Posts by Steve Parks
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Like what? Where do we draw the line?
Where do we draw the line in terms of voting age? Can't we just be pragmatic about this too?
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Chris, about go to bed (i.e. fall asleep at keyboard), but short answer for now - do you think Anders Breivik should be able to vote?
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Moz,
"Why 16, and why only prisoners rather than all disqualified persons?”
The idea of lowering the voting age to 16 was in the news recentishly, and then there’s the Scotland referendum on independence, in which 16-year-olds could vote.
I think we should lower the voting age – as I said above, this is their society too. And many 16 and 17 year olds are as capable of making informed decisions as many people older than that, and 16 seems like a reasonable goal.
However, if you think that the voting age should be lowered, you need to pick an age that has a hope of getting wide acceptance. So 16 seems pragmatic – let’s try for 16 for now.
As to the second part of your question: again, prisoner voting rights (or lack of) have been in the news recently; I’m lazy.
So who are the people currently not allowed to vote that you think should be able to?
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Chris Waugh,
“Well that, except for the (or most) bit, I certainly agree with.”
I’m ambivalent about the most serious of criminal offenders being able to vote.
I absolutely think most people in prison should be able to vote because they’re part of our society and will be affected by the policies (and will have been affected by the policies) of the people we as a society elect to govern. Essentially, it’s their society too.
However, I’m not completely against the idea that a person could commit violations against other members of our society that are so bad that we not only remove them from the general public for most/all of their remaining life but we also say it would be perverse for that person to be able to vote while their victims cannot.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to bmk,
People hate jury duty – compelling people to vote will only make them feel about it like they do about jury duty.
This is not a good comparison. Ben Wilson addressed this on page 2.
I don’t have much further to add to what’s been covered by Alex MacKenzie’s blogpost and things covered by Haywood, Wilson and Moz and others since. I guess we should all stop referring to it as compulsory voting, since it is not that. ‘Compulsory participation’ maybe?
Digressing a bit: I also think that the voting age should be lowered to 16, and that all (or most) prisoners should be able to vote.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Steve Barnes,
“The absurdity of it is that the Greens are barely more left than Labour.”
I would say they were to the right of Labour, in a traditional sense, because the power behind the Greens are the children of the comfortable middle classes that have the time to care about the subjective, whereas traditional Labour supporters are the struggling poor and the exploited workers. Its a Class thing.
Yeah that could be fair, in the sense that you mean. I was thinking of it more in terms of a lining each party’s policies up against each other kind of way – tick box politics if you will.
(Not sure what you mean by “have the time to care about the subjective”.)
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Richard Grevers,
“Dad just died!”
“Oh dear, do you you need me to contact a funeral director?”
“No, a real estate agent, we only have ninety days to sell the house!”Ok, I know that it won’t really be like that, as it would have to date from probate being granted at the earliest. And, unless the timeframe is really generous like 12-18 months, it makes whether or not you pay CGT at the whim of the property market in your time and location. Doer-uppers in Lumsden are probably slow to sell.
As I understand it it is two years in Australia. That would be fine. As I said, Cunliffe’s comment about 90 days, or one month or whatever, was poor. He, they, really needed a more detailed understanding of their own tax policy given that it was a *new tax policy* and a key difference between National and Labour and bound to come under scrutiny. It’s not like they don’t have a lot of models around the world they can look to, and it’s not like they weren’t already planning a CGT in their previous campaign.
Building the case for “why I very strongly considered voting for Labour, but then didn’t” is fairly easy. There’s the problem, I guess.
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*problems the left faced. Edit window ran out.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to mark taslov,
What’s your take on why they lost it Steve, or why they didn’t win?
Well that’s a big question, I think Jack got it about right back on page 7:
The tax cuts they did were financed on our nations credit card. The modest tax hikes suggested are needed to cover our needed spending and because the original tax cuts are a drain on our economy. Cutting taxes in a recession for your core base is good politics, but fucking disastrous for our national accounts.
I don’t think this issue won them office in 2014. They won because they simplified the choice, socialist p.c nutters versus nice John. How they simplified it that way is a topic for much discussion.
There’ll be variations on epithets for the Left: socialist p.c. nutters to some, disorganised rabble to others, and for others it will be that they just don’t trust that smarmy guy who sometimes says some odd shit and many in his party don’t like.
And Dotcom, of course.
And I say this one with hindsight: the timing of the release of Hager’s book (should have been earlier).
All of that kind of thing was on one side. On the other: John Key. Perceived by many a centrist ‘swing’ voter as: nice, or competent, or down to earth, or moderate (he’s kept National from becoming too right wing, I have been told by a traditional Labour voter, so he doesn’t need to vote Labour at this stage and risk those Greens coming in and ruining the economy*).
So basically, many many people like or even love certain things about the left parties – certain policy ideas, or even a particular party. But the overall framing is that with the left you can’t get the good without the bad. The left lot have no John Key to keep us all safe from the excesses. So they look back to the right and see actual John Key and a government who they perceive has run a country kinda-sorta-pretty okayish despite some bad luck (earthquakes, world economic downturn) and as Craig suggested earlier, they get all small c conservative and vote for consistency.
And all the hullabaloo around dirty politics and spying and whatnot so close to an election just reinforced that they should vote positive. And vote positive, for many many people, was a vote to the nice, moderate, down to earth relaxed guy who has it all under control.
I also thought this commentary by the International Socialist Organisation was very useful.
http://iso.org.nz/2014/09/22/lessons-to-learn-from-bitter-defeat/#more-2220
(Although apparently Danyl McLauchlan thinks that giving this consideration is part of the problem.)
And this from Nandor.
http://nandor.co.nz/2014/09/22/election-2014-the-aftermath/
* That anecdote is just one example of the problems he left faced. Traditional Labour voter with utterly irrational fears that the Greens just aren't a credible governing party, because ... printing money, or socialism, or something. To him, the Green Party are a niche party that doesn't get to seriously share power. That's just one attack line that's been used against the Greens, and supported to a degree by the systematic bias of the media. The absurdity of it is that the Grens are barely more left than Labour.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to mark taslov,
I can feel how “they hadn’t determined” would be a bridge too far for most. During the campaign Cunliffe said ‘a month’ as I recall, but with that it’s still always going to favour those who can sell within the window: slow market-tax!
The one month comment was poorly thought out, that's true. It was something that Labour wanted to leave to their expert advisory panel, which is fine if they had at least a reasonable minimum time they could have put up. Basically they just had to reassure people that there was no intent to get a tax off someone for, as you say, "... inopportunely dying before having liquidated the asset".