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Categories under capitalism

Australia’s sweatshop

Written By: - Date published: 10:29 am, July 7th, 2012 - 69 comments

The Nats have given up on catching up with Australia, and are content for us to become their low wage sweatshop instead. Their cheerleaders think it’s a great idea.

I beg to differ.

Choices, choices: waste at Pukekohe

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, July 6th, 2012 - 56 comments

You know how the Government is so skint, and absolutely much get back into surplus by 2014/15, that it has cut education at every level, cut conservation, cut home insulation, cut Kiwisaver, cut Working for Families .. etc etc. They even created a new super-ministry to cut costs. And what’s the first action of Mobie Dick? $2.2 million sunk into Aussie V8s.

What is “progress”?

Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, July 5th, 2012 - 22 comments

If “two-income families are increasingly worse off than single-income families were a generation ago”, then something is seriously wrong with our definition of “progress”.

Paul Reynolds takes the money and runs

Written By: - Date published: 11:14 am, July 4th, 2012 - 41 comments

$20 million. That’s how much Paul Reynolds pocketed during his disastrous 5 years as CEO of Telecom. You could have employed dozens of teachers and nurses over that period for that money. Instead, it all went to one man as the company he headed went down the toilet. What a broken system capitalism is. The kicker: the $1.75m goodbye gift, on which he got a $100,000 tax cut. Nice.

Sunday Reading

Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, July 1st, 2012 - 1 comment

I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring).  This week: Feminism, capitalism & resource depletion.

Heroes of capitalism

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, June 30th, 2012 - 24 comments

Banks engaged in market fixing. What a surprise. No doubt someone will be held to account…

A poor investment

Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, June 28th, 2012 - 60 comments

Now the legislation to sell our assets has passed, the question on lefties’ minds is whether it’s more principled to refuse to buy them or to spend the money to ensure they don’t get sold offshore.

What’s not getting a lot of attention is whether they’re actually the great investment our Prime Minister keeps insisting they are…

Privatisation bill passed

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, June 26th, 2012 - 239 comments

They’re quite literally selling our country down the river.

It’s for efficiency

Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, June 26th, 2012 - 10 comments

Now we learn that directors’ fees are set to double after National sells or assets. Who pays for the fat-cats to get twice the cream for the same work? We do. Through higher power prices. It’s just another cost of privatisation that we all pay – despite the fact that Treasury reckons 95% of us won’t buy shares. No wonder 100,000 of us have signed the referendum petition already.

What’s in the TPPA?

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, June 24th, 2012 - 44 comments

While we the public distract ourselves with trivia like car crushing, and focus on other important matters like asset sales, the TPPA which is quietly unfolding in the background is actually the most important ongoing political issue.  It has potentially disastrous implications for our sovereignty and our future.

Endless greed

Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, June 24th, 2012 - 57 comments

It’s sickening to see rich ministers and columnists saying ‘of course we need to green the economy’ and then turnaround and promote fossil fuel extraction and agricultural intensification – things that will ultimately wreck the environment and the economy that is built on it. The truth is, we’re a hugely wealthy country already – it’s just most of the wealth is with the endlessly greedy elite.

I am the Markets

Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, June 23rd, 2012 - 12 comments

“Markets have become increasingly concerned that the austerity programmes in the eurozone are causing a vicious circle of recession”, and “Markets were confused by mixed messages from European capitals”. I have only one word of reply: Bollocks. Did anyone phone me to ask how I, The Markets, was feeling about these subjects? Did they hell!

Darkhorse: Subsidising “capital markets” through asset sales

Written By: - Date published: 12:16 pm, June 20th, 2012 - 26 comments

Darkhorse writes amazingly insightful economic pieces on his ‘How Daft’ blog (the title gives you a clue as to what he thinks of the current state of affairs). The neoliberal experiment has been an abject failure by any rational measure. And there are alternatives. Darkhorse has given us permission to syndicate his posts, the originals are here.

1600 dead, power prices 2/3 higher than Oz/US: Market working – Ryall

Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, June 19th, 2012 - 81 comments

Independent energy analyst Molly Melhuish is putting out some facts that Tony Ryall will not find comfortable: we pay on average 28.1c per kWh from private companies and 24.79c per kWh from state owned companies. Why is the asset sales process being rushed through parliament, before Treasury can analyse Molly Melhuish’s research?

Cunliffe attacks Nats’ crony capitalism

Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 14th, 2012 - 79 comments

David Cunliffe went to the lion’s den yesterday with a speech telling a meeting of Kensington Swan’s receivership and liquidation lawyers that there would be a lot less work for them under Labour but saying “the Labour Party is not your enemy. Your enemy is inefficiency, corruption, and the wastage of both public and private wealth. Your enemy is a cosy corruption that helps a few friends of the government get very rich at the expense of the community.”

