On Mon, 06 Jun 2016 17:59:45 +1200, Crash <
nogood@dontbother.invalid>
wrote:
On Sun, 05 Jun 2016 23:55:56 GMT, slaybot@hotmail.com (Newsman) wrote:
On Sun, 05 Jun 2016 15:56:45 -0500, Tony <lizandtony at orcon dot net
dot nz> wrote:
slaybot@hotmail.com (Newsman) wrote:
On Fri, 03 Jun 2016 21:10:54 -0500, Tony <lizandtony at orcon dot net >>>>dot nz> wrote:
slaybot@hotmail.com (Newsman) wrote:
On Thu, 02 Jun 2016 23:41:34 -0500, Tony <lizandtony at orcon dot net >>>>>>dot nz> wrote:
Rich80105<rich80105@hotmail.com> wrote: >>>>>>>>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/31/witnessing-death-neoliberalism-imf-economists?CMP=share_btn_fb
New Zealand is right up there with ideological dogma such as reducing >>>>>>>>the size of the state for the sake of it over-riding common-sense, >>>>>>>Any evidence of that?
leading to our current housing crisis,
I am sure you can provide a causal link between the size of the state and a
localised house issue caused primarily by an inept council so please do so.
Never forget that Auckland Council is the recalcitrant bastard child >>>>>>of the current National government which - now hoist with its own >>>>>>petard - not only planned, designed and created it but then appointed >>>>>>the ultimate turkey, Rodney Hide, to implement it.
The council has been in place more than long enough to have established some
competency - they have failed to do so.
If not Goff, who more competent than Brown? Sack the Council and put >>>>the Commissioners in to build roads and lay sewers? Commissioners to >>>>build more schools and hospitals; and, of course, prisons? Fanciful or >>>>not, that'll take **years** - **and** where're the billions coming
from to pay for it?
There's a fundamental truth that underlies the whole shemozzle, but >>>>it's a truth that dare not speak its name: Whether it be funding by >>>>government or Council, or the burden shared, New Zealand's entrenched, >>>>low-wage GDP combined with its already-existing debt levels means that >>>>it cannot generate sufficient wealth **ever** to underwrite the cost
of repairing and regenerating - let alone expanding - a mess like >>>>Auckland into becoming a "world-class city," whatever that boastful >>>>description may mean. Singapore? Vancouver? Geneva? London? New >>>>York?
Really?
Not a chance. Ever.
Way back, in 1973, the writing appeared right up there on the wall in >>>>capitals 50 feet high. That's right, this is is work that should have >>>>been anticipated and planned at least 40 years ago, with a nationwide >>>>infrastructure introduced in tranches on a progressive basis. It >>>>hasn't happened and it's now far too late. You've missed the boat.
But what else are you entitled to expect after 40 years of
complacency, drift and intellectual indolence, all summed up in >>>>Godzone's proudest amongst all of its self-validating aphorisms:
"She'll be right, mate."
And the pampered-for-life Pontius Pilates in the Beehive - yes, those >>>>elected ladies and gentlemen whom you have entrusted to steward your >>>>country and its fortunes - still don't get it, Hence their band-aid >>>>panic, characterised every single time by their specious blaming and >>>>denigrating, each time the next 'crisis' comes along.
Simply, they're not up to the job. As Tom Frewen once put it, in all >>>>their conceit and cocky arrogance, not one of them would even make it >>>>onto the arse end of a drains board of some French provincial town.
And they know it, as do you.
Maybe and I mean maybe!
Some of what you say is clearly correct, some is worthy of debate.
For instance your opinion of NZ governments, and I assume you mean of all >>>flavours, is an interesting one when compared with most other countries >>>including notably the UK and the USA both of which have struggled and are >>>currently struggling to find decent governance - maybe it is an international
issue.
It is. The global machine has now grown rapidly to the point where it
now dictates to the global workforce. In fact it is now outpacing the >>ability to keep up with it.
That machine is based in the US, and that machine is Technology.
Among dozens of the machine's cogs, the largest and most powerful are >>Google, Microsoft and Apple, hand in hand with the power-to-influence >>mass-communications companies whose technology is supplied by the
Grand Trio. All are US-domiciled. Their sole business is to supply -
and control the supply of - technology to the international trading
and financial corporates whose sole business it is to **extract**
wealth from every country they can and place it at the disposal of the >>corporates' chosen few.
