Quote Originally Posted by Bjauck View Post
What if part of the solution "to fix attitudes" is to broaden the tax base to include those taxes (and maybe others you also dislike?) to encourage investment into taxable income producing and employment stimulating areas. You have already excluded that part of any solution?

Have you got links to the studies that conclude that NZ has higher proportion of people who do not wish to work or are "unemployable" compared with the various Nordic countries?

However I agree. NZ does need to look at the appropriate and relevant education and vocational training, underlying socio-economic causes, underlying taxation issues and other systemic issues behind any non-engagement in NZ society. It would be great to have actual policies that address these issues head-on instead of their coming to grief against the powerful block of vested interests?
Bjauck you are making huge assumptions about my position on taxes. I am all for fair taxes to maintain a good and FAIR social system.

But in response to your question, no I do not have any links to "studies" on differences between Nordic countries and NZ. I have interests in both a Nordic country and in NZ and trust myself to see the difference, I don't need studies to tell me about it. And the typical Leftie response is that we need to increase wages to get people to work. While that is partly true because our benefits are very high and not much incentive to work, it is not true that the jobs available are all low paying. In my industry (fishing), we can no longer crew vessels with reliable good Kiwi workers. An 18 yo unqualified but hard worker, could get a job in our industry tomorrow if they'd want to go away for 6 weeks at a time. 6 weeks on and 6 weeks off and earn $35-50k a year for 6 months work. But no, going away for a weekend is beyond what they're prepared to do.
Agriculture and horticulture is in the same situation.
I've just come from a couple of weeks trip around the bottom of the South Island. I made a point of talking to pub, hotel and tourism business owners along the way. They are ALL complaining about the lack of reliable workers available and some were working much longer hours than they wanted themselves, because they can not get workers.

So I'm sorry to hear you need some studies to prove this to you. Open your eyes and have a look for yourself. The situation in NZ today is outrageous. Stop making excuses for it.