The end of growth

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, June 14th, 2012 - 26 comments

Five to fifteen years of economic turmoil. Peak oil. Climate change. For “Western” / OECD countries it’s time to start creating a world based on a different kind of growth.

The Nats’ agenda

Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, June 9th, 2012 - 30 comments

You don’t usually see it stated as succinctly as this.

Sunday reading

Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, June 3rd, 2012 - 12 comments

Last week I put up some Sunday reading – longer, thoughtful pieces I’d found.  I liked that other people also put up their links, with some very interesting topics.  So I thought I might make it a regular feature.  I’d put up a couple of interesting things that I’d come across in the week, and other people could share their links.

National’s war on the deficit – 2015

Written By: - Date published: 1:38 pm, May 30th, 2012 - 7 comments

Stockholm syndrome

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, May 25th, 2012 - 22 comments

With enough conditioning, our psyches will adapt to believe almost anything. Like that pain is good.

Meatworkers win

Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 38 comments

News in that Talley’s/AFFCO and the Meatworkers reached an agreement at 5am this morning. The workers will keep their wage and job security provisions and still be covered by a collective. The workers have displayed incredible strength with support from up and down the country. Next time, bosses will think twice before attacking their workers.

Saveloy Soup! Anyone?

Written By: - Date published: 6:17 am, May 12th, 2012 - 58 comments

Seems as though Dicken’s Oliver character was an ungrateful little ingrate who actually had it pretty good, all things considered. Gruel has to beat left over savaloy water, no?

All in the game

Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, May 9th, 2012 - 77 comments

Everyone’s leaped on the Nats’ contraceptives for benies bid to distract from banks.com. Guess I’ll jump in too. Capitalist morality goes: the world/God rewards the good, which is why capitalists are rich – so, the poor, like beneficiaries, must be morally bad – the world would be better without bad people. Eugenics has been and remains a logical endpoint of capitalist morality.

NRT: Bringing Ports of Auckland to heel

Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, May 7th, 2012 - 11 comments

Over the past few months, we’ve seen Auckland City’s wholly-owned port, Ports of Auckland, waging war against its own workforce, costing the city millions of dollars in lost dividends. Now, the Auckland Council has acted, requiring its intermediate Auckland Council Investments Limited to impose “good employer” provisions on its subsidiaries.

Talley’s cracking

Written By: - Date published: 6:51 am, May 4th, 2012 - 36 comments

It is a fundamental injustice of our society that one family, which already has more than it can ever need, can hold 1,300 families, who have very little, to ransom just to make a little more cash. But the union makes us working people strong. By standing together, the workers are beating Talley’s in the AFFCO lockout. Talley’s cracked. Wants half them back. The workers have said ‘all of us or none of us’.

Into Black-Scholes: where all the money went

Written By: - Date published: 11:14 am, May 2nd, 2012 - 15 comments

A very interesting article on the BBC – the financial formula that ruined the world. Well, that’s a bit sensationalist, but it’s a formula that allowed intuition to be taken out of “options” trading and computers to move in.  And with the “understanding” of the maths of futures there was a move into more and […]

Will Dunne heed his own poll on asset sales?

Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, April 30th, 2012 - 46 comments

United Future are polling the public about their support for partial privatisation. Will Peter Dunne heed his own poll?

Banks’ secret donation from the ‘wide boys’

Written By: - Date published: 6:19 am, April 27th, 2012 - 101 comments

John Banks has had a miraculous change of heart on pokies. He used to say gambling bosses were “wide boys” who “sucked” the people of this country dry. Now, he’s rubbed up against John Key and become ‘relaxed’ about more pokies. Maybe the $15,000 undeclared donation from SkyCity helped. A donor Banks was legally required to disclose but didn’t. Labour’s laid a complaint. Update: donation has been referred to police.

The lucky ticket

Written By: - Date published: 2:56 pm, April 24th, 2012 - 52 comments

By popular acclaim we’re putting this comment by rosy up as a Guest Post. Rosy describes success in life by analogy to winning various divisions of lotto…

Genesis boss living it up on your money

Written By: - Date published: 6:48 am, April 24th, 2012 - 51 comments

The FYI project and I/S at No Right Turn have uncovered what appears to be massive abuse of expenses by Genesis CEO Albert Brantley, whom we pay $1.2m a year. It puts me in mind of Marie Antoinette. And we know what happened to her. Almost as shocking is the small stuff. Lucky Genesis is subject to the OIA, for now, so this guy could be found out.

A society that works for the few doesn’t work

Written By: - Date published: 11:25 am, April 23rd, 2012 - 76 comments

This country produces $200 billion of wealth a year. Yet half of adults have incomes less than $29,000 a year. 200,000 kids live in poverty, may in working families. A tiny few – the 1% – pocket the lion’s share. There is no justification. It is bad for society and the economy. Helen Kelly confronts the greed irrational of one rich family, the Talley’s, and how it’s hurting 1,300 poor working families.