class war
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Dunne: 80% of families will pay for income splitting & get nothing
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, August 17th, 2010 - 41 comments
Peter Dunne admits that income splitting will be available to only 310,000 families. The other 1.3 million will get nothing and be left to pick up the bill. Even of the lucky 19%, only a fraction will get big tax cuts. Most will get squat but a few families with big disparities between the partners’ incomes win big. Key has voted himself $22K of tax cuts so far, this would be another $9K. Will he be tempted?
More tax cuts for the elite coming
Written By: - Date published: 10:13 am, August 14th, 2010 - 42 comments
The Government is set to announce income splitting. Effectively, it allows a taxpayer to assign part of their income for taxation purposes to their partner on a lower income, the transferred income will be taxed at a lower rate. This will benefit a select group: wealthy nuclear families, especially those with a stay at home parent. An unaffordable, unfair, unnecessary policy.
The age of recession sharpens class war
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, August 13th, 2010 - 23 comments
So, it looks like we’re heading back into recession. We’re going to have to get used to the idea that we can’t depend on perpetual economic growth to deliver rising living standards to all. We could make nearly everyone wealthier with a fairer distribution of wealth but the opposite is happening. This is simply class war; a battle over shares of a diminishing prize. And we’re letting the rich win.
Unions launch name and shame
Written By: - Date published: 7:09 am, August 13th, 2010 - 144 comments
John Key challenged the unions to “put up or shut up”. So they’re going to put up. The CTU has launched a campaign to name and shame businesses that are abusing the fire at will (90 day probation) bill. It’s a campaign based around personal stories. Heather Smith tells the first of many…
The cycleway & the coming benefit cuts
Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, August 12th, 2010 - 42 comments
Attacking beneficiaries won’t solve the real problems. There aren’t enough jobs, the recession is not really over. Rather than dealing with that, this government is carving off an ever large slice of our shrinking national wealth for their rich buddies. The poor and the jobless are turned into figures of public spite by a government of the rich which will cut to their meagre benefits will be pay for tax cuts for the rich.
Welfare working group tries to create a crisis
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, August 10th, 2010 - 43 comments
The benefit system is not unaffordable, the best way to lower its cost is to create jobs. But it is clear that is not on the Welfare Workings Group’s agenda. Their job is to paint beneficiaries as bludgers, the welfare system as broken and expensive. Their job is to pave the way for welfare cuts to pay for tax cuts that will leave the poorest Kiwi families more impoverished. They’ve made a good start.
Tory welfare bashing
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, August 10th, 2010 - 100 comments
If the political world can be split into Left and Right, is there any issue which is better at dividing us than welfare? Inevitably, the Tory attack on welfare has begun. The Rebstock report “dutifully deliver[s] the findings the government wants to hear”.
The “screw you†government
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, August 10th, 2010 - 9 comments
Lost your job? Screw you…
Workers and Dear John
Written By: - Date published: 7:34 am, July 28th, 2010 - 35 comments
National is making a total mess of industrial relations. Two different news items yesterday tell the same story: the unions are angry, and the PPTA teachers are angry. Nats beware. Nice Mr Key could so quickly become Dear John…
Where’s their evidence?
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, July 26th, 2010 - 13 comments
National wants to make a change, they’ve got to make a powerful case that the change will have the results they claim. So where’s their evidence? Where are the models, the studies, the scenarios? They haven’t got any. This is faith-based government. Based on faith in the neo-liberal god. This is guess based government. The guess being that we’ll keep voting for that Nice Man Mr Key.
The underclass
Written By: - Date published: 10:46 am, July 26th, 2010 - 16 comments
Remember when John Key used to talk about the “underclass”. Much recently of course John Key’s policy direction has been more about pandering to the wealthy elite, so you don’t hear so much from John Key about his concerns for the underclass anymore. But worries about the underclass still concern some people.
Empty promises on employment law
Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, July 22nd, 2010 - 29 comments
National’s promises aren’t worth the paper that they’re printed on. They’ve broken plenty and downgraded most of the rest to “aspirational goals”. Now John Key’s current anti-worker employment policies add a whole new chapter to the list of broken election promises.
Caption contest
Written By: - Date published: 7:21 pm, July 21st, 2010 - 40 comments
Remember the billboards comparing Helen Clark to a series of dictators in 2008? Funny thing is she’d never had anything to do with a dictator. But at least one MP who will be voting for John Key’s attacks on workers did.
The changing excuses for Fire at Will
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, July 21st, 2010 - 7 comments
In the 2008 election campaign, National carefully packaged up its policies in such a manner as not to scare voters. One of the policies John Key was very careful to frame was the 90 day probationary period for new workers, rightly called Fire at Will. This removal of rights for working people, he explained to us, was for two specific reasons. It was targeted toward people on the margins of the employment market and only applicable to small businesses (less than 20 workers).
Key, Unions and Pinochet
Written By: - Date published: 10:13 pm, July 19th, 2010 - 105 comments
Over at Kiwipolitico Pablo has a good post tracing the ancestry of Key’s attack on unions to Pinochet.
Not that we should be surprised of course:
National and Act have both been influenced by that regime in the past. Especially when it comes to dealing to workers.
