Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Doesn't first year law get harder at some point soon? Somebody needs their time occupying...
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I think on the swine flu, what may have happened is that, because it first occurred on any scale in Mexico, the virulence was thought to be much higher. It's logical that in a less-developed country with expensive healthcare, only the worst affected patients will actually present for treatment. Without any correction for this, the disease might look like it has a high mortality rate (e.g. 6%).
On the terrorist front, the guy was a white wingnut, so he got 16 months and then released because having a license plate surround that says "I'm a violent right-wing nutter" isn't grounds for a search. Had he been a Muslim, of course, he'd have been disappeared to Guantanamo or Raoul Island as soon as you could say "probable cause".
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I've been looking at that downgrade bogeyman.
I need to do some more numbercrunching, but it looks like Eurozone states with an AA- rating pay maybe 1% - 1.5% more on their government debt than AAA states.
Also, that only actually cuts in when the government rolls over debt or increases borrowing. Existing coupons stay the same.
Which would mean that on debt of $200bln, we'd be paying $2-3bln more a year, cutting in gradually over the next 10 years. That's against public spending of $38bln today. So we'd have to eventually find 7% or so in extra tax.
Actually working out the economic effect of that's a hard problem, but it wouldn't be death. Worst case would be that we'd have to pay tax at a level similar to France or Finland.
I think that would be a good tradeoff for saving jobs now.
(Not to mention that if we spent public money on energy saving and renewables now, we'd be a much better credit risk in the future than countries that are struggling to pay their oil bills).
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I find NZ reasonably cosmopolitan. But then, I wouldn't live anywhere other than central Wellington.
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Have a geek question:
discuss the usefulness or otherwise of the reference operator in the C++ languageIf you can't answer that, or don't know what it means, you aren't a geek, you're a fanboi.
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The press release you linked to is from the Libertarianz.
Ooops, didn't notice.
I feel all dirty now.
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the fiscal hawk in me is quite satisfied with the depth of cuts in this Budget
I don't buy that fiscal stringency is all about government cashflow. I think it's more about not stoking bubbles and baling us out of recessions.
Right now, we're in a *deep* recession. Inflation isn't going to be a problem however many dollars we print (within reason).
Now, if Cullen had taxed gains from house price inflation over the last 9 years, we'd have a *huge* surplus and would be able to easily switch to spending. But the electors wouldn't accept that unearned dollars should be taxed like earned income.
At the end of the day, unemployment isn't efficient. Having people doing nothing doesn't make (most of) us richer or happier. The indicator of whether fiscal policy is right should be whether jobs are being created or destroyed.
The downside of this, of course, is that if we borrow now, there'll be tax and interest bills later which will probably fall on the wealthy. That's why National won't do it and why Labour should advocate for it.
It's a budget for Omaha (& Hawaii), not Mt Albert.
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Last I looked, DPF was being the good soldier, and his crazier correspondents were declaring war.
Some erstwhile Actoids on my Facebook are incandescent. Given no tax sweeties, and Garret's wanting to stop them packin' heat, we may see cleavage before the next election. (phnaar, phnaar)
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aiming to be just like Iceland or Ireland isn't so smart either.
How about Germany, France or Switzerland then? They all have ratios in the over 40% range, and are doing better than we are.
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Two things:
- firstly, that graph assumes no growth forever, right? If we can actually recover from this recession, then we'd expect debt to fall.- secondly, 60% debt/GDP would only put us where most developed nations are now. Why should we be the only ones with tiny government debt, how does it help us?
The answer of course, is that for most people in NZ, it wouldn't really matter if we had 50% or 60% debt/GDP. We'd have to pay a bit more tax and slightly higher interest rates, but that would be more than outweighed by stable and secure jobs.
It's different for the people who matter to Nationals though. Government borrowing will impact their ability to fund schemes (like building billion dollar hotels in former scenic areas) and higher taxes will get between them and the bach in Hawaii.
So we've got to suck it up. Vote for change, eh?