Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Superannuation: Back to the Future, in reply to dave stewart,
How hard could that be?!
Well it's defied our political system for 40 years so I guess the answer is "It's pretty hard".
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I haven't noticed any twitterbots yet. But I only follow and am followed by less than 400 people. My concept is to keep it sort of village sized. But my purpose is not to speak directly to vast numbers in the first place. I'd rather whatever goodness there is in anything I tweet be mediated by a small number and thus only ever go viral if it's really interesting/clever etc.
I presume once you start hitting city-state sized numbers of followers, you're really not using Twitter in a way that resembles how the majority use it.
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That said, I'm patently aware that the differences between the major parties, even on super policy, are likely to be a lot more than announcements would suggest. Most policy is not campaigned on, nor even really floated as balloons. It seems likely to me that Labour's would be more palatable than National's, but that's just guessing based on past form.
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I find this issue very complex to the point of being far less sure about it now than I used to be.
On the one hand, I feel like the silver bullet to the debate (and benefits more generally) is a full-on UBI. But a lesser UBI could also be used in tandem. Retirement savings offered with tax discounts are also a good idea, and compulsorizing them has some pretty strong arguments. If universalizing is rejected as too pinko, then means-testing is an obvious corollary - we're buying neoliberalism, we're committing to user pays, so do it on the biggest benefit line item in the national budget by far.
Given that no UBI and/or compulsory retirement saving and/or means testing super is currently being touted by the major parties, though, we fall back on dastardly incrementalism and all its eternally-damned spawn. What little tweaks and fiddles could improve the system a little bit, and to what extent are the improvements likely to just be targeted at unsold voting subsets just now, this year, for the coming election?
This proposal is pretty much the smallest possible increment I can imagine. Let's float a balloon that if elected the government will try to find some way to influence an unknown government 20 years hence to make a phased in small change to policy settings. Nice way to kick off a debate with a position totally lacking in extremity, whilst still actually appearing on face value to be a practical policy.
In fact, I can't help but feel that the purpose of the announcement is more about kicking off intergenerational fighting to polarize oldies to vote this year than anything else. The baby boom only has a couple of shots left in it. Use them for maximum effect. By 2037 there will be no baby boomers at the helm of this country. As an X genner, I'll be 66 years old myself. My folks will be in their 80s and 90s, if they're still alive. I can pretty much recall that people reaching those peaks aren't really that politically active any more, being more concerned with things like getting past the next stairway, and keeping on breathing through the heat of the day.
So how many shits can I really give about Blinglish's water pistol shot at the face of the Kraken? Not many, if any.
For me, this kind of policy option raises the more horrid choice about whether to vote at all. It's already watered down as shit just by the numbers game, let alone that it's a choice between water and homeopathically altered water.
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Hard News: Superannuation: Back to the Future, in reply to Jeremy Andrew,
Super does count as income, and is taxed. Retirees pay income tax on their income just like anyone else.
Yes, so that does already function as a kind of means testing. More of their income, if they also have a well paid job, will be taxed at a higher rate.
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Hard News: Superannuation: Back to the Future, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Just running on a single issue – tax and welfare reform as per the Big Kahuna – would likely have been a much better strategy. It would have been like getting a referendum on it without having a referendum.
Yes, if it were the party of the Big Kahuna I might have been interested. Now I’m not sure what it’s the party of.
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Up Front: For Your Own Safety, in reply to Lilith __,
Just BTW, there's no law stating men can't piss while sitting down.
No written law. Fortunately, when you're in a cubicle no one can really tell whether you're there for 1&2 or just 1. So Sitzpinklers get away with it. Disclaimer: Manchmal, Ich bin ein Sitzpinkler
The only reason for separating genders is if you can have men use a urinal
Agreed. And urinals are quite a lot more space, time and water efficient, so they're useful to have. But when it's portaloos I can't see much reason to segregate, although the idea of a smaller number of segregated ones available isn't a terrible idea...probably only really need women's ones. ie a system of having a large number of unisex toilets and a much smaller number of women's ones makes sense.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
Yes, it seems to be unraveling. I don't think that app based ride booking is going away, since it is actually a good idea. But Uber seems to be blowing their chances of a future, banking everything on technology that has not been invented yet. They had a perfectly good idea in their app if the fares hadn't been pitched to beggar the drivers. But this idea of buying market share with endless huge losses whilst still pitching your prices below fair remuneration to the workforce is bound to fail in the end.
Their point that the business doesn't have economies of scale is a good way of summarizing why it must eventually break. They didn't actually make driving a taxi magically cheaper. They just worked out how to squeeze worker balls in a way that's taking a few years to unpack.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to Pao Montenegro,
Sorry, no one's written a guide as far as I'm aware. Try the NZUDA Facebook page for free advice, if you think such a thing is a good idea when it comes to taxes. Personally I think you'd get what you paid for. But you may be able to inquire about reasonably priced accountants with experience with Uber drivers.
AFAIK, IRD is itself conflicted about whether Uber drivers are meant to pay GST.
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Yeah I just came across it too, and everything it says resonates with their behaviour in every way to every complaint ever made to them. It's a Trumpesque, however frantically they are trying to disassociate from The Orange Vortex.