Labour forces Three Waters through Parliament on its own after having to remove an entrenchment provision inserted by 'mistake'; China pivots away from covid zero; National in pole position to win
Great round up and excellent 3 Waters analysis. Thanks for looking at this funding ‘solution’ in context (migration, housing affordability etc). Media analysis that breaches the 3 Waters silo has been sorely lacking.
Thanks, Bernard. But how can I live without the weekly Hoon at 5 pm? For goodness sake come back! No reason to pour a gin at the end of the week without you and Mr Bale expatiating on matters great and small. One simply trudges on...
Hope you have had a good break. All will be forgiven.
I've been pondering the three waters entrenchment problem since I read Andrew Geddis piece a week or so ago. The problem I see it is that the government wants to prevent privatisation of the newly established assets. If three waters died in a ditch it would be basically impossible to privatise the current water assets because you'd need to get agreement from the diverse range of existing owners, i.e. all the councils around New Zealand. With three waters bring these assets into a much smaller set and centrally controlled they would be much easier to privatise and the government with its ideological leanings wanted to prevent this. The entrenchment was just a bad way to do this, much like everything else with three waters as Bernard and others keep pointing out. At the very least they should be trying to make some version of this argument. In short, we have to protect something that is essentially impossible to privatise now, from being able to be privatised in the future just because we changed the way it was structured.
The continued drop in labor costs has economists pointing to private sector profits as a main driver of inflation, undercutting arguments from the Federal Reserve regarding its plan to bring down consumer prices that remain around 40-year highs.
Unit labor costs, which are measured by the Labor Department to determine how much businesses are paying for workers to produce their goods and services, have been getting outpaced by profits over several quarters, leading economists to call out a trend.
Paul Donovan, an economist with Swiss Bank UBS, wrote in a note to investors saying that Wednesday’s labor cost numbers showed again that corporate profits are rising faster than labor costs.
“Today’s inflation is more about margin expansion than labor costs,” he wrote. Earlier this week, Donavan said the slowing labor cost growth underscored “how little of the current inflation is labor related.”
That’s a very different argument from the one put forward by many U.S. policymakers, both in the political and economic sectors.
No Governments should be able to micro manage peoples lives and finances in this way to rig the system against the majority of citizenry.
Great round up and excellent 3 Waters analysis. Thanks for looking at this funding ‘solution’ in context (migration, housing affordability etc). Media analysis that breaches the 3 Waters silo has been sorely lacking.
RIP Hamish, great choice of tracks Bernard, one of my favs also
Thanks, Bernard. But how can I live without the weekly Hoon at 5 pm? For goodness sake come back! No reason to pour a gin at the end of the week without you and Mr Bale expatiating on matters great and small. One simply trudges on...
Hope you have had a good break. All will be forgiven.
Anne
I've been pondering the three waters entrenchment problem since I read Andrew Geddis piece a week or so ago. The problem I see it is that the government wants to prevent privatisation of the newly established assets. If three waters died in a ditch it would be basically impossible to privatise the current water assets because you'd need to get agreement from the diverse range of existing owners, i.e. all the councils around New Zealand. With three waters bring these assets into a much smaller set and centrally controlled they would be much easier to privatise and the government with its ideological leanings wanted to prevent this. The entrenchment was just a bad way to do this, much like everything else with three waters as Bernard and others keep pointing out. At the very least they should be trying to make some version of this argument. In short, we have to protect something that is essentially impossible to privatise now, from being able to be privatised in the future just because we changed the way it was structured.
From The Hill newsletter today -
The continued drop in labor costs has economists pointing to private sector profits as a main driver of inflation, undercutting arguments from the Federal Reserve regarding its plan to bring down consumer prices that remain around 40-year highs.
Unit labor costs, which are measured by the Labor Department to determine how much businesses are paying for workers to produce their goods and services, have been getting outpaced by profits over several quarters, leading economists to call out a trend.
Paul Donovan, an economist with Swiss Bank UBS, wrote in a note to investors saying that Wednesday’s labor cost numbers showed again that corporate profits are rising faster than labor costs.
“Today’s inflation is more about margin expansion than labor costs,” he wrote. Earlier this week, Donavan said the slowing labor cost growth underscored “how little of the current inflation is labor related.”
That’s a very different argument from the one put forward by many U.S. policymakers, both in the political and economic sectors.