GUEST BLOG: Class War: Leadership Counts
Guest Blog: Pat O’Dea argues New Zealand faces a stark choice between austerity and taxing wealth as poverty, housing insecurity and inequality deepen.
Economics
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Labour’s declining share of national income
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.
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MUST READ: The Government’s new ‘Employment’ Contract Existential Crisis
The government has got it badly wrong with the new Policy Targets Agreement, its contract with the Reserve Bank about monetary policy. Perhaps inadvertently, the emphasis is now on maximising employment, not living standards. Maximising employment is not the same as minimising unemployment.
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What’s really slowing housing markets? A 10 year old birthday present from the GFC
Lot’s of ’10 years ago today’ stuff last week marking the beginning of the meltdown in global markets as weapons of mass destruction derivatives forced a global market collapse that almost tail spun the entire planet in a steep economic depression.
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Economic Democracy
Universal Basic Income is neither an idea of the political left nor of the political right. The principles of liberté and égalité are not principles of partisan politics.
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Economic lies about the “rock star economy”
The business media is all in an excited state over the fact that the headline growth rate for the New Zealand economy is going to around 3.5% for the year ending June. What they don’t tell you is that because of the artificial boost to the population as a result of the government opening the taps for new migrants the actual annual per capita growth rate is only 0.6%.
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Oh, so the trade war with China has erupted and where are the NZ Media?
NZ faces some very rough economic times if China decides to make an example of us for questioning the quality of their mass produced cheapest capitalism model exports they have dumped upon us, and the NZ public seems ill aware of the ramifications.
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MUST READ: Land and Shelter: Unpacking the Crisis
Shelter is a human right, not a privilege. Private ownership of land is a privilege, not a human right. The debate is framed about getting ‘first-home buyers’ on the ‘property ladder’. Framing this as a right makes no more sense than having a debate about how to get people onto the ‘sharemarket ladder’.
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Political Realignment in the Far Northwest?
The Brexit referendum means many things, only one of which is a requirement for Grand Bretagne (Big Britain; as distinct from Bretagne, Brittany) to leave the European Union. Most important, the outcome was the political equivalent of a magnitude five earthquake. It may have forestalled the magnitude eight earthquake that was otherwise coming to a politically comatose Europe.
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MUST READ: Mossack Fonseca and Global Tax Avoidance – Economist Keith Rankin
If we encourage others to legally cheat on their own people, and encourage our people to help them cheat on their people, then the global market system fails