OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Which entirely describes Brash who challenged the sincerity of Clark's relationship while sleeping around, but may not so apply to Key.
And then there was Christine Rankin's childlessness jibe at Helen during the smacking debate. Rankin herself is a divorcee of near-Liz Taylor proportions, and was embroiled in a reputed affair with the widower of a well-liked real estate agent who'd committed suicide.
Self-proclaimed Family Values types? A bunch of fucking hypocrites if you ask me, with a capital F. Pun fully intended.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Rankin herself is a divorcee of near-Liz Taylor proportions, and was embroiled in a reputed affair with the widower of a well-liked real estate agent who’d committed suicide.
While you’re on that moral high horse denouncing “fucking hypocrites”, Red, perhaps you can get together with Carolyne Meng-Yee – who had a rather unhealthy interest in whether Helen Clark and Peter Davies ever had sexy shower time – and tell us all when it would be “sensitive” to re-marry? My preferred option is: None of your fucking business but YMMV.
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DexterX, in reply to
IIf shoudl be about increasing tax revenue then creating a framework the leads top expansion of the economy and that creates jobs and kifts wages is what should be done.
It should also be about reigning in wasteful expendiutre.
It is any easy an unproductive out to introduce another level of taxation or raise the rate of tax as they did with GST - which decreased the level of economic activity.
Ben Wilson poasted " CGT Mostly it's about closing another tax loophole that encourages a particularly unproductive behaviour that has made people rich" - Owning a residential pptty is not an unproductive behaviour - you provide accommodation and use services such as ppty maintenance etc and you do this in NZ.
I would regard an unproductive behaviour as the high % of Kiwi Saver $s that end up offshore.
Bearing in mind. Ben Wilson expressed no faith in innovation which was regarded as just a 'buzzword' I wonder if you or Ben actually have any positive ideas or insight on how to encourage economic growth that will expand GDP and create jobs?
Rents will increase with a CGT, this will be passed on and the demand for ppty and the demand for rentals will increase - the state of the domestic economy is such that resdiential building consents are at an all time low - so the current shortage will get worse.
. It appears the election is going to come down to a choice between Sale of SOEs (National Coalition) and Capital Gains Tax (Labour Coalition).
What a vacuous bunch they both are – neither appear to have any strategy that involves living within ones means (spending less) and encouraging expansion and growth of the economy that would actual increase the tax take – rather than the tax rates.
The tragedy is that thes two options are the best they can do.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
I would regard an unproductive behaviour as the high % of Kiwi Saver $s that end up offshore.
Except that NZ is far, far, far too small to be a good resting place for all but a small fraction of what's in KS. It would be poor investment management to plonk lots of KS dollars into NZ just because it's an NZ-based fund, as many others have observed. KS is a retirement fund, not a sovereign investment fund. The managers are expected to act in a prudent manner, and that means not over-exposing to a single market.
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Sacha, in reply to
It would be poor investment management to plonk lots of KS dollars into NZ just because it's an NZ-based fund
Which however is Key's policy from the last election for the Cullen fund, I note.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
And at the time I, and others, pointed out that the Cullen Fund already appears to be over-invested in NZ. Key was talking 40%, IIRC, and learned commentators said even 25% would be excessive given the size of the NZ economy relative to the world.
ETA: However, public ooh'ing and ahh'ing over Key's record as an investment banker notwithstanding, I am far from awed by his achievements as an economic manager on a national scale. He hasn't got past the "getting me rich" mindset and into the "this is everyone's money" one.
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Sacha, in reply to
his achievements as an economic manager
But Key wasn't one - he was a speculator who helped design some of the derivatives that fucked the global economy. A gambler with other people's money, in short. But let's not pretend he is the only one running the government's economic policy, either.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
his achievements as an economic manager
But Key wasn’t one
Never said he was. Read carefully.
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Sacha, in reply to
Never said he was.
I believe we're in violent agreement
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BenWilson, in reply to
I think the editors expect it may give them a certain air of authority, but if anything it has the opposite effect for me.
Me too, especially since writers within the paper disagree very much with it.
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Owning a residential pptty is not an unproductive behaviour - you provide accommodation and use services such as ppty maintenance etc and you do this in NZ.
I said speculating on property was unproductive. I was pretty damned clear about believing that building property is a highly productive thing to do.
Ben Wilson expressed no faith in innovation which was regarded as just a 'buzzword' I wonder if you or Ben actually have any positive ideas or insight on how to encourage economic growth that will expand GDP and create jobs?
You're twisting what I said, which was:
Innovation is OK, but it's also way too much of a buzzword for my liking. You can have good solid growth doing something quite unoriginal, like raising sheep, or putting down railways, or growing trees. Innovative is usually synonymous with "risky". I'm not so sure the government should be gambling with our money. Better would be if they provided the infrastructure for some kinds of targeted growth areas.
