The New Zealand Government has announced in its Budget statement for the last two years that it expects to balance its books by 2014. This seems increasingly unlikely. Like a sunny weather forecast that is corrected as the storm approaches, the Government has been revising its numbers as 2014 approaches. Last year the Government spent nearly 1/3 more than it took in revenue. This year it is projecting still to spend more than 20% more than it takes in revenue and the numbers are still getting worse.
The main problem with the Government's financial outlook is that it is dependent on economic growth. Last year the Minister of Finance was saying GDP growth would reach around 4% by 2014. This seems increasingly optimistic. Our current GDP growth is around 1% and even that is dependent on the highest commodity prices New Zealand has ever experienced. Commodity prices are starting to decline and the trend is likely to accelerate. Add to this the fact that Europe and the United States are still in the grips of economic stagnation in spite of a very tentative recovery in consumer spending and jobs and you have a very risky economic scenario for New Zealand.
The Government has proclaimed that it expects the Christchurch earthquake to add 1.25% to economic growth every year from 2012 to 2016, which is based on a economic misunserstanding known as the broken window fallacy. Rebuilding Christchurch only diverts investment from other potentially more productive areas of the economy and adds costs to everyone (look at the rise in your insurance premiums this year, if you don't believe me).
I am normally an optimistic person but I am more pessimistic about New Zealand's immediate economic prospects than I have been since the late 1980s. If everything goes our way, we may have a modest economic recovery over the next few years, but it won't see the 4% economic growth by 2014 the Government hopes for. And if the world economy does not recover strongly and if commodity prices continue to fall, we will see a significant worsening of our terms of trade with a consequential negative impact on every area of our economy.
New Zealanders need to prepare for very tough economic times ahead.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
Time to Abandon Fraudulent ACC Scheme
New Zealand has a socialised accident compensation scheme run by a government agency called ACC. Originally intended as a workers accident compensation insurance fund, ACC has become anything but. What it has really become is a parallel welfare system and an attractive prospect for those who think that someone else should support them.
There are several aspects of the scheme that, in my view, make it inherently corrupt.
The first is that when it was introduced, the right to redress for injury under common law was prohibited. This has led to a culture of non-accountability in New Zealand. Criminals can assault with little prospect of financial penalty for their actions, likewise negligent employers and traders have little incentive to ensure the safety of their workers and customers.
The second is that its original purpose seems to have been turned on its head. It is now, in my experience, almost impossible to get compensation for a genuine work-related injury. The only time I have tried to claim compensation in recent years (a small claim for physiotherapy on a neck injury) I was actually told that if I had incurred the injury on the sports field or the skifield I would be able to claim but because I got the injury at work, I couldn't.
The third issue is that it is hideously expensive. Premiums for employers and self-employed peope are supposedly based on risk factors. But I have a sedentary, office-bound profession and the only injury I have ever incurred is the one mentioned above. Yet my premium, at around $4000 per annum, is twice what it costs me for full health insurance for my family, a policy on which we frequently make claims. In my case it is money for absolutely nothing.
The scheme is meant to be user-pays but it seems to be selectively so. Motor cycle riders are charged around $400 a year on top of their vehicle registration as an ACC contribution but bicyclists (or rugby players, to take another example) are charged nothing. My premiums must be going to subsidise others who are in genuinely higher risk categories than me and I suspect the portion of premiums paid out of taxes for non-workers and non-work injuries does not cover anything like the true cost of these claim.
The worst thing about it all is the scheme's dishonesty. It is not, and never has been, an accident insurance scheme. What it is really is a parallel welfare system funded by an additional dollop of tax on the most productive is society and it allows the NZ Government to hide this extra tax under the pretence of an insurance scheme. It is dishonestly abused by work-shy layabouts, who are occasionally exposed on video as perfectly capable of working when they have been drawing accident compensation payments for years.
It is time we abolished the pretence of this fraudulent scheme and returned to private insurance provision and the right to seek redress in the courts.
There are several aspects of the scheme that, in my view, make it inherently corrupt.
