*yawn* Is alive

[theVOID]

I like to bait, its one of things that people get pissed off about me.

My political allegiance differs by country and issues. I never vote Labour (vote Green instead), in the US I would be aligned with the Republicans, not due to religion or civil rights but due to their more radical economic thinking, and more due to the fact only the Republicans and Democrats have the real power over the system.

Greens? I'd vote for them if they stayed the fuck out of social issues, if the environment was truly their priority they wouldn't get involved in social policy, doing so ultimately hurts the movement, I did a post on this about a year ago.

As for John Key, I don't like him purely because he was popular.

That's completely irrational.

My favorite politicians are unpopular, and think and act for themselves, it was no surprise that I liked Helen Clark over John Key.

Umm... Helen Clark was EXTREMELY popular... That's how she got through 3 terms.

1. Borrowing money is the best option, alongside building up infrastructure

The benefits of debt funded infrastructure are extremely overrated, was it the case that it was a sure win every country in the world would be doing it constantly, they don't however, and projects like "the bridge to nowhere" are shining examples of the potential failures.

Also, getting into more debt to stimulate the economy is basically nothing more than offsetting the costs for short term gains, you might create jobs and give money to local manufacturers but that project has to generate or facilitate the costs plus interest, when we're already $253 billion in debt and running a 15 billion dollar deficit, and that is with teaser interest rates...

and massive immigration (a strategy that worked successfully for NZ in the 19th century by all accounts),

That's completely off base, firstly, borrowing to stimulate the economy loses most of it's few potential benefits as soon as the labour force is imported, the biggest advantage in the short term (and what makes the risk and debt arguable) is the lowering of unemployment that generates tax revenue (which is realistically just the government reacquiring some of it's debt) and cuts the need for welfare (which is actually cheaper than government 'stimulus' jobs unless the project is economically beneficial). Secondly, there is more immigration in times of surpluses when the demand for workers is greater than what the national labour force can provide.

cutting is not a proven strategy just like spending all you can.

The aim of cutting is to get rid of the deficit so we can get out of debt, it's 100% proven to do that...

There are plenty of people willing to come to NZ and improve the country but the government bares the door.

There are plenty more people right here who need work, we should only be allowing immigrants with specialist low-supply skills at the moment.

The worst possible way to get out of it is to borrow or cut, and when things get worse you can guess which party becomes unpopular and gets the boot.

You have to do one or the other, cutting is a guaranteed way to remove the deficit, borrowing is a huge risk that usually backfires and increases the deficit, we can't stay in debt forever either, eventually we're going to have to pay it back and at much higher interest rates than at present.

2. Labour AND National. I wouldn't put it on a single party. But for a while now (1970s onwards) public and private debt has been steadily increasing faster than the GDP is growing, so the problem has been ignored for a while and reared its ugly head in the last few years. Labour had its mess of a deal with Toll NZ that is true, but its the fault of the bureaucracy, not Labour that there was a budget blowout before the recession.

Exactly why I'm small government, bureaucracy is far less efficient than private spending, we should get the government out of everything we can.

3. Westpac is the governments principle/main banker, a bank in individual terms owns you if you have a loan with them you can't outright repay, the same with the New Zealand government in its position with Westpac, and it has the NZ government in a perfection position, to rape NZ dry (if it wants to), they may lend money but at a much higher interest rate than say if the debt was divided up among multiple banks in several countries or even among several different Australian banks. NZ is in a worse position than the US in this respect.

Being in debt doesn't in any way mean you are owned by another person, it means you are obligated to return them what you've borrowed. If we were to default on our loan we'd have to go through something like Ireland is going through right now, sell state assets and cut spending radically - We're much better off doing it gradually now while we still have the opportunity.

Westpac doesn't even own a majortiy of our national debt, our currency is held by banks, hedge funds and other nations, the UK owns 7.8%, Japan owns 7.1%, Australia in total owns 6.8% - Perhaps half of what Australia owns is in Westpac... if that.

NZ is in nowhere near as bad a position as the US, they so much money that they would completely collapse without more loans, some time soon China, Japan etc are going to stop buying their debt and the US will have to print money to pay the interest rates - That will cause inflation to rise even further, wiping out the value of the dollar and increasing prices and subsequently the cost of living.

