NZ policy suggestions

I suggest there should be a party in NZ that as supports spending our money as if it was their own, with a social conscience. A sort of left/right neutral John Banks. the bottom line would be better services in every area that matters - for the same money.

the key question would be is this piece of expenditure more important than the most important project that I am not yet spending money on. A metric I understand some departments use is that they are willing to spend 1 million dollars to save one live (I think this is per year?). It is a fairly strict criteria.

the total NZ budget is about 53.74 billion
First defence 1.56 billion - I suggest this can go almost entirely - the NZ defense force has no business being anything other than a defense force. that means the ability to repel an invader with SIS type tactics - not peacekeeping or assisting in Iraq or anywhere else - if we have no capability we can avoid the temptation/pressure to get involved in such things.
Heritage, culture and recreation 2,036 billion - most of this can go - NZ should not be pushing any sort of culture or heritage on anyone, and where it might encourage recreation that should be pretty cheap. Bottom line is a couple of billion dollars pays for a lot of operations/medicine etc, 2,000 lives worth - so it better be a very important museum to be willing to let people suffer instead.

socialservices and welfare - we spend $19,700mil that is 101 dollars a week for every man women child and baby. That sounds a little much to me - considering we have 3% odd unemployment. I suggest we have a major administrative cost in there - so simplify the policy.
as I have suggested before - one basic benefit - you are either unemployed or your not. Further assistance for those needing special help can be arranged.
Then take the axe to any sort of service that doesn't clearly add value within this department.
At the end you can redistribute the rest back to the remaining benefits either to include more people or pay people more.

Health - $10300 mil - ruthless application of the 1 million dollar life principle - don't pay for anything that doesn't give you the correct return because to do so would be to effectively kill more people elsewhere. We should be able to achieve much better results for the same money. I suggest centralization of decision making to assist this. Local boards seem to have become inefficient and tied up in stupid debates - take the power back and merge all the DHB.

GFS Pension expenses ($1051mil) - again one benefit

education ($9892mil)- don't force children to stay at school. there is no point teaching a future plumber who wants to drop out about quantum physics - he probably doesn't care and will probably never use it, stop pissing our money down the toilet.

And give schools the ability to easily kick out trouble makers and create a safe environment. If there are very expensive and dangerous students then one needs to find a efficient way to manage them which probably requires special schools with special resources.

Also don't fund courses that don't lead to taxable professions - bottom line is that courses need to show that the people leaving them make enough tax money to pay for the subsidy to the course and the lost income to the person many times over. Otherwise the course might as well be one of those uncertified courses that the govt does not sponsor - like bible study or whatever. Again the savings can be spread around.

I know a lot of people who study tourism courses, business courses and hospitality - which are almost completely a waste of time, there is no point the government certifying such causes and wasting the students money let alone their own money.

core government services (2770mil) - not sure what is included here but NZ politicians don't need to go overseas to kiss up to foreign politicians much - we can hugely cut back on all of that sort of expenditure which seems to be mired in corruption in NZ anyway. I also think we don't need as many MP as we have anyway.

Law and order (2600mil)- we could probably do with more expenditure here - but that doesn't mean there are not savings to be made. Also note that fines are a good way to help pay for the law and order costs, in fact they should be used for a very wide range of crimes much wider than is used now. and its criminals who get fined, so if you get fined for breaking the law then cry me a river.

transport and communications 7,240mil- we could probably do with more expenditure here - or at least more flexible expenditure. the problem here is that
A) governments spend a lot of money getting very little done slowly in a hot economy and about the same getting a fair amount done when it is a cold economy.
B) projects are put on hold waiting for funding
If the project is justified just build it - funding should be automatic - and more projects should be viable in a cold economy while slack resources (including labour) are around.

Economics and industrial services 5,684 mil - (trade and enterprise NZ?) this should be measured fairly pragmatically regarding the relatively strict criteria of 'will i get more tax back than I put in' and be assessed after the fact as a performance measure. that will keep them on their toes

Housing and community development 913 mil - (housing NZ?) - I don't think the government helps much being in the housing market in this sense - I doubt they are good property managers and the 'rent based on income' theory just makes it really hard to tell if you are giving a fair benefit ie if I have a state house in central wellington vs a state house in Mangere why should I be sitting on a million and a bit dollars of asset that could be used to help that other poor family? the government can however build cheap houses and do things like that I suppose.

Draft sharing website

I am thinking of creating a draft sharing website - basically students and in particular academics would put their draft papers on the site and people would post information against those drafts that they think will improve them and make them fit for publication (or an A).

the system would have a smart system for ranking comments and handing out reward points to the most valuable members. in time it would have it's own 'journal'. there appears to be a niche out there created by academics wanting such a site - but lacking the technical skills to make it.

Well I can arrnage the technical part the help I need from readers is assistance in marketing the concept - ie getting academics, students, universities and so forth to sign up - or at least a commitment to do so when a reasonably well developed version of the website is up and ready.

Of course, never fear, there will never be fees for signing up, posting or commenting.

What Labour should do

OK I think Labour is well and truly in the hole now. They genuinely need a circuit breaker. So what to do?
well the airport law they rushed through was a decent idea, its something hard for national to support - they should a little dishonest when they do it. AND it forces them to move further left - so really win/win political and ideological.

