Fooeee...what a load of BS. The working group will work away on matters that avoid the real problem but should ensure the media are supplied with a steady stream of effluent sufficient to encourage the brainless to think some real action is being taken..but on no account are they to let on that they are just a waste of space time and money. They should manage their time wasting in such a manner, that those members of the public who would normally attack the govt over such poor decision making, will be distracted and given to thinking they can have a role in the formulation of govt policy, by entering into correspondence with said time wasting working group.

Hey it worked for the tax working on being silly group...so why not pull the same trick. Public are too dumb to remember!

The group focused on the persistent balance of payments deficits leading to a very high level of net foreign obligations and debt (think Ireland, Spain and Greece); relatively low per capita levels of GDP and wealth - which are growing slowly compared with many other countries; the relatively low stock of capital in the business sector; and New Zealand’s poor productivity performance.

Fer-christ-sake hasn't this been the situation for forty years?

Tax luxury imports

Raise the minimum wage

Stop robbing savers via taxes and inflation.

Scrap tax on savings

Tax on 2nd homes (holiday homes included, close all loop holes)

Get prisoners building infrastructure

Build tourism

It is mathematically impossible to acheive social outcomes of net economic wellbeing by borrowing from the private banking network with usurous amounts of compound interest attached. The US Greens have finally headed in the correct direction, hopefully the NZ Greens will now stop cowering like shivering dogs and do the same. But, dont hold your breath, I sent the below to every Green MP and have yet received a reply, I quess not admitting to having read the irrefutable facts is a defence against having to take on any difficult task of attempting to do anything about it?

Greetings All,
http://www.monetary.org/greenpartymonetaryplank.html
Dear Friends,
Some exciting and historic news from the U.S. Green Party!
This past week (end of August 2010) the Green Party's National Committee working on monetary and economic policy matters have approved an historic, comprehensive Monetary Reform Plank in their 2010 Platform which actually does the job, as it includes all three of the necessary elements to achieve real reform.

There is one thing that needs to change at the core of our current economic policy or quite simply by mathematical formula, nothing else can. The current 'New Green Deal' as promoted by the Green Party is as inept as the new deal of FDR it has hooked its wagon to. Despite what is now being endorced by the US Green Party(2010) being voted through the US Congress in 1932, it never made it through the US elite dominated Senate which saw FDR back down from his stance, and that of his brother before him for that matter;

Theodore Roosevelt Sixth State Of The Union Address, 1906;
I do not say that this is the right system. I only advance it to emphasize my belief that there is need for the adoption of some system which shall be automatic and open to all sound banks, so as to avoid all possibility of discrimination and favoritism. Such a plan would tend to prevent the spasms of high money and speculation which now obtain in the New York market; for at present there is too much currency at certain seasons of the year, and its accumulation at New York tempts bankers to lend it at low rates for speculative purposes; whereas at other times when the crops are being moved there is urgent need for a large but temporary increase in the currency supply. It must never be forgotten that this question concerns business men generally quite as much as bankers; especially is this true of stockmen, farmers, and business men in the West; for at present at certain seasons of the year the difference in interest rates between the East and the West is from 6 to 10 per cent, whereas in Canada the corresponding difference is but 2 per cent. Any plan must, of course, guard the interests of western and southern bankers as carefully as it guards the interests of New York or Chicago bankers; and must be drawn from the standpoints of the farmer and the merchant no less than from the standpoints of the city banker and the country banker.

Theodore Roosevelt, New York Times, March 27, 1922
"These International bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or rive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government."

Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural Address, 1933,
"More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order: there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits: and investments, so that there will be an end to speculation with other people's money; and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency." End

I strongly suggest if the New Zealand Green Party want to truly assist the basically decent majority of this nation that they follow their United States Of America party of the same name and do something of merit that would acheive both the economic and social justice that they claim to pursue. Underwriting own own money supply by building of sustainable energy infrastructure would appear to also be a far more descent way of acheiving carbon emmission reductions than creating another great merry money go round that will favour only the private bankers who currently issue the worlds money supply as monetised debt, that would in all probability not impeed the growth of carbon for all the misery the $50 odd trillion of 'investment' + compounding interest, they claiming it will cost the global citizenship.

If you folks want to prevent the repeated cycles of predatory lending of excess created credit with compounding interest attached by private interests, you need to act now. If you do not, you are nothing but another corrupt institution in this nation, plain and simple.

American Bankers Association, 1891, as printed in the Congressional Record of April 29, 1913;
"On September 1st, 1894, we will not renew our loans under any consideration. On September 1st wee will demand our money. We will foreclose and become mortgagees in possession. We can take two-thirds of the farms west of the Mississippi, and thousands of them east of the Mississippi as well, at out own price... Then the farmers will become tenants as in England."

U.S. Banker's Association Magazine, 1924;
"Capital must protect itself in every way. Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When through the process of law the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd. It is thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished."

Regards
Iain Parker
Public Credit Advocate

America land of the stupid home of the arse****s. But wait that could also sum up the Green's in every country (nice colour like their idea vomitlike)

Before you can save you have to pay off your debt.  Paying off debt will kill the banking system.  The working group has to answer this question first, and the only possible answer is to restructure the banking system so that there is something other than "bank credit money" in circulation.

1) Axe taxes on interest

2) Axe the corporate tax. Tax incomes, not reinvested profits.

3) Abolish the minimum wage. If you want to help low income earners, don't tax them. Raise the threshold for zero tax, and keep raising it. This also gives welfare beneficiaries more incentive to work.

4) Listen to Paul Callaghan. "From Wool to Weta". Farming and Tourism are the backbone of a LOW WAGE economy. Every acre we convert to industrial, commercial and urban use, puts NZ ahead on every score. Making industry and their workforce pay hundreds of times as much for their land as farmers, is economic suicide. Abolish urban limits.

5) Workplace law needs to be realistically established according to whether we are doing more harm than good by disincentivising employers and potential employers. How many people leaving for Aussie every week are "once were employers" or "might have been employers"?

6) Permitting development needs to be put firmly back on a "rule of law" basis. There should a a book of rules, and it should be possible to look it up and see yes/no I can/can't do that here/there and the cost will be "x".

Besides the baby boomers having been through a period where obscene capital gains could be made on property, they also remember a period when inflation was so high that there was no POINT saving money.

Here is what needs to be seriously looked at.

What is the relationship between "buying now and paying off"; and "saving up and buying later"? If it is actually CHEAPER to "buy now and pay off", we have a serious, immoral problem. Margins between lending interest rates and borrowing interest rates are only part of the equation - the governemnt's role in all the other factors, monetary and fiscal, are what counts.

And of course there is the "disposable income" issue. This will get very much worse as long as oncoming generations have to pay several times as much for homes (and mortgages) as their grandparents did.

Phil Best, please tell me you are taking the piss!

Hey Justice,

What th govt needs is to have a 'Minister of anti price gouging by so-called tradesmen'.