Hard News: A thing that rarely ends well
199 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 8 Newer→ Last
-
Similarly the redundancy of 75 staff at my old Christchurch office had a total of two relocate to Auckland, one to the West Coast & two to Oz.
-
Oh & a number have been rehired.
-
Paul Williams is right people move to Australia, and don't move, for a number of reasons, and wages are only one of them.
Driving wages down isn't going to make Australia less attractive.
I'm here because I get a fully funded (free) degree at a university that attracts top professors. I have to work part time to survive, but I had to work part time in NZ too, so there's no real difference.
-
This morning at water coolers all the talk was "jobs for boys" and there was surprise when the cooler people discovered to be an "honourary" position.
Missed the Key interview on this matter on Nat Rad because I was putting the rubbish and recyclables out (OK, laboured simile, sorry), but I caught the listerner feedback before the nine o'clock news and it was unanimously negative. RNZ tries to be 'balanced' these days and there are no shortage of Colonel Blimps in their audience, but the most charitable description of Key read out was 'lightweight'.
The TV news people may have their story to tell, but that observation, and that there was 'surprise' rather than, say, scepticism around the water cooler at this manufactured scandal (or as Sean Plunket put it, 'scandelette'), would suggest that people are starting to notice a whiff from Key's, um, 'fertiliser'.
-
RNZ tries to be 'balanced' these days and there are no shortage of Colonel Blimps in their audience, but the most charitable description of Key read out was 'lightweight'.
He was average. But he's always average.
I certainly don't "hate" Key. He just seems a bit of an empty vessel.
-
Insider outsider,
Maybe. But your argument is that almost all of their potential pay increase might have been lost to a move across a WFF threshold. This is completely different from a situation where the top marginal tax rate gets raised a couple of percent.
With regards to productivity, the increases we are after oughtn't be in increased hours worked, anyhow. They should be increased output per hour.
-
My distrust of him stems not from any personal dislike (how can one dislike a void?), but that he tries too hard to say what he thinks people think he should say (now there's a hall of mirrors!). It doesn't give me confidence that he has coherent principles or a structure of reasoning to generate those principles - just reflexes and an obsequious desire never to be caught saying 'no'.
Someone said of someone else (both famous) that he was like a cushion, bearing the imprint of of whoever sat on him last. I get that feeling about Key - and in government he'll surround himself with all the old plutocrats and technocrats.
Well, I tend to be cynical about any man in a suit.
I wonder if the wrong interview technique is being used. Time for the Turing Test perhaps? Or maybe one could set up some interesting tape loop experiments by playing recordings of him back to himself?
-
I wonder if the wrong interview technique is being used. Time for the Turing Test perhaps? Or maybe one could set up some interesting tape loop experiments by playing recordings of him back to himself?
Heh.
-
Time for the Turing Test perhaps?
You mean, see whether a person conversing with Key via a keyboard will decide (be fooled into thinking?) he's human based on the answers he gives?
Heh, indeed.
-
Just how much trade do we have with Monaco (other than swapping postage stamps)?
We export millionaires and tax dollars to them.
-
Most people don't want to be CEO. They want job security, enough money to get married and to have some kids in a house they will eventually own - and to squirrel away a bit for a rainy day/reward for their labours.
Precisely. But classical and neo-classical economics has a serious problem coping with the concept of "enough", or that desires may in fact be limited.
I know off employees who have foregone promotions because the wage increase is outweighed by the loss of WFF benefit. That is not good for anyone.
Clearly, they felt it was good for them. Or does revealed preference only count one way?
-
Insider Outsider -
FWIW I work in education; my promotion was to a job that would in effect have doubled my salary and I have lived/worked in several English speaking countries across my career. Though me, her and new arrival are by no means rich, we do okay. Hence I looked for reasons other than money to go. I still feel I have a useful contribution to make to NZ with what I am doing. There are important differences between NZ and Australia that I value greatly. I make this point with the caveat that I and my partner made money overseas which was used to secure our modest comfort here (we own 80%) of our home. I hope this is of some help, if you want a more detailed dialogue just ping my email flag. -
I'm a migrant to Australia, and though I'll not purport to speak for anyone else, I think its an over simplification to suggest wages alone are what attracts people.
I'll speak for 90% of the couple of dozen that I know that have gone - weather and family.
I don't think I've heard anyone going over there and say "I'll be earning heaps more". Maybe a couple were and didn't mention it, but most people mentioned lifestyle and sun.
-
Thanks 81st
For me the attraction is the career opportunity and the tens of ks mpre money but the downside is access to the sea, the hills, and family. Maybe going to Auckland would be easier.
-
I'll speak for 90% of the couple of dozen that I know that have gone - weather and family.
Family is a complicated matter. Our youngest was born here and as often happens you end up with friends with kids of the same age with whom you do lots of stuff. The idea of relocating and losing that network is a bit daunting (I recently considered a job back in NZ, hence an earlier post about the apparent dearth of parks in Akl).
I know plenty of kiwis who're earning good money here, particularly in the private sector (I don't think the money is significantly different in the public sector excepting health professionals) because the commercial sector simply is considerably larger. Whether they'll stay for the money I don't know. I tend to agree with the earlier commenter (and IP above) that we're not all exclusively motivated by career goals and typically want a balance.
Ultimately for me, its lifestyle not career that keeps my family in Sydney though both my wife and I expect we'll return to NZ in time. Personally, despite promotions etc, my career goals are still about achieving things in and for NZ. How our experience impacts on policy alternatives is unclear however - in a global labour market, there'll always be a fair degree of mobility and it's not all bad provided a country is not beset by skill and labour shortages (and both Australia and NZ have some problems in this regard).
