Loss of Humour- another victim of privatisation policies

Humourless and Passionless in the quest for leadership.

Judith Collins takes aim at the individual's sense of humour as she seeks to privatise all possible personal assets.

The Bellman has been predicting that Judith Collins would reveal her Thatcherite tendencies at some point as the internal feuding for the leadership of the National Party heats up and so it is with her latest demonstration of the problems that the sale of personal and State assets is causing individuals in the National-ACT party.

The Bellman has assured us that Judith Collins was one of the first to embrace the privatisation of personal assets to demonstrate her support for the sale of all of the State assets before the 2014 election.

Apparently Judith Collins sold her sense of humour to Gerry Brownlee in a deal that required Ms Collins to stump up a deal sweetener of a contribution to Gerry's election campaign Vote catching bench plaques. Unfortunately for both Judith and Gerry someone got wind of this inspired strategy and started posting their own versions thus upsetting the Brownlee quest to become the supreme ruler of Christchurch.


When Collins learnt that David Cunliffe had used a series of puns in a humourous blog comment Collins' sale of her sense of humour left her with only one recourse- a vocal demonstration of her belief that she is the only person able and allowed to comment on issues and that anyone who dares hold that belief up to ridicule must be abused and accused of "sexism" or "personality assassination."

Humourless and passionless Judith Collins took the hook and awaits being reeled in.

At the risk of being accused of carping on, but by hoki one cannot help it, one must conclude that her reaction to the Cunliffe fishing puns has revealed two things: (1) that she is quick to snap at a baited hook and will be easily reeled in by a cunning fisherman like Cunliffe and (2) that if she does succeeed in pushing Key and his favoured successor, Joyce, out of the way the New Zealand voters will be subject to a disciplinarian who will remove all sense of fun from the NZ psyche.

Economic Fallacies of the Second Great Depression (Social Europe Journal) that under pin the present Government's policies

Four Fallacies Of The Second Great Depression

21/11/2013 by Robert Skidelsky 1 Comment

Robert Skidelsky

The period since 2008 has produced a plentiful crop of recycled economic fallacies, mostly falling from the lips of political leaders. Here are my four favorites.

The Swabian Housewife. (in NZ read "Waitakere Man" )“One should simply have asked the Swabian housewife,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. “She would have told us that you cannot live beyond your means.”

This sensible-sounding logic currently underpins austerity. The problem is that it ignores the effect of the housewife’s thrift on total demand. If all households curbed their expenditures, total consumption would fall, and so, too, would demand for labor. If the housewife’s husband loses his job, the household will be worse off than before.

The general case of this fallacy is the “fallacy of composition”: what makes sense for each household or company individually does not necessarily add up to the good of the whole. The particular case that John Maynard Keynes identified was the “paradox of thrift”: if everyone tries to save more in bad times, aggregate demand will fall, lowering total savings, because of the decrease in consumption and economic growth.

If the government tries to cut its deficit, households and firms will have to tighten their purse strings, resulting in less total spending. As a result, however much the government cuts its spending, its deficit will barely shrink. And if all countries pursue austerity simultaneously, lower demand for each country’s goods will lead to lower domestic and foreign consumption, leaving all worse off.

The government cannot spend money it does not have. This fallacy – often repeated by British Prime Minister David Cameron – treats governments as if they faced the same budget constraints as households or companies. (in NZ this is the favourite mantra of both Key (the gambler) and English (the "finance" minister) But governments are not like households or companies. They can always get the money they need by issuing bonds.

But won’t an increasingly indebted government have to pay ever-higher interest rates, so that debt-service costs eventually consume its entire revenue? The answer is no: the central bank can print enough extra money to hold down the cost of government debt. This is what so-called quantitative easing does. With near-zero interest rates, most Western governments cannot afford not to borrow.

This argument does not hold for a government without its own central bank, in which case it faces exactly the same budget constraint as the oft-cited Swabian housewife. That is why some eurozone member states got into so much trouble until the European Central Bank rescued them.

