Catch-22

The New Zealand Goverment continues on its farcical march towards becoming Milo Minderbinder's "M&M enterprises", in which "everyone has a share".

Kiwibank, Kiwisaver, Air New Zealand, Vector, Transpower et al. all are increasingly pointing towards this Governments absolute goal of the Kiwi collective ownership of everything via their benevolent and enterprising Government.

My own catch-22 now lies in how do I continue to help and support a country and people to whom I am increasingly drawn to despise?

EPMU vitriole wins the day

Hattip: Scoop / Scoop

Unfortunately it looks like the EPMU et al. campaign of lies and hyperbole has managed to convince enough people that Wayne Maps Probationary employment bill is an "attack on their rights". And so the Maori party have decided to withdraw their support for the bill meaning it is likely to be defeated rather shortly.

Workers need to wake up and realize that initiatives like this are *not* an "attack on their rights" but are attempts to actually bring realistic responsibilities back to those rights that they possess. The current climate of repealing employers rights and making the employee ever more powerful and legislated will continue to drive New Zealand down its path of foreign ownership and small business ownership.

Those people with enough entrepreneurial spirit to start their own businesses will continue to trend towards being single proprietorships, possibly expanding to partnerships, and then typically moving offshore for expansion - if that isn't where they started already. It is ludicrous that it is becoming increasingly less risky and orders of magnitude cheaper for someone to move into a partnership agreement than to hire their first employee.
Only large multi-corporates are likely to continue with the increasing hassle of employment, only they can continue to take the risk and employ the legal / HR teams that are required to deal with actually having employees. If workers think either of these trends are in their favor then they are severely mistaken.

We have already seen a number of our businesses start to replace staff with machinery due to their increasing costs - this is the one positive side effect of these moves. New Zealand needs to increase its labor productivity if we are to regain any kind of comparative standing in the OECD. However it would be nice to be able to have a domestic manufacturing segment rather than watching them all (Jack Links et al) slowly collapse and shut down, it would be nice to continue having a domestic clothing market, car assembly - in fact almost anything other than food and aluminum would be good.

As we continue to make this less of a reality for ourselves, as we punish the entrepreneur for the lack of vision, lack of risk tolerance, and lack of intellect for their workers we will see ourselves continue to decline until we are that prison colony at the end of the Earth that Gene Roddenberry predicted.
Tags: nz, politics, employment

Pay it back - IRD style

"A payment is late if it is posted or delivered to Inland Revenue after the due date. If you send in a payment after the due date, you will be charged an initial 1% late payment penalty on the day after the due date.

A further 4% penalty will be charged if there is still an amount of unpaid tax (including penalties), at the end of the 7th day from the due date. Every month after the due date, a further 1% will be added to any unpaid amount (including penalties)."

Thanks to Insolent Prick for his discourse on the situation: link
However the biggest disgust that I have had over this entire episode is that politicians in general seem to think that just "paying it back" would be restitution enough (those that you can get to admit a theoretical guilt from).
However there is nowhere else, and no other party that can play by those rules.  In particular the money that was spent from the public purse is coerced under the penalty structure above. 

Note that it is worse if you were avoiding tax - this is just the penalties for not paying on time - which includes if you didn't know you had a bill to pay.  Which can occur up to 7 years after the fact.  Even if it takes a court case to establish some unclear portion of tax legislation which you could have justifiably thought you were in the right over.

What really needs to happen is for all political parties who abused the parliamentary services funding and electoral spending caps to be treated in the same way as every person and business in the country.  They should be audited for the last 7 years and made to pay for every cent spent unjustifiably, with penalties and back interest.

This is the threat that they as politicians and political parties have created.  It would be nice to see them see what that feels like.
Tags: IRD, tax, political, nz, parties

Public Service Association "defends" staffing increase, by pointing out exactly how they are not needed

Hattip: Scoop "The myth of the exploding public sector"

The PSA provided an attempted press release with regards to defending the greater than 50% increase in public servants, which generally does a pretty good job.  Primarily through ignoring the actual issue and quoting completely irrelevant statistics (decreasing debt has nothing to do with public service employment figures...) and then mixing in with those areas that actually are relevant and can be used to support their cause.

