Posts by Matthew Poole
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The real question is how do you decide how much we should pay politicians when no one thinks they have any need of their services.
Apart from fanatical libertarians, and anarchists, I think most people accept that politicians have some utility. It may be as the butt of jokes, or as media fodder, but they have a purpose.
The harder issue is what's a suitable scale. Private industry would be fine if a criterion was having a successful past in private business. But many, if not the majority, don't. On both sides there is plenty of employed mediocrity. Also, when a nation has undergone the profound economic changes that have swept NZ in the last 20 years, how does one effectively value the politicians, such as Anderton, who have been in the House so long that whatever their past business success may have been it's now a) irrelevant and b) so diminished by inflation as to be worthless in current terms?
The nice thing about indexing to the salaries of a particular sector, or to the median income, is that those measures transcend time and inflation. They also give feedback as to the well-being of the economy, giving increased rewards when all is going well and diminishing ones when things are going to custard. And if it ever all goes thoroughly to shit and we suffer deflation, well, they get to share in that pain too. Coz you can be absolutely certain that we won't ever see deflation-linked decreases in parliamentary salaries. Well, not until there's a need for a Kathmandu outlet in the outer circles of Hades in any case.
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I have to agree that this is nonsense. The people who get the most money are the people who make the most money for their masters, be they be sports clubs, Media companies or money speculators.
Tom, Shay, the point is over that way *points into the distance*.
I said one of the reasons not the only reason. I actually think it's pretty fucked that we pay entertainers such stupid sums, but they do have the advantage of economies of scale. A doctor can only treat so many patients. A single episode of Shorters is watched by more people than a consulting surgeon could hope to treat in their entire career.
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That's a good point. Public respect, at least as measured by those surveys, is not at all closely tied to income.
That's an interesting point. Fire fighters have been top of the "Most Trusted Profession in New Zealand" surveys for several years, and the vast majority of them aren't paid anything (about 85% are volunteers). The ones who do get paid for it start on $32k after completing training, while after 20 years and with station management duties and responsibility for, generally, incidents with up to about 16 fire fighters (at which point chiefs start to come along and take over) the base rises to a whopping $55-60k.
At the opposite end are politicians, who're about the most highly-paid in the surveys, possibly excepting lawyers (I think they're in there) and airline pilots.
And speaking of how woeful fire fighters' remuneration is, there's the possibility of a fire fighters' strike this year. Unlikely, but possible. NZPFU have already reached the "work to rule" point in trying to get a new collective agreement after over a decade on an expired one.
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Marcus, that's very true. However, one of the reasons for paying people more is recognition of the value they bring to society. We pay doctors well because there is nothing more important to most people than the health of themselves and their loved-ones. Similarly corporate lawyers are well-paid as a recognition of how much money can be saved or wasted based on their competence and skill.
Politicians, though, are not uniquely skilled people, except maybe at being suckups who can tolerate endless hours of brown-nosing. They're paid at such high levels in this country because, supposedly, they're running a business. Only, they're not. What Adam Hunt failed to acknowledge is that the CEO administering a $70b annual budget has to first earn that $70b through trading activity. He can't just reach into the pockets of others and take it by legal force, to then be spent on other things. If money out is