Natonomics and Fire at Will
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, July 19th, 2010 - 157 comments
Extending Fire at Will and attacking union access to worksites undermines workers’ rights and is simply economic vandalism. Weaker work rights will tend to lead to lower wages (already falling under John Key’s watch), low wages lead to underinvestment and poor economic performance, and lack of work rights increases the risk in changing jobs making labour allocation less efficient.
It’s different when it’s your job
Written By: - Date published: 12:50 am, July 18th, 2010 - 47 comments
It was mainly young and poor workers on the minimum wage who were its victims of Fire at Will before. But now the middle class’s jobs will be on the knife edge too and they’re not happy. This will be an issue that causes National to bleed votes, especially if Labour and the unions organise a strong campaign. Middle NZ doesn’t care about poor workers but it’s different when it’s your job at risk.
National’s donation spin
Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, July 17th, 2010 - 30 comments
National is claiming its donations are strong but the numbers tell another story all together.
With an election possible within 12 months, National needs to scare up some cash – and quick.
Key’s dilemma
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, July 17th, 2010 - 23 comments
This weekend Key will start (literally) cashing in his political capital by trading off Kiwi workers’ rights for business backing.
But by pushing for these changes his backers risk the second-term National majority they need to get their hands on our assets.
It seems their bad habit of putting short-term profit ahead of long-term sustainable gains has carried over into the political sphere.
Crash National’s Party – Protest for Fairness at Work
Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, July 16th, 2010 - 57 comments
At the National Party conference in Auckland this weekend, John Key is expected to announce drastic attacks on workers’ rights.
You can stand up and fight back against this madness by joining the protest at 10am on Sunday at Sky City Hotel in Auckland.
National’s attack on working Kiwis
Written By: - Date published: 6:56 pm, July 15th, 2010 - 248 comments
With National’s donations flagging something was needed to loosen the purse-strings.
It seems they’ve decided giving business an early present of wage-lowering laws will do the trick.
And every working Kiwi will pay the price.
Bennett up in flames in Rotorua
Written By: - Date published: 1:49 pm, July 14th, 2010 - 49 comments
The protest rally held in Rotorua, held its slogan high with nearly a hundred people in tow. “Kill the Future Focus Bill, or it will kill you!” was out in front along with cut outs of Paula Bennett, complete with fangs, risque cleavage and that famous leopard skin trenchcoat -all the props of an actor satirising the working class as she attacks us.
I was just following the market’s orders
Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, July 14th, 2010 - 31 comments
Should be no surprise to anyone that the Nats and Maori Party are cutting help for tobacco addicts while upping the cost of their ciggies. They don’t care about better health. Don’t care about helping poor people get off an expensive habit. It’s all about sopping the poor and give aways for the rich. But you know who did grind my gears? Those tabacco execs the other week.
Tax cuts for the few, just plain cuts for the many
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, July 13th, 2010 - 10 comments
English is talking more cuts at a time where cutting could well push the economy into a downward spiral.
But he knows that better than most – he was a minister in the cabinet that did just that in the ’90s.
Deepening the stockmarket
Written By: - Date published: 11:26 pm, July 11th, 2010 - 48 comments
Can someone explain to me this ‘deepening the stockmarket’ line that the Right uses for privatisation? I consider myself reasonably well informed on these issues but I just can’t see the value to the country of the government selling public assets to a handful of stockmarket participants. Why is ‘deepening’ the stockmarket by giving up our public assets a good thing?
Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, July 10th, 2010 - 52 comments
This guy writes what I would aspire to write if I had the time and the cojones. For a lazy Saturday morning rant, read on.
English’s faith-based economics
Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, July 2nd, 2010 - 90 comments
Bill English claims that our low national savings rate is due to the ‘government paying for everything’. According to English, people don’t need to save because the government pays for early childhood education, superannuation, Working for Families, and interest-free student loans. Does he have any evidence that is the case? Of course not. The evidence points the other way.
Key comes clean on the ETS
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, June 30th, 2010 - 28 comments
In a moment of uncharacteristic political honesty, John Key has come clean on his ETS. It loads “disproportionate” costs on to householders. National’s scheme is all about keeping things sweet for their business mates – muffling the price signal that an ETS is supposed to send by (as usual) socialising the costs.
British austerity budget
Written By: - Date published: 6:55 am, June 24th, 2010 - 28 comments
The first budget from the new Tory-LibDem government is a shocker, with massive austerity cuts and a rise in VAT to 20%. This is the bill for the £850 billion bail out of big banks coming home to roost.
They’re white and rich, so it’s news
Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, June 23rd, 2010 - 26 comments
Why should we care about five dead rich mining executives? Makes me feel pretty sick thinking about the warped coverage these stories get. Deaths of poor dark-skinned people by the hundred are so routinely ignored. And anyone ask what they were mining there? Foreign mining interests in that part of the world triggered the Great War of Africa. But who cares, eh?
Speculators – Our Evil Overlords
Written By: - Date published: 9:49 am, June 21st, 2010 - 44 comments
Many think that Capitalism has been corrupted, socialised. It hasn’t – it’s been purified. We used to have capitalists that produced things; they weren’t the worker’s friend, but they did actually serve a purpose, setting up factories, providing the machinery for workers to use. But now we have a new class of capitalist that doesn’t […]
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