Newsman you do indeed paint a foreboding picture - but it is just a
little out-of-date in some respects. Technology giants come and go -
IBM, EDS, DEC etc. Microsoft is not as dominant as it once was
because of the demise of the PC and laptop in favour of devices that
don't come with Windows. Apple also faces competition from devices
that don't come with IOS but provide equivalent functionality for a
price Apple cannot match. These technology trends have one thing in
common - the new manufacturers are not US-based.
But the die is long since cast.
The manufacurers may be not be US-based (outsourcing), but the
technology is for the most part based in the US. A hiccup here and
there, of course, but the symbiosis works well between them. China is
now even outsourcing to the US because some sectors of US labour have
recently become so cheap.
Now, the business of extracting (**not** creating) wealth requires
only that, when investing in various 'client' nations, global
corporates invest onot one cent more than the minimum needed for their >>operations to provide the return on capital that they and their >>shareholders seek [1]. The smallest possible slice of the profit
(crumbs from the corporate table) is left behind in each country to
provide the minimum wherewithal for it to subsist and survive
sufficiently for it to keep beavering away and not actually expire as
a result of its own exertions. (e.g. McDonald's et al)
Not a recent development. This is the way business operates.
It is, but it is now grossly out of balance (the expanding wealth
gap), only made more egregious when, for example, **foreign** bankers'
bonuses are (partly) calculated on the quantity of client debt they
have succeeded in creating and selling **in New Zealand**. Sobering,
isn't it, to realise those same overseas bonuses are funded by New
Zealanders' labourings?
For New Zealand, the tide of money and earnings is always
outward-flowing. Hence my term, farming NZ for profit, fo that is
exactly what is going on with, it must be agreed, the direct condoning
and connivance of our all-but-foreign-domiciled PM and his mob.
Again, when the credit ratings agencies come calling, their commentary
is from economists employed by the transnational finance industry.
So, when they say New Zealand GDP is doing OK, what they really mean
is that New Zealand financial institutions are doing well. What they
never tell you is **who owns** those financial institutions and in
which country New Zealand's real wealth increase in GDP actually ends
up. Nor will they ever tell us. Why? Because it's an open secret
that these same credit agancies are **paid** by the New Zealand
taxpayer to produced their rating. But even worse, internationally,
the level of that rating is based on the amount they are paid! But
this is the world's least corrupt country so the numbers must be OK
and the process must be OK. Right?
Now take a look at the NZSE to see how NZ's manufacturing/export
sector has shrunk as a percentage of total trading over the years
along with the inexorable rise and rise of local utilities - not
manufacturers - and foreign-owned corporate finance institutions.
One international commentator describes this as 'Strength through >>Exhaustion' - an ironically humorous oxymoron, I agree - but a perfect >>description of New Zealand's self-inflicted economic condundrum.
The result is what we have now, in New Zealand. The few who are doing >>really well are mainly those tabbed by the global corporates as their >>placemen, i.e. executives and members of incumbent governments. The
rest find that, no matter how hard and long they work each day, they
can never seem to get ahead.
So - what of those entrepreneurs who can and do access capital through
new channels such as 'crowdfunding'? The multinational companies have >difficulty in protecting themselves from small startups now because
there are many more options to access capital than in times past.
Of course, but in New Zealand, these instances are but a drop in the
ocean of global finance and financing **which is where the real muscle
and influence lie.** And when the foreign multinationals see any
threat to their dominance they simply out-compete and wipe out the
local minnows, either through under-pricing or by buying them out,
asset stripping them and then promoting their newly trumped-up share
value to greed-driven mug punters with nothing between their ears.
Then, with a wink and a flick of the wrist, they sell out their
over-valued majority holding lock stock and barrel the very next day
to the mug punters and sugar off with the spoils (ref: Oaktree
Capital/Dick Smith, Fay-Richwhite/NZ Rail.)
Crowdfunding? What is a government handout to a foreign operator other
than involuntary crowdfunding from NZ's taxpayers' pockets?
Politicians, no matter how 'competent' or not, are now hostage to
these transnational monoliths and can only do their bidding. They are
no longer self-determining, i.e. in control of their own economies
(even the exercising of their own laws), hence the increasing
appearance of the term, "Loss of Sovereignty" that we hear from so
many quarters. Little New Zealand is nothing more than the
transnational's nice-to-have-and-farm-for-profit back office. It will >>always be this way, the moreso when, as we now have with John Key, New >>Zealand meekly kneels to power, not out of conviction but out of >>fear-induced expediency, as soon as there is even a whiff of danger or
risk to the continuity of its international corporate subjugation (and >>massaging of his adolescent conceits) through the oh-so-generous but
deadly patronage of its global masters.
