Archive for July, 2010

Caring

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Rational and experienced employers care about their workers because they have learned that it is profitable to do so. At the margin, it is often more profitable to train, support and retain someone than to burn them off and start again. And even if you do start again, lessons will have been learned.

The same considerations should apply from the perspective of NZ Inc (if you’ll please pardon that collective noun). The welfare system links wealth/income generators to net beneficiaries, making it rational for the former to care about the latter. Why then is no-one seriously investigating the links between social and economic policy?

In particular:

  1. it would be nice to see the welfare working group (WWG) looking deeply into the reasons for underemployment, from both sides of the relevant markets. I’d expect a complete analysis to end up recommending a combination of sticks and carrots.
  2. and what’s with these Auckland mayoral candidates? Notwithstanding the recent troubles in JohannesChurch,  Auckland surely has the most to lose from inequality-based social unrest, and the most to gain from including and upgrading the skills of poor Aucklanders. So why do none of the candidates even mention social issues, let alone the social/economic links?

Posted in Inequality | No Comments »

Look at it this way Don

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

It seems I was way out of line to suggest that the Feds were OK with the ETS. They didn’t challenge the PM directly (anyone know why?) but at the very same conference, Feds Pres Don Nicolson (left) described the ETS as “a tax from the cradle to the grave”. In fact, it drove him to Obama-style oratary/poetry, with a Kiwi twist:

Its a tax on young families struggling to make ends meet

Its a tax on retirees who watch every penny they spend

Its a tax on students huddling aroung a single bar heater in a Dunedin flat

Its a tax on everybody from a newborn infant to a funeral home

The ETS is a tax from the cradle to the grave

I wish it was a tax. That would have given business much more certainty than having to guess what the carbon price will be, and would therefore have stimulated the making of business decisions. Instead, the effort that should have gone into figuring out how to respond has been diverted into rent-seeking lobbying for special treatment.

But even though its not a tax, the point of the ETS is still to change behaviour. The reality is that NZ signed up to the deal, and that as a consequence we have liabilities (an unpleasant surprise). Now we need to pass those liabilities down to those of us who generate them. Otherwise we will just make things very much worse.

This is a new reality, faced by all Kiwis irrespective of their proximity to cradles/graves. Denial won’t work.

Farmers (me included) need to take a good look at the systems being sold to us. Why have Waikato dairy farms been losing soil carbon at the rate of 700kg/ha (Doesburg, NZH, 9/7/10)? Is it just possible that farming methods that put more emphasis on organic/biological issues could actually be more efficient overall? How confident are we that the agricultural business models that have already devastated Nauru are not going to get us in the end?

Posted in Agriculture, Climate change | No Comments »

Cruising in Christchurch

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

MP Nicky Wagner (left) says “his exhaust was this wide”, while successfully promoting a crackdown on “boy racers” who have been annoying some people in Christchurch by “cruising”.

Maybe you have to be there, but from this distance, I just don’t get it. There seems to be a group of young people in ChCh who take pride in their cars and like to drive around the city in groups, admiring each other. OK, it probably seems weird to many of us, but what exactly is the social harm? I’ve had a reasonable hunt around for a problem definition, without success.

However the bylaw passed by the local Council prohibits “cruising” which is defined as

driving repeatedly in the same direction over the same section of a road in a motor vehicle in a manner that draws attention to the power or sound of the engine of the motor vehicle being driven or creates a convoy that is formed otherwise than in trade and impedes traffic flow.

I don’t see much legal distinction between the “boy racers” who are the target of the bylaw and ordinarly commuters, who also drive “repeatedly in the same direction over the same section of a road in a motor vehicle in a manner that… creates a convoy … and impedes traffic flow”. The caveat that the convoy be “formed otherwise than in trade” is hardly a distinguishing feature because there are surely commercial (trade) flow-ons from the cruising the bylaw is meant to target.

Anyway, this conduct (basically driving around city streets) doesn’t sound terribly naughty to me. Maybe some of the people doing it also break actual laws, but in that case the solution is surely to just enforce those laws.

I wonder how ChCh mayor (sideshow) Bob Parker interprets the fact that someone has now died during enforcement of the bylaw.

Posted in Councils | No Comments »