Stanford reviewing ‘unsustainably’ high immigration and wants policy to match ‘absorbtive’ capacity of economy and infrastructure; Luxon plans ‘tough love’ for ‘fragile’ nation
There’s a rule of thumb for calculating the doubling time for anything subject to compound growth, divide 70 by the growth rate. So at a rate of 2.8% we can see that the population would double in only 25 years. I feel this would horrify most given the already parlous state of our infrastructure.
even more so when you think it is you and I that are paying for their infrastructure! National speaks of free riders - the biggest subsidy/free rider going in this little economy of ours is the one funding population growth.
Also our wealth is largely dependent on our ability to export - and that ability to export has functionally flatlined while our population has doubled so our ability to pay for our imports (cars petrol smartphones overseas holidays clothes etc has roughly halved on a per capita basis over the past three decades. Our ability to export has also been hammered lately by a substantial drop in export earnings - ask a farmer how things are going - they are remain the foundation of our economy - the answer will be- NOT GOOD! And that is where the rest of the economy is heading.
Our housing crisis is a direct consequence of too many people arriving here in too short a time frame and most of our other problems arise from the same cause.
Established media and their digital usurpers are very selective on holding truth to power as blatantly evident in coverage on the Gazan genocide and 100 plus years of human rights atrocities leading up to it.
Liam Dann is the only one I can think of who was mulling over it for NZ Herald the other day. But that’s paywalled, so only a smallish specific group of ppl will see.
Pleased that you clarified the 'universal' pension at 65 years. In 20th C, the 'old age' pension was available at 60 years but was means tested. Anyone could claim 'universal' pension at 65 years. When the age of eligibility was raised from 60 to 65 over time, the result was all retirees were now on 'universal' non means tested pension.
It should be recalled that there was a separate taxation fund to pay old age pensions in mid 20thC.
My memory is that disappeared into Consolidated Gov coffers during Muldoon years.
Nearly 50,000 beneficiaries of NZ Superannuation are collecting $1.1 billion a year in benefits while also getting more than $100,000 each from jobs, investments and private pensions.
Yet Super is not enough to live on for the beneficiaries who really need it: retired jobless renters with no assets and no other income.
We need to stop thinking of NZ Superannuation as an entitlement for everyone who reaches 65, and instead recognise it as a universally available social welfare benefit to spare have-nots from living their final years on the streets in poverty.
Many people, regardless of ethnicity, are broken and unable to work long before they reach the NZ Super qualifying age of 65; and of those who survive till then, many will be renters with no savings.
NZ Super needs to be reconceived to be aimed at the person who reaches 65 with no home, no savings, and no job or possibility of work.
The single-person-living-alone benefit for 2023-24 is a net $496 a week.
Massey University's FinEd Centre reckons that person really needs $826 a week for a no-frills 'metro' retirement (presumably in Auckland) or $690 a week in the provinces. Both much more than $496 a week.
The single-person-living-alone weekly after-tax benefit needs at least to be increased from $496 to that 'provincial no frills' $690.
That would still leave the retired renter struggling to pay the bills, especially in Auckland.
But it would be a further bonanza for those 50,000 beneficiaries already getting $100,000 a year from other sources.
Something needs to change.
We need to increase NZ Super to be enough for the retired poor to live on, yet, to keep it both universally available and affordable, discourage those who have no need of it from signing up for it.
That will require reintroducing some form of the surtax or surcharge on other income that was abolished in 1998. And that is something that can only be accomplished by the major parties, National and Labour, agreeing to do it together.
The repeated calls to lower the NZ Super qualifying age for Māori do point to an argument for restoring a means-tested and health-tested pension at 60, to tide the broken over for five years till they qualify for the main Super at 65. On the other hand, a qualifying age of 60 would arbitrarily favour a disabled 60-year-old over a disabled 59-year-old. Perhaps what is required is a harder look at invalid benefit rates for everyone.
The assertion that some groups have a right to early Super because of a lower life expectancy is nonsense: NZ Super is a social welfare benefit to provide a dignified retirement for the living, regardless if they get it for one year or thirty.
Just a quick reminder that, before Erica Stanford was making breathless drama out of how just how bad the mess left behind by the previous government is, she was a reality TV producer.
Yes her knowledge of the term "equilibrium" leaves much to the imagination. Big word for an immigration minister - Net migration of zero is her aim then?