Doomsday stuff. Why bother if all is lost? Simply because it is not.
Doomsday or not; lost or not, here's a dose of cold, hard reality:
TOTAL DEBT: A tad short of half-a-TRILLION NZ dollars, comprising:
Household debt: $96 Billion
Local government debt: $13 Billion.
Farms debt: c$60 Billion
Business debt: $91 Billion
Collectively, this debt amounts to rather more than $100,000 per man,
woman and child; or about $150,000 per wage-earner.
And it's rising by the hour.
Sustainable and Repayable? What do you think?
Nothing can change or improve until New Zealanders come to their
senses and do what they have always ducked out of because of their institutional fear of examining themselves for what they know they
are: financially illiterate, keep-up-with-the-Joneses spendthrifts,
drunk on debt.
The numbers unequivocally and unambiguously prove it. Twist and turn
how New Zealanders may, this inconvenient truth can never be argued or
fiddled way, even though Key and English may continue to kick their
rusted-out economic can down the road while pulling the wool over 4
million wilfully unseeing eyes. And all of the fear and pain gently
massaged away with a soothing, motherly, "She'll be right, mate."
Then there's this:
"The rest of the OECD envies New Zealand's GDP growth," some pinhead
will crow, but you don't have to dig deeper than a millimetre to find
the truth you always somehow suspected:
It is the **rate of growth** that they envy, yes, but that **rate of
growth** is off just about **the persistently lowest base in the
OECD**. It's like proudly announcing that "Our 16 year-old Jimmy has
doubled his rate of learning his alphabet," when the rest of the class
has long since got Shakespear and Mansfield under their belts.
Unedifying and demeaning, I know, but it's the sort of thing that
happens when the lazy-minded and complacent are in charge and
pandering to the corrosive "She'll be right, mate" mentality.
To say that our current government is lacking the depth necessary is >>>something that could equally be said of all NZ governments in the last 30 years
or more.
The steady and well-documented comparative decline in New Zealand's >>educational standards over the same period parallels this degenerative >>flaw. in fact, in "Prosperity Mislaid," Len Bayliss identifies this >>insidious trend as **the** core factor in New Zealand's comparative
failure to raise its economic game.
We have to do the best we can with what we have;
It's as plain as the nose on your face: 'what we have' isn't up to
snuff.
to do nothing is
surely unacceptable so we must try and the Auckland council is inept so once >>>more I say the government should step in as they did in Christchurch (something
which worked well for a considerable period of time although maybe it is now >>>about the right time to let the city take back the reins).
That's all as may be, but one has to consider that New Zealand's
history of poor decision-making does little if anything to quicken the >>heady pulse occasioned by the 'Brighter Future' mirage that John Key
and the likes of Bill English so vacuously project beyond GodZone's
rapidly fading, culturally monochrome rainbow.
When a one-off city rebuild and an out-of-control housing market in
which Kiwis sell New Zealand to each other, are so dishonestly yet so >>vigorously declaimed by our tops smells as evidence of a usefully >>productive increase in GDP, you know that **they** know, the jig is
up.
So we have no hope then of moving forward Newsman?
But we do!
All it needs is the competence of educated statesmen, not the
snake-oil salesmanship of sleight-of-hand spivs and hucksters.
Tragically, New Zealanders identify with the latter, i.e. the
chancer-larrikin AKA the spiv and the huskster, and his
once-over-lightly upbeat band-aid pragmatism rather than the
hard-yards thinker-statesman with focused economic vision and
strategy. And the polls consistently confirm it.
Continue down this path by all means if Kiwis must, but in their
hearts Kiwis know it cannot possibly end well.
I don't agree with
most of what you say, but engaging in debate is pointless with such a >determined doomsday scenario-painter.
"Blame-anyone-but-me" Kwis are the intellectually indolent architects
of their own economic woes. Had their education system not so
drastically failed them and their intellectual curiosity been
encourged and allowed to develop, they'd never have found themselves
in such a parlous situation.
They've made their bed and none but they deserve the fear and
discomfort that it now increasingly affords them.
[1] It is axiomatic that, in a world where capital is the master,
rewards to labour can never be sufficiently meagre while corporate
dividend can never be enough.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)