A review of things you need to know before you sign off on Thursday; eyes on banking market study, Fonterra ups dividend, GDP shrinks especially per capita, swaps unchanged, NZD shifts, & more

"...crappy, low paying job..." Yeah nah.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/01/how-jacinda-ardern-s-an…

"The empress has no clothes"

They all believe what they’re doing is right. But she seems to have been a hopeless idealist. Not evil just naive. 

I'm don't thing she was a superstar just a good ambassador.

Ignore the angry old Kiwi men on here. My bet is a fair number of them grew up in state houses and are children of assisted passage parents. White trash roots.

I've been to some isolated backwoods with people that don't speak English, and they love Jacinda, and think fondly of NZ because of her.

Tell that to the groups of women that I know and have witnessed describing her as a useless divisive power hungry b….ch. Good looking women too, I would never describe them as angry old men.

Not really. I think kiwis overstated her global stardom the same way they fawn over a celebrity visiting. Sure a minority of the global woke loved her. And a minority of the right hated her (the way they do Trudeau or Thunberg) but 99% of the world wouldn’t know or care who she is 

don't forget the thousands of women and non binary people she screwed over with her government as well who hate her. She was awarded a prestigious uni role in speaking about tech governance, she has neither the skills, ethics or education in that. There is all sorts of reasons to hate someone but hating their lack of ethics in receiving goods, large benefits, large pay and awards they have even less qualifications, completely contradictory actions and skills to get would be one of them. It would be like awarding the nobel prize for medicine to a cigarette exec and them publicly accepting and then using that to boost their career. Jacinda Adern is doing exactly that. It is hard not to detest someone who markets that level of shameful fraud and self congratulation. No honesty is a valid reason to hate her and many men, women and non binary people hate her not only for that but many many other reasons as well.

She is not a superstar, those people have to have skills and celebrity, she is a political ex PM. They have even less celebrity then our current ones and they have even less voice in public unless they are trying to sell something or pivot in a new career. There will not be sold out tickets for her shows even to the level of a minor DJ, even the scalpers would have pause on the value of her words.

I've a pretty decent sample size to draw comparison from.

It's not only government, in general, the more energy of a project gets diverted into layers of management, the less efficient things get (although you definitely need some management). And government, especially in recent years, has added layers.

Some of these Ministries do have policy requirements that also add to the problem. The core setup runs contrary to basic principles of production.

But we have never seen the growth of back office stuff so high as a % util the last 6 years.   We can do 6 years without they.

Yes, I've managed several outsources / downsizes in the private sector. They often seemed designed primarily to enable announcements that temporarily boosted the share price at the right time. That's why I don't work in the corporate-scale private sector any more! 

Not so much in WGTN

I have worked extensively in the private sector (engineering), run businesses (tech and hospo), done some big corporate gigs (change mgmt), and spent maybe 60% of my long career in the public sector doing all kinds of interest stuff. I even did some change work in banking (where I developed an unhealthy interest in how money actually works).

The public waste vs private productive thing is *dumb*. We have people doing necessary, important work that makes a difference to the lives of kiwes, and we have people doing bullsh*t jobs - that often only exist because of smart marketing that persuades people they need something they don't actually need at all, or because someone has spotted an opportunity to insert themselves between buyers and sellers. I don't think there are more productive / useful jobs in the private sector than the public. Give me a nurse above another bloody salesperson in Harvey Norman any day of the week.

I also regret to inform you that the world does run on Govt spending - not least because that spending provides the regulatory, policy, and legal frameworks that create and sustain markets. I am always amazed by peoples' desire to achieve some kind of max max small state.  

I can't say what the future price may or may not be.

But you just did. Your troll skits unravel like a ball of wool.

I've spent a considerable amount of time witnessing happiness, and the happiest people I've known (as populations) have materially far less than most of us will even come close to.

By all rights most of us should have been born slaves with no money or possessions at all. The fact we have an abundance that 99.9% of all humans ever could barely dream of, is totally lost to most of us.

These are all things that shouldn't have to impact how anyone lives their day to day. The majority of the impact is if that's the core narrative you hold onto, in your mind.

Old men have controlled everything, everywhere, basically forever. Nothing new.

Under 35s had their chance to vote for something meaningful like changing the tax base with a land tax. For the second election in a row, they failed spectacularly to tick that box.

Old white men, and women, always vote, all the time.

Old rich white women in power aren’t any better. I don’t look on Thatcher, Shipley or Richardson very fondly.

Funny I say the same about able bodied people who are ignorant of deprivation and what removal of human rights actually is. Just look into countries like Sudan or Gambia and we see a whole new story that involves different levels of human suffering unrelated to your ageism and racism. Sadly it is the fact humans are a tribal species, have severe cognitive bias and fail to learn from a diversity of viewpoints.

Every generation takes decades to learn up to the level of the previous one and the only things we have effectively done is set up a democracy that seeks the votes of a majority on changes designed by a extremely privileged minority to pass anything. It does not take a fool to see the flaw that majority voting on anything, especially that which does not consult the minority most disadvantaged by the changes in design, would always have some disadvantages to different groups. The most severely affected group of all changes are those who are disabled who only in the last couple of decades won the right to live outside of imprisoning institutions, to not be tortured daily, to have education and to have access to medical care and we still cannot guarantee them that. In fact by and large near half don't have that now. Hence the death rates & estimated life spans still below the age of 65.

You want a stat well accordingly to Stats NZ wellbeing stats and mental health stats the most severely disadvantaged socioeconomic group is disabled people (over 50% have negative wellbeing stats). Ethnicity and age groups sit around the NZ average which is overwelmingly good wellbeing (over 75%). Women, those LGBTIQ, solo parents are the groups midway between the average and disabled people in that order. No surprise to anyone who knows anything about what effects wellbeing and mental health access. In case you are still being extremely ageist at this point the largest proportion of disabled people are older, who often have better incomes over twice that of disabled people under 65, who have incomes that can be zero to less than half that of a non disabled person on a benefit.

Now lets talk about your "white" "boomers" you crafted in your mind as a boogeyman you so love to hate. I would love to hear more about how your cognitive bias and hatred leads you to need a evil foe to feed all this negative emotion to, to feel control when faced with intractable problems and so you can have a simplified world view. Continuing to fail to construct real inclusive solutions to your problems. How instead of addressing your issues you feed into just an us vs them blame game that simply cycles negative emotion & hatred with no tangible actions. Which is a self destructive and self defeating pathway of hatred.

The fact that your ageism predominantly also targets the least well off socioeconomic group, well that is bloodly isn't it. Especially when the blood drips down their bodies as they are left in severe medical and financial neglect to die in pain younger than most non disabled isn't it. I always find it disappointing and funny when ignorant people exclude disabled people from existence in their models of diversity. Because in your world view they don't deserve to exist with equitable access to basic needs and rights do they. Don't worry I don't expect you to be capable of learning until you have your own significant experience of deprivation of human rights and rights to education & healthcare.

You can get that almost everywhere these days. 

Can only improve happiness in short durations.