Guest Blogs & Sponsored Posts

Marxist economist Michael Roberts takes on Noah Smith’s claims that neo-liberalism is making a comeback and is actually increasing GDPs and reducing inequality. But to make that claim Smith has to use China and India as examples of successful neo-liberal economies. Roberts says that growth in these two countries comes not from market reforms but from heavy state intervention.

When we discuss poverty, the two extremes seem to fall in two categories: beneficiaries and the uber rich. The “middle class” seems to be an amorphous blob which fills the gap between the two, and (according to the law of post-90s politics) is the demographic which politicians have to appeal for votes.

Recent disclosures about an unbudgeted blowout on staff salaries amounting to $42m, ‘communications’ costing $45.6m per year, and $1.3m spent on business class travel and luxury hotels, unhappily have coincided with widespread public complaints about the council’s failure to manage even basic services such as mowing the grass in local parks.

This matters because work without dignity is merely wage slavery with no quality of life and in a country with the type of leadership we have historically shown on so many progressive issues, it is unacceptable to me to see us go backwards on something as vital as quality employment.

New Zealand has an employment crisis that the last National Government has refused to engage with and this denial has left tens of thousands of Kiwi workers without the wages, job security and dignity that employment can give them.

After nearly 40 years of protesting, lobbying, direct action, media, and general political and social pressure the new government has announced that there will be no new mines on conservation land throughout New Zealand!  Yeah !