So my idea was building the basic infrastructure needed by targeted fledgling industries. The government still owns the infrastructure, so it's not intended to just run at a loss to pump money into private businesses engaged in risky developments, which will lose heaps if they flop, and make the owners heaps if they succeed.
Indeed, most infrastructure grows business. More roads does that. More rail. Better telecoms. Reliable cheap electricity. It doesn't need to be free, it just needs, in some cases, to be torn from some rip-off monopoly that's sitting on some sweet position, milking it, and doing jack to improve it.
I don't want to comment too widely about what's need across all industries, because I don't know. But my own one would definitely benefit from NZ having much faster internet, both internally and externally. That means a lot more than just changing the way the internet is charged for, like LLU acheived. It means actually laying cables. That means lots of people getting paid to do actual work that makes something, after which the infrastructure pays for itself because it's so damned superior to anything we already have. It means businesses can more cheaply deliver hi-tech services.
I don't like this idea because it's innovative. It's not. It's an obvious idea, and I thought 20 years ago that it was going to happen now that Telecom was freed from the shackles of inefficient government bureaucracy. But they never did it. Instead, foreign innovators invented DSL, and Telecom cashed in big time, delivering faster internet without having to put in much infrastructure at all, and charging HEAPS for it.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Indeed, most infrastructure grows business. More roads does that. More rail. Better telecoms. Reliable cheap electricity. It doesn't need to be free, it just needs, in some cases, to be torn from some rip-off monopoly that's sitting on some sweet position, milking it, and doing jack to improve it.
An abusive monopoly could be thought of as a Polish shipyard listed on the stock exchange.
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A thought off the top of my head:
One of the problems people seem to have with selling off state assets is that money which would otherwise go into infrastructure investment and R&D gets siphoned off as shareholder profit. Telecom would be a good example - decades of refusal to invest in network upgrades so that dividends can be kept high.
If large/infrastructure-crucial enterprises in private hands were required by law to pump a certain percentage of their profits back into infrastrcuture/R&D, would that sweeten the pill?
I haven't really thought about this at all, so maybe there are some huge and obvious arguments against it. But if anyones got some good comments, then let's hear them.
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would that sweeten the pill?
It would, depending on the certain percentage. Shareholders would not even necessarily suffer as a result, because stock prices would probably rise, so they'd just make their profits in a different way. But how much reinvestment? 50%?
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So my idea was building the basic infrastructure needed by targeted fledgling industries.
We are in a battle to try and promote this "innovative activity" in NZ. There are a few things that have to occur before it takes off. Here is what could be perceived as a few:
Educate more people in science and engineering. This would mean that future middle managers / Managers / Directors would be able to know what the hell is being talked about.
Utilise the existing Govt R&D structures to act as a R&D "Source" by: eg Promoting easy access to staff from CRIs into industry. This could be by secondment or, temporary job transfer.
Allow such people to be guaranteed employment back in the Govt R&D sector to assist in eliminating risk to their income. it would encourage them to try the jump.
Allow IP to be easily tranferred to SMEs (especially) that allow the IP owner to retain ownership but allows development and manufacture to occur.
Identify SMEs with good management, good financial nouse, good bread and butter product lines. Convince them to take a punt on diversifying in any of the good ideas that (have) will emerge from CRIs.Develop business along the lines of this link to the German Experience.
This paper explains how mid to larger SMEs have kept up with their output in the face of competition.What is striking is the number of long term family companies that have ended up in this group. Where this could be useful is to convince NZers that the BMW and Bach is not the end of their business. NZ needs to have goals that extend a wee bit further than their nose. That allow employees to take bigger hands on in the business. That develop an attitude that business can be good for country, rather than just my back pocket.
NZ is full of SMEs. One could argue they could easily be developed into our lifeblood. It seems obvious that it is easier to grow SMEs rather than try and take the big boys and make them bigger.
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Educate more people in science and engineering. This would mean that future middle managers / Managers / Directors would be able to know what the hell is being talked about.
Why? Is NZ's problem actually a lack of engineers (or the quality of said engineers)? No. It's incompetence at the management level. We need to start training managers who can actually manage, as opposed to more engineers to be incompetently managed.
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Danielle, in reply to
It’s incompetence at the management level.
People keep saying variations of this, and to be honest I have no idea what it means. Isn't management just admin with some special value-added power to make your underlings miserable?
Perhaps I have merely been so incompetently managed all my working life that I have never understood its true glory. Heh.
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recordari, in reply to
Isn’t management just admin with some special value-added power to make your underlings miserable?
Really? You think that? The 'management are all evil' theme does my head in. You really must have had bad experiences.
Engineers should engineer and managers should manage. The real problem comes when 'professionals' suddenly become 'management material' and act outside their area of expertise, along with discovering that all consuming thing called 'power'.
Management, IMhO, are enablers. Providing the context and resources for people with professional skills to maximise their potential, while growing a sustainable business.
And other Utopian ideals.
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The ‘management are all evil’ theme does my head in.
