Posts by Kyle Matthews
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(Here, where I am not limited to 140 characters, I can note that of course not ALL jobs suck, but most of them obviously do, or they wouldn’t be jobs, and I am sure that the lovely person I have hired to come and clean my bathrooms while I am Hugely Pregnant would greet the well-meaning suggestion that she should continue to work for some unspecified longer amount of time with a giant bird-flip, and I wouldn’t blame her one bit.)
Absolutely. But there's a counterpoint, which is that yes, she might work for two years longer if able, but she'll pay less taxes or get more government spending on health or education or something else because the government for her whole life. So it's not all bad.
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“The answer to the question ‘why shouldn’t people keep working into their 70s?’ is BECAUSE WORKING FUCKING SUCKS AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.”
Well that's certainly true to an extent.
But there is a long term problem if we keep helping people live longer through various means, but keep them working (and therefore paying taxes) for the same amount of time (probably in reality shorter as people are at school and more likely to do tertiary education and therefore many won't pay taxes until they're in their early to mid-20s).
Maybe it's counteracted by the change with more 2 income families, working mothers and fathers, etc, but I doubt it.
I also don't think it's just a babyboomer issue. Of our welfare state with unemployed and sickness beneficiaries and DPB recipients getting so much flack, superannuation is more than those three all put together, and then some more. And that's before the baby boomer retirement bubble hits. It's a tremendous amount of money and a small change like this actually saves a lot. As long as no one is actually pushed into poverty or other serious problems - which by my reading of the policy it prevented - seems like a good idea.
I also hate the idea that there's this third rail in politics which is death if you touch it. Labour has gone and touched two apparently - CGT and raising retirement age - and maybe it won't help them, but it certainly hasn't seemed to be death, and now people are saying that because it's now policy they'll stick with it so it'll eventually happen when they win.
Seems like we need to touch more third rails if that's the case.
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I don't have much to contribute to this specific debate, but I think it would be great if over the next three weeks PAS regular bloggers, and various people via Speaker, drawing on their expertise and the hivemind, could poke at various policies across the parties.
I pretty much know how I'm going to vote, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't look twice at a National Party policy if someone who knew something about the field was to go through and give some of it a tick.
I'd happily do a tertiary education post.
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I should say, that baby is DUE on Wednesday, but when s/he decides to turn up is anyone's guess. And so I do have a pass to the Music Awards, and I might pop in for a couple of drinks towards the end there, but with Backbenches Auckland special on Wednesday night (all welcome), and a day-trip to New Plymouth to cover the campaign for Q+A, I might be pushing my luck somewhat, baby or no.
Can I just point out that some time in the next three decades your partner will take revenge on you for this "less than 100% attention to me and my baby".
I do have problems with this policy that I’ve laid out at some length elsewhere. Is the only way to sustainably fund super screwing over the young, Maori and Pasifika (who statistically have lower life expectancies than Pakeha) and the working poor by moving the goal posts further away?
I don't get this argument. For starters, people with significantly lower life expectancies are already getting screwed over by the current system. The only way not to screw them over is to have no centrally funded super system, but to have your own personal account (a la kiwisaver). That's sure as hell not going to work out very well for Maori and Pasifika who are going to retire on average with a hell of a lot less.
The problem there is life expectancy, not when we start funding superannuation.
I don't get the argument that this change will cause the elderly to be poor, maybe I missed something in the announcement? If you are able to work and have work, you get nothing. But you're earning, so you are only worse off in missing out of two years of super.
If you can't work, or don't have work, Labour made it very clear that you would be getting a generous benefit - I presume something equivalent to the super. So the people that can't work through their body being buggered or other reasons are no worse off in 20 years than they are now.
The only people that are worse off are those people that can work until they are 67, and surely if there's savings to be made, those are exactly the people that should be missing out because they're the best off?
Aren’t student living allowances means tested? And who knew it’s NOT about the economy?
Means tested on your parents income to boot.
I come at this from a diametrically opposed place to you, Ben: I have almost no desire to continue working into my seventies. Fuck that. I’ll be old. I could be doing something fun instead.
Which is damn great with me. But if you were to set a personal retirement age of 60, should we start paying you then? No - everyone gets the same age, and it might move at some stage. If anyone chooses to retire early for whatever reason, that's a personal financial decision that they should prepare for.
Congrats on the baby Damian. Welcome to the rest of your life.
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Anyone’s parents or grandparents use a gold card on the bus to get them places they couldn’t go to otherwise?
My father finished his six year contract as a CEO for a large govt department, preceded by 5 years as a Commissioner of Police, preceded by a very healthy career in NZ police with associated superannuation.
He happily uses his gold chance every chance he gets. Just sayin'.
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And everyone should emerge from our educational system with a basic set of skills and knowledge which helps them get about in the world independently able to earn a living and function properly.
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I’m trying to work out how much financial harm you suffered, and how much it justifies in terms of changes to the education system, and how much of it you could have worked out with 5 minutes questioning of the guy before hiring him. This is not to attack you personally, just to get a handle on why this considered a huge concern.
Surely the problem is that someone has made it through the education system without being able to use a ruler. That person is not prepared appropriately for an adult life in or out of the workforce. And when it comes down to them trying to get work, they're at a massive disadvantage compared to people who have the appropriate basic skills.
That's a failing of the educational and other systems earlier in their life.
Sure the employer should be expected to do some work-specific training with new employees, but they shouldn't have to take their employee back to primary school.
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Certainly in the public statements, the police seem to be quite reasonable at the moment. They could have gone in and moved them out, and it would have looked terrible, they're still hopeful of a happier resolution.
Personally, as a Dunedin citizen, I don't mind if they stay there until Xmas. There's a lot of people complaining about their loss of their public recreational space who wouldn't have sat on the grass in the Octagon in their life. The protesters aren't exactly scary.
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Eh? I just meant in relation to having kids push for something they don’t really understand or have opinions on.
My son - 4 at the time - had a very clear position on the Iraq war almost a decade ago. It was no doubt coloured by my beliefs, but given the effort that I'd put into teaching him not to be violent to others, it was a fairly straight-foward leap. He was tremendously disappointed when the war went ahead - he had trouble sleeping some nights he was so worried about it.
But I think that most of the reason that parents bring their kids to protests, is that you can't leave them at home by themselves, so they have to go where I go. I also take them to the supermarket, to the movies, to theme parks, and no one gets to tell me off that I'm allowing them to be sucked in by global capitalism when they're too young to understand.
PS: Bonus: the voiceover is by Tandi Wright, star of the rated-its-arse-off Nothing Trivial – and a trustworthy character in that
We likes her, yes we do.
The Act ad. Awkward.
It is isn't it. It's like they could only think of a way to fill in 4 minutes, so they put a minute of a song at the beginning. The lyrics of the song and Don Brash saying "we are patriots" is creepy. Could they not find a non-white person to sit around that table?
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Basically, I want an STV vote on what voting system I want, but that’s not what I’ve been offered, and it worries me. Am I missing something, or do I need to (strategically) vote to keep MMP rather than risk a no vote counting as a vote for FPP?
I would imagine that there are, or will be, some polls that give a strong signal as to which way the two questions are likely to fall. They might help indicate whether you should vote with principles or strategically.
I suspect that your support for STV is likely to be token. The second question is essentially a FPP election and FPP is likely to win it (ironically).