Posts by Sacha
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Some more numbers from Marty at Te Standard.
So, what’s left after all that locked in spending? And how does that compare to what the other areas of government spending need just to tread water? Yeah, it doesn’t. We’re talking $3.75 billion in real cuts (only a billion of which is due to the quake rebuilding). That means nearly 19% slashed from housing, transport, police, defence, customs, conservation, justice etc etc.
I did the same thing but assuming the Nats won’t cut transport, and then again this time assuming they also won’t cut police and defence either.
[intervening table of figures]
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The cuts for what is left are, of course, even deeper, up to 32% in real terms. Are you happy to cut 32% from the Kiwisaver, and bio-security budgets? No. Well the money has to come from somewhere else then. What about 32% out of state housing? Or 32% out of R&D? Each area you wouldn’t cut means deeper cuts somewhere else.
The point I’m making is that this isn’t play money. The $3.75 billion in real cuts that Key is planning to make has to come out of the public services that you and I use, directly or indirectly. There’s a reason they call it the social wage – without it we’re poorer and we have to pay money out of our other income to try to cover the costs.
And what’s sucking all this money out of the economy and firing all those workers going to do to the wider economy?
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OnPoint: Everything has changed until 2014, in reply to Lyndon Hood,
I think they were presented with options, including for eg more tax or more borrowing, but "cut spending" was the only one that appealed.
Totally - it is a choice motivated by ideology and they need to be held accountable for that. "TINA" won't wash. As I said last night,
And no, the signalled service slashing is not to pay for "new spending" in health and educaton - that's the most basic annual top-up to keep pace with inflation and population changes.
The economy was already in the toilet before the Christchurch quake, which is just a convenient opportunity for some disaster capitalism. Things may have gone quiet on the asset sales front but that won't last long.
Also noteworthy that the massive ETS subsidies to polluters and top-skewed tax cuts (which could pay for the Christchurch hit on their own if reversed) are not on the table - lest our pathetic government of yesterday's men is forced to admit that its ideology is wearing no clothes, just like the 90s when they pulled the same shit. Wake up voters. And grow a pair, opposition parties.
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Hard News: Kittens and puppies for happiness, in reply to Russell Brown,
I was actually planning to raise a discussion, but a brief bout of flu has screwed up my workflow. I'll see what I can do today.
and he has - behold, a new thread about Libya
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OnPoint: Everything has changed until 2014, in reply to George Darroch,
There's money around, it's just distributed differently than it was 3 years ago.
And if we're looking for large amounts of state spending to shift, how about the massive subsidies to ETS polluters, continued propping up of property speculators and top-skewed personal tax cuts that have produced totally predictable results.
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At issue is NZ's total foreign debt (and our refusal to invest in productive export-revenue-earning enterprises to repay it).
We know the debt is overwhelmingly from the private sector, not the public sector. Ratings agencies have said this country's public spending is acceptable. They are also unconcerned about taking on extra long-term debt to pay for rebuilding Christchurch.
Please explain how slashing state spending will fix private sector debt levels.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Sacha,
Army chap tipped to head the new Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to BenWilson,
placing different priority on the many, many competing factors
Unfortunately the overarching funding systems prioritise the needs of trucks and cars - so those are the factors that planners mostly represent in their work.
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Hard News: The Wall and the Paper, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I’m hoping that the libraries are going to be the norm not the exception that proves the rule
They were already many years ahead with systems integration. Hence the ability to switch on interloaning right away.
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Army chap tipped to head the new Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority.
A top army officer has been chosen to run a new organisation overseeing Canterbury’s earthquake recovery effort, according to political newsletter Trans Tasman.
Trans Tasman says NZ’s senior defence attaché in Europe, Brigadier Phil Gibbons, has been whisked out of London to become chief of staff to the new Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, which is to be formally instituted this week.