Posts by WH
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I'm not at all against privatisation of businesses the government doesn't need to own.
There really aren't that many good reasons to be for the privatisation of soundly run state owned businesses, unless you are a potential investor. First, profitable state owned enterprises help the Crown's fiscal position, allowing profits to be spent on other government expenses rather than being distributed to (overseas) private shareholders. Second, SOE's earning 'normal' profits can provide worthwhile alternatives in non-competitive markets (ala Kiwibank). Alternatively, products can be provided more cheaply to the market if government decides that profits are not its sole objective (Electricorp). Lastly, the effective regulation of privately owned monopolies can be very difficult as every conceivable accounting gimmick, legal trick, and PR stunt can be deployed to defeat effective oversight (Telecom, Enron).
Couldn't say whether renationalising the rail network is going to work though - I'm kinda hoping Cullen has run the numbers. Auckland needs to start building a subway or a tube, maybe it has something to do with that? Who knows.
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There are a couple of interesting articles in WaPo today about the commodity boom and food prices
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/29/AR2008042902880.html?hpid=topnews
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/29/AR2008042903092.html?hpid=topnews
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Russell's other point - that introducing a food exception to GST would not reduce food prices by 12.5% - is still valid.
In other words, this proposal may not represent the most efficient use of the government's money. There's probably a more effective way to help people dollar for dollar - whether by changing other tax rates and thresholds or by lowering the cost of other goods and services.
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What would your cousin make of Simon Barnett hosting "Stars in your eyes", still promoting all of the best Hits
If I had to hazard a guess, I think he would claim to have never heard of it but secretly watch it religiously. I'm a fan of David Hasselhoff so people don't tend to ask my opinion about this sort of thing.
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I've found this whole discussion really useful.
If it wasn't for Russell's suggestion that there is more to this than meets the eye, I would have assumed from what was said that someone had made allegations they couldn't substantiate and was forced to apologise when someone called bullsh*t.
I have a cousin with a degree in irony studies.
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This article changed my thinking about the Hillary/Obama race, but its a couple of months old now.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/05/AR2008030503621.html
Hillary's team has made some major strategic mistakes that have her cost her the delegate lead and probably her shot at the presidency - especially the 'inevitability' narrative, the failure to win over the media and the failure to properly prepare for the races in important states. Her candidacy has also been handicapped by the hangover from the snow job the Republicans did on the Clintons in the 90's, something Obama has ocassionally exploited. Some of the criticisms that Clinton attracts are strangely personal.
Obama's delegate lead does not necessarily make him the more electable candidate IMO, but an early end to the race may be the only way to prevent McCain from taking advantage.
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After Bill Clinton signed the Brady Bill and the ban on a limited number of assault weapons, the NRA aggressively targeted Democrats who had supported the legislation in the 1994 midterms. That was the year the Democrats lost Congress to the Republicans.
Despite what is written above, Bill Clinton generally ran on a moderate DLC platform rather than a traditionally liberal one. A superb communicator, he was the first Democratic President to be re-elected since FDR, which was, like, back in the day.
Democratic primary voters - especially caucus-goers - tend to sit to the political left of the country at large. This is why Hillary has encouraged people to look to the results of the swing states, where she tends to hold her own with Obama - rather than the total delegate count, where she is losing. Some parts of the left despised the DLC and Hillary long before the race for the nomination started to heat up, so its no surprise that they dont like her now. (Not that she doesnt have genuine flaws as a candidate.)
As I see it, the real problem is that Democrats are closely split between two strong candidates, and have no good way of deciding the issue before the nominating convention. I don't really mind who wins the nomination - I just want the Democrat to beat the Republican.
Obama's comments were bad politics IMO. He is of course right to point out that cultural issues, including race, religion and guns (cf. god, guns and gays), have been ruthlessly exploited by the Republicans for years. However, in this context it may have been unwise to suggest that people's strongly held opinions are in fact the result of forces Obama understands but that they do not.
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Keith, do you think that the effect of immigration policy on the cultural and racial makeup of a country is a matter of legitimate public interest?
(I tried to put that as neutrally as I could.)
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Obviously the Herald readership´s intuitive command of 5th form economics renders anything Joseph Stiglitz might say about the relationship between interest rates and the prices of specific goods completely redundant.
I had a brief look through the RBNZ´s monetary policy statement. Higher wages are generally considered a good thing, international energy and commodity prices do not respond to changes in New Zealand´s interest rates, we can´t effort to ignore climate change, so presumably the emissions trading scheme can´t be rolled back. And tax cuts/increases in spending seem set to remain on the table. Are we wasting our time and missing the point with these interest rates? Does anyone know?
Sure, New Zealand needs to comprehensively address the housing market incentives problem that it deliberately overlooked in the good years, and not just by building more homes. But there must be more ways for government to effectively reduce the basic cost of living - from lowering the cost of vehicle registration (for instance) through to ensuring that water, power, phone services, banking and local government rates are priced at more affordable levels.
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That was a strong speech by Obama. He started stiffly, but as the faux MLK vowels dropped away, and as he eased into a more professorial tone, he became more compelling.
It must have been difficult to craft a speech that simultaneously placated disaffected African Americans and reassured white voters. His point that white voters tend to reject claims that they are beneficiaries of (or are morally responsible for) histories of injustice was very interesting - even while he rightly demanded that society address the inequalities that those histories of injustice have produced.
As Don Christie said, some aspects of this speech will have application in the New Zealand context. We are still working out a response to the facts of historical injustice and the inequalities they have created. In my opinion, we ought to argue from the morality of the present - by talking about what can justly be demanded from those are being called upon to change and by talking about what each individual in our society can justly expect both from the state and from other citizens. I thought Obama´s speech moved the argument forward in this respect.
Re religion; it seems that many American politicians feel compelled to feign belief for electoral reasons. Its not surprising that voters prefer candidates who claim to share their values, but having inauthenticity of this kind built into your political system probably isn´t a good thing. On the other hand, religion can be a genuine and powerful motivation for those who want to make the world a better place. Its difficult to go beyond people´s public pronouncements on their religious beliefs, so campaign policy provides a much safer means of evaluating candidates.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.