There is a heirachy of desperation but labour needs to shake things up -depending on how desperate they get they cantry one or all of the below

1) Environment - make some tough calls - for one thing bring in some sort of a fart tax equivilent - not quite the same but taxing the same people about the same amount. Just slam straight into the lobby and dare them to make a fight of it. Make it really simple - recouping of costs.
2) get stuck into illegal immigration - and I mean this in its broad sense - in particular people brought into NZ under false pretenses of job offers and that sort of thing in order to work for less than minimum wage. Raise punishment etc. there is a dirty sewer waiting to be exposed there.
3) slash defense spending. Bottom line we don't need frigates, particularly stupid ones that don't work properly.
4) a broard capital gains tax as a way of leveling out house price speculation, -you could promise it - then bring it in when house prices have bottomed out or throttle/eliminate the tax benefits of declining house prices. Maybe a stamp duty on selling a house then flush it back as a tax cut to labour.
5) raise the retirement age - someone has to do it eventually - Labour should take one for the team - besides we all know it is the right thing - be the party of common sense.
6) change the banking system - give the reserve bank some more tools.

etc etc

Biofuel

Norightturn gets all excited about bio-fuel from trees.

I’m not so eager about bio fuels since we have already been conned once.

1) how does one ensure that marginal land and not food producing land is used to grow trees for ethanol?

2) if we use marginal land won't that force up the cost? I.e. the same sort of reasons that make land marginal for food production (increasing the cost per kg of food produced) tend to increase the cost per kg of fuel.

Anyway assuming that by some miracle marginal land is not marginal for these super tree farmers...

from wikipedia

"In June 2006, a U.S. Senate hearing was told that the current cost of producing cellulosic ethanol is US $2.25 per US gallon (US $0.59/litre). This is primarily due to the current poor conversion efficiency.[citation needed] At that price it would cost about $120 to substitute a barrel of oil (42 gallons), taking into account the lower energy content of ethanol. However, the Department of Energy is optimistic and has requested a doubling of research funding. The same Senate hearing was told that the research target was to reduce the cost of production to US $1.07 per US gallon (US $0.28/litre) by 2012."

Verenium Corporation appears to use Steam Explosion to pre-treat cellulosic biomass followed by an enzyme reaction - I presume that the majority of the $2.25 is energy cost so the implication is, and I'm just guessing here, something like 1.50 dollars of energy to make 1.07 dollars of energy

Then we have the exciting effect where we start cutting down trees so that we can regrow them - think of a forest full of pine trees, its cheap as chips to own it as wild land - just don't do anything and it will suck up CO2. A subsidy of a few cents would make it worthwhile letting a few trees grow there - and anyone who doesn’t allow that should be slapped. So we should not compare growing trees with having bear earth - it should be compared to a tiny subsidy and lots of trees constantly growing.

I don't want to be totally negative but it is easy for an environmentalist to be conned into supporting something that actually does crippling damage to the environment (like corn bio-fuel) just because it isn't cool to be against any of these sorts of policies. By the time those people realise that it is bad for the environment they have helped to create a huge vested interest (eg american corn farmers) who will be next to impossible to stop.

Biofuel

Norightturn gets all excited about bio-fuel from trees.

I’m not so eager about bio fuels since we have already been conned once.

1) how does one ensure that marginal land and not food producing land is used to grow trees for ethanol?

2) if we use marginal land won't that force up the cost? I.e. the same sort of reasons that make land marginal for food production (increasing the cost per kg of food produced) tend to increase the cost per kg of fuel.

Anyway assuming that by some miracle marginal land is not marginal for these super tree farmers...

from wikipedia

"In June 2006, a U.S. Senate hearing was told that the current cost of producing cellulosic ethanol is US $2.25 per US gallon (US $0.59/litre). This is primarily due to the current poor conversion efficiency.[citation needed] At that price it would cost about $120 to substitute a barrel of oil (42 gallons), taking into account the lower energy content of ethanol. However, the Department of Energy is optimistic and has requested a doubling of research funding. The same Senate hearing was told that the research target was to reduce the cost of production to US $1.07 per US gallon (US $0.28/litre) by 2012."

Verenium Corporation appears to use Steam Explosion to pre-treat cellulosic biomass followed by an enzyme reaction - I presume that the majority of the $2.25 is energy cost so the implication is, and I'm just guessing here, something like 1.50 dollars of energy to make 1.07 dollars of energy

Then we have the exciting effect where we start cutting down trees so that we can regrow them - think of a forest full of pine trees, its cheap as chips to own it as wild land - just don't do anything and it will suck up CO2. A subsidy of a few cents would make it worthwhile letting a few trees grow there - and anyone who doesn’t allow that should be slapped. So we should not compare growing trees with having bear earth - it should be compared to a tiny subsidy and lots of trees constantly growing.

I don't want to be totally negative but it is easy for an environmentalist to be conned into supporting something that actually does crippling damage to the environment (like corn bio-fuel) just because it isn't cool to be against any of these sorts of policies. By the time those people realise that it is bad for the environment they have helped to create a huge vested interest (eg american corn farmers) who will be next to impossible to stop.

Comment on Godwins Law

You wanna know who else used laws to stop debates? HITLER!