, while disadvantage and debt compound negatively at the bottom end. The fortunes of the top and the bottom are inextricably linked. To begin to reverse the growing wealth divide, policy must address the balance sheets of both.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? The people who decided it would be a good idea to take Santa out of the Nelson Santa Parade?
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When you consider only 324 documents out of 17 000 have been released, who is bering protected here?
…so commercial fishing pay Shane a big donation and Shane cuts back on oversight of the commercial fishing industry.
Doesn’t that smell fishy?
The economist for the Council of Trade Unions Bill Rosenberg has produced some revealing data about the resumption of the declining share of labour income in the New Zealand economy in the most recent CTU economic Bulletin.
After the strong public reaction against the potential closure of its last 79 Post Shops the Postal Workers Union is…
In my job I get to hear about a lot of sad and bad things, but I also have the privilege of talking with people who give me hope in humankind – ordinary folk who see a problem and try, against the odds, to do something about it.
This has got to have been the most ludicrous Santa Parade season we’ve ever seen.