However they do fantastically as they point out what Public services incorporate:
"The services that are central to the administration of our society such as collecting taxes, paying benefits, passing laws, regulating consumer protections."

Kindof speaks for itself as to why we "need" 65% more public servants now.  43 new taxes, WFF, x new laws, constant interference in infrastructure companies (Telecom and Vector anyone?).  We need that many more public servants because we have a Labour Government - the relationship is that simple.  The core of the public service employment is doing those things that the Labour Government is philosophically aligned with increasing: taxes, welfare, regulation and market intervention.  The only Government that would increase the public service faster is the Greens.

Bye Bye Origin Pacific

Kind of sad to see Origin Pacific finally shut its doors completely, especially after it looked like they may have rescued themselves from bankruptcy earlier this year.  I quite liked some of the innovations they brought to the table with their five flight click strips, and a greater accessibility to standby tickets.

However they were always going to struggle against the might of another player that could get free $300 million capital injections.  Just like the Overlander.
Tags: nz, newzealand, origin

Maori failing the closing the gaps policies

The NZ Herald today published a fantastic statistic that should help everybody question the entire intent of the closing the gaps policy, and the fundamental mis-guidance with which it has been sold to the public.
It shows how the poverty line in New Zealand has moved from being 12% of the population in 1985 to 19% in 2005 - where poverty is defined as earning less than 60% of the median income level.  Which of course means that the success of Peter Jackson, Sam Morgan et al. should all be deplored as they have contributed to the increase of poverty in this country.  Every time anyone creates wealth above their station, moves from a menial type role to a high productivity role, they have increased the numbers in poverty.

Which is of course ludicrous.  Poverty should only ever be defined in terms of an absolute level.  Not in income, but in living standards.  And because your neighbor has a plasma TV, and you don't does not make you in poverty - which is effectively how our current definition works.

It is this type of thinking that has led to the current situation where despite millions of dollars being poured into Maori and Pacific Island communities, their growth rates have continued to lag further behind the growth of the rest of the New Zealand community.  At some point the responsibility for this needs to be placed at the feet of those communities themselves, rather than blaming the rest of the community for growing faster than them...

As Gareth Morgan points out:
"Could it be that the traditional Maori marae-based model with its denial of private property rights and promotion of lineage over meritocracy is just incompatible with the achievement of economic and social outcomes that mainstream Western capitalist democracies achieve? Economic theory would suggest tribal-based feudalism is bound to impoverish those it discriminates against - commonly women and children. As well as being a questionable practice anyway (from the perspective of Human Rights), protecting this chauvinistic societal model under the guise of Treaty of Waitangi obligations is to discourage its evolution. The approach portends the need for infinitely deep taxpayer pockets if equitable outcomes under Treaty Article Three are to be achieved."

I would highly recommend reading the rest of his article: Closing Gaps is a misnomer which helps to direct attention towards the question of whether we want to close the gaps, if this means pulling the top down rather than pulling the bottom up. 

And I would pose the subsequent query: Are not Maori failing the policies, more than the policies are failing them?
Tags: Maori, nz, newzealand, policy, closinggaps

 

Employment discrimination, no smokers need apply

Smokers really need to wake up on this latest development where it has been found that the human rights act et al. do not prevent employers from specifying that smokers will not get employed.

Mainly because they need to realise that the primary defense which they are presenting is completely fallacious.  At present the reaction has been that "it is discriminatory and where would you draw the line?".  Discrimination is already inherent in our employment legislation and the line drawing already exists - so what the smoker needs to do is differentiate which side of the line (protected or open-season) they sit.  An employer can already discriminate on the basis of criminal record, education record, previous employers, time in the workplace, cultural fit etc, smoking in many realms is actually more relevant to your future perceived performance than some of these highly used discrimination measures.  What they need to realise is that the actual protected areas: sex, race, religion, sexual preference etc are all generally protected due to their supposed "non-choice" based origin.  A person does not "choose" these things, and therefore may not be discriminated against on the basis of them.

