Posts by Rosie
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Sacha,
I think the idea is to keep it simple and cheap to administer by having a flat tax rate. Nobody would pay any tax on the first $25k or so they earned because of the UBI. (Everyone gets it...even the workers). People who earn enough to acquire assets will pay a modest tax on their assets (including houses).
So it is progressive but in a different way.
The system Gareth Morgan describes could in theory appeal to both the (old) ACT party and the Greens. -
Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Kumara Republic,
Yeah, it's Gareth Morgan's idea not mine....I read the Big Kahuna and thought the ideas were quite exciting.I would love to se Keith Ng do an analysis of the numbers. I suspect the numbers are sound, its just the concept lots of people would have trouble getting their head around. It depends on a flat rate of income tax and a tax on assets as well. Over 65s would only get the same universal basic income as everyone else. The most radical bit is that because older people may have paid off more of their house (or own other capital) they will be paying more in asset tax. Kind of turns thing on their head.
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We could help people become more independent by giving everyone a universal basic income and allowing them to keep all the money they make if they get some temporary or part time work. Instead of wasting masses of money administering a complicated benefits system and chasing people we could spend the money helping people. ....and we could call it a transfer not a benefit.
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Hard News: On Science, in reply to Just thinking,
I know some things about shit. Down side of putting a pressure sewer system in is that each property needs to have a small tank with a macerator pump in it to chop up the chunky bits and pump the wastewater into a pressurised main. The good thing is that sewer main might be 50mm diameter rather than gravity sewers where you might have to bury larger pipes, ie 100mm or 300mm and larger. If you are starting from scratch a pressured system is likely to be cheaper (I would have thought). However the homeowner will have to fix their own pump if it breaks and if the power goes off - no pumping..... Gravity systems still have big pump stations which collect all the wastewater from the gravity sewers but when the power goes off you can stick a generator on those (if you have one handy).
If you have the right topography you can use a vacuum system instead they then you don't need pumps on each property. You have to bury those pipes at specify grades so in that respect is a bit like a gravity system. -
Arh. That was lovely. It will be interesting to see if you experience much culture shock when you come back. I did but mainly around work.
My advice is ship the garden tools. You will miss them if you don't. -
After living under a shallow of violence and torture so many decades the protesters in all these countries are so incredibly brave.
It is a pity that the countries that are so keen to help enforce the no fly zone in Libya weren't able to persuade their great friend and ally Saudi Arabia to stay the hell out of Bahrain.
Its seems the most important thing that can happen now is that Egypt (and Tunisia) form reasonably stable democracies and that western powers don’t interfere but only support in a non partisan way.
If democracy spreads in the middle east and Libya can’t get rid of Gaddafi now they will get rid of him eventually. The deaths of many of those (very brave) people will be sad but it might save more deaths later on if it’s a totally Libyan effort when it happens. I can’t support the intervention in Libya. Perhaps with more dictatorships falling (if the west allows it to happen) then Gaddafi will see the writing on the wall. The best intervention the west could make in the middle east is to stop propping up all the other dictators. -
Also, I think we need to start challenging people who say that people driving slowly cause accidents because people behind them get frustrated and have to overtake in dangerous places.
I do think ‘slow drivers’ should pull over and let people pass sometimes because it’s polite but if they haven’t pulled over for some reason and the person behind them overtakes stupidly it isn’t the slow driver’s fault.
It’s hard to pull people up on those sorts of comments though, especially when it’s your friend’s mum or someone like that saying it. I think people say things like that because they sometimes overtake slow traffic dangerously and need to justify it to themselves as someone elses fault.
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Speaking to the German woman in my office it sounds like Germans have; difficult driving tests, compulsory formal driving lessons (quite expensive) and are taught that cars come last in the pecking order because people in cars are protected (in a metal shell) and therefore must give maximum consideration to the road users who are not protected and therefore come first.
Totally different way of thinking.I would think that bringing in tougher driving licence tests/ education would be easy politically. All the grumpy old scrotes have their licences already and it would just be the new ones that would have to do it. (Admittedly results on the road would not be immediate but you have to start somewhere).
Perhaps we could even bring in the UK, no ‘undertaking’ on the motorway rule in...
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I don't think Skycabs should be confused with monorails. The cool thing about Skycabs is that you can have a cab hanging off each side going in different directions (or the same direction). From memory the support column foot print is really small, so you don't need to shift loads of services (which is often very expensive) and the control system could be really smart. Oh and I think if one breaks down you can just use the next one to shove it along to the next station. I find it hard to believe you couldn’t find suitable places for them. Basically I think Skycabs rock. (they just don’t exist)
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Auckland should totally invest in Sky Cabs. So cheap, so cool looking, so easy to link all the suburbs to the train network. They could probably start with a better web site though.