Posts by Paul Williams
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Islander,
For a long time, I’ve pushed the idea of a basic minimum living wage – artists included!
Gareth Morgan agrees with you. Working for Families was as close as the Labour'a got to this and Key said it WfF was communism by stealth (and then kept it).
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Sacha,
Those are precisely the type of people who will not stick around if the most extreme 1% of the party are loudly complaining that the glories of communism are still not manifest, comrade.
I've been to that meeting...
I'd like to at least acknowledge there has been some improvement. Open Labour was a good move, the red alert blog too. Likewise Politics in the Pub (I think this is not party affiliated however?). Party membership might need to change more fundamentally. By way of an alternative, the fastest growing political movement in Australia is GetUp which claims almost 600,000 members.
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Until business cheerleaders like EMA pull their heads from their arses and look to themselves for change, New Zealand's poor productivity will not improve.
EMA, meh, a new leader doesn't appear to have changed them any.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
More seriously, I think what we actually need is not just the idea of jobs, but of a living.
Agreed. And I think the Green's bump in popularity reflects that, at some level at least, a lot of people feel this.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I think it kind of weird, given that former Carter Holt big cheese Chris Liddell quit the BRT in disgust and jumped ship to the NZ Institute.
I didn't know that, kudos. Certainly it seemed for a while, particularly under the Skilling, that they were a constructive and reasonable mob.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to BenWilson,
It is incredibly hard to get away from the fact that debt distorts everything about money.
Indeed. The Germans have a notion of "patient capital" and regulate banks and finance markets much more strictly that most other OECD countries. This Prospect article is a useful overview, albeit from 2010 and I don't know how Germany is coping through the EU crisis. On the issue of pernicious credit :
Take, for instance, the almost complete absence of credit cards. This is generally taken by American observers to be merely a reflection of an antiquated German economic culture. But Luigi Guiso, a Florence-based expert on economic culture, points out that there is probably more to it than this. As a matter of policy, the German banking system has hindered the rise of credit cards and has instead promoted debit cards. Credit cards reduce the savings rate whereas debit cards boost it, providing German banks an abundant source of funding to support their corporate clients.
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I'm even more strongly of the belief that Labour needs to deploy Cunliffee across a similarly broad and influential policy span and make him the Opposition to Joyce.
It's the approach first modelled by Bill Birch, later by Cullen. It does, however, require you to give up leadership ambitions something I don't know Cunliffe has yet done.
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It might be that we need an entirely gestalt switch away from seesawing socialist/capitalist thinking.
You're not alone in thinking this. This IPPR paper on New Era Economics argues that we are "pre-paradigmatic" stage where the anomolies and failings of current arrangement are not sufficient and the alternatives not clear enough to lead to fundamental change. On the issue of employment, the authors say:
Although economic developments have been bad, perhaps they have not been bad enough. Unemployment in most western economies rose sharply as a result of the recession that followed the financial crisis. In the US, it reached 10 per cent and has since fallen to 8.8 per cent, and in the UK it climbed to 8 per cent and is now 7.7 per cent. These are high figures in the context of recent experience, but they pale into insignificance compared to the Great Depression. Unemployment was in excess of 20 per cent in Britain in 1931–1933; in the US in 1932–1934 and in Germany in 1930–1933 (Stevenson and Cook 1979).
They go on to argue that a new paradigm, based possibly on complexity economics that eschew the notion of competitive equilibria or zero growth ecological economics, will likely emerge only after the kind of decade-long zero growth that Japan has/is experiencing.
Disclaimer: I'm not an economist (if that's not already obvious).
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Going back a little, Ben said:
I didn't say Hooton arranged it. That's your concoction there. I'm just suggesting he could have known about it. If that's how it went down. If it did go that way, I'd actually be impressed by Labour, rather than depressed by them.
I got lost in the variations of the grand stitch-up that never was. Honestly Ben, unless you've got a particular good reason to suspect this, I'm happy to drop it and move on.
Lew said:
But why on earth would anyone with a stressful job and a mortgage and a young family join such a dysfunctional movement, where you’re judged less on teh quality of ideas and more on the length of your tenure or the quality of your connections and extent of your agreement within the existing hierarchies?
I think joining parties is a problem generally since it's not entirely clear what benefit you gain. That said, I'm unclear how Labour's dysfunctional specifically? I'm guessing you mean the disconnect that appears to have developed between the Parliamentary Party and some vocal union members?
However, your second point, regarding tenure, seems a little awry given that the leadership team comprises single term MPs, including the Whip? Additionally, although Kelvin Davis has not been returned, a number of relatively new MPs have been. That said, I'd be happy to see the back of some of the three-termers who'll never be Cabinet material.
And finally Sophie said:
I tried 5 pages back Bart, but yes absolutely like and agree with your angle. So if I meet him at the pub I may just congratulate him. :)
As slightly aside, in the past outside world, I could see David having to be very careful with words, at the same time trying to be helpful by standing by his word. Could be a reason to falter.I agree. I accept he could polish up a little but I'm also inclined to think the public are wise, and bored, with relentless speaking points. It's entirely inauthentic.
And finally, Russell...
On that score I think Key's declaration today that Shearer or anyone else from Labour won't be getting on the new "poverty committee" unless Labour promises confidence and supply to his government is a fairly damning illustration of Key's priorities. I'm quite appalled by it.
It's also surprisingly inept. Make participation conditional upon something Labour could, but would rather not, do. Not something that fundamentally offends Westminister Parliamentary democracy. Key's response is stupid and makes Shearer's request, which was reaching a little, look even more reasonable.
Round one for Shearer I think.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to BenWilson,
Nothing near so organized, but that doesn't mean that the "contingency that Labour will lose" plan might not have taken considerably higher precedence in their internal planning than the outside shot that they would win.
Sorry Ben, I still think you're clutching at straws. Shearer's a risky selection, sure. He's got broad appeal, agreed. There are alternatives, clearly. How you combine these three factors to suggest his candidacy was a stitched up three weeks ago and with Hooton is fantasy.
And I meant Farrar's site... however, he and Bryce Edwards are working on a different conspiracy, so you might want to wait...