The first is that when it was introduced, the right to redress for injury under common law was prohibited. This has led to a culture of non-accountability in New Zealand. Criminals can assault with little prospect of financial penalty for their actions, likewise negligent employers and traders have little incentive to ensure the safety of their workers and customers.
The second is that its original purpose seems to have been turned on its head. It is now, in my experience, almost impossible to get compensation for a genuine work-related injury. The only time I have tried to claim compensation in recent years (a small claim for physiotherapy on a neck injury) I was actually told that if I had incurred the injury on the sports field or the skifield I would be able to claim but because I got the injury at work, I couldn't.
The third issue is that it is hideously expensive. Premiums for employers and self-employed peope are supposedly based on risk factors. But I have a sedentary, office-bound profession and the only injury I have ever incurred is the one mentioned above. Yet my premium, at around $4000 per annum, is twice what it costs me for full health insurance for my family, a policy on which we frequently make claims. In my case it is money for absolutely nothing.
The scheme is meant to be user-pays but it seems to be selectively so. Motor cycle riders are charged around $400 a year on top of their vehicle registration as an ACC contribution but bicyclists (or rugby players, to take another example) are charged nothing. My premiums must be going to subsidise others who are in genuinely higher risk categories than me and I suspect the portion of premiums paid out of taxes for non-workers and non-work injuries does not cover anything like the true cost of these claim.
The worst thing about it all is the scheme's dishonesty. It is not, and never has been, an accident insurance scheme. What it is really is a parallel welfare system funded by an additional dollop of tax on the most productive is society and it allows the NZ Government to hide this extra tax under the pretence of an insurance scheme. It is dishonestly abused by work-shy layabouts, who are occasionally exposed on video as perfectly capable of working when they have been drawing accident compensation payments for years.
It is time we abolished the pretence of this fraudulent scheme and returned to private insurance provision and the right to seek redress in the courts.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Maori must take responsibility
The following is, for the most part, a comment I posted on Lindsay Mitchell's blog Tip of the iceberg about the over-representation of Maori in crime, child abuse and welfare dependency. Her posting was prompted by the conviction of a young Maori man, Raurangi Mark Marino, for the rape of a 5 year girl in a camping ground in Turangi, New Zealand. Marino's father and mother are members of the criminal, violent (and predominantly Maori) gangs Black Power and the Mongrel Mob that are known to use rape as an rite of passage for young inductees.
In her post, Lindsay quoted Peter Buck, one of the most prominent Maori leaders of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, who said:
“The [Maori] communism of the past meant industry, training in arms, good physique, the keeping of the law, the sharing of the tribal burden, and the preservation of life. The communism of today means indolence, sloth, decay of racial vigour, the crushing of individual effort, the spreading of introduced infections, diseases, and the many evils that are petrifying his advance.”
The following (with minor edits) is what I said in response to Lindsay's posting.
The sorry state of Maori today, filling the courts and prisons for violent crime, overwhelmingly dependent on welfare and failing to perform by almost any accepted aspirational and moral measure, is a huge indictment on the resurgent Maori tribalism and the billions of dollars thrown at them by successive governments.
The problem is, I think, partly that Peter Buck and many contemporary apologists for Maori performance have got it wrong. Maori 'communism' (and I think that is a good term) in the past may have been about "the keeping of the law, the sharing of the tribal burden, and the preservation of life," but it was also about preserving a brutal, paternalistic, cannibalistic, genocidal Stone Age society with little going for it except for some fine primitive art. Black Power and the Mongrel Mob are the precise modern expression of this culture.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that a young Maori man brought up in such a culture feels it is acceptable to rape a 5 year girl because, as gut-wrenching as this crime is to you and I, it pales into insignificance compared to the wholesale female infanticide that was practiced by Maori society prior to the establishment of British rule.
The answer is not more Maori tribalism, tradition and culture, nor more handouts. Such policies are just producing more disaffected Maori youth who believe it is their right to take anything they want by force, even the innocence of a 5 year old girl. The answer is that Maori must be forced to take individual responsibility for being productive, moral members of society. The sooner Maori themselves and New Zealanders generally realise this, the better.