The national debt is deferred taxation. According to this oft-repeated fallacy, governments can raise money by issuing bonds, but, because bonds are loans, they will eventually have to be repaid, which can be done only by raising taxes. And, because taxpayers expect this, they will save now to pay their future tax bills. The more the government borrows to pay for its spending today, the more the public saves to pay future taxes, canceling out any stimulatory effect of the extra borrowing.

The problem with this argument is that governments are rarely faced with having to “pay off” their debts. They might choose to do so, but mostly they just roll them over by issuing new bonds. The longer the bonds’ maturities, the less frequently governments have to come to the market for new loans.

More important, when there are idle resources (for example, when unemployment is much higher than normal), the spending that results from the government’s borrowing brings these resources into use. The increased government revenue that this generates (plus the decreased spending on the unemployed) pays for the extra borrowing without having to raise taxes.

The national debt is a burden on future generations. This fallacy is repeated so often that it has entered the collective unconscious. The argument is that if the current generation spends more than it earns, the next generation will be forced to earn more than it spends to pay for it. (this is the favourite mantra of the disappearing ACT party and, on occassions, Key (the money dealer) )

But this ignores the fact that holders of the very same debt will be among the supposedly burdened future generations. Suppose my children have to pay off the debt to you that I incurred. They will be worse off. But you will be better off. This may be bad for the distribution of wealth and income, because it will enrich the creditor at the expense of the debtor, but there will be no net burden on future generations.

The principle is exactly the same when the holders of the national debt are foreigners (as with Greece), though the political opposition to repayment will be much greater.

Economics is luxuriant with fallacies, because it is not a natural science like physics or chemistry. Propositions in economics are rarely absolutely true or false. What is true in some circumstances may be false in others. Above all, the truth of many propositions depends on people’s expectations.

Consider the belief that the more the government borrows, the higher the future tax burden will be. If people act on this belief by saving every extra pound, dollar, or euro that the government puts in their pockets, the extra government spending will have no effect on economic activity, regardless of how many resources are idle. The government must then raise taxes – and the fallacy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So how are we to distinguish between true and false propositions in economics? Perhaps the dividing line should be drawn between propositions that hold only if people expect them to be true and those that are true irrespective of beliefs. The statement, “If we all saved more in a slump, we would all be better off,” is absolutely false. We would all be worse off. But the statement, “The more the government borrows, the more it has to pay for its borrowing,” is sometimes true and sometimes false.

Or perhaps the dividing line should be between propositions that depend on reasonable behavioral assumptions and those that depend on ludicrous ones. If people saved every extra penny of borrowed money that the government spent, the spending would have no stimulating effect. True. But such people exist only in economists’ models.

© Project Syndicate

This cartoon sums up the policy directions of the Key owned National-Act government.

This attitude is the one we have come to expect from John Key... a total lack of moral responsibility in the selfish quest for aggrandisment.

John Key's cold hearted refusal to recognise the responsibility of the State to compensate the families who lost loved ones in the Pike River disaster and  the recent appearance of the Jammy-Lea Ross / Ports of Auckland / Slater-Lusk framed anti-worker, anti-Union bill and the up-coming Simian Bridges created Employment law amendments are a reflection of the attitudes expressed by this pointed cartoon.

Those that drive companies into the ground and then demand and receive a taxpayer funded bail out are those"entitled" to a golden deluge rewarding them for their incompetence while those that work and positively contribute to the economy are to be squeezed and vilified for daring to claim and fight for protection and their rights.

The attitude of Key to the families of Pike River reflects the beliefs of the complaining "Banker" in this cartoon.

"Democracy is such a waste of time and money." John Key

This is typical of John (Pinokeyo) Key.

The latest demonstration of Key's belief that democracy is a waste of time, a waste of money and should be ignored in the interests of asset stripping New Zealand is shown by his cynical decision to sell off Air New Zealand and, no doubt have Genesis Energy on the block, before the Citizens Initiated Referendum opposing the Sale of New Zealand's Assets to foreign asset strippers.

