Posts by Keith Ng
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
OnPoint: Brain Drain Et Cetera, in reply to George Darroch,
A lot of those Australian arrivals are kiwis. I get counted pretty much every time I cross the border.
True. But you actually *are* moving long-term every time, right? And you come back and forth, so you kinda balance yourself out.
-
I noticed that the departures-to-Australia figure spikes and dips quite markedly over the years. Have you (or will you?) given any thought or analysis to what was happening around these spikes and dips? Is it world events, local policy, combination, something else?
My partner and I were talking about this the other day, wondering if it would be possible to link the interest-free student loans policy to any particular behaviour i.e. does that policy entice people back?
The most obvious thing to compare it with is unemployment - you don't go to UK/Aus when the job market there is crap. Will add that in the next version...
-
OnPoint: Brain Drain Et Cetera, in reply to George Darroch,
not area, but radius
Rookie mistake: Fixed.
-
OnPoint: Brain Drain Et Cetera, in reply to linger,
not area, but radius
GAH! Can't believe I left that in there. Thanks for noting that...
-
We need some way of dealing with this. If someone left study in 1992, has stayed in NZ and has never made a repayment since, then I think its fairly clear that they’re unlikely to, and their loan should be (gradually) written off. Debts that can’t be repaid won’t be repaid, and it is false accounting to pretend otherwise.
The accounting side already happens. The value of new loans is written down massively (over 40%, I think – don’t quote me on this) to take non-payment into account. e.g. If you take out a $10k student loan, the fair value of the Student Loan Scheme only goes up by $6k. So they’ve immediately absorbed the $4k loss they expect, on average, to take.
The fair value write down is the main cost of the of Student Loan Scheme – greater than interest write-offs for now. This will change when the SLS gets bigger.
But the change is to the value of the loans held, not to how much people owe. Writing off people’s debt for non-payment would encourage them to not pay.
-
OnPoint: PREFU 2011: "What credit downgrade?", in reply to merc,
Finance Minister Bill English said he still expected the "tax switch" to be revenue-neutral over a period of four or five years
And you know what? I can't prove him wrong.
-
OnPoint: PREFU 2011: "What credit downgrade?", in reply to George Darroch,
You and I wish for very different things. They’re going to expend that political capital by cutting basic services that have large positive externalities, so that some rich [insert derisory term here] with a view of the water can build a larger swimming pool.
For better or worse, they have a democratic mandate to cut taxes for the rich, cut the public service and enact punitive measures against beneficiaries. They don't have a democratic mandate to bound future generations with debt, in the sense that future generations have not voted for them. That's why I see the former as legitimate, but not the latter. And sure, the former is not desirable, and there are better ways to do it, but it's an undesirable but legitimate means to avoid an illegitimate end.
-
OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Well, Keith, perhaps you can explain to the group why “the public” was completely justified in passing legislation in 1915 to remove Professor George William von Zedlitz from his teaching post at Victoria?
Sure, democracies do the wrong thing all the time. Doesn't that mean they shouldn't have the right to do it?
I don’t really have any choice about subsidising New Zealand’s universities through my taxes
That's a perfectly legitimate argument. But that's not about freedom of association (any more than an anti-abortionist is associated with abortions), that's about how you want your democratically elected government to behave. Which is my point.
-
OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Because it is the state and the state can’t legitimately do that.
You're conflating what the kinds of conditions the state can set with whether the state can set conditions at all.
You’re argument “don’t want to be a member of a students’ association, then don’t go that university” is pretty stark
Well strengthen the opt-out clauses then.
The ban on unreasonable limitations on the freedom of expression
WTF? Since when did this change from freedom of association to freedom of expression? But while we're here, freedom of expression is sacrosanct except when it's not. (Defamation, hate speech, inciting, etc.)
It’s about forced membership of an organisation that you might not want to be a member of
OPT-OUT CLAUSE.
You're going to ask why opt-out clause rather than VSM, right? Because it solves the Free-Rider Problem by making opting out cost the same.
-
OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
They really don’t.
They don't have to go to that university. It goes to the question of "choice". Right now, you can choose between a VSM university and a CSM university. But the VSM bill is saying that this individual's right to choose supercedes any right for that institution, or any collective at that institution, or the nation as a whole, to make CSM a condition of entry at that institution.
Given that the public owns these universities, why shouldn't it be able to make these conditions? A libertarian should argue that a private university has the right to make membership of the Nazi Party a condition of entry. They would (like me) argue that that wouldn't be a freedom of association issue: If you don't want to be a Nazi, don't go to Nazi U.
You can't say it's the government and not the universities' owners setting these conditions, given they are one and the same. The corollary is that it would be unjustifiable for the government to impose CSM on private institutions. But it would be exactly as unjustifiable to impose VSM on them.
Which means that, from a standpoint of property rights and individual freedom, society shouldn't dictate anything about SM, and the only reason they should in this case is because they own those universities. Therefore, this argument is not about freedom of association, or even about the nature of individual rights vs collective rights. This is about how we want public universities to work.
It's about effective service provision, not rights, not freedoms, not democracy.
Phew. That's my case.
What is it that is inherent about being a student at a university that means there should be a law that allows other students at that university to force you to be a member of a students’ association entirely distinct from the university?
The most obvious would be the public good argument. There are some services which we, as owners of the university, would like to see provided. These services, by their very nature, are non-excludable public goods (advocacy, campus atmosphere, etc.). Because every student benefits from these services, it is equitable that everyone pays. Hence, compulsion.
It's a straightforward Free-Rider Problem.
The fact that these services are administered by the student association rather than the university itself is neither here nor there. If the university administered these services/contracted them out, does it actually make a difference?