A maximum wage – Franklin D Roosevelt first called for it, Bernie Sanders called for it, and now 75 years after Roosevelt, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK Labour Party, has called for it. It’s long overdue.
Corbyn says, “What we cannot accept is a society in which a few earn in two and a bit days what a nurse, a shop worker, a teacher do in a year. That cannot be right.” Continue reading
National Superannuation is a great scheme. It allows people to live with dignity whether they are in paid work or not. It has been around in non-means-tested form ever since 1938. National party stalwart Rob Muldoon insisted on a national superannuation rate of 80% of the average wage for couples.
Universal national superannuation survived the era of Rogernomics and Ruthanasia. Almost. The age of eligibility was raised from 60yrs to 65yrs, and the rate dropped to 66% of the net average wage. And politicians, neoliberal economists, and the independently wealthy have been trying to work out ways to get rid of it ever since. Continue reading
We have a new Prime Minister – or do we? John Key may have been the front person for the National Party, but he was not driving policies. It is widely acknowledged Bill English did that, and he is the new Prime Minister. The question is, can Mr English sell his policies as effectively as Mr Key did for him? Continue reading
Our Prime Minister, John Key, seems to be struggling to come to terms with the fact that the TPP is gone. The battle has been lost. The US will never accept it without major concessions like a 12 year patent period on biologics. US Pharmaceutical Corporations’ profits versus people’s access to lifesaving medicine. People’s lives versus making a few people very rich. It’s a no-brainer. We cannot go there and neither can the other 10 participating countries.
Time to move on. But not to other deals of the same ilk – albeit without the US as Mr Key is hoping against hope. Time to talk in wider terms than just businesses in one country’s desire to exploit people in another country. All in the name of ever expanding, ever increasing profits. Continue reading
Our government votes on the TPP Agreement Amendment Bill next week. It is a futile gesture. The United States has pulled the plug on the TPP. President Obama has said that he will not try to pass the bill in the lame duck session before Donald Trump is sworn in. Continue reading
By now most Kiwibank customers will have had their email from CEO Paul Brock telling them he wanted them “to be the first to hear the big news”. Though most would have already read about it in their daily newspaper.
The big news is that the ACC investment fund and the National Superannuation Fund have bought a 47% stake in Kiwibank. Evidently Kiwibank customers are expected to be over the moon with this deal.
Sorry Mr Brock, don’t expect us to join the celebrations. Kiwibank as we know it has gone. Continue reading
The terms ‘social’ and ‘investment’ are an unlikely combination. Proof economists have crossed the final frontier and sallied forth with their spreadsheets into social services. Social investment means, “investment to achieve better long-term results for people and helping them to become more independent. This reduces the number of New Zealanders relying on social services and the overall costs for taxpayers” (Treasury briefing paper on social investment 2016).
To be blunt, the social investment approach is too narrow and too nasty. It involves too much invasion of privacy, too much blame, too much resentment about sharing our collective wealth for our collective benefit. And it paves the way for government-funded social service delivery to be just another profit-making opportunity for overseas corporations. Continue reading