However things that are chosen, or are the results of decisions are all (currently) fair game for the purpose of discrimination. 
So the question needs to be: If we protect a smoker from being discriminated against, where do we stop, where does the line get drawn?
Tags: smoking, discrimination, nz, newzealand, employment

Dysfuntional Justice System

I have been surprised by the amount of backlash against both the Rotorua city council and the police with regards to the RCC's proposal to ban repeat criminals from the city center for periods of time.

The main reason for my surprise being centered around the fact that the main reasons that people are touting are actually showing the dysfunctional nature of the justice system, not either of the two parties they tend to focus on.
Where you have a repeat offender to the tune of over 80 offences that is still offending, it is not the police you should blame.  They have done their job - hence the convictions for 80+ offences.  It is the justice system that keeps recycling this type of individual into our society with whom umbrage should be taken.

It would seem to be a failing of our current system that it does tend to take the view that once a criminals "debt to society" is "paid" (IE time served, fine paid, fine waived due to insufficient means...) that this should take little to no part in determining future sentences, and most particularly; cannot be used to escalate the offence with which one has been charged. 

In the latter point one would think that a system much like that of the NRL should be used - where a person accumulates their penalty points against their record and this is used to determine appropriate atonement in conjunction with the seriousness of the current offence.  This would remove the need for the RCC to enact their current bylaw - the people who they are banning would still be being dealt with by the appropriate authorities, and it would free up the police from needing to deal to the same criminals on as frequent a basis.  Because the simple fact is someone else won't start offending because other offenders have been removed.  Crime does not increase to populate a vacuum...
Tags: nz, newzealand, crime, punishment, justice

Thanks to slashdot for reminding me I've worked with computers for far too long

Hattip: Slashdot
Today is the day of the 386, yesterday was the 286, Friday the 486 - which I guess means that Saturday somewhat appropriately is the day of the Pentium (586)

The fact that I can remember and tell you the configuration of each of the machines I had with each of those processors is kind of depressing (and sad in a whole other meaning).  Especially given that the 386 was the first one with a HDD, the only HDD I've had that never ran out of space. 

That's right that 20 MB was inexhaustible.
Tags: 286, 386, 486, pentium, tech, humour

Rates and the elderly

It has been quite interesting to see over the past week the reactions to the new Auckland city rates bills. 

The NZ Herald managed to elict this nugget from Auckland City chief executive David Rankin:
"People did not realise the wide range of services provided by rates, such as world-class water and treatment of sewage or that most spending on roads and public transport came from rates."

But the more insightful quotes were actually:
People wanted more and better public facilities and there was no "painless" way of paying for it.
He [Mr McKinlay] said people moaned about rates bills but did not get nearly as excited about power bills, which were often higher.

I personally don't mind this set of rates increases - because I happened to provide feedback to the Auckland city plan and the eventual decision on what they were planning to increase funding on has a reasonable congruence with what I was willing to spend additional money on.  But what is interesting in the current set of public opinions is the number of people that have supported collectivist and redistribution policies, now complaining about the effects of those policies. 

Because rates are just a form of taxation, which happens to attempt to levy itself on a proxy of wealth (much like income taxes).  Both are made unfair in their application through their supposed attempt to be equitable.  The most amusing thing in reading the opinions in the blogosphere and Herald is that in the main the right wing sphere has actually been derisive towards those complaining about the bills saying they should just sell their appreciated assets and it is just free markets in action (when taxes and levies are normally quoted as market failures...), while those on the left wing have in the main been the complainers about the size of the funding required for their public transport / community initiatives etc for which they were the main protagonists. 

We then of course have the Libertarian sphere combining with the less politically partisan (a strange sight) to decry the whole concept of rates in general.  Although in the last case the Libertarians are normally calling for better user pays allocation while the non-politically partisan seem to be calling for central Government funding, where the latter of these is just an obfuscation of the problem, and just lumps more into a different inequitable funding mechanism.