-
You mean, see whether a person conversing with Key via a keyboard will decide (be fooled into thinking?) he's human based on the answers he gives?
I believe the Turing test is intended to be a sufficient but not necessary proof of "intelligence", not humanity. That's why it's always computers trying to pass it. Key could still be a very cunning android. He certainly is intelligent.
I can't hold his poll watching against him too much, since it's one of the things I most like about Clark - she actually does what's popular quite a lot of the time. The only real concern is whether he will continue to do it after getting elected, or whether there really is an agenda we just don't know about. And there really is no way of telling, unless he gets caught red-handed saying "gone by lunchtime" kind of stupidities. I'm sure Labour will do their damnedest to make people think that though. Their spin will be "it's better the devil you know".
-
Why is that spin, rather than a statement of fact that we really don't know Key or what he stands for?
I suspect Key is benefitting, and will continue to benefit, from the admirable (mildly left-wing) NZ tenet that everyone should get an equal opportunity, translated here into an unexamined impression that "it's National's turn". Which is an extremely poor basis for choosing a government, particularly if the party thereby benefitting is less inclined to put that very principle into practice.
-
I've always felt that a number of people move to another country because it lifts from them the burden of having to feel responsible for or even think about local politics and issues.
It all adds to that irresponsible, floating, holiday feeling - the thought that making the country work is someone else's problem. You're just there to enjoy yourself. I've been an emigrant to someone else's country, and I know the feeling well.
I've never seen it cited anywhere as a reason for migrating, but from the frequency of posts to other fora stating that they are leaving for Oz to get away from gangs, or from Treaty problems, or Helen Clark's ****ing nanny state, I'd say escape from solving New Zealand's problems is a big spur to some.
Which they then dress up as "weather", "lifestyle", "opportunities" etc (which may also be true of course. Or not.).
-
Dale, true that.
-
I believe the Turing test is intended to be a sufficient but not necessary proof of "intelligence", not humanity.
Actually it is a test of neither, but - supposedly - of sentience or consciousness. Alan Turing proposed it as a means of examining, not necessarily solving the questions about whether computers actually think or respond without comprehension. One questions and compares the responses given by a computer and a real human and the computer is considered to have passed once it is indistinguishable from a human being. To do so, it would have to display some 'theory of mind', that is, the ability to model the inner thought processes of another and to reflect upon one's own situation through discourse. Thus far no software has been able to simulate a human being for long, but in theory one could. Would it actually be conscious or just a skilled mimic however?
Well, that's a philosophical can of worms, becoming now a neurological can of worms as neuroscientists start asking, 'Well what do we mean by "consciousness" anyway?'
Then there's Searle's Chinese Room for hours and hours of more fun...
-
Come to think of it, I would consider voting for Max Headroom.
-
Glenn offered me $1m to stand as MP, says Morrison
Does Howard Morrison have some sort of "open mouth before brain" affliction?
And who on earth would want Howard Morrison as their MP? It's like a collection of stupid people all getting front page headlines this week.
-
Kracklite, I think Turing thought sentience or consciousness was an offshoot of intelligence. The test can hardly discover something that can actually only be experienced by the individual who has it. But it can give a very strong argument that if such a thing is in other humans (which each of us can only guess at) then it very likely also would be in a machine that could not be distinguished from a human via conversation.
As you say, it's 'in theory'. I always thought Turing's point was for it to be a thought experiment to refute philosophers saying a machine could never, never, never ever have consciousness. He provided one test that most of them (but of course not all) would accept.
To my thinking it's way too high a standard, which is why I said it's a 'sufficient but not necessary' test. I don't think something has to be be so skilled a mimic that it can pretend to be something it is not to highly discerning observers, to be considered intelligent or sentient. For an illustration, I doubt most most ESL folk would pass a Turing test where they pretended to be a native English speaker - natives would spot them pretty quickly. That does not mean they are not equally intelligent, it just means it's a pretty unfair test.
Turing himself doubted that a disembodied intelligence could be written that would come near to passing his test. I agree. But there's still a lot of disembodied software which does incredibly smart stuff. Google, for instance, is better than most human librarians at finding you the info you need.
What I'm saying is that computers will have been intelligent and sentient way before they ever pass a Turing test. I don't think they're there yet, and I think we still have quite a long way to go before there's any kind of general intelligence in machines that even vaguely resembles human intelligence. But who knows, it could just be a small chance in paradigm and architecture. Certainly the hardware is powerful enough now, something we couldn't really say when I was first studying AI.
-
I've never seen it cited anywhere as a reason for migrating, but from the frequency of posts to other fora stating that they are leaving for Oz to get away from gangs, or from Treaty problems, or Helen Clark's ****ing nanny state, I'd say escape from solving New Zealand's problems is a big spur to some.
Which they then dress up as "weather", "lifestyle", "opportunities" etc (which may also be true of course. Or not.).
This may be true for some Dale, but it is certainly not true for me - in fact, I feel the opposite. I was very active in NZ politics and would never get involved here (certainly not NSW where there is endemic corruption) in part because I don't feel the necessary affinity.
-
certainly not NSW where there is endemic corruption
Sometimes it seems the basic requirement for migrating to Australia is not to know - and above all, not to want to know - about the political culture that people are heading for. NZ is squeaky clean by comparison.
If Australia is the solution, Helengrad is not the problem.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.