Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I don’t pretend a lot of people will read it, or that I’ll have a big impact through my blogging, but if the sum of knowledge about issues of public importance increases, I’ll consider my time well-spent.
I'm enjoying them. Always like a good pendant.
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we could decrease the number of MPs in the South Island (the Royal Commission recommended 15, not 16), if an larger Parliament was that much of a concern
I don't get this rule. Is that what it took to massage the concerns of south islanders in the early 90s? It seems bizarre that we don't:
1. Have a fixed number of MPs, and redraw the electorates as required with movements. OR
2. Have a fixed population range for electorates (voter population I guess) and then increase the number of electorates as total population increases.Having a fixed number of SI electorates, and then determining the overall size of the by the relative population of north vs south island? Whacked.
I live in the south island, I don't care if we have 16, 15, 14 etc MPs. Just as long as we get a fair number based on how many of us there are.
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And in the afternoon we get Jim Mora singing the praises of Sky TV’s new channel SoSo…, a channel of “All New” repeats, mostly repeats from Prime.
Well that's not fair. They're running Game of Thrones, Hours, Killing, Mad Men, Rescue Me, Boardwalk Empire, Six Feet Under, Weeds, True Blood, Entourage at present. Some of those are NZ premiers, some others are season premiers.
Treme S1 E1 starts tomorrow night - highly recommended by me, even just for the music. Wire is coming - and most people won't have caught that at midnight when it first played in NZ.
They also have some good HBO films. Last week they had To Big To Fail about the 2008 financial crisis and the US govt response. I watched another one the week before. This friday they've got You Don't Know Jack with Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian.
I don't know if it's worth the $10/month they're going to be charging us all soon. But I suspect in terms of quality TV vs trash, it's the best thing on the box at present.
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The core problem here is that the “private benefit” of tertiary education, on which the scheme is predicated, isn’t all its cracked up to be.
The core problem is well before that, and something that we didn't push enough in the 90s when a solid push back might have made a difference.
The core problem is that we don't use private benefit elsewhere in society to determine what you should pay for and what you should incur a loan for. Primary schooling has a massive private benefit, but you don't build up a student loan from age 5. Medical care, welfare. Only in tertiary education has this idea of a private/public benefit caught hold. By engaging in the debate about the public/private split in the 1990s, we let the new right transform the debate and we're poorer for it.
And they got funding based on how many students they could push through to a degree (that has changed now).
Not even that. They got funding based on how many students enrolled. Completion of courses or degrees was irrelevant for funding - they're trying to put in place such a system now.
And in some ways you could say the student loan system *is* a tax on graduates, albeit one that applies equally regardless of your success or failure.
Again, not a tax on graduates, a tax on people that have enrolled. Lots of people don't complete their qualification for various reasons, but have the debt without the benefit.
I think this is the one that people choke on, because it’s meritocratic rather than egalitarian.
After many years I'm possibly now in favour of us having less research universities, and focusing the research more. A country our size could probably have five good research institutions, the rest are just teaching institutions.
I find it strange that if you want to study history after high school in a formal sense, you have to do it at a institution where the teachers have PhDs and do active research (at least in theory). This might be desirable, but I think it's a luxury that isn't necessary in the modern world. Your students that want to progress to postgraduate either go to a research institution, or transfer and maybe have a bridging course, your ordinary teaching qualification or commerce degree - can effectively become taught by lecturers who aren't research active.
1. Are they taking into account that by the end of 3 years study, the school leaver has 3 years of experience, and also 3 years of earnings, and no debt?
The best stats use lifetime earnings, but obviously there is a bit of guesswork going on for the changes over the past 20 years so it's unclear.
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Also, on the left-wing voting tips, party votes going to the Maori party won't make a difference, as they'll have an overhang associated with them. If you want to support Maori party, give them your electorate vote, and party vote Labour or Greens.
And if you're confident that Act won't win Epsom, encourage right-leaning National party voters to vote Act party vote as well.
And if you're confident NZ First won't make it, encourage centrist anti-immigrant National party voters to vote NZ First.
And hope that the conservatives pick up a good 2 - 3%.
All will be wasted votes that'll get evenly distributed around.
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Does anyone know if there are plans to show how Chch used to be in public spaces? Just watching that video, it will look so incredibly different five years from now - are they planning to put up signs outside the new buildings showing what they have replaced? Old photos of buildings and maybe a small record of what used to be there and how the earthquake affected the building?
The video felt liked it breezed past the CTV site. What are they planning to do there?
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Yes I am aware of those projections – but they partially are based on assumptions that retired people will make no contribution to the economy ie they will be a burden.
I believe those that keep on working into national super age group are included in that 2:1 ratio.
But won’t the people paid this pension be spending it back into the economy?It’s not like they are getting it and going out the back and burning it in the incinerator or in some other way taking it out of circulation…
I'm not sure how that helps. The government could throw billions of dollars out the window at various people and they'd spend it and it would stimulate the economy. The money still needs to come from somewhere however.
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(I'm catching up on this thread, so haven't read it all the way through, hopefully my points still make sense).
Maori and Mana dislike it because of Maori’s poor mortality rates. They believe a raise in the age would be unfair to Maori, and they have a valid point.
I feel like that's only a valid point if the unemployment benefit is unfair to white people and the DPB is unfair to males. It's demographically unfair across the population, but we don't apply that filter to other benefits do we?
What's really disappointing is that I've seen heaps of people raise this point, and their solution is "keep the retirement age where it is" rather than "lets help Maori live longer".
For the first time the number of people in the workforce is shrinking relative to those retiring, and the Ponzi-like nature of the scheme is becoming apparent. We either make it affordable, or it will collapse.
The very fact that we have a massive bill on the horizon is the indication that the soon to be retired haven't paid for their retirement. If compulsory super had gone through years ago they would have, we're now talking about how people that are working over the next twenty years are going to fund their own future retirement, while paying for people that are retired now. People who have been paying taxes for the past forty years may not have funded their own retirement, but they're going to get to retire at 65 anyway. There's a bit of getting your cake and eating it too involved.
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If they've got capital gains income and aren't paying back their student loan, why would charging interest change their position? Until capital gains cease to be tax-free, people who have largely tax-free income will have no encouragement to repay their student loans because they'll not be over the threshold.
Depending on the policy, not so. If you charge interest regardless, then their loans will increase when they're not paying it back.
Many of us had this for numerous years as students.
If you write off some interest (perhaps to people who aren't earning enough to pay it off) then yes.
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If a list MP wins a by-election, they become the MP for that electorate. They don’t get two votes in the House, or two salaries. They can be replaced as a list MP for their party by the highest-ranked person on the party list who hasn’t been an MP during the term, if they resign.
Would they still get replaced if the resigning electorate MP was from the same party as them? Surely not.