The state of the nation speech is rehearsing the justifications for austerity for bottom feeders to pay for the absolutely necessary corporate welfare for landlords and income tax reductions for those on higher incomes.
This sounds pretty close to an estimate of how much we can grow.
Are we finally about to get an official population growth estimate/target?
I'm not holding my breath because Immigration Ministers in the past haven't given estimates, and she could still walk it back, but I'd be impressed if she went there.
and most of our former immigration minsters are now making a fat living as immigration consultants! One has to wonder what that says to the rest of the world? In many nations that would be considered a corrupt practice
Not sure who dreams up the corporate speak but pretty certain absorptive capacity directly proportional to infrastructure investment so I think it is safe to deduce NZ has had negative “absorptive capacity” for some time.
Absorptive capacity was invented as a term by the Productivity Commission in its report into immigration. The Commission is no more, but the term lives on...
Pretty certain productivity also a key variable for “absorbative capacity” so you would think diddy David’s abolition of the commission to fund his cowboys charter directly reduces said capacity
Interested in this statement ex RNZ this morning Bernard, reality or marketing?
Willis said the previous government had changed the way they measured the country's debt and it resulted in making it look about 20 points lower than what it should have been.
"It's now heading to about 44 percent of our GDP - that's really high by New Zealand's historic standards."
I can't hear anything she says anymore without imagining her smug, glinting-eyed, amusement as she pronounces about how many people she's going to turf out of public sector jobs and off social welfare, in order to reduce some numbers on the right-hand side of a spreadsheet somewhere!
My pet theory, there is a stash of mad max cosplay kit in the Beehive basement Nicola and David Seymour are frothing to get onto the post austerity apocalypse streets of Wellington in
Thanks Mr Anderson. She's talking about the gross debt to net debt change a couple of years ago. It is about 10-20% of GDP depending on the size of the NZ Superannuation Fund. The 'historic standards' are from before NZ Super Fund. It is worth $70.7 billion and very liquid. It can't be ignored.
I realise this is off point but I can remember when Argentina was one of the richest nations in the world. Now it is a basket case and it has a nutty economist - in the style of Luxon - as its leader. Now do we really want to go down that road?
'Hot-bedding' like the awful trend towards hot desking has always been around for shift workers. I have a friend who regaled me of a particularly grim year he shared a single mattress in a cupboard under the stairs (Harry Potter like). He had it for nights and a nightclub worker had it during the day. It was $20/week in the 90's in notoriously cold and damp Aro Valley. I'd hate this to become a regular occurrence in NZ. I still have the asthma that started in a mouldy student flat 25 years ago.
My partner's brother slept on a camp mattress under the stairs in Queenstown pre-covid, desperately trying to find somewhere to live as a teacher. They're QT locals, or at least they were until they couldn't afford to move home after university.
The second and third paras of TL;DR is a wonderfully concise explanation of how we got to be paddlesless up this particular creek with this particular economic situation.
And the remedy certainly isn’t lower tax rates for the mythical squeezed middle.
until all New Zealand citizens and residents are properly housed then any immigration is too much (with possibly a few exceptions eg medical practitioners)
How can a government expect to be taken seriously when it talks so emphatically of retaining a universally applied guaranteed income for anyone over the age of 65 - no matter their level of income - And in the very next breath declare an all-out-war on anyone under the age of 65 who is disabled, disadvantaged and poor?
In 1964 they held a “meeting planning for the million” conference to mark the celebrations of Auckland reaching 500k residents. Tellingly, Dove Myer Robinson gave the opening speech.
Sorry landlords, it's tough love, can't meet the promise, won't apologise.
There’s a rule of thumb for calculating the doubling time for anything subject to compound growth, divide 70 by the growth rate. So at a rate of 2.8% we can see that the population would double in only 25 years. I feel this would horrify most given the already parlous state of our infrastructure.
even more so when you think it is you and I that are paying for their infrastructure! National speaks of free riders - the biggest subsidy/free rider going in this little economy of ours is the one funding population growth.
Also our wealth is largely dependent on our ability to export - and that ability to export has functionally flatlined while our population has doubled so our ability to pay for our imports (cars petrol smartphones overseas holidays clothes etc has roughly halved on a per capita basis over the past three decades. Our ability to export has also been hammered lately by a substantial drop in export earnings - ask a farmer how things are going - they are remain the foundation of our economy - the answer will be- NOT GOOD! And that is where the rest of the economy is heading.
