Posts by Marcus Neiman
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Another scene from the War on Youth, a distraction away from the feckless, self-centred, short-sighted complacency of our elders...
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First they came for the clothing workers and the reporters said nothing, for they were not clothing workers.
Then they came for the washing-machine makers and the reporters reported nothing, for they were not makers of washing-machines.
Then they came for the reporters...
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Paul: I take your point, but I guess I had Australia in mind - where I really think there basically no "lifestyle gap" or depending how much value you place on sunshine, it may actually have an advantage.
I guess my point is that NZ exporters cannot generally compete on price/cost anymore in the global economy - this means that they must compete on quality. Quality requires highly skilled workers. Highly skilled workers can demand higher wages elsewhere - thus NZ needs to provide them with competitive wages. If NZ business is too shortsighted to do this, then I think that it is a task of Govt to make them do this - Kiwisaver is a start, but frankly it is a little half-assed in comparision to elsewhere.
Similarly, domestic firms need to pay higher wages to avoid losing the staff they and the NZ taxpayer have trained up - even if these firms are too short-sighted to realise this.
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Continuing with my short-sightedness of business theme, again I struggle to see why business doesn't realise that in the new global economy, where NZ firms can't compete on price, that giving more money to workers to keep them in NZ, might be a good thing.
As a wage or salary earner it really makes no sense financially to remain in NZ vis-a-vis Australia unless you have to care for a sick relative or something (and don't give me no vague, BS notions of "lifestyle" otherwise). Only by delivering more income to employees will NZ be able to compete for workers with the skills to pay the national billz.
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For all of the whining about the costs of Kiwisaver by business - the contribution they will have to meet is still half of that in Australia. Furthermore, in the longer term they are getting cheaper capital...
The short-sightedness of business lobbyists in NZ and their reflexive partisanship never ceases to amaze me.
And sorry Keith, I'm afraid I don't have too much sympathy for business being made to save on behalf its employees. I don't think it is unreasonable to ask business to share more of the gains of late given the otherwise ongoing falling share of national income going to wage and salary earners.
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Finn: I agree with what you say - critique is usually a good thing.
I guess I am just observing that this has largely been absent vis-a-vis the creatives in NZ, and now a lot of people (as fellow producers and consumers) suddenly seem willing to speak up critically against the general scene and (if somewhat less so) against particular artists.
After seven or so years of increasingly widespread NZ artistic nationalism, maybe a backlash has emerged against people and things riding too easily on the wave. This is, as I think you might agree, a good sign.
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What's is going on here?
Is this Denouncing NZ's Creative Industries week?
Should we make this a regular event, along with NZ Music Month and the festivals?
In the spirit of the week should we get in overseas experts to savage the nation's artists, musicians, and so on, far better than NZers could ever savage them?
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Hmmmm indeed - another insight into the apparant general uselessness in the contemporary NZ union movement.
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Good point about the localisation within Auckland - but the points remains that 1) not all yoof parties are the same and 2) violence in youth socialising situations is not an evenly-distributed phenomenon.
As someone who experienced yoof parties in North, Central, and West Auckland, and provinical NZ in the late 90s I can say that the presence of violence varied from place to place - and particuarly I found the commonplaceness of violence through my experience and the anecdotes of others seemed to be greater outside of Auckland, in the Hawkes Bay, Taranaki, and Bay of Plenty.
As a note, I strongly think that the Shore party scene in the 1990s was heavily beaten up by the media due to certain personal connections. This also entailed a greater Police response than might have otherwise been expected.
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This is digging up memories...
Maybe policing strategy also had a part of it. I can also recall now that it was not unusual for a year or two during the late 90s to see convoys of Police vans going up and down the Northern Motorway on a Saturday night with the sirens going and the heavies presumably inside.