Chippy has heralded a move away from social justice and more of a focus on economic justice which follows a move by the Political Left to recoil from the woke whose alienating middle class virtue signals are destroying our chances the ballot box.
This has enraged the NZ woke who have attacked this narrative even existing by attempting to cancel the academic Dr Bryce Edwards who is espousing it.
Poor people are not sitting around the kitchen table arguing over who to cancel for misusing pronouns or not using te reo everyday, they are trying to pay the bills.
Chippy represents economic justice over social justice and he has a lot to do.
The looming economic recession is going to be far more damaging than most comprehend
Here are some ideas for Chippy.
Making RNZ/TVNZ merger work: Chippy is focused on end user experience more than bureaucratic systems, he gets the viewer is the biggest part of the RNZ/TVNZ Merger which struggles to explain why it is taking up so much political capital. To this end Chippy can make TVOne advert free and allow TVNZ to make money from TV2 and Duke so that viewers get the benefit of TVOne being advert free while allowing that advertising revenue to be shared with private media.
Making 3 Waters Work: This is ultimately about bloody drains! How the Christ did it become an existential race war? Chippy needs to refocus 3 Waters on drains and promote more work to be done by small drain layer companies by ensuring 15% of drain supplies go to independent/small Drain companies. Currently the large players choke off the small companies and the work doesn’t get done! Pushing this line takes the political heat out of the issue.
Smashing Supermarket Duopoly: To date Labour’s response to the Supermarket Duopoly has been pitiful as Food inflation prices surge (and will only increase). A State backed 3rd player in the Supermarket Duopoly is the only way to guarantee downward pressure on food prices. Chippy must argue for this and ram it through.
Financial Transaction Tax: Remove the yoke of taxation from workers and place it on the speculators, the super wealthy and the Banks to fund better social infrastructure.
Free Dental: Chippy has to focus on subsidising universal services that remove cost from people’s lives. For every dollar we spend on dental we save $1.60, this is a policy that will save us money in the long term and bring huge vote back to Labour.
Free Public Transport: Chippy has to focus on subsidising universal services that remove cost from people’s lives. More people on public transport means less cars choking roads for environmental reasons and better use of roads.
Free Breakfast and Lunch in all schools: Chippy has to focus on subsidising universal services that remove cost from people’s lives. School Breakfasts and Lunches are an enormous weekly cost for the poor while enticing truants back to school.
New Deal for Public Servants: We need to make their working conditions better if we can’t raise wages. A 4 day working week, longer holidays and more mental health support.
Free Tertiary Education: Throw the Uni students a bone FFS.
Cogovernance to co-operation: Chippy needs to tilt the debate away from cogovernance towards co-operation with Māori.
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Scrap the gold plated restructuring reward scheme for PSA members.
Well, all that will certainly have an effect on inflation. Mostly by increasing it. Probably not a pathway to winning an election.
The one thing he might do from that list is Free Dental. Though there will need to be some limit, maybe a cost limit per year or something like that. Otherwise all sorts of dental treatment will be done that is more in the nature of cosmetic. Perfect Hollywood style teeth for everyone would be the result if there is no cap!
Are you absolutely certain that’s how it works, Wayne? Modern Monetary Theory states that the proper action during this time is to hike rates and increase taxes.
Unfortunately, MMT’s proponents like myself, like so many economists, forget that the economy doesn’t exist in a vacuum – turns out, tax increases are extremely unpopular and legislators like being elected.
That means that despite there being two levers, the political establishment has deemed one lever off-limits, so the reserve bank is now hammering the one lever they control for all its worth.
A significant increase in government spending, which is effect of all the suggestions here, will be inflationary. The spending would have occurred well ahead of the tax increases. A FTT would also feed directly into the costs of goods and services. It is not and end tax, that is, borne by individuals and families, but on business intermediaries, who can pass it on with increased prices. Hence the effect on inflation.
The various suggestions would lift the government share of the economy from about 35% of GDP to close to 40%. An enormous increase. That is why the new PM could only choose one of them. I guess one could say Martyn has produced a smorgasbord of choices, and the government can pick the one or two best.
You are overly ideological and don’t know as much as you think you do. The Corona recovery was too small and resulted in nominal GDP growing too fast for real goods to be produced. Money supply is not a useful variable. Just take a look at M2 compared to inflation. They’re not correlated.
The last time a general economic crisis (Christchurch earth quak) happened the stimulus was too small and it caused half a generation of low employment, murdered the housing market etc. Mistakenly using too large a stimulus is way better. People with below median income have gained real wages over the course of corona, in spite of the inflation.
Furthermore, your notion that taxes would be bad right now is exactly backwards. The problem is too much money chasing too few goods. Right now the reserve Bank is taking care of that in significant part by… making mortgage payments more expensive for people who get new mortgages. What an efficient policy with few undesirable side effects! I think not. There are other important channels by which the reserve Bank gets people to spend less, but the biggest virtue is the responsiveness of the bank, not anything about the mechanism by which interest rates affect spending.
The best reforms, obviously, would be to increase real output to match nominal consumption, for example by increasing immigration, upzoning, reforming permitting process (I want to get rid of welfare entirely but that’s outside the Overton window), repealing the oil and gas exploration and RMA and other supply side changes. However, those mostly take time to work and generally require policy research to identify the problems, though the specific reforms I identified stand out as obvious things to do, and it’s important to beat inflation fast. They’re still good ideas. Increasing real output is almost always good.
However, a fast thing the government could do, would be to take money away from the people who are spending too much, by taxation. This wouldn’t have to affect housing production (and other forms of real output, which need to not decrease as much as spending in order to actually do anything to inflation!) to nearly the same degree as interest rate increases. Taxation is precisely the good remedy to the problem of the moment.
