The Daily Blog Open Mic – Monday – 24th February 2020

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Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting discussion on Otago Daily Times, about inflation.

    The interesting thing, is the some economists in Austria are challenging how inflation is measured and under their systems inflation in NZ is not 1.5% but more like 6% per year because there is so much money sloshing about – which is certainly what it feels like with the cost of living going up well beyond 1.5% per year and the governments attempts at rebuilding Christchurch and other buildings and roads… It is advantageous to governments to keep inflation low so that they don’t have to increase welfare payments…

    “In the seven years to 2017, the CPI bumped along at a humble average of 1.5% per year. The amount of money sloshing around in the New Zealand economy, on the other hand, rose from $3.5billion to $5.3billion. A more than 50% increase.

    According to the Austrians that would mean an inflation rate of at least 6% per year, four times higher than we are told it is.

    Another place to find a truer rate of inflation is in the wake of natural disasters, the Austrians say.

    There, the actual increase in the cost of replacing things comes into plain view.

    The magnitude 6.3 earthquake that struck Christchurch on this day nine years ago killed 185 people and caused widespread damage. Between June 2011 and December 2015, the Reserve Bank had four attempts at forecasting how much the Christchurch rebuild would cost. It started with a projected four-year rebuild that was to peak at 1.4% of potential gross domestic product and ranged up to an unknown length of time with a peak of almost 2% of GDP. In 2015, the bank estimated the total cost would be about $40 billion; more than twice its 2011 estimate. The RBNZ has since stopped trying to forecast the ever-mounting cost.
    There is another reason the price of goods and services, that is the CPI, is not the right place to go looking for the true rate of inflation, Prof Berg says: governments are incentivised to make the CPI appear as low as possible.

    Complex formulas to take “quality improvement” out of the equation and methods that track an ever-changing basket of goods play into governments’ desire to show as low a rate of inflation as possible.

    Being able to report to voters yet another quarter of below-2% inflation is important in a three-early election cycle.

    Also, an under-reported inflation statistic helps governments reduce their welfare spending. If reported inflation is 1.5%, that translates to a much cheaper hike in the cost of providing superannuation and unemployment benefits than if inflation was reported at 6%.

    Stats NZ rejects any claim the CPI under-reports the rate of inflation.”

    https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/real-cost

        • Marc
          You jump to the negative all the time, dissing others. Hardly the way to work out a way to do more than survive in the future. I notice that this is a default position by the majority of NZs I would say. Yes Norway has made money from its oil and has invested it. We have made money to and have managed to not manage it and are in constant debt that business has decided should be very low for Government overseas borrowing but high for private and business interests. At the same time they want lower taxes so Government for the people can’t do much – it is constrained by the wealthy and money-mad who want to rip off the country and keep the benefits for themselves, and who don’t want to pay living wages so that ordinary people are squeezed. So Norway has made money when Oil was Queen and they still have it. Whereas we, haven’t and are making money from dirty dairying still, and looking to make a quick buck for private interests from everything good that still can be hocked off or chopped off the body politic here.
          That is being really negative, and it’s easy to do. Looking for the positive is like mining for gold, not many nuggets but we have to keep looking for colour.

        • ugh despicable .. what country doesn’t have carbon emissions .. immigration wouldn’t be possible .. and is a by – product overall.
          it’s not dirty oil
          wow , ‘how great’ ..

          • Fossil fuels should only be used for making steel and other materials that are needed for building the post fossil fuel age infrastructure, period.

            While Norway did well out of selling fossil fuels and building up financial reserves, it has at least started to move to alternatives, albeit in a somewhat dishonest way, as electric cars still use a lot of fossil fuels, when looking at their overall carbon footprint.

            More is needed, and other petrol and gas producing nations must be called out and challenged to provide their resources not as ordinary petrol and diesel to run vehicles, but instead for making materials to build the new, more sustainable instrastructure.

            I see laggards everywhere, even in NZ Inc, where the government now wants to bring in law changes or system changes forcing petrol companies to sell their retail products even cheaper, hardly anything one should aim for given the global situation.

            I just call BS out, where it deserves to be caught out in the act.

  2. I’m fascinated by the verve of Australian Mulloon Institute leading the way to better techniques of using farming land and retaining water on the farm resulting that the local watertable is replenished. There are now many other initiatives and they are getting into gear after the bushfires. The MI was an enduring pioneer over ? decades. Government felt obliged to take some interest but dissed it as a universal approach whose time had come. Australian politicians will probably be found to be direct descendants of TRex dinosaurs. We have tuatara that don’t move so as not to waste energy. We probably have similar initiatives here but need to coalesce to become as noticeable a force for a good environment, as the blue-green algae is for a bad one.

    This is info on a sold-out workshop being held end of Feb 2020 (I like explicit dates) and it was only $10 so practically free.
    https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/building-resilient-landscapes-after-fire-and-drought-tickets-94086409985?fbclid=IwAR3O9ZkQFHNdKXXTUZR4uZp-Rgy5zfwdtTziXds12h4bAd3pUBux4_3RNQ0

    The people are anxious to get going and make a difference where it matters. I think there are considerable numbers also in NZ like that. I am enquiring to see if there a central website where such activity here is publicised and of course noting what we hear from overseas? There needs to be a goldmine of information and advice so people can get going quickly with good results immediately without lengthy learning processes, re-inventing the wheel.

  3. Just a wee excerpt from Ruth Park’s second volume autobiography, Fishing in the Styx, (NZ-Oz author) . She found the Irish regard for officialdom funny. (This was prior to 1967 when her husband D’Arcy Niland died suddenly at 49 years.)

    …we reach Ireland.
    ‘And would you be carrying any tinned salmon, sir?’
    [We] looked narrowly at the Customs Officer. Was this an Irish legpull? He sighed.
    ‘For the love of God why would people like yerselves be carrying tinned salmon? But it’s a question they make us ask.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Them.’
    ‘Ah, them.’ We were on familiar ground. The Establishment, bureaucracy, the faceless ones. Australia jumped with people fulminating against Them. We nodded sympathetically, shook our heads with the correct ruefulness. Them! The injustices, the idiocies we good ordinary people had to endure from Them!…

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