Posts by Sacha
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
the things that government spends money on might have to change (aging population etc.)
Saying "might" is being disingenuous. We know darned well that demographic changes will increase the cost of health services and retirement income support over the next two decades. What expenditure will be cut to pay for those demands if the overall total is not allowed to increase and if tax increases are magically off the table?
And annual inflation means that a zero spending increase is actually a cut in real terms.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Keir Leslie,
and unaware of
oh I'd say they know exactly what they're doing
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to nzlemming,
He's strictly laissez-faire - the market is all
Not really - the massive preference for funding new highways at the expense of local roads, basic maintenance and public transport infrastructure is a deliberate intervention in the market. The current crop of Nats combine faith-based neolib nuttiness with standard 'daddy knows best' authoritarianism. Worst of all worlds.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to merc,
Hell the people of Auckland have made it clear what they want...
A National-led government
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Up Front: The Up Front Guides:…, in reply to BenWilson,
"Oh fuck, she's hitting on me. Now what?"
one faces that problem all the time :)
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Why would any organisation do more than required by its enabling statute and real governors? That they haven't bowed to Brown's wishes shows us who is really in charge.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to HenryB,
the wearing of sack cloth and ashes
skimping on the sackcloth - probably NSFW in some workplaces
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Choose not to conduct their business in public quite so much.
Joshua also noted that the way the CCOs including Auckland Transport were set up by govt did not require their business being public. Len Brown and the Council extracted some concessions beyond that but they can't overturn a legislated culture of arms-length accountability.
Joyce is making that worse with law changes that tip the balance more towards centralised Ministerial/Ministry control of prioritisation - another casualty of an opposition asleep at the wheel.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Angus Robertson,
If the left had an austerity program of substantial increases in top rate taxation and a steady spending regime, they'd be a choice.
Instead Labour decided to offer borrow&spend as the preferred alternative.
Labour offered Capital Gains tax and a progressive tax-free lower band. The Greens went beyond that and proposed rolling back carbon subsidies for polluters who tend not to be the poor.
Maybe it wasn't communicated well enough..
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Surely the bigger source of outrage for disadvantaged Canterbury homeonwners is the low level of expertise that EQC seems to require for these pivotal roles.
Pinning the outcome on the judgement of any person who has no relevant trade/assessment experience but who may be good at filling out forms or 'communicating' is utterly incompetent. As is letting the situation remain uncorrected - not that I'd expect better of Fieldmarshall Brownlee or his pork-fed chums.