David Rankin's quote caught my eye in particular with regards to this because he is of course right - alot of the issue in rates is that people cannot tell what they are paying for.  What is less clear is two things:
Why he doesn't see that this is implicitly solved by moving to actual user pays?
Why he chose the two examples that do have specific taxes and charges outside of the rates system?
Tags: nz, newzealand, auckland, rates

Labour Party Politicians

I cannot help but point out the delicious irony in the simultaneous conviction of David Maka for dishonesty and abuse of priviledge offences (number 50 on Labours 2002 party list) with Taito Phillip Fields grilling in the house for dishonesty and abuse of priviledge.

I can only wonder as these types of ironies continue to occur how people can doubt the systemic corruption within the Labour Party. How do people continue to look at seemingly trivial seperate events such as the F16s, Timberlands, the boardinghouse fax, Paintergate, Dover Samuels, Tamihere, TPF, etc as disconnected incidents?
Whether you believe in genuine corruption, or just straight incompetence, this Government seems determined to implicate itself fully one way or the other.

For once I actually wish Winnie was here and in the house - then after the recent behaviour of Margaret Wilson things might get interesting. As it stands by the time he has back her recent ejecting of members from the house is likely to have faded from our political short term memory.

Someone else worth watching with interest though is Jim Anderton. Labours lapdog to be sure, but mainlybecause their interests are so well aligned. Jim was normally one of the only politicians you could guarantee to stand by his principles - even though I completely disagree with what his political beliefs are. If it came to the crunch in terms of his actually having to explicitly support Field or Wilsons behaviour I would be interested in which way he would lean.

Michael Cullen's blatant lies about tax

Hattip: "The Business" / NZ Herald
In particular I take umbrage with one particular part of Michael Cullen's latest speech:
"We are proposing to match Australia's corporate rate without burdening business with all the other onerous taxes Australians suffer - namely, a capital gains tax, stamp duties, payroll taxes and compulsory superannuation"

I was of course very glad to hear that we have no tax on capital gains here in New Zealand.  I will now no longer have capital gains declared in my tax returns.

Compulsory superannuation in Australia is not a tax - I can self-collect and self-manage my own superannuation fund.  Strangest tax I've ever seen with no money ever going to anyone else but myself.  As compared to our compulsory superannuation here which is a tax, or the upcoming Kiwisaver scheme that the Government determines where the funds can be invested; close to a tax.

Stamp Duties - OK, a fair point there until you look at the context of the discussion: business competitiveness.  So then the question becomes how many companies own their own land / buildings?  Sure this will be a consideration to some - but given that most businesses tend to lease their premises stamp duty is something a person worries about.

Payroll Taxes - Yay, I suppose 1 out of 4 specific examples isn't bad.

But this seems to be about MC's rate of telling the truth anyway given the "We have never had Treasury price a party policy" --> "We didn't get treasury to price  interest free student loans" --> "We got treasury to do one costing of  interest free student loans" --> "We got a treasury costing of interest free student loans, and then had them change the assumptions to give us another one..."
Tags: Labour, tax

In the "only something a Government department can get away with" file

Hattip: http://taxblog.co.nz/

Accountants warn that a defence of following IRD instructions does not get a taxpayer off the hook if what the department says is wrong.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't - What else can you say?
Tags: nz, new zealand, tax

Labour finally admits that subsidies are inefficient...

Did anyone else have trouble deciding whether they should laugh or cry as Michael Cullen, completely straight faced, explained that they would not be subsidizing the Overlander train service because subsidies were inefficient and a bad idea?  Why did no reporter ask him why it was completely inappropriate in this case, and yet so core to this Governements philosophy in so many other areas from the arts, Jim Anderton's business grants, Kiwibank, or most ironically: Air New Zealand. 

Of course the irony that the main internal air competition that sunk this route was provided by a company that received a subsidy that would have been sufficient for the Overlander to run for 150 years didn't seem to phase MC at all.  Chances are he was oblivious to it.