This is where thinking is too narrow. Implementing some of these measures doesn’t have to result in a significant increase in government spending. Successive governments have made the mistake of thinking government departments and SOE’s have to turn a profit. They don’t they just need to be run efficiently. So many spend masses of amounts on consultants, write endless reports that result in nothing and slow processes down and departments are bloated with comms and PR people, middle management etc. There are less and less people doing the work at the coal face and more and more admin, PR and management people. That needs to change and, dare I say it, it might need National or Act to do that as I can’t see Labour breaking the hold of the government managerial class and getting rid of consultants who see the government as a gravy train.
Quite frankly a bit of inflation is a price worth paying for decent public services.
We had the best public services in the world at one stage, then rich pricks like you decided that inflation should be capped at 2%, which totally cause massive cuts in wages, working conditions and public services.
Got another suggestion:
Reduce GST to the level it was under Michael Cullen (or at least bring it more in line with what is tax exempt in other countries). It will be a direct answer to “you deserve a tax break” and would be a good reminder of the bait and switch National did last time.
The problem is that his (corporate) political donors are highly unlikely to let him announce any such popular policies.
Just two policies could win him the election in a landslide: bringing back manufacturing, and returning to the Full Employment Policy. However, he would be demonised like Trump (who also promised this), and all his donors would turn off the money.
As he is reportedly a right-faction man, he is more likely to follow Sir Keir Starmer: focus almost entirely on “foreign green investment” (i.e. globalisation, low taxes), and being “tough on crime”, and almost nothing else.
Sir Keir also just said he wants to privatise parts of the NHS, to “bring down waiting lists”, and shrink the size of government by devolving responsibilities to local councils.
Sir Keir’s plan for housing is to ask private developers to reserve houses for first home buyers, rather than any promises on construction.
If he is really cynical, “Chippie” might channel Tony Blair and deploy troops to Europe, so he can claim to be a “patriotic wartime leader”. Lots of visits to Zelensky and Washington D.C.
‘ his (corporate) political donors’=Labour have raised apx $150,000 against millions for Gnashnul.!
Agree with Smashing Supermarket Duopoly, free dental (paid for by sugar tax), scrap co governance, free public transport – the rest need to be scraped and permanently and Labour will not get back with ‘relaxing and better communication’ on these issues.
The financial service tax is too polarising so maybe a windfall tax on banks and those earning super profits via Covid, would be more popular!
I am for free tertiary education, but first look at cleaning up education and stop the rise of cheats and woke/right wing management/lecturers. NZ universities need to return to subject experts in university lecturer roles and management, with no political/identity expectations. Would help if they were Kiwis and had deeper understanding of the country and culture that they are supposed to be representing.
As for public servants getting more benefits, I would say that many believe public servants have far too much time on their hands already and a Wayne Brown moment would be a lot more popular than giving them more ‘mental’ health care. The only exceptions are nurses and doctors and teachers.
Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me. This is what leftish leaning swing voters will be thinking, no matter how good Hipkins is at the job or how pure his intentions his party is toast.
I’m predicting National will do what they did under Key and avoid bold policy statements, then bring in some nasty surprises after the election and say it was on our website so we campaigned on it.
By moving Labour to the right, shelving any co-governace ideas, the firearms registry & any identity based policies they’ve been working on, starts pushing an “economy based” platform and pretending to be a slightly more human focused version of National. They might have a chance then.
What they could do is redistribute the tax system. If they removed tax off the first $14,000 instead of 10.5% as it is now. Then drop the tax rate for $14000 to $48,000 from 17.5% to 15%. For someone on $48,000 that’d put an extra $45/week in their hand which will find its way into the economy via spending. Then raise the next 2 tax brackets from 30% and 33% to 32% and 35% respectively. No one under about $160,000 would end up paying more tax but the people who need it the most would be helped.
Go Chippy!! Get good left-stuff done!!!
Is Labour under your watch, a workers party or not?
Working classes and those we support – UNITE! 🙂
(Faark, it can’t hurt, surely?)
NZ 2023 🙂
It’s obvious that most don’t actually understand what a politicians job description actually is.
Google the job description and you will see what I mean
First appreciate we don’t elect the prime minister, that’s the Caucas, in other words they elect their boss . The main job of a all of political party in power is to listen to the public, look after the economics of the co7ntry and make laws that achieve all of the above. These laws have to be required, practicable, enforceable and fit for purpose.
Do you think that the many laws passed covering matters over the last few years, covid 19 is a perfect example, we’re fit for purpose. If so, where is all the prosecutions for escapes from isolation, meetings well over the numbers permitted etc. then on top of that when some cases went before the courts the Judges dismissed them….l.the law was faulty……..given this do you still think that the politicians did their job…….remember the words, fit for purpose.
Baicaly the job of a politician is to listen to the public, if change is required put the facts forward for debate, and process laws to cover that matter. This should involve all public department, crown law and department of. Justice. Clrarly for a judge to say the law is flawed means someone’s not doing their Job……..if th3 system was working properly there is no way that a public service can over full the instructions given by parliament, so the obvious conclusion is management of the govt departments have forgotten who they serve and who their boss is. That also highlights the fact the the Minister with that brief is also toothless.
The only eay of fixing this issue is an overhaul of all govt departments from the top down and if Ministers can’t do as the law and their boss ( prime minister) requires the minister should be taken from the brief… appreciate that they get well paid for this responsibility of handling that brief.
So next time you think the Prime Minister is doing a good or poor job, just reflect are the applicable laws being carried out, enforced etc. if ,as it is at present time, laws are being ignored or the laws are not enforced then clearly there is something wrong with the system…..
Martyn,
Yes 3 waters is about drains but it’s also got to be about a well maintained supply network and cleaning up our streams and rivers.
It’s that simple.
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