Our housing crisis is a direct consequence of too many people arriving here in too short a time frame and most of our other problems arise from the same cause.
Yep. But no one is talking about it on the big tv networks or newspapers. Strange.
Established media and their digital usurpers are very selective on holding truth to power as blatantly evident in coverage on the Gazan genocide and 100 plus years of human rights atrocities leading up to it.
Liam Dann is the only one I can think of who was mulling over it for NZ Herald the other day. But that’s paywalled, so only a smallish specific group of ppl will see.
Is it like covid or climate in a way, if it doesn’t immediately impact you or your family, it doesn’t exist?
Pleased that you clarified the 'universal' pension at 65 years. In 20th C, the 'old age' pension was available at 60 years but was means tested. Anyone could claim 'universal' pension at 65 years. When the age of eligibility was raised from 60 to 65 over time, the result was all retirees were now on 'universal' non means tested pension.
It should be recalled that there was a separate taxation fund to pay old age pensions in mid 20thC.
My memory is that disappeared into Consolidated Gov coffers during Muldoon years.
If my memory is inaccurate love to know.
Nearly 50,000 beneficiaries of NZ Superannuation are collecting $1.1 billion a year in benefits while also getting more than $100,000 each from jobs, investments and private pensions.
Yet Super is not enough to live on for the beneficiaries who really need it: retired jobless renters with no assets and no other income.
We need to stop thinking of NZ Superannuation as an entitlement for everyone who reaches 65, and instead recognise it as a universally available social welfare benefit to spare have-nots from living their final years on the streets in poverty.
Many people, regardless of ethnicity, are broken and unable to work long before they reach the NZ Super qualifying age of 65; and of those who survive till then, many will be renters with no savings.
NZ Super needs to be reconceived to be aimed at the person who reaches 65 with no home, no savings, and no job or possibility of work.
The single-person-living-alone benefit for 2023-24 is a net $496 a week.
Massey University's FinEd Centre reckons that person really needs $826 a week for a no-frills 'metro' retirement (presumably in Auckland) or $690 a week in the provinces. Both much more than $496 a week.
The single-person-living-alone weekly after-tax benefit needs at least to be increased from $496 to that 'provincial no frills' $690.
That would still leave the retired renter struggling to pay the bills, especially in Auckland.
But it would be a further bonanza for those 50,000 beneficiaries already getting $100,000 a year from other sources.
Something needs to change.
We need to increase NZ Super to be enough for the retired poor to live on, yet, to keep it both universally available and affordable, discourage those who have no need of it from signing up for it.
That will require reintroducing some form of the surtax or surcharge on other income that was abolished in 1998. And that is something that can only be accomplished by the major parties, National and Labour, agreeing to do it together.
https://figure.nz/chart/2eIStXKBWssxMIze
The repeated calls to lower the NZ Super qualifying age for Māori do point to an argument for restoring a means-tested and health-tested pension at 60, to tide the broken over for five years till they qualify for the main Super at 65. On the other hand, a qualifying age of 60 would arbitrarily favour a disabled 60-year-old over a disabled 59-year-old. Perhaps what is required is a harder look at invalid benefit rates for everyone.
The assertion that some groups have a right to early Super because of a lower life expectancy is nonsense: NZ Super is a social welfare benefit to provide a dignified retirement for the living, regardless if they get it for one year or thirty.
https://www.infometrics.co.nz/article/2022-04-lower-super-age-maori
Just a quick reminder that, before Erica Stanford was making breathless drama out of how just how bad the mess left behind by the previous government is, she was a reality TV producer.
I was quite impressed by her in-depth grasp of her portfolio. I'm not sure I'd want to work for her, though - looks like she takes no prisoners.
So was I.
But there are lots of examples of people who are very very sincerely, and persuavively, catastrophically wrong !
Haha, indeed, those two things are not mutually exclusive - any 'good' modern politician works their staff for their own ends ;-)
Yes her knowledge of the term "equilibrium" leaves much to the imagination. Big word for an immigration minister - Net migration of zero is her aim then?
I have heard that she is most capable and smartest of the Nats can think analytically and is likely to be next Nat leader if it was based on ability.
The state of the nation speech is rehearsing the justifications for austerity for bottom feeders to pay for the absolutely necessary corporate welfare for landlords and income tax reductions for those on higher incomes.
