What people mean when they say "High effective marginal tax rates"

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2010/03/earnign_less_by_being_in_work.html

Christchurch woman Cassey Quy, 29, quit her job in a flood of tears after three months.

As a single parent looking after her four-year-old son Riley, she gets $357 a week on the domestic purposes benefit (DPB), with some bills being paid by Work and Income.

Struggling to make ends meet, she took a part-time job as a laboratory assistant at Canterbury University in January.

After advice from a Work and Income case worker, Quy believed she would be better off by $100 per week.

However, her part-benefit, part-wage income left her $10 a week worse off.

After the Government changes were announced yesterday, Quy said she was scared she would fall back into debt.

“It doesn’t make sense, working but not earning money,” she said.

“It’s like the Government is punishing us.

This should be very high on peoples lists of things that are wrong with the world. Her work at the university was helping other people, even though she was doing it purely for her own reasons. That way, everyone wins. However, government has gotten in the way, and her incentives have been perversed so much, that she stopped producing her labour. Because of the government, she has had to take an action that benefited herself, to the detriment of everyone else.

Such extreme cases like this one should be the first thing to be fixed.

Don't listen to anyone who tells you producers will never stop producing.

Government gives Councils money, makes their balance sheet look better

http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/government_finance/local_government/LocalAuthorityStatistics_MRDec09qtr.aspx

The deficit this quarter is $45.4 million smaller than the September 2009 quarter deficit of $65.6 million

Oh good, Councils are being slightly less irresponsible and accumulating debt on our behalf slightly more slowly.

Local authorities recorded a seasonally adjusted operating deficit of $20.2 million in the December 2009 quarter

But there's still a little way to go.

The main contributions to the increase came from government grants and subsidies (up $26.7 million) [...]

Oh wait, that's not councils being more responsible, that's just government bailing them out so they can continue being irresponsible. Well that number is smaller, so they are still being $18.7 million more responsible, which is good.

and investment income (up $26.0 million). The rise in investment income was driven by an increase in revenue from dividends (up $27.9 million).

And the rest of their good fortune is down to things beyond their control (dividends). So the effect of their responsibility or otherwise on the operating deficit is $45.4m - $26.7m - 27.9m = -$9.2m, a further $9.2 million of debt per quarter, on top of what they were already doing. Of course this doesn't even include the increases in rates and their effect on society, which is what the problem really is.

MMP? FPP? STV? PV? SM?

Well, i have to say, that looks like a very short list. Really they should be asking for suggestions that weren't on the list in 1992.

as far as those 5 go, the things i would find acceptable are MMP with PV electorate votes and no 5% threshold, or alternatively STV with either a single nationwide "multi seat constituency" or at most 4 or 5 huge electorates (so that the south island and Auckland become 1 electorate each).

What i think would be better is the Most Open List. You get your party vote, you get your proportionality, you get to vote for your local candidate if you wish, but you're not limited to voting for the one and only (your party) candidate in your "electorate". You can vote for anyone on your favorite party's list, be it the preferred local candidate, another local candidate you like better, a candidate from a neighboring electorate or even someone from the other end of the country if you feel they represent you better.

And the icing on the cake for people that follow politics closely, you can if you want to rank everyone on the list yourself, which means you can effectively "un-vote" someone you don't like, all without losing your party vote and proportionality.

And yet it is not on the list of finalists, despite no one even asking whether there might be a better option out there. Instead we have what feel like the same hand picked straw men to make the government's favorite system look good especially when the info given about the options is whatever they could pull off wikipedia in 5 minutes.

Have a look at the descriptions of the 5 systems on www.elections.org.nz:

Some STV systems[...] Other STV systems[...] Yet another alternative[...]

You would think that whichever 2 of them they aren't considering were irrelevant, and they could tell us a bit more about what the actual option for NZ was, or at least just tell us which one to think about. Would be nice if they explained the formulae too instead of saying "just trust us".

What do i have against MMP FPP STV PV and SM?

MMP - list members no one wants, and how important the party organizations become, being 100% in control of the party list. Worries about "wasted votes" give minor parties a huge disadvantage - both in electorate (2 horse race) and party votes (5% threshold). Not proportional in the case of overhangs.