In her post, Lindsay quoted Peter Buck, one of the most prominent Maori leaders of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, who said:
“The [Maori] communism of the past meant industry, training in arms, good physique, the keeping of the law, the sharing of the tribal burden, and the preservation of life. The communism of today means indolence, sloth, decay of racial vigour, the crushing of individual effort, the spreading of introduced infections, diseases, and the many evils that are petrifying his advance.”
The following (with minor edits) is what I said in response to Lindsay's posting.
The sorry state of Maori today, filling the courts and prisons for violent crime, overwhelmingly dependent on welfare and failing to perform by almost any accepted aspirational and moral measure, is a huge indictment on the resurgent Maori tribalism and the billions of dollars thrown at them by successive governments.
The problem is, I think, partly that Peter Buck and many contemporary apologists for Maori performance have got it wrong. Maori 'communism' (and I think that is a good term) in the past may have been about "the keeping of the law, the sharing of the tribal burden, and the preservation of life," but it was also about preserving a brutal, paternalistic, cannibalistic, genocidal Stone Age society with little going for it except for some fine primitive art. Black Power and the Mongrel Mob are the precise modern expression of this culture.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that a young Maori man brought up in such a culture feels it is acceptable to rape a 5 year girl because, as gut-wrenching as this crime is to you and I, it pales into insignificance compared to the wholesale female infanticide that was practiced by Maori society prior to the establishment of British rule.
The answer is not more Maori tribalism, tradition and culture, nor more handouts. Such policies are just producing more disaffected Maori youth who believe it is their right to take anything they want by force, even the innocence of a 5 year old girl. The answer is that Maori must be forced to take individual responsibility for being productive, moral members of society. The sooner Maori themselves and New Zealanders generally realise this, the better.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Is the Left-wing Media Consensus Finally Cracking?
I often blog about the state of the mainstream media, a favourite bugbear of mine. I have complained in the past that the media in most Western countries, and in New Zealand in particular, is facile, politically biased and dishonest in hiding its real motives behind a hypocritical, holier-than-thou cloak of journalistic integrity. Major global news organisations like the BBC and CNN are among the worst offenders, taking strong advocacy positions on issues of the day such as climate change and Middle Eastern politics without the slightest concern for impartiality. The editorial views of such organisations are invariably left-wing - the answer to any problem is always strong, paternalistic, government intervention and individual rights are always dispensible. Sure, they pay lip service to "human rights" but they are always selective about whose rights they are supporting. The rights of Palestinian Arabs, for example, are deemed worthy of their support, those of Syrian protesters just a few hundred miles away, not so much (or those of Israeli families to enjoy life free of missile attacks). Of course, there are a few news organisations that take a more right-wing stance such as Fox News in the United States, but these are very much in the minority and in recent years they have become shrill advocates of religious conservativism rather than supporters of the small-government, maximum individual responsibility views of classical liberals like me.
There have been a couple of promising signs recently that the predominatly Socialist/statist/big-government consensus in the mainstream media is cracking. On climate change, for example, the views of the many reputable scientists who question the consensus of catastrophic, man-made, global warming are finally getting some coverage in outlets previously staunch in their promotion of warmist propanganda - for example, this article in The Independent about Richard Lindzen's speech to a public meeting in the British House of Commons. Even the Guardian, known for its overwhelmingly left-wing stance on all issues, recently reported in this article that the British public doesn't buy the continued expansion of the welfare state. Here in New Zealand, I was surprised to see this opinion piece in The New Zealand Herald questioning why hardworking taxpayers should continue to pay taxes to support unworthy "work-shy drones" (hat tip to Lindsay Mitchell for bringing my attention to this).
I suppose a swallow doesn't make a summer but the signs are encouraging. Perhaps a new wave of young journalists is finally questioning the years of brainwashing they received at the hands of Gramsci-ite journalism school lecturers, or perhaps editors are becoming concerned about their falling circulation figures and are realising they are out of step with mainstream public opinion. I do not know the answer but it is encouraging to see we are finally getting a small degree of balance in the reporting of such issues by major news outlets.
