Little looking dodgy and fickle

There are suggestions from Labour leader candidates that the election was lost due to bad policies. Andrew Little blamed the Super raising age and capital gains tax policies.

This is a cop-out. Raising the Super age is not a poor policy. It is a willingness to deal with a harsh reality. The size of the working age population - the one paying the taxes - is shrinking relative to the 65+.

The 2011 Briefing to the Incoming Social Development Minister highlighted this as a "challenge". They also point out however that , "...on average New Zealanders are living longer, healthier lives..." The obvious response is to raise the eligibility age for Super.

And while there was vigorous opposition to the capital gains tax, plenty of people believed it has merit if it can redirect investment into business and make the cost of renting or buying a house more realistic.

For Labour, Little in particular, to blame their loss on 'bad' policy so soon after desperately trying to sell it to us, just looks dodgy and fickle.

Politics isn't setting up a retail outlet. You don't do your market research to find out what people want and then act accordingly. Politics is about having policies that deal with difficult, unavoidable, problems which feature conflicting interests. It's about making a brave and fair (probably utilitarian) response and then persuading the public of its merits.

This may sound slightly mad but that's where Labour really needs to go. It was where Douglas went.

There isn't going to be the money to buy elections in the future. A 'fairer' society can only be based on less unnecessary government spending. Starting with youthful pensioners.

Young people see what are essentially late middle-aged people getting "paid to do nothing", getting free bus rides while they have to pay, chomping through 'free' healthcare while they have to fund their own education, and justifiably ask why.

We can't afford more socialism. National has the monopoly on voters who want to preserve the level we've got. The only direction that leaves for Labour is ... ACT territory.

Afterall ACT's founding members were ex-Labour. I am an ex-Labour voter.

Though thinking about Labour's current line up the idea just seems hysterical.

You can lead a horse to water and all that

NCPA reports:

School children continue to dump their full lunch trays into garbage bins in protest of Michelle Obama's push for healthier lunches. School boards are demanding that the Obama administration relieve them of serving "costly and tasteless meals." The National School Boards Association demanded today that Washington address the "onerous requirements for federal school meal programs."

More

The upside is a new generation is getting a real taste of nanny state and it's not pleasant.

Declining criminal apprehensions

Te Uroroa Flavell is complaining about prejudice in the justice system leading to over-representation of Maori in crime statistics. Charted data can neither prove nor disprove his claims, but if I don't use Excel and NZ Stat regularly I forget what to do. Below is today's practise.

To get into the justice system an individual has to be apprehended. The annual number of Maori (aged 14-30) apprehensions is back to where it was in the early 1990s, whereas for non-Maori, the current number  is significantly lower. The downward trend is steeper for non-Maori.

Kiwi blog has a different chart showing Youth Offences in Court. But that demonstrates the same trend. A steeper decline for non-Maori. Which led me to reflect that 'non-Maori' are increasingly Asian so the cohort may be more law-abiding than in the past.

At least the trend is positive for both groups.

The more things change....October 13, 2014

It's par for the course to hear left MPs complaining about policies or reforms to discourage people from defrauding the welfare system. Most recently, when the government introduced measures to prosecute partners of individuals caught committing benefit fraud (as the partner is often complicit) Stuff reported:

The new measures did not receive a warm reception from the opposition, with both Labour and the Greens criticising the announcement, and Government partners the Maori Party saying the emphasis was "all wrong".
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said it was clear the Government was pursuing its aggressive policy towards beneficiaries.

"It harks back to the old National Party dob-in-a-bludger day when they were asking people to sneak around and look in people's windows and check what people were doing and report them."

I have concluded that the left is actually quite happy for people to illegitimately receive benefits because it's additional flow of money from the loathed 'rich' to the exalted 'poor'. Typically they label attempts to prevent fraud as "beneficiary bashing".

Had the phrase been in use 80 years ago no doubt it would have been employed on this occasion:

Source: Evening Post, October 13, 1934

More