Posts by Lucy Stewart
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The decline in income taxes will be sufficient to compensate those who are not eligible for any benefit - as the goal is to set the GST rate + income tax rate to the same level as it is now anyway, so that labour income is taxed in exactly the same way.
Your clairvoyance is truly impressive.
(More seriously: I'll believe that when I see it, especially for very low income earners, c.f. Keith's figures.)
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hmm? What're your concerns there? Just skimmed through the speech, and totally underwhelmed by so much of the knowledge investment section, but don't know enough background to know why you think the CRIs thing could be bad news.
Largely that any time I hear that funding is going to be more closely tied to whether science has commercial value, I get extremely twitchy, because while that sort of research is hugely important, the government is one of the very few bodies which funds explicitly *non*-commerically oriented science. If they aren't interested in funding basic science (which can make very important commercial discoveries, but is not necessarily obviously commercially valuable) then who will be?
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As a member of that vague group, were I not rather attached to my family and newly in a relationship Australia would be looking really tempting right now. It's not like I've got a job to hold me here at present.
As a member of that group, the only reasons I haven't is that we're waiting on other options, but it's looking more and more likely. And that stuff about CRIs could make it a very long term move, if it ends up being as bad as it sounds.
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What about students who aren't so keen on that sort of thing? I mean, that French fashion parade sounds great for *other people*, but group projects are my personal version of hell. I hated them at school. I hated them at university. I hate them at work. Just let me read the books and take some notes and write an essay, by myself. (I think I might be a learning styles dinosaur. Get off my lawn, you educationally innovative whippersnappers!)
Everything Danielle said.
It's nothing to do with dinosaurishness, it's to do with being a verbal rather than a visual learner/communicator. It has been not so many years since I was a high school French student and, personally, I would have rather shot myself* than done a fashion parade.
*Somewhere damaging but non-fatal, in the interests of disqualification
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2) Most of the compensation will simply occur through the increase in benefit and WFF thresholds and rates.
And those of us working for low-ish incomes who haven't sprogged are compensated....how, precisely?
I'm lucky enough to be moving into a well-compensated graduate job; if I was in the situation I was in last year, I'd have got an effective tax increase through the rise in ACC levies *and* a cost of living increase through GST rising (well, I still have both of those, but mitigated by my higher earnings.) And I wouldn't be getting compensated one iota, although if I was very, very lucky, they might have let me borrow slightly more for living costs on my student loan.
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And after all that....no land tax, but up goes GST. Sigh.
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They don't seem to consider "not renting" as an option.
Because, well, for a lot of people it's not? I'm sure there are a great many renters who would buy if they could, but that doesn't mean there isn't a solid core of people who can't afford or for whom it isn't practical to buy.
That being said, I don't think that's a good reason not to have a land tax, I just don't think we should pretend that renting is optional for everyone.
And even if it was passed on to renters, it'd be nice to see some calculations on what that would actually mean, given current rents...any way to find out the unimproved value of land in a few example suburbs?
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With all due respect Lucy, could you link to an NZQA page or something similar for this because it is my understanding that the subject of English, at Level 1 as it stands now, is still the gate keeper for literacy. Students must get reading and writing credits in the English domain to achieve literacy. There is some talk of literacy at Level 2 being assessed by 'language rich' subjects such as History and Media Studies etc, but that isn't happening this year.
Sorry, not specific enough - I mean it is now any 8 English* credits, whereas in my day, IIRC, you specifically had to pass four reading (i.e. the reading comprehension paper) and four writing (i.e. one of the essay papers) credits. Whereas now you could cherrypick the most re-assessable/internal/non-writing based credits.
*and Te Reo, of course
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In my old town one of the schools reported 100% in Level 1 literacy some years ago. How can that be? I'm not accusing it of being a Cambridge but there are ways and means of measuring and presenting. Schools will be desperate to present themselves well.
We-eelll, if you mean the literacy component of Level 1 NCEA, you only need8 credits to get it - and it's any 8 credits now, whereas they used to sp ecify 4 in reading and 4 in writing - so if you got failing kids to study for just two 4-credit papers, and pushed them on those two, I can imagine you could get everyone through. Not easy, but not impossible.
(And I'm being nice and not bringing up internal v. external standards, and reassessment.)
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On this morning's RadioNZ news an item about how a capital gains tax will hurt the 'most vulnerable' -- in this case it's renters, since landlords will have to increase rents to cover increased tax liability. Far more serious IMHO is the prospect of an increased GST rate, or a rate which varies across different market sectors. This is likely to have ramifications well outside any forecast envelope.
Leave the tax alone, or the poor people get it, in other words?