#maxrashbrooke — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #maxrashbrooke, aggregated by home.social.
-
"In return for borrowing this money from the private sector, the government pays interest over many years. This deal allows it to build things now that it otherwise could not, if limited by its current reserves of cash; it also ensures that future generations, who will benefit from that infrastructure, pick up part of the tab.
New Zealand commentators and policymakers, however, have long taken a peculiarly constrained approach to such borrowing."
#MaxRashbrooke, 2025
-
"The Commerce Commission has calculated the supermarket duopoly extracts $1m in excess profits every day – profits, in other words, above and beyond those they would make in a competitive market. That $1m a day comes straight out of shoppers’ wallets."
#MaxRashbrooke, 2025
https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/27-02-2025/we-need-to-stop-shadow-boxing-on-competition
(1/2)
#AntiMonopoly #ComCom#SupermarketDuopoly
-
Max Rashbrooke gave the NatACTs way too much credit back in 2023
"... an incoming administration can hardly cancel signed contracts or halt work underway."
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/25-09-2023/did-national-really-just-simply-sell-off-state-houses
If only that were true.
-
"Administrative waste in US healthcare – generated by every private player trying to shift the cost onto another – is so great that it would pay for every uninsured American to get insurance. It is also greater than the entirety of Britain’s NHS budget."
#MaxRashbrooke, 2025
-
"The maddest examples have come when monopolies – water, rail – have been sold to private firms, even though competition is the only thing that makes markets work. A private monopoly is the worst of both worlds: no competition-based incentives to improve, and no public-good ethos pushing the organisation to look out for citizens’ interests."
#MaxRashbrooke, 2025
-
"In 1993, financiers Fay Richwhite were allowed to advise the government on the sale of the state-owned New Zealand Rail – and then be one of main shareholders in the winning bid.
After that things really went downhill ... And while cutting maintenance to a level [economist Bill] Rosenberg labelled 'abysmal', Fay Richwhite and their fellow owners took out at least $370m in profits from a firm for which they had paid just $328m."
#MaxRashbrooke, 2025
-
Oh and in the same paper, #MaxRashbrooke's ideas on #LocalGovernment funding. Btw, he's not a fan of govt. returning a portion of #GST on rates (as proposed by mayor Paula) since it just reshuffles $$$
https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/nz-news/350112741/higher-rates-rich-and-other-ideas-local-govts-funding-crisis -
As #MaxRashbrooke pointed out on TheSpinoff;
"Our spending is not really the problem: our failure to raise enough tax revenue is. The projections of a surplus by 2027 rely on the annual allowance for new spending shrinking from the current $3.5 billion to just $1.6 billion in 2026 (once existing commitments are factored in)."
-
"[Aotearoa] continues to run current account deficits – importing more goods and services than it exports, often loosely described as 'living beyond our means'. The deficit will be a large 8.1% of GDP this year, falling to 4.3% in 2027."
A result of successive govts doing anything they can to increase exports, while being effectively banned from reducing imports - even of designer landfill like the garbage sold in $2 stores - by "free trade agreements".
-
The right claim National are better protectors of economic health than Labour. It's never been true, and still isn't;
"No recession is expected. The economy will continue to grow at 2.6%, on average, over the next four years. Inflation will be back under 3% some time next year, and wages will easily outpace it. Unemployment will rise, but only to 5.4%, a below-average amount.
Government debt remains low by global and historical standards..."
-
@trustdemocracy
"There’s a middle-class fantasy of authoritarianism that I hear more and more these days, and which needs to be stopped in its tracks."#MaxRashbrooke, 2022
This!