There have been a couple of promising signs recently that the predominatly Socialist/statist/big-government consensus in the mainstream media is cracking. On climate change, for example, the views of the many reputable scientists who question the consensus of catastrophic, man-made, global warming are finally getting some coverage in outlets previously staunch in their promotion of warmist propanganda - for example, this article in The Independent about Richard Lindzen's speech to a public meeting in the British House of Commons. Even the Guardian, known for its overwhelmingly left-wing stance on all issues, recently reported in this article that the British public doesn't buy the continued expansion of the welfare state. Here in New Zealand, I was surprised to see this opinion piece in The New Zealand Herald questioning why hardworking taxpayers should continue to pay taxes to support unworthy "work-shy drones" (hat tip to Lindsay Mitchell for bringing my attention to this).
I suppose a swallow doesn't make a summer but the signs are encouraging. Perhaps a new wave of young journalists is finally questioning the years of brainwashing they received at the hands of Gramsci-ite journalism school lecturers, or perhaps editors are becoming concerned about their falling circulation figures and are realising they are out of step with mainstream public opinion. I do not know the answer but it is encouraging to see we are finally getting a small degree of balance in the reporting of such issues by major news outlets.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
2011 in Review
2011 has been an interesting year.
Early in the year we had the second severe earthquake in Christchurch and this one killed nearly two hundred and left the city with massive destruction. The earthquake was instructive not so much in terms of what it taught us about the impact of such a seismic event on buildings and lives (which was pretty predictable) but in what it taught us about the behaviour of our Government in such a situation. The dust had barely settled before they had deployed troops and armoured personnel carriers on the streets of Christchurch and were arresting and prosecuting property owners for attempting to gain access to their own properties. Clearly John Key's Government has no respect for individual liberty and property rights.
A month after the Christchurch earthquake, Japan suffered a much more devastating one combined with a tsunami that killed more than fifteen thousand people. In spite of its much greater impact, Japan is well advanced with its reconstruction effort. In the meantime, our national and local governments continue to dither and obstruct those who want to rebuild their lives in Christchurch.
During the year it became blatantly obvious that "spend and hope" economic policies were never going to lift the Western world out of recession. Certainly it is hard to see how more of the same medicine that caused the crisis will cure it. In New Zealand our Government is spending $18B this year more than it takes in revenue, despite increasing consumption taxes and many government charges. Our minister of finance promises we will return to government fiscal surpluses by 2014 but given his projections are based on 4% economic growth and our current rate is about 1%, this seems like very wishful thinking. In the meantime, various ignoramuses camped in parks around the world, under the "Occupy Wall Street" banner, have chosen to scapegoat bankers as the cause of all the world's problems in a slanderous campaign that is reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that the Nazis used to rally political support in the 1930s.
Governments around the world continued to erode the rights of their citizens with ever more instrusive security and surveillance laws in the name of the so-called War Against Terror. The least you can say for the panjandrums involved is that they are relatively indiscriminate in their abuse of citizens, as this report of the US TSA's actions attests. The US Government finally killed Osama Bin Laden but if the Al Qaeda leader's aim was to destroy the liberties that Westerners enjoy, then he has certainly achieved what he set out to do.
Late in the year we had an election and New Zealanders chose to re-elect John Key's National Government in coalition with a motley bunch that including a former National Party minister who was standing for a party whose principles he clearly does not believe in, a former Labour Party minister who jumps in bed with whichever party will give him a seat in cabinet, and a party based on the racist principle that Maori deserve preferential treatment in our society. I cannot see John Key's appeal as he and his government seem to me to be entirely without any political principles.
The political finale of the year was the death of Kim Jong Il, the nutcase who has ruled North Korea since the death of his father who was the previous nutcase leader of that country. Kim Jong Il managed to annoint his third son as his successor, the sole selection criteria apparently being that the third one was the only of his sons who was not mentally handicapped or gay. It is a sad indictment on humanity that we still have such tyrants as leaders of a significant number of countries.
And finally, we have this incident to greet us a few days before Christmas - an horrific crime against a defenseless 5 year old girl in a New Zealand campground. It is no surprise that locals report the perpetrator may be a member of the Mongrel Mob - a predominantly Maori gang whom the authorities treat as a welfare organisation rather than the violent, drug-running, raping bunch of thugs it really is.
On that depressing note, I wish you all a very safe and pleasant Christmas and all the best for 2012.
