As a person using a bus to commute, I couldn't think of anything worse. They would be jumping on and off for only one stop of travel just because they can.
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You did'nt stay in Ireland though! Instead coming to NZ where you appear to have prospered Unfortunately NZ has become under policies of both parties
a country where the younger generation and others are finding it harder to get ahead consequently voting with their feet for supposed opportunities overseas.
For all the talk on tax and who pays what the highest rate is still only 33 cents in the dollar. A good read is a book called " Pity the poor Billionaire " which illustrates how following the GFC the wealthy in the US have continued to prosper at the expense of the poor. A similar situation applies in NZ.
westerly
My appreciation to Belgarion and Westerly for holding back the hordes of neoliberals and right-wingers!
However I like CJ's idea on scalable LVRs. That would work, it would be fair, it's a Labour-type policy though, isn't it. Don't school-age children get cheaper fares in Auckland?
By the way, the data on the poorest families in NZ shows an increasing trend in average family size as poverty increases, but only to about 2.7 children on average. Yet another right-wing propaganda untruth that is endemic in certain circles.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/09/03...ty-of-poverty/
I would like to see a list of all the public sector and SOE jobs that have disappeared under National. The govt who said they would simply cap the staff levels in 2008, not decrease them. The population of NZ is increasing, so therefore we should have more employees in the public sector.
Edit: Not all of the high-tech NZ businesses stay here. Labour should look at fish-hooks for R&D funding.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/another...-offshore-sale
Not true EZ. My brother was on a few labour think tanks. He used to write speeches for Helen no less. He's told me its accepted that the people that can't afford to have children are having too many and those that can are having less. Its creating an exponential problem. Not one labour can address in the public domain though.
That's interesting Slimwin. However I'm sure your brother would have said that there's a trend forPutting it the way you have, is a lot more hard and fast, which is not true. In any case, where is society laying down how many children are too many, as a number? It's surely a figure that there will be a range of opinions on.Quote:
the people that can't afford to have children are having too many, and those that can are having less.
Here is the article I pulled a figure of an average 2.7 children in the most deprived families from. See Table 1. http://www.nzchildren.co.nz/child_poverty.php
I think we all know how empowering earning a wage is anywhere in the world, it's no different in NZ. People don't go on the dole or the benefit for the lifestyle, as a rule. They are there because their options are very limited. I think that if you do the numbers, the cost to the public purse is not a big net proportion of outgoings for the taxpayer. Don't forget that everyone is a taxpayer in some form or another, despite the half-truths National keeps trotting out. Labour achieved a record unemployment figure and record tax take before they were removed from office. Great budget surpluses too.
National, for all its rhetoric and admittedly tough events since 2008, is only just now getting the economy back towards a very small budget surplus, and I'd be surprised if they get that before being turfed out, and we have a heap of new loans to pay off as a country. We're not as badly off as some countries, but as this article states, that's because NZ started with a record low borrowing position in 2008. SOEs and the public service are still in line for job losses (I'm picking MBIE), and many struggling service businesses in the private sector are doing the same, in a constrained domestic economy.
This is apparently the bright future we were promised.
No he didn't say that EZ although I didn't push him more on it.
So, one of the complaints is there is not accurate enough reporting/recording of child poverty so a graph means little. Perhaps there is a statistic somewhere which correlates benefits paid to related families. I doubt it though.
I worked many years in impoverished African countries and the old way was to have as many kids so some will make it. Then the church's came in and stigmatized contraception while demanding more flock for their parish's. Why should other people be forced to support this societies life style. (although that's what I was there doing)
If your in NZ that has an excellent, by world standards, welfare system this does not give you the right to deliberately burden the taxpayers by having as many kids as possible and expecting to be supported.
I have no problem with people having lots of kids. It just must be a balanced decision and part of that decision making process is not the thought "ahh, the state will pay.."
Labour were in power during one of the biggest world growth periods recorded. Even they couldn't fail. They did allow a property bubble to develop under their watch, although I know both parties would of. Neither Labour or Nats are the answer. In fact there is no answer. We can't predict the future with world and local events. Only hindsight will tell which policies are correct.
At the moment all I can see from Labour is rhetoric. National are sticking to a plan they laid out long ago and we've come through a recession way better than what my friends are going through all over the world. I'm not going to swing back just yet. Will wait and see what Labour comes up with closer to the election but at this stage a collusion with the greens is the deal breaker for me. Or too much of the "all together brothers..." type speeches.
Fair enough Slimwin. I'm not so keen on the comrade speeches either. But remember David Cunliffe is a diplomat. When he speaks to business people, they come away reassured. He will tailor a speech to the audience. Maybe a bit too transparently sometimes. Will DC become a statesman - that's what I'd like to see.
I agree with you on poverty in Africa, I support one young adult there. In retrospect, a rotating business loan would be a better concept.
You can hold onto the idea that National is steering us safely out of a global recession, but my impression is that Labour left govt with a nearly clean slate, and all National have done is the usual downsizing of the public sector, swapped valuable state assets for immediate cash in the bank, borrowed for everything else, scuppered one or two SOEs, and provided almost no incentives for the private sector to thrive in the years ahead. The message has been that the business sector, outside of construction, should hunker down for the meantime. And they have, for several years.
The NZ govt's indebtedness in terms of a percentage of GDP is just starting to level off or drop. That's because GDP is going up again. But it has not reached the level obtained when Labour were in power in 2008. More importantly, the GDP output per person in NZ has fallen from the ramped up output Labour achieved. It's all in the charts.
Tough luck EZ - news release today says NZ's unemployment rate has gone down :-)
A lack of historical knowledge EZ. In 1973 when Norman Kirk was in we had registered unemployed of zero in Auckland Wellington and Christchurch and an NZ total of about 300.
However that was on the back of a huge commodity price surge in NZ's favour that couldn't and didn't last. The Labour government was just a piece of flotsam in a surge of water that went in and then out.
What was Labour's response? Borrow and Hope! But the hope never materialized and it took Roger Douglas to sort things out with a floating exchange rate and repayment of debt.
Overall equilibrium and growth counts for more than an isolated low unemployment total.
It's just that further back up this thread I saw some moronic left winger crowing about "rising unemployment" (like to compare it with Greece, Portugal and Spain some time?) so I thought I would pop that bubble with an uncomfortable fact.