Labour govt 2020-23

[Logen Ninefingers]

One can try actually reading what's in it. It's not difficult.

That's ok, go ahead tap out.

[Logen Ninefingers]

Raise incomes?

The median wage in NZ is 27 bucks.

Yup, great answer. Raise incomes to fight inflation. Businesses can give everyone a wacking great pay rise and pass the costs on to the consumer, and to fund the public sector we can borrow to increase wages and salaries. And let's also not raise interest rates but keep the credit tap turned on so the flood of cheap money flowing into residential housing continues. I think once you've done all that inflation should be running well into the double digits.

Absolute economic illiterate.

[Panda-NZ-]

When wages go up they will look to machines which is great -- higher productivity at long last.

[Balance]

When wages go up they will look to machines which is great -- higher productivity at long last.

Just pay no tax.

Like your lie that Luxon paid no tax.

[Logen Ninefingers]

We're actually in a lot of trouble as a nation, and particularly under this government. We are now heavily dependant on energy from overseas and the national grid is maxed out to the extent that coal imports from Indonesia in 2020 totalled 1.084 million tonnes, or just over one billion kilograms. Every additional person we import into New Zealand has energy needs which need to be met, remembering that we are already maxing out our generation capacity. If we switch more people to electric cars it will necessitate more imported coal. We have cracked down on oil and gas exploration and coal mining out of a mistaken belief that we will be a world leader that others will look to, and because of the powerful red / green voting group in NZ. China has no interest in what we do, their only interest is keeping their own living standards advancing and keeping their own lights on. China is currently expanding mines to produce 220 million metric tons a year of extra coal, a nearly 6 percent rise from last year. China already digs up and burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. In 2021 Chinese coal production climbed to an all-time high of 4.07 billion metric tonnes, up 4.7% on the previous year. China continues to add coal-fired power plants within its borders, bringing forty-one gigawatts of coal power on line in 2020 alone, which accounted for seventy-five percent of the global total.

In order to continue to secure our energy needs and consumer goods from overseas, our dollar needs to remain high. There is currently a global energy crisis and oil has now gone through USD 90 per barrel. In the US the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell only needs to talk about interest rate rises for the USD to go up, while in New Zealand it takes actual increases in the OCR for us just to tread water. At the moment 1 NZD is worth only 0.66 USD, and the value of our currency has been sliding. With the appearance of strong inflation globally, printing money or borrowing heavily is not going to do anything for the strength of our currency or help us tackle inflation.

Basically the only things we produce as a nation are dairy products, Kiwifruit, meat, and raw logs. We don't have a sophisicated economy and we don't have the wealth of mineral resources that many other nations have. We store our wealth in property - which is highly illiquid - and have one of the largest housing bubbles in the world. We are highly vulnerable to credit downgrades by the big ratings agencies due to the 'all eggs in one basket' approach we have taken to making houses our main investment vehicle.

[Logen Ninefingers]

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...ue-capture-tax

Properties around Auckland's light rail likely to face 'value capture' tax
Glenn McConnell and Todd Niall
13:13, Jan 28 2022

Auckland’s light rail will cost more than $14 billion, and the Government is considering taxing landowners along its route to help pay for it.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson said they were investigating a “value capture” tax, to take a cut from property owners looking to make “a windfall” from land along the proposed Auckland Light Rail corridor.

The Government had not yet settled on how to implement a value capture scheme. Auckland Light Rail’s business case suggested a $1000 annual levy on properties around the stations, which could be deferred until when those properties were sold.

[dobby41]

When wages go up they will look to machines which is great -- higher productivity at long last.

There is truth in that.
One of the issues we have with productivity was that it is easier to employ cheap labour than mechanise.
The situation now may finally push some progress.

[Logen Ninefingers]

There is truth in that.
One of the issues we have with productivity was that it is easier to employ cheap labour than mechanise.
The situation now may finally push some progress.

People losing their jobs to machines is not exactly going to help with employment and financial stability

[Panda-NZ-]

There is truth in that.
One of the issues we have with productivity was that it is easier to employ cheap labour than mechanise.
The situation now may finally push some progress.

Yes and there's all these tax benefits to it -- no gst, depreciation, no CGT.

Still not worth it when there's cheap as chips labour available.

[artemis]

There is truth in that.
One of the issues we have with productivity was that it is easier to employ cheap labour than mechanise.
The situation now may finally push some progress.

Depends. New Zealand has made great progress in robotics in horticulture. Still small here on a global scale so harder to justify cost though starting to sell overseas where volumes can be huge, eg apple packers. But as you say if wages rise, costs fall a bit and if insufficient labour is available anyway, machines will become more viable. Still going to be a lot more economical to outsource and import most manufactured items though.

There is also the option of turning to planting trees for the carbon credits and reducing costs a whole lot. Sad but happening.