Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Budget 2017: How do we get…, in reply to Paul Conway,
If you ever want to chat about "how we get out of here" just get in touch - It's one of my favourite topics!
So I had a read through and I can't say I felt better. It feels like you're blaming everything on lazy unproductive workers.
You don't address what it takes to make a worker actually want to be more productive. Basically in a lot of those industries someone on the line working harder just makes more money for the old white guy in a suit who has kept his/her wages as low as possible for the last decade.
As for the business owners they have no incentive to be anything other than a minimum wage payer. If it all turns pear shaped they walk away and start a new business.
There are exceptions and a whole generation of small startups with ethical attitudes but there is nothing systematic that promotes or rewards ethical behaviour.
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Hard News: Budget 2017: How do we get…, in reply to BenWilson,
I'd say it's part of the solution, but not sufficient in itself.
I'd agree completely.
I don't think there is a simple solution.
But I do think the ideology of lower taxation = growth which will make everything all right is utterly debunked. It's a completely broken model. The only people supporting it are self-serving nobs like the taxpayers onion and The NZ Initiative.
I also don't think it's something you can change quickly, you need to allow people to adjust to a new balance. And I absolutely think most of the rise in taxation needs to be borne by those on the top of the heap.
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Hard News: Budget 2017: How do we get…, in reply to BenWilson,
You had me up until this point. This doesn't follow axiomatically from rejection of the hypothesis. It is simply one of the alternate hypotheses.
Nope it's just saying other countries, that for the most part we want to emulate, use much higher taxation settings.
It's not a hypothesis it's simply using someone else's method rather than trying to invent it all from scratch. That also applies to all the details.
We don't have to reinvent this stuff.
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How did we get here? Well we've spent the last 20-30 years basing our economy on the idea that lowering taxation will increase the efficiency of government and business leading to a stronger economy that benefits all New Zealanders.
Both governments have followed roughly the same ideology with minor tweeks.
It's a lovely idea, you can come up with lots of rationales explaining why it will work.
The problem is it hasn't worked. At all. The observation is that while the economy has grown, government is no less or more efficient than it was, and the increase in the wealth of the country (which is real) has excluded two thirds of the people in New Zealand.
The idea that reducing tax will benefit New Zealanders has proven to be wrong.
That shouldn't be a surprise. Everywhere else in the world where they reduced tax the rich got richer and the rest of the population saw no benefit. Those countries with high taxation are the ones we love to quote when talking about human rights and freedom and happy societies and equality and education etc etc etc.
If this was a lab experiment we'd simply say our hypothesis was wrong and we should use the method that other countries have shown is successful.
The solution is taxation and a government that then spends that money for the benefit of all New Zealanders.
And I'm sure there will be a bunch of economists (spit) who present models explaining why that is wrong, it's just a pity that their models don't fit the observed data from all over the world.
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Up Front: What's the Big Idea?, in reply to mark taslov,
To imply that party policies offer little to youth, to me, is a characterisation of youth as having no foresight towards adulthood
Sorry that was not my intent.
All I'm saying is that given the observation that young folk are not voting then a not unreasonable hypothesis is that none of the political parties offer those young people anything to vote for - be that policy - or potential representatives.
How appealing has inexperience ever been in an MP?
Inexperience as an MP is not the same as inexperience. And even then I personally believe we overvalue experience over talent.
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Up Front: What's the Big Idea?, in reply to BenWilson,
Changing people's values
Except I'm not interested in changing anyone's values, and I never enter any discussion intending to change someone's values.
All I'm interested in doing is getting people to use data and evidence to assess the positions they take. If given good assessment of data and evidence that position is still in opposition to their values I accept they probably will not change position. We can agree to disagree.
But most often, when you get folks to look at the data and evidence it turns out that the evidence-based position is not in contradiction to their values. That means they can change their position without ever changing their values. But they still might not want to.
That's hard work, for both parties, and it's fair enough if folks don't want to bother.
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Up Front: What's the Big Idea?, in reply to BenWilson,
But it’s not. It’s about values, and that means emotion.
To a large extent, but not entirely.
It is unbelievably hard to get someone to change their value-based position.
Even excluding the penguins and polar bears, who are forever fixed in their views and will never meet, the group in the middle mostly take positions based on a set of core values and will interpret all incoming information with a conscious or unconscious bias determined by those values.
Sometimes, with patience and time and effort on both parties, it's possible to change a value-based position. But you can't underestimate the effort involved for both parties. Most folks just don't care enough to bother.
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Up Front: What's the Big Idea?, in reply to Sacha,
Not young or diverse enough for you?
Yes but where are they on the list?
You could argue that putting Chloe Swarbrick at 13 and Golriz Ghaharaman at 15 is a carrot for young voters, but really it could have been much better.
Same problem with Labour, the list position favours the "experienced MPs" aka old ones.
It's a classic problem if you decide experience is a high priority, you exclude youth (and usually women as well). It takes a huge effort to avoid that bias.
I know the Greens work hard to balance the list but if we're trying to engage the young voters then having young representatives actually getting into parliament seems like a no brainer.
And I know I'm extra hard on The Greens and that's unfair but I really do want them to be a better party, they should be my slam dunk vote. Especially since the other offerings are such dross.
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Up Front: What's the Big Idea?, in reply to Sacha,
we're swimming in stereotypes that old white men deserve our trust most
I agree. But while I don't know I suspect that the younger generation think that stereotype is a load of crap. Since none of the parties offer anything other than older mostly white and mostly men they figure why vote for any of them.
If you offered them a younger inclusive selection you might see a different behaviour. But not even The Greens did that.
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Up Front: What's the Big Idea?, in reply to Sacha,
Plenty of evidence in political studies that most people do not vote on policy. Feeling respected by the system and its actors might help.
Most voters don't vote on policy.
But even then if you believe voting is purely tribal and policy is pointless then why don't any of the parties actually present candidates who are part of the tribe to which young non-voters belong?