Of course that I agree with the decision in this case is actually irrelevant - if there are enough people up in arms about the demise of this route then there are enough to donate $1 a year to a foundation to do the subsidization.  If there are not enough people to care to that level then it is rightly scrapped.  Of course anyone who is surprized at the lack of patronage just needs to look at the problem that the journey takes 12 hours.  This is a pretty similar distance to the train we used from Koln (Cologne) to Berlin that took 4 hours 15 minutes.  The first - despite the view of the countryside is an ordeal; the second - a nice trip.  And you still get a pretty good view of the scenery despite travelling at up to 300 kph... 

I realise we probably don't have the population (including tourists) to justify the upgrading of our lines to the level that you can put an ICE train on it - but wouldn't even a trip of 6/7 hours make it one that you would consider?

Tags: Labour, Michael Cullen, subsidy

[EDIT] In an interesting article posted by Unlimited they also highlight the inefficiencies of Government subsidization in that case in the R&D market.  For those too lazy to read the whole article (which I recommend) and excerpt follows:

"The survey responses reflect FRST’s conclusions: government R&D spending in CRIs, universities and State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) is not resulting in commercially valuable IP of any great consequence for New Zealand companies — especially SMEs. This situation reflects findings in the US and EU that universities and government-funded laboratories contribute less than 10% of the IP used by companies to produce and market innovative products."

Likelihood of posts next week = low

Going off to freeze next week in Dunedin onsite for a client. 
Mmmm - had a high today of 6 degrees, really looking forward to that!
Tags: blog, blogging, holiday

Good use of RFID - but is anyone else worried its needed?

I read an article on this earlier in the week, but it was this eweek article that prompted me to point it out:
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Radio frequency ID (RFID) chips, similar to those implanted in products to deter theft, may help prevent sponges and other materials from being left in a patient during surgery, the findings from a small study suggest.

The study I read earlier (and now cannot find) was mentioning that this trial was likely to be extended to all the surgical implements used so that they can use an RFID scanning wand to check for implements / sponges after the patient has been closed up.  Certainly in the case of this study:
The wand identified all of the RFID-tagged sponges and never reported the presence of a tagged sponge when, in fact, there wasn't one. On average, it took just 3 seconds for the wand to pick up the presence of an RFID-tagged sponge.

Which is all a great use for a much maligned technology.  But the question you have to ask yourself is: how happy are you that it is needed in the first place?
Still, further research is needed to determine whether placement of these chips in surgical sponges and other operating room materials will be cost effective for a problem that occurs once in every 10,000 procedures.

Due for surgery? Feeling Lucky?
Tags: health, RFID

Ben Elton

Watched Ben Elton at his standup gig "Get a Grip" at the Aotea center in Auckland last night.  Absolutely brilliant and extremely funny, Elton managed to cover every topic from politics, health, beauty obsession, conspiracy theories, through to consumerism.  As he put it at the start it was all about linking the size of his Mars Bar with Newtons 3rd law of physics (the equal reaction one for those too lazy to google it :D )

He really was at his exuberant, cutting best - doing extremely well to toe the line quite firmly on a number of what could be quite touchy issues, cutting deep enough to make people think, but I would deem not actually offending many people.  Of course his humour isn't for everyone (most popularly known via Blackadder 2+, Bottom, The Young Ones etc), especially given its real bite (not actually shown through the aforementioned series).  His stand-up definitely reminds more of his books - in this case mostly his earlier books of Stark, This Other Eden and Gridlock.

One of the fascinating aspects of his performance was the ease with which he localized the majority of his performance - The Warehouse, Air New Zealand, the descent into Wellington airport, Freedom Furniture, etc all became the examples within his performance without hesitation.  He was even able to preface the section about Iraq with appropriate sentiments about how NZ did not go and still managed to make the section entirely relevant - despite NZ only comprising 4 shows on his tour and being the only country with that stance on Iraq.

