reine

Didn't Labour sell assets when they were in power for a measley Dollar and later on they had to buy them back at a price of millions or have you had a senior moment about these assets. Truth please.

Ah yes the great Roger Douglas who turned into an Act man.

Jobs have been taken over by technology reine, and thanks to Helen Clarke our labour is no longer required because just about everything is imported from Asian countries.
The assets are not being completely sold, we will still have controlling shares.

reine, gaye-belle - what has happened, has happened, and we have to face it, and think about what needs to be done to overcome the undesirable results of what happened.
If you are like a hand-to-mouth living hunter/ gatherer or even self-sufficient peasant living independently on your plot of land - then for everything extra you require that you cannot make yourself, you just have to save something to exchange for the extra you desire.

Isn't that the simple, natural truth?

If we are in want, what other way is there than to work and save for it, or go and rob someone who got what we want?

The same applies to the national economy.
So - isn't the answer to all imaginable economic complaints, including excessive unemployment - a bit of belt tightening for a higher savings and investment rate, unless we want to become the servants of foreign savers, because without savings, nothing beyond hand-to-mouth consumption gets done, and there are no jobs in anything else but hand labour based food production.

What else can you propose, reine and gay-belle, to face the problems you experienced and observed?

Yes JENS.......we are the hunter gatherer types where we go and get our own meat, have our own hens and get eggs, we have a garden with veggies and fruit growing in it, but its hard work when your not well to do it...
We dont have a big yard just a small city yard...

Everything we buy is bought with money we have saved for it...we have no bills, but we wait until we can aford it, even if it takes a few years to get there.............
We have no bank cards to get into trouble with, and that is the way we prefere to live......that way it is a simple but dept free life without any worries of what will happen in the future............

reine, since you have a garden and chickens, you are a step ahead of a "hunter gatherer" alredy, even if you do some hunting, fishing and gathering from the public domain of what "mother nature" provides.
(You do realise, that the latter on its own without some special "capital investment" effort, is not enough to feed our huge population even at starvaton level?)

So, reine - would you not be the first one to understand and welcome a govt. initiative to help you share in a collective wealth creative savings effort with a personal stake in it, in view that the small amount you might be able to save separately on your own for the long term might not amount to much, and would not make a difference to the national economy for visible benefits to all, unless it is done by all of us for the delivery of better retirement security and prosperity?

Especially, as beside those desirable goals in the future for our younger people, it will also deliver immediately felt benefits through building up national assets (and jobs without borrowing from banks and overseas) ?

JENS.........
We have worked hard for what we have to be able to do these things, the trouble with a lot of those on the stavation level is, it is more important to buy a drink or a packet of smokes instead of buying a shovel and a packet of seeds, thats all it takes to start out...........
How many meals could they afford if they didnt drink or smoke...I would even lend them a shovel if it means that they are going to dig a garden and grow some food for the family.......

How much money does it cost to put a line over the rocks or wharf to catch some fish or walk along the beach for some pipis..
most want to just do what they want without thinking of the children..they would enjoy having part of the garden growing something they have learnt from school....
they would love to go to the beach fishing or getting pipis....it is what your priorities are in life..

Unfortunately NZ has bred a civilisation of "WANNA's" in the last 20 years.

I remember being in a park or in the bush, and even on the farm having a drink out of the creek or water trough. You older ones may werll remember. But today what does "Mum or Dad" do; race to the supermarket and grab a bottle of FIZZY DRINK or SPRING WATER.

Why take the tax off Fizzy?

Any "FRESH FOOD ITEM" SHOULD BE FREE OF SALES TAX and GST., And parents should be growing their own food as much as they can as it's soooo cheap to do and productive.

"I blame WINZ for a lot of the trouble."
A case in point which actually blew me away happened in a supermarket.
A young woman (30ish) in front of me at a Checkout places her groceries on the conveyer . Among her shopping I distinctly recall; a case of 18 bottles of beer, 6 Dog Sausage Rolls, 1 loaf of bread, 1 margarine and a pottle of honey. Along with 4 packets of "Chippies" (on special) 2 for $3.
She also asked the operator for 2 packets of 30 cigarettes.

So what is my point you may well ask?

After she was told the amount she handed over a voucher from WINZ to pay for it.


I askeds the operator while I was being served: "Where can I get a "Chitty" like that?"

The reply. "WINZ, we get them all the time and it saves arguments if we accept them without questioning the products they are buying."

What a bloody wraught, I have to live within my means on Superannuation.

Amazonian - if there were relief GST vouchers for selected "healthy food" items, there would be no arguments for supermarket operators, because they would appear automatically on the sales slip, for a reduced sales price for those that had them.

Thus, for those qualifying poor there still would be a NZSF savings rate accounted for, and their GST relief vouchers would practically be a modest savings subsidy - which is arguably more fair and "common sense", than savings subsidies to those that can afford to seve without them, like say most of our KiwiSavers.
(This is not to argue against KiwiSaver subsidies, but only to soften opposition to universal NZSF savings through retaining full GST as it is, and drawing attention to the VERY MODEST subsidies called for to achieve 100% of citizen participation through that.)

JENS.......
If instead of giving the benifisheries all the money weekly to just smoke and booze away if not gambling as well, we should be paying there rent giving them a voucher for groceries to make sure food is put on the table for the kids, making sure there is a fund left there so when the kids have to go on a school trip they cannot be left behind all the time as booze and smokes come 1st.
That there is money left put aside for clothes for the children when they need it or they need to go to the dr and then give the parent what is left over with the addition of them going to money manament course

Not all need to do this but you know who does and who doesnt, some have no job of there own and dont need a job, they just plain dont want to work.
You do this to them and they will will soon find a job of there own to work as they wont want there money sorted out like that. But the children should come 1st not beer and smokes, and as long as they can sit on the benefit and not do anything for it, as well as children going to school hungry then this is how it should be.

If there are circumstances, like chch with ppl out of work and not seeing any work in the future because of things beyound there own responsability then that should not be put a cross on them, after all they were working, they want to work, they feel people are being put down with strangers coming in doing some of the jobs that they were doing in the comunity.
Then they wonder why there are so many sucides here in chch at the monment and most are family men who feel put down as they feel that they have failed there family.

tobacco and beer and spirits are not allowed in wins purchases

Waimak1 - since I suppose even GST vouchers could be exchaged for cash between boozers and sympathetic non-boozers - then how can govt. really reduce child poverty of those irresponsible boozung parents?

Waimac...
It seems to me that you are quite prepared to spend taxpayers money on booze so once again children go without because to many selfish adults want there own thing...
Most adults have some sort of decency when it comes to children......aparently you dont..............