I said they had the power, not that all of them necessarily used it for evil. I'm sure you personally are a delightful manager and I'd only whine about you very slightly in private. ;) But when you get right down to it, isn't that what distinguishes management from a plain old administrator? The ability to make the people you manage... do stuff? And possibly get rid of them if they don't do the 'right' stuff?
I haven't had particularly bad experiences, but I have no illusions about how little pause it would give people I work for to lay me off. Being on the Evil Commie end of the spectrum, I don't really believe in all this wishy-washy co-opted-hippy HR-speak about everyone being enabled and empowered in employment relations, because most businesses are fundamentally hierarchical and motivated by profit. That's why unions exist in the first place.
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I’m with Danielle. The only managers I’ve had who were worth their salt knew the business through and through, and could do most of our jobs pretty well- if not better than any of us. They stayed close to the ‘shop-floor’ (or the staff tea-rooms:)) and knew damn well when things were running well, and when they weren’t, and who and what and why.
There’s a management philosophy, typified by TVNZ head-honcho Rick Ellis in the 1990s when he quipped- “it doesn’t matter if it’s television or baked beans- the principals are exactly the same” that seems to insist management involves no more than a set of generic strategies and a bland reliance on ‘metrics’. Such managers are seldom found in the tearoom, seldom win respect, and generally head off to the next ‘generic management opportunity’ at the drop of a KPI.
</rant> I should add: I’ve had this discussion with folks from business schools and the southern institute of management, and by-and-large, they all agreed. None of them taught MBA classes, so I blame the “MBA” :)
ETA: of course this doesn't mean 'all managers are evil'- or bad managers. Just that the average caliber in NZ is... not brilliant. NZ rates as a very good place to do business, and ranks well in educational achievement. Our business success, productivity, average wage, etc all rank somewhat lower. Some of the responsibility for this does, I think, lie with management. -
For one example, NZ (and other places, but we have it worse) have this growing chasm between "geeks" and "business IT".
The former (just as a for instance) have developed a poetic attitude that suggests, for instance, that even though a company's line of business systems require IE6, and would cost millions to upgrade away from this dependency, they will not support archaic browsers. (Despite the fact that the LOB systems are why the desktops exist, and the web is a luxury).
The latter refuse to take good technical advice or employ smart people, with the result that millions are wasted. A company of my acquaintance just dropped $2 million on the floor pursuing a development project and changing their mind after a year.
If the two sides would come together and solve problems, I'm sure this crap wouldn't happen. I'm fairly confident this also goes on in other industries as well.
(The one place I've worked in that seemed to avoid much of this was the investment banking industry. Perhaps the frantic pursuit of huge pay packets makes people more goal-focused).
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recordari, in reply to
because most businesses are fundamentally hierarchical and motivated by profit. That’s why unions exist in the first place.
I have a distinct feeling I could easily back myself into a corner here. Lets just say in my experience this is not always the case. And I’ve never laid anyone off for being a commie.
ETA: Rob, I have no disagreement with the 'tea-room' school of management. And I don't have an MBA. Phew!
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Danielle, in reply to
That's why I said 'most'. I'm sure there are lots of drum-circle type businesses out there with a warm and welcoming flattened organisational structure which would make me equally suspicious and annoyed. There is no pleasing me when it comes to this shit, Jack. ;)
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I sympathize with recordari, my brief foray in management simultaneously increased and decreased my respect for it as a job. I worked out that it's actually a really difficult job to do well.
But when you get right down to it, isn't that what distinguishes management from a plain old administrator?
I only got into the theory of it in a small way, having been trained as a techo, but the broad functions of management are:
-Planning
-Organizing
-Leading
-ControllingDifferent managers are involved in these to different degrees. They are often not restricted to just being managers, either, and have other roles - certainly I still had techo work to do as a manager. Also, people who are not technically managers have a lot of input into these functions. Planning would often involve system architects. Organizing required help from admin staff. Controlling sometimes required human resource help (most for hiring and firing, but also training). Leading can very much come from below, from motivated people just inspiring the people around them.
The real fun begins when you get to "manager's managers". These people are often specifically trained in management. This becomes more prevalent the higher up you go, until you get CEOs who can move easily from one organization to a totally different one, in totally different businesses. Lotsa MBAs there. But they do sometimes come from shop floors too.
Curiously, I was quite apt to the task - philosophy finally paid off as a subject, since most of what managers do is abstract, high level, and involves a lot of talking, explaining stuff up and down the chain. But I found quickly that I also hated the work. It's highly uncertain, the goals very inspecific, the hours awful, and if you came from some tech background you feel yourself de-skilling every day. It can be very Machiavellian too, empires built and defended by whatever means, lots of double talk, politics basically. That was what finally put me off it, that despite a lot of hard work, everything you did can just be destroyed by some move coming from the secretive layers above you, and you're the first casualty.
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Danielle, in reply to
I only got into the theory of it in a small way
I did a compulsory paper in management for the MLIS and it MADE ME WANT TO DIE even more than the rest of that pointless busywork degree. Which is saying something.
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