"absolutely necessary"
I presume that is cynicism/sarcasm.
Cynicism on my part, the received truth and natural order of things as far as Luxon, Willis and Seymour are concerned (the strict father frame).
"understand what our absorptive capacity is"
This sounds pretty close to an estimate of how much we can grow.
Are we finally about to get an official population growth estimate/target?
I'm not holding my breath because Immigration Ministers in the past haven't given estimates, and she could still walk it back, but I'd be impressed if she went there.
and most of our former immigration minsters are now making a fat living as immigration consultants! One has to wonder what that says to the rest of the world? In many nations that would be considered a corrupt practice
The problem with the absorb-ative capacity is I don’t feel we’ve absorbed the previous decades growth to deal with the current growth.
Not sure who dreams up the corporate speak but pretty certain absorptive capacity directly proportional to infrastructure investment so I think it is safe to deduce NZ has had negative “absorptive capacity” for some time.
Absorptive capacity was invented as a term by the Productivity Commission in its report into immigration. The Commission is no more, but the term lives on...
Pretty certain productivity also a key variable for “absorbative capacity” so you would think diddy David’s abolition of the commission to fund his cowboys charter directly reduces said capacity
The rhetoric sure smells a lot like Rogernomics/Ruthenasia...
Interested in this statement ex RNZ this morning Bernard, reality or marketing?
Willis said the previous government had changed the way they measured the country's debt and it resulted in making it look about 20 points lower than what it should have been.
"It's now heading to about 44 percent of our GDP - that's really high by New Zealand's historic standards."
I can't hear anything she says anymore without imagining her smug, glinting-eyed, amusement as she pronounces about how many people she's going to turf out of public sector jobs and off social welfare, in order to reduce some numbers on the right-hand side of a spreadsheet somewhere!
My pet theory, there is a stash of mad max cosplay kit in the Beehive basement Nicola and David Seymour are frothing to get onto the post austerity apocalypse streets of Wellington in
Thanks Mr Anderson. She's talking about the gross debt to net debt change a couple of years ago. It is about 10-20% of GDP depending on the size of the NZ Superannuation Fund. The 'historic standards' are from before NZ Super Fund. It is worth $70.7 billion and very liquid. It can't be ignored.
Cheers!
I realise this is off point but I can remember when Argentina was one of the richest nations in the world. Now it is a basket case and it has a nutty economist - in the style of Luxon - as its leader. Now do we really want to go down that road?
Unfortunately Patricia we have had four decades of nutty economists taking us down the Argentinian path.
"in the style of Luxon" - obviously you don't mean style as in hairstyle - Luxon and Milei are polar opposites in that respect!
'Hot-bedding' like the awful trend towards hot desking has always been around for shift workers. I have a friend who regaled me of a particularly grim year he shared a single mattress in a cupboard under the stairs (Harry Potter like). He had it for nights and a nightclub worker had it during the day. It was $20/week in the 90's in notoriously cold and damp Aro Valley. I'd hate this to become a regular occurrence in NZ. I still have the asthma that started in a mouldy student flat 25 years ago.
My partner's brother slept on a camp mattress under the stairs in Queenstown pre-covid, desperately trying to find somewhere to live as a teacher. They're QT locals, or at least they were until they couldn't afford to move home after university.
Don't necessarily agree with her but Erica Stanford struck me as reasonably competent.
Thanks Bernard.
The second and third paras of TL;DR is a wonderfully concise explanation of how we got to be paddlesless up this particular creek with this particular economic situation.
And the remedy certainly isn’t lower tax rates for the mythical squeezed middle.
Thanks Dave.
until all New Zealand citizens and residents are properly housed then any immigration is too much (with possibly a few exceptions eg medical practitioners)
And builders.
am dubious about that
the number of building consents being issued is decreasing
but if Kainga Ora commenced the rapid construction of 200,000 public/state houses then yes.
but builders from overseas would need to be overseen to ensure compliance with the Building Act and the Building Regulations.
How can a government expect to be taken seriously when it talks so emphatically of retaining a universally applied guaranteed income for anyone over the age of 65 - no matter their level of income - And in the very next breath declare an all-out-war on anyone under the age of 65 who is disabled, disadvantaged and poor?
In 1964 they held a “meeting planning for the million” conference to mark the celebrations of Auckland reaching 500k residents. Tellingly, Dove Myer Robinson gave the opening speech.