"What? Me worry about democracy? Never, as long as I can flog off the State Assets and even reward the asset strippers with a cheque to help them buy I'm happy." John Key.

And this lot don't even sing in tune except when it comes to pillaging the State.

Nats resurrect the ghosts of 1932 and 1951 as Jami-Lee's Bill is defeated.

Massey's Cossacks used to attack strking workers in 1913... resurrected by Botany MP, Jami-Lee Ross.

The close won defeat of the Ports of Auckland inspired anti-worker bill, sponsored by the often unseen Botany MP, Jami-Lee Ross, should be seen as a brief flicker of sanity in a Parliament that has been held in a time warp that alternates between the mid nineteenth century and the McCarthyite madness of the 1950s ever since the election of the Key-Joyce dominated National government. (if, as the Bellman predicts, the Collins faction gains ascendency watch out for the National Party to regress further into hard-line conservatism).

Jami-Lee’s bill was a combination of Nineteenth century draconian worker exploitation and anti-Union rhetoric of the McCarthyite “50s and the Muldoon “80s which, in a more rational and realistic parliament, been laughed out of the debating chamber as well as being heartedly ridiculed by critical media analysis with Jami-Lee being publicly pilloried for being the privileged chump he so capably parades around the House.

The bill capably demonstrated that Jami-Lee is no more that a shallow, inexperienced, privileged and easily manipulated MP who is at the beck and call of those with anti-worker political and management agendas and who should not have been rewarded with the “dignity” of having his bill treated as a serious and thoughtfully drafted piece of legislation.

Empty rhetoric from the Nats to disguise their true agenda

Mind you the level of thoughtful analysis of the ramifications of the Bill coming from the National-Act MPs during the debate was hardly inspiring and well thought out. In 99% of the cases the rhetoric was cliché filled, emotively empty and sounded as though we were being given a re-run of 1932 and 1951 National Party Hansard records.

The National Business Review reported that Jami-Lee had been advised on the wording and purpose of his bill by the management of the Ports of Auckland whose anti-employment contract and anti-worker agendas demanded the strike breaking provisions written into the bill. Rumour also had it that the bill had been further worked over by the young Nats who reef fish around the Slater-Lusk blog-site group. Given that the NBR report and the rumoured involvement of the Slater-Lusk group is true then one must seriously question the ability of Jami-Lee to be seen as an MP who genuinely has the needs of concerns of his constituents at heart. Instead one must see him as being the easily manipulated tool of those whose self interests over-ride the common good.

Unfortunately for NZ workers the National-Act government have an equally obnoxious piece of anti-worker, anti-union legislation waiting in the wings- the Simon Bridges (he of the “If I shout and bluster loud enough I’m telling the truth” persuasion) sponsored “Employment Relations Amendment Bill” which is designed to strip workers of fundamental work place rights.   On the other hand, here is what the Labour MPs have been saying about the Ross-Bridges bills.

The Bridges’ Bill probably explains why the National-Act caucus voted en-bloc for the Jami-Lee bill as, if they did vote it down, it would have made Simon Bridges look powerless and ineffective and expose the flaws in his Employment Relations Amendment Bill.

Performance Pay- a myth that has had its day

The article by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian provides solid reasons why the mythical efficacy of performance based pay should be pushed right off the table as being, like other neo-liberal ecomonic policies, a fallacy based on faith rather than empirical evidence.

National internal feuds increase- the rats desert.

The list of deserting rats grows as the feuding between Very dry Joyce and Tinder dry Collins increases in intensity within the National Caucus closet.
While the cartoonist chooses to show PinoKeyo as orchestrating the leaving, like the Captain of the Concordia, the desertion is a result of the constant sniping was between Collins and Joyce within the caucus forcing those who cannot take the increasing heat to pack their bags and head for bluer pastures in which to trough. In the meantime Key attempts to strut the world stage - a poor fool seeking his five minutes on the stage before disappearing into the cast list of history.