Early in the year we had the second severe earthquake in Christchurch and this one killed nearly two hundred and left the city with massive destruction. The earthquake was instructive not so much in terms of what it taught us about the impact of such a seismic event on buildings and lives (which was pretty predictable) but in what it taught us about the behaviour of our Government in such a situation. The dust had barely settled before they had deployed troops and armoured personnel carriers on the streets of Christchurch and were arresting and prosecuting property owners for attempting to gain access to their own properties. Clearly John Key's Government has no respect for individual liberty and property rights.
A month after the Christchurch earthquake, Japan suffered a much more devastating one combined with a tsunami that killed more than fifteen thousand people. In spite of its much greater impact, Japan is well advanced with its reconstruction effort. In the meantime, our national and local governments continue to dither and obstruct those who want to rebuild their lives in Christchurch.
During the year it became blatantly obvious that "spend and hope" economic policies were never going to lift the Western world out of recession. Certainly it is hard to see how more of the same medicine that caused the crisis will cure it. In New Zealand our Government is spending $18B this year more than it takes in revenue, despite increasing consumption taxes and many government charges. Our minister of finance promises we will return to government fiscal surpluses by 2014 but given his projections are based on 4% economic growth and our current rate is about 1%, this seems like very wishful thinking. In the meantime, various ignoramuses camped in parks around the world, under the "Occupy Wall Street" banner, have chosen to scapegoat bankers as the cause of all the world's problems in a slanderous campaign that is reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that the Nazis used to rally political support in the 1930s.
Governments around the world continued to erode the rights of their citizens with ever more instrusive security and surveillance laws in the name of the so-called War Against Terror. The least you can say for the panjandrums involved is that they are relatively indiscriminate in their abuse of citizens, as this report of the US TSA's actions attests. The US Government finally killed Osama Bin Laden but if the Al Qaeda leader's aim was to destroy the liberties that Westerners enjoy, then he has certainly achieved what he set out to do.
Late in the year we had an election and New Zealanders chose to re-elect John Key's National Government in coalition with a motley bunch that including a former National Party minister who was standing for a party whose principles he clearly does not believe in, a former Labour Party minister who jumps in bed with whichever party will give him a seat in cabinet, and a party based on the racist principle that Maori deserve preferential treatment in our society. I cannot see John Key's appeal as he and his government seem to me to be entirely without any political principles.
The political finale of the year was the death of Kim Jong Il, the nutcase who has ruled North Korea since the death of his father who was the previous nutcase leader of that country. Kim Jong Il managed to annoint his third son as his successor, the sole selection criteria apparently being that the third one was the only of his sons who was not mentally handicapped or gay. It is a sad indictment on humanity that we still have such tyrants as leaders of a significant number of countries.
And finally, we have this incident to greet us a few days before Christmas - an horrific crime against a defenseless 5 year old girl in a New Zealand campground. It is no surprise that locals report the perpetrator may be a member of the Mongrel Mob - a predominantly Maori gang whom the authorities treat as a welfare organisation rather than the violent, drug-running, raping bunch of thugs it really is.
On that depressing note, I wish you all a very safe and pleasant Christmas and all the best for 2012.
Friday, December 9, 2011
The Morality of Welfare
This blog incorporates the comments I posted on Karl du Fresne's blog this week. Karl posted about a documentary that aired on TV3 during the last week of the New Zealand general election campaign (and of course TV3's timing was not coincidental - it was just part of their on-going pro-Labour, pro-Greens editorial campaign). I didn't see the documentary but in Karl's view it was "very one-sided", presenting the "message...that the welfare state has failed our poor."
This sort of overtly left-wing polemic always tries to cast the rest of us (i.e. those other than the 'deserving poor') as uncaring and immoral. How could we in good conscience possibly let one child anywhere go hungry? It never asks the same question of the parents and extended families of such children, assuming that they must be victims of circumstances like their children.
Those who oppose further extension to the already ubiquitous welfare state, and who oppose further taxation increases to pay for it, are often put on the back foot by such arguments. They seldom challenge the de facto position that there is no moral argument that could possibly be put forward to justify less state intervention in the welfare of poor children.
Well, I am not afraid of entering the moral debate on the side of the oppressed taxpayer. My comments on Karl's blog follow.
I guess you could call the welfare state 'compulsory altruism', if that is not too much of an oxymoron. The system of taxation and redistribution through welfare is enforced by the state's exclusive legal mandate to use violence (and if you don't believe this, then let's make taxation voluntary tomorrow and see what happens).
So, the moral argument in regards to welfare is whether it is right for the state to threaten and use violence against some people to force them to support others (whether such people are deserving or not may change the weight of the argument but not the principle).
I believe that a rational, moral society is one where families and communities look after those less fortunate than themselves. I also believe that a rational, moral society is one where no man or woman is forced to work for the benefit of another (or another's children).
I don't believe these two things are mutually exclusive, but so long as the taxation and welfare system is based on the threat of violence, it will lack any real moral mandate in my view, no matter how many heart-rending documentaries appear on TV.
Forcing people to work for someone else's benefit is slavery. The needs of others do not justify this slavery no matter how compelling that need. The only choice we have is to submit to the slavery or join the ranks of those benefiting from the corrupt welfare system. The system may make most New Zealanders feel like they are part of a 'caring society' but we should not pretend it is anything other than extortion based on the threat of violence. It is certainly not moral.
This sort of overtly left-wing polemic always tries to cast the rest of us (i.e. those other than the 'deserving poor') as uncaring and immoral. How could we in good conscience possibly let one child anywhere go hungry? It never asks the same question of the parents and extended families of such children, assuming that they must be victims of circumstances like their children.
Those who oppose further extension to the already ubiquitous welfare state, and who oppose further taxation increases to pay for it, are often put on the back foot by such arguments. They seldom challenge the de facto position that there is no moral argument that could possibly be put forward to justify less state intervention in the welfare of poor children.
Well, I am not afraid of entering the moral debate on the side of the oppressed taxpayer. My comments on Karl's blog follow.
I guess you could call the welfare state 'compulsory altruism', if that is not too much of an oxymoron. The system of taxation and redistribution through welfare is enforced by the state's exclusive legal mandate to use violence (and if you don't believe this, then let's make taxation voluntary tomorrow and see what happens).
So, the moral argument in regards to welfare is whether it is right for the state to threaten and use violence against some people to force them to support others (whether such people are deserving or not may change the weight of the argument but not the principle).
I believe that a rational, moral society is one where families and communities look after those less fortunate than themselves. I also believe that a rational, moral society is one where no man or woman is forced to work for the benefit of another (or another's children).
I don't believe these two things are mutually exclusive, but so long as the taxation and welfare system is based on the threat of violence, it will lack any real moral mandate in my view, no matter how many heart-rending documentaries appear on TV.
Forcing people to work for someone else's benefit is slavery. The needs of others do not justify this slavery no matter how compelling that need. The only choice we have is to submit to the slavery or join the ranks of those benefiting from the corrupt welfare system. The system may make most New Zealanders feel like they are part of a 'caring society' but we should not pretend it is anything other than extortion based on the threat of violence. It is certainly not moral.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Launch of Mars Rover Trumps Political Mediocrity
I could get quite depressed at the outcome of New Zealand's general election - a triumph of mediocrity if I've ever seen it. But it is a lovely Sunday morning in Wellington and news has come through of the successful launch of NASA's Curiosity mission to Mars. This incredibly advanced robotic rover, if it lands successfully on Mars, will significantly push forward our understanding of the Red Planet and whether any form of life is, or has been, sustainable there.
Amongst the self-indulgent political squabbles, the economic problems that beset the Western world, and the trivialisation of serious issues by the media, such news sticks out like a beacon of hope. Mankind continues to push forward with the use of its intelligence to make better tools that will one day take that intelligence into deep space. This news should cheer the most cynical of us.
Amongst the self-indulgent political squabbles, the economic problems that beset the Western world, and the trivialisation of serious issues by the media, such news sticks out like a beacon of hope. Mankind continues to push forward with the use of its intelligence to make better tools that will one day take that intelligence into deep space. This news should cheer the most cynical of us.
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