Posts by Kyle Matthews
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What smug self-serving deliberately divisive drivel. If you happened to be attempting to run a small manufacturing business in the mid-80s, actually making stuff, you got hit with GST, with no appreciable reduction in personal tax. I know, I was there, I didn’t get rich, I paid a shitload of tax, and I’m a damned fool for having done so.
NZ went through major tax reform in the the 1980s. The top income tax rate came down from 66% to 33%. The imposition of a 10% GST rate only took 7-8% of that back for upper earners (there were some other changes, most significantly to company tax efficiency). To quote Brian Easton:
Why the rise in inequality? First, observe the most rapid increase occurs in the period when the government is cutting the top income tax rate – it was 66 percent in the year to March 1986 and was 33 percent by 1990. This lifted the relative income of those in the top decile, who were the main beneficiaries of the tax cuts. This is sufficient to explain most of their income increase. In order to fund the reduction in income taxation on those at the top, the government cut social security benefits and other government spending (sometimes by the imposition of user charges), withdraw tax concessions, and allow income tax rates to rise on lower incomes via fiscal creep. Since there was little income growth, the net effect of the fiscal changes was to switch income from the poor and those on middle incomes to the rich.
The fact that you might not have benefitted personally from the changes (like all generalisations it's not universally true) doesn't negate the fact that many baby boomers from the mid-1980s onwards benefitted tremendously from tax cuts. To go back to the original statement. Baby boomers were at the most 40 years old when the 4th Labour government hacked taxes. During the following 25+ years - their peak earning years when people pay the most in income tax, they did not fund the care of their elders as per the social contract that had built up for several decades. Within a few years their parents and grandparents were having to sell their homes to fund their hospital care.
Um Kyle – “large tax cuts” during peak income years – 40s onwards?
I sure as shit dont recall that: in my late 30s until mid40s I was earning comparatively large amounts of money (comparative to earlier earnings) – and I was paying 66% of aforesaid income over a relatively low cutoff point. My mother
who became a pensioner in my mid40s, did not have income testing.You're describing the situation before the tax and health systems were reformed in the mid 1980s onwards. I'm talking about the change.
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Argh. This is exactly what I mean. It’s the knee-jerk moderatism of `how dare we imagine that a politically motivated assassination attempt might have been affected by high profile talk of politically motivated violence?’, coupled with the really quite offensive implication that we (or the dreaded `some people’) are using this in some kind of sly, underhanded way.
Wow, you're really reading a lot into some fairly normal level debate round here.
I believe you still need US proxy servers to view thedailyshow.com?
Nope. Or at least you didn't last year. Just go watch the clips individually in the video link. I've seen every daily show for the past... five or so years, about half of them through the web site, never had a US proxy.
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But it currently goes the other way: “these are our commercial boundaries, as defined by these charts in Billboard and these offshore playlists so we insist that you use your money to make music that we deem acceptable to those to play on your airwaves.”
But it's perfectly possible for a radio station to take a different line and different commercial boundaries. Or someone to finance one that does. Given that we have a commercial radio system, being competitive is what they do best. I'm dubious, given the silly number of radio stations that we have in some cities that "no one thought of it" is the problem. Seems to be to be quite reasonable that if you run a private radio station, you should be able to define your musical boundaries, and look for NZ music that fits within them. The playing field hasn't remained static after all - hip hop gets plenty of radio time.
It’s them who will need the health care and pensions that can’t be afforded, and a likely scenario is that they will miss out, despite having funded such things for their own elders during most of their lives.
Well that's not true. Baby boomers are starting to approach retirement age. During their peak income years - 40s onwards they had large tax cuts while their parents and grand parents had income testing. The 1980s and 1990s are a generational split in our social contract.
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The “men of the west” part of Aragorn’s speech in the Return of the King was not in Tolkien, as I understand it, and the Arab pirates were… something else, really. It was either grotesquely tone deaf to history, or blithely casual with its racial politics. Or both.
The Corsairs of Umbar were a mixed raced of descendants of Numenor, and Haradrim, who Tolkeins mentions were dark skinned people (in the movie they were the ones driving the Oliphants).
Aragorn gave no such speech in the book at that point, as "little time was left to Aragorn for the ordering of battle". And a speech to 6,000 soldiers is somewhat impractical. "Men of the West" is mentioned in that section, and at other points in the book, and is the general term used for the combined armies.
The only bad humans are of Middle Eastern stock, just as the men of the West invade the Gulf? I don’t know, you tell me.
Filming of that scene, which was cut from the theatrical release, was completed in 2000, undoubtably designed before that, well before us Westerners engaged in our latest invasion of the gulf.
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My issue is that a judge gamed the system for (eventual) personal benefit and any inquiry into that was hushed up or not undertaken.
The inquiry wasn't hushed up. It was prevented by the ruling of a judge, presumably acting under the law, in an open court.
I really struggle to call the case you're discussing corrupt. Given that the judge lost his job and no longer has that particular power. And that he give up a much more lucrative legal career to become a judge. And the whole thing was played out in the the public eye in the legal system. Far smarter legal minds than me are also pretty ambivalent about the whole thing.
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And that if three hundred million people are repeatedly exposed to that idea,
As Simon's link pointed out political violence in the US isn't at all new. It's possible that teabagger talking points and advertising influenced that. It's possible some sort of mental illness did. It's possible umpteen other, unrelated factors did. Historically it's often been the case that the reasons for the assassination weren't the obvious political ones.
I'm dubious that a person was so influenced by a map with a set of targets on it - pretty standard imagery - and republican statements that they went off and started shooting without something else pretty serious being in play.
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Two things: firstly radio operates on licensed airwaves that we own (but yes, they have paid for the right to use that bandwidth).
Secondly, I don’t think anyone is suggesting such but in the early days of NZoA radio did slowly start playing things that were pushing their range. Chains for example or Hip Hop Holiday both sounded like songs from another planet when added to commercial radio in NZ, both building via Mai and B-Net. Supergroove are another. The last two were also extraordinarily successful beyond our shores for the same reason. Even now, when I hear Can’t Get Enough in Asia, where it gets gold airplay, it stands out. And that’s why it worked.
First, I'm not disagreeing that we have the right to influence the use of the airways. I thought the voluntary quota that was adopted was a pretty good step at the time.
Going from "you should play a certain amount of nz music" to something further - whether it be "here's what you need to play" or "here are some people to help you decide what you need to play" gives me the heebee geebies however. It's a commercial model so they need to be able to make right and wrong commercial choices for it to work. There's a lot of kudos to Mai FM for spotting the ones that other stations missed, it's important to still allow that so that they can stand out for making good decisions.
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as Simon says, now we get predominantly artists chosen for their ability to sound like something already on the play list. is that really as much of a progression as you’d have us believe?
I never understand the push to have private radio stations play nz music that differs massively from their overseas music. Radio stations have a brand, play a certain type of music, surely the expectation should be that they play NZ music from inside that range?
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Perhaps, but in the meantime we may also wish to pause and express unsmirking sympathy towards fellow citizens who are being denied due process.
Given that the ruling is clearly within the law, I think they're getting due process by definition.
Having appeared before a judge, I think I'd be more in favour of a judge trial in this case. There some pretty marginal stuff in the prosecution evidence which they'll probably try and paint over in front of a jury. That's a lot less likely to work in front of a judge. Jury selection may not help them.
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I think McKellen should turn up on the first day and inform Jackson that he has subcontracted his part to the equally capable Judy Dench.
She's such a good actor, I'm thinking she could pull it off.