Absolutly worth going to see - sorry to all you Kiwi's who have now missed out unless you dash to Australia quickly (but hey, 600 of you were already planning to go this week anyway ;-> ). To anyone else who still has the chance to catch him on his tour, I unconditionally recommend you to go.
Tags: BenElton, humour

New Zealand Labour Party endorses exploitation of immigrant workers

Helen Clark has indicated that the Ingram report clears Taito Phillip Field of any wrong doing.
Given that this is the same report that while saying Field had no conflict of interest he showed poor judgment in his use of (extremely) low income workers.

Apparently this type of exploitation of poor, defenseless workers is supported by the Labour party - ratified by the fact that Field is already being reinstated to the Executive.

Poor exploitable workers take note: Exploitation of the worker is what Labour is about.
I wouldn't expect an ACT, National, Green or NZ First MP to get away with this type of behavior - would you?
Tags: nz, newzealand, Liarbour, exploitation

Superb work Cactus

Cactus Kate today has an excellent post on envy, wealth and politics that I could not leave unsung. It is a long post but I would highly recommend people to read it through - regardless which side of the political divide you sit.  It can help to open some neurons for all supporters (and that goes for non-NZer's as well).  Just be aware that Cactus Kate can be abrasive in nature and suffers no fools...

She is spot on in her underlying message about that which most Socialist / left wing political supporters cannot grasp:
That the only greedy, envious messages and policies are coming from your side of the table.
And that there are no *rich* in New Zealand on which to practice your redistribution policies - all you are doing is taking from those without a lot to give to others without a lot.

What is most important to take from her vitriolic discharge however is the point that the myth of powerful rich people only being rich through exploitation of others and particularly old money is absolute BS.  Although this scares most Socialists and poor (in 1st / 2nd world countries) because they cannot handle the fact that the reason they are in the situation(s) they are is their own fault.  Not because they weren't "born into money".

Against that final point argue to me how many families you know that the current generation is truly rich because they were rich 5 generations ago.  And if there has been any bankruptcy along that chain of 5 generations then it (obviously) doesn't count.  Although I wager many of you haven't thought about that part before.
C'mon I'm waiting...

( For those complete dimwits out there who just had the thought "I know one", you better post it here and hope for a lot more - because the point is if there is considerably less than what there was truly rich people 75 years ago my point is proven)

Widening income and living standard disparities

It is interesting to look at the amount of debate kicked up by the recent "overview of living standards" released by the MSD, in a different context.  The report highlighted how it is not the absolute income of a familial grouping that determines their final living standard, but is just as closely linked to the income sources and decision making of those familial groups in terms of their income disposal.

In that respect I would turn your analysis to the same debate, but using New Zealand and Australia as test subjects, rather than New Zealand family units.  In that respect I would point out that it is still the continuing wasteful monetary mind sets of both the New Zealand Government and general public that would doom us to a continuing relative decline in living standards, despite our recent closing of growth rates. 

Australia is currently in the process of implementing a change to their superannuation scheme such that wage / salary earners will be saving at the rate (opt-out) of 12% of their pre-tax income.  Even if they opt-out of the 12% rate they will still be saving a compulsory 8-9% pre-tax.  Contrast this to the New Zealand situation of 4% opt-out, an optional 8% opt-in, or a 0% if you would still like.  The wealth generation difference of the Australian situation running between 9% - 12% of their salary / wage income versus New Zealand's prospective 4% savings (household savings are still negative so the superannuation stands as the only incrementing savings pool) means that the Australian capital pool will be increasing at a rate of double to treble our own. 

Even most of New Zealand's financially illiterate citizens should be able to understand that if you start with a greater capital base, and then continue to add to that base faster than your comparative position, you will quickly and irrevocably be in an unassailable position.

Even more than fighting our internal issues of beneficiary entitlement mindsets, bloated local Government bodies and high child abuse rates, we need to realize as a country that we need to start building a wealth base.  Otherwise we will continue to lose on the living standards scales, and beyond not being able to support those other Pacific nations that depend on us, we won't even be able to support ourselves.
Tags: nz, newzealand, wealth, capital, investment