Also, having debt across multiple sources doesn't make bugger all difference, everything ultimately balances around the global reserve currency, the US Dollar.

4. I never said taxpayer money would go into it, developer money would. Right now the land would be cheap (in comparison to pre-Earthquake levels), and with enough manipulation of local councils and buying out of residents a few areas of inner city land could be bought for the right price. Christchurch will be lost to overseas developers and loose its charm is what I meant, plus unless he plans massive state housing programs or provides jobs for people in Christchurch in the interim period (both would add billions on to debt) then the lower class will have to leave Christchurch, if he pushes through the ideas on cutting welfare then its guaranteed.

Great, let people invest, we need it, the whole country needs it, the cost is people live further out of the city? So be it.

Government is too easily manipulated, that's why they need less power to begin with, so they can't be manipulated to create favourable conditions.

State housing = shit housing. Realistically most people have home insurance (all the sensible ones anyway) so private insurance will account for the bulk of it - The best thing government can do in this regard is to remove regulations and restrictions around building so people can get their homes rebuilt much faster.

How you got from this to "the lower class will have to leave" I don't know, but I smell bullshit. The vast majority won't be going anywhere, the labour jobs created in the city will be mostly going to low income earners, they are the ones who would take the jobs because they're just the unskilled labour they need. And the government is exhausting the $15 billion dollar EQC fund as well as ramping up welfare payments and removing some of the means testing in order to keep people fed and sheltered - If one way of doing that is putting interest back on student loans it's more than a worthwhile compromise.

5. Speculation has always existed, merely regulations were changed in the Reagan years, then under Clinton and then under Bush to make it easier, and John Key joined in 1995 and left to join the US Fed, which many blame for the recent financial crisis (from Michael Moore to Ron Paul, not to mention the entire Republican Party and significant portions of the Democratic Party).

I blame the Fed too for a great portion of it, the government subsidies and guaranteed loans were the other massive contributor, they combined manipulate the markets with no real concern for the actual monetary relationships or the risks in doing so, and I'm not on the same page economically as John key - He's better than Labour and I agree we need to make cuts to spending (to a far larger extent than him) but I don't think he should have borrowed more for his tax cuts and I don't think he should have agreed to bail out failed finance companies.

In 1995, he joined Merrill Lynch as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore. That same year he was promoted to Merrill's global head of foreign exchange, based in London, where he may have earned around US$2.25 million a year including bonuses, which is about NZ$5 million at 2001 exchange rates.[3][8] Some co-workers called him "the smiling assassin" for maintaining his usual cheerfulness while sacking dozens (some say hundreds) of staff after heavy losses from the 1998 Russian financial crisis.[4][8] He was a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1999 to 2001.[9]

His work on the Fed was before the stupidly low interest rates.

6. It decreased by chance, or you are going to have to admit Labour (and previous National) policies improved the economy, and that John Key merely took their work for his own.

What is this referring to? It's hard to keep track when you're putting everything at the end of the post rather than layering quotes like most people.

7. John Key is popular now, but not when the shit really hits the fan, and the unemployment and poverty figures skyrocket in response, companies leave the country, and last but not least everyone starts striking for better wages and welfare the government can't afford to give them. Will merely booting National solve the problem, nope, but if it weakens National and Labour so they are no longer the dominating force in politics (and there are plenty of small parties who would be a breath of fresh air wanting a go) I am all for it.

What makes you think Unemployment and poverty will skyrocket?

People shouldn't expect more when we are broke, it we stopped inflation we could at least ensure that the cost of living remained stable.

I agree small parties need more power, that's why I'm voting Libertarianz.

But to be honest I would never trust or like a banker, accountant, stock broker or market speculator to run a country.

But you'd trust someone with some useless as hell degree in social/political sciences? I'd want someone fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I sure as fuck don't trust Phil Goff, he's an incompetent asshole with a fancy political science degree (which essentially means he's been Keynesian brainwashed) or that fat slut Annette King.

PS: Not saying Helen Clark's Labour govt was perfect, but I doubt NZ would have recovered at all from the 1980s if she hadn't been there.

Helen took Labour to the right more than it had ever been, I think she did a good job transforming the party and essentially removing blanket socialism from the country, still, she managed to destroy the surplass... We had a chance of getting out of debt in the next 20 years for a while there.