Researcher & Senior Lecturer #psychoanalysis #sociology #publichealth #climatecrisis #inequality ACC reform, Boxing/Thai. This is solely my personal account.
New Zealand / Aotearoa
Joined June 2012
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In December 2023 the Secretary of Education emailed the Director-General of Health asking her to "soften" the stay-home-if-sick messaging. Not a doctor. Acting for a Minister who is also not a doctor. I have the email, via OIA. #nzpol 🧵 1/
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
A fair point from this article is that the real limit is real resources, not dollars. Fewer workers per retiree does matter. But the Crown issues NZD, so it can always pay NZ Super. It credits accounts. Tax and bonds don't fund it, they drain money afterwards.
So "can we afford it" is the wrong question. The right one is whether we'll have the nurses, carers, builders and care facilities to meet the demand. That's a productivity, migration and inflation question, and 8% of GDP is a call on real output. It isn't a bill the Treasury might fail to pay.
Raising the age cuts the number of people claiming. It doesn't make the pension any more payable. You're naming a real-capacity constraint and calling it a funding problem.
NZ Super age 67: Why raising the eligibility age won’t solve the funding challenge - Greg Smith, via @nzherald nzherald.co.nz/business/pers…
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
There is something really concerning (and disappointing) going on in the US right now.
A dangerous and preventable situation.
Let me explain.
nextstrain.org/avian-flu/h5n…
1/
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
Regardless of political party support or affiliation, I think we can all agree that any government that passes a law to make it harder to enrol and vote is a bad govt.
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
Last #NZ election, 450,000 of the special votes cast were by those who enrolled in the 2 weeks before the election. 110,000 enrolled on the day. This is the scale of the potential disenfranchisement of the Govt law change stopping enrolment on 25 October:
nzherald.co.nz/the-listener/…
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
Agree with Asher, and the economic myths that carried the 1980s deserve naming too.
Myth one: the Government has to collect taxes and borrow before it can spend. It doesn't. NZ issues its own floating NZD and spends by crediting accounts. Tax and bonds drain money afterwards.
Myth two: the Government is like a household. Councils and families can run dry. The Crown can't be forced to.
Myth three: the debt is a burden. It's the settlement cash the Government issued itself, sitting on Treasury's books as "Borrowings".
Myth four: no money for nurses, hospitals or state houses. The money was never the shortage. Real capacity is the limit, and austerity manufactured the shortage of nurses.
Myth five: the ratings agencies keep us honest. Same firms that stamped AAA on subprime junk. Money grows on trees, what it buys does not. Inflation, imports and the exchange rate are real limits. Solvency never was.
Neoliberals said there's no money. They just gaslit the gullible.
stuff.co.nz/nz-news/36104912…
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
He fails to mention that for 40 years, New Zealanders have been able to enrol right up until midnight before election day.
The last two elections we could even enrol on election day.
It’s a massive backwards step that many people won’t know about until they try vote.
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
Good read. When introduced NZ’ers rejoiced that same day enrolling/voting occurred.
For us a right of passage, taking our kids to enrol/vote.
But now serious money is involved & corporate & foreign agendas so democracy & fulfilling civic duty are illegally obstacled.
#nzpol
Voting is a pain in my arse. I hate peopleing, and I hate the quiet Presbyterian udgement in the queue. Whatever, I’ll do my civic duty. But Luxon’s coalition of calamity just made doing yours that little bit harder, and why you have until MIDNIGHT TONIGHT to enrol. #nzpol 🧵👇
What holds the knot together? Rituals. The bloke at the trestle ruling a line through your name. Grandad voting from his rest home. Same-day enrolment was a vital patch. Now, a young person braves the hall, and isn't on the list. Civic psychosis: total alienation from the system.
The Real reason this law was passed is to further loosen the democratic knot for some, by shifting the polity toward those with pre-existing tight knots. If you know someone who may (k)not be enrolled, they have until MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. Full piece: andrewdicksonnz.substack.com…
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
The media should stop asking politicians whether they BELIEVE in climate change and start asking them whether they UNDERSTAND it.
It’s science, not Santa.
Not just economics.
We obviously haven’t had the major jobs wipeout yet. But you read stuff like this. And you read what economics students themselves are saying about working with AI (ht @odavis_h) and it’s hard not to feel like the seismic shift is on its way.
Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC retweeted
When it comes to Seymour always look at what he does, not what he says.
Then you will never be surprised.
He is the ultimate hypocrite.
The ACT Party just love to tell us that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Ok then, what if we were to ask who actually paid for Seymour’s downgraded $3 school lunch? Clue, it wasn’t Seymour. 1/4
Then we learn that 20,000 of those lunches are waste every day! The Ministry even asked one Christchurch school to cut its order by 200 lunches. The principal said no. She wasn’t going to help them hide that waste. Good stance. 3/4
In psychoanalytic theory, when any one kid refuses food, they are making a statement. 20,000 a day is cacophony. I wrote something on this... Marx and Lacan on Seymour’s slop. The Greens come out of it rather well: andrewdicksonnz.substack.com… /fin