FPP - not proportional, nationwide (not concentrated in few areas) minor parties have no chance (Greens, NZ 1st, historically Social Credit). Worries about "wasted votes" give minor parties a huge disadvantage.

STV - only proportional within electorates, so a party needs to get up to around 10% of the vote before they start getting MPs, so this and worries about "wasted votes" give minor parties a huge disadvantage. Depending on how 2nd votes are transferred, this either results in elections depending on chance (random selection of winning candidates surplus voters) or calculating fractions of votes quickly descending into an obscenely complicated process of re-counting and calculating fractions. Multi seat constituencies will be about 3 times as large as current electorates (in rural areas) so some areas will be without adequate local representation e.g. the west coast might plausibly end up with 3 MPs all based in Nelson and Blenheim (Although currently it would be entirely plausible for the MP to be based in Motueka)

PV - not proportional, nationwide (not concentrated in few areas) minor parties have no chance (Greens, NZ 1st, historically Social Credit).

SM - not proportional, minor parties disadvantaged in electorate seats. Party organizations become too important, being 100% in control of the party list.

Update:

Some people are talking about one change that might be made to MMP if we keep it is to open the lists. This would be great, but i should specify that my vision of the Most Open List was to abolish electorates altogether and let voters use their list rankings to ensure local representation.

I also want to point out that current "independent"candidates would be free to run as a 1 man party, and in this case using the current Saint-Lague formula and assuming 2.4 million votes, independents would only need about 10,000 local votes to get their 1 and only list candidate into parliament, about the same number it takes for an independent to win an electorate currently.

My favorite part about this is that those 10,000 votes don't have to all come from within an arbitrarily delineated "electorate" but can come from anyone who feels represented by the independent. An example is if someone from Queenstown-Lakes district wants to run as local representation, he could have 7000 votes from Queenstown and 3000 votes from Wanaka. Currently these towns are split by an artificial electorate boundary.

This would also work for Maori electorates. If Hone Harawira got kicked out of the Maori Party but can still get 10,000 votes from Maori in Te Tai Tokerau, he can go to parliament and represent Maori in Te Tai Tokerau. Even better, this still wouldn't stop Maori Party voters ranking their local candidate at the top of the list and getting a Maori Party MP for Te Tai Tokerau too.

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I loved the inclusion of organic-organic DNI and global distributed transapience. Loved the whole baseline/indigenous conflict and the level of conflicting interests for the apologists, needing to survive in both bodies despite their inclinations. Too much reliance on transapient intervention though. They went out of their way to make it realistic, with the cryo, splices, uploads and everything. They almost succeeded, it was only the use of unobtainium that really screwed them up on the realism front. Apart from that, there were too many similarities between Pandora flora and language and kiwi bush flora and language. Can't they use something a bit more exotic? The nanotech was a little absent too considering it was sci-fi. Eywa is officially my new favorite transapient.

Happy New Year!!!

To everyone in New Zealand. And early happy new year to everyone else! :p

Yeeha!

New Zealand Wins!

NZL 2300 - ROW 2228

This beats the All Whites! It's a very rare event these days that New Zealand scores more kiwis than the rest of the world. Note where the big slide starts: November 2008 ;)

Some Brilliant Humour from Kiwiblog

This is great! bus sadly, far-fetched.

I’m looking forward to the following deal “informally mediated” by Joris:

1. [Hone Harawira and the Maori Party] would write a personal letter of apology to [Pakeha New Zealanders]

2. [Hone Harawira] would offer to meet with the [Leaders of the Pakeha community]

3. The Race Relations Commissioner would be invited to address a seminar for [Hone Harawira and the Maori Party (and any other MP)] on race relations

4. [The NZ Parliament and the Maori Party] would in general uphold the complaints it had received rather than contest them before [the NZ public]

5. [The Maori Party and Hone Harawira] would continue to look at ways to promote positive race relations in New Zealand

6. [The Maori Party] would adopt a new policy for its [MPs] who were in a position to lead and shape opinion, that judgments based solely on race, colour or creed were offensive and would not be tolerated.

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• I especially love the last one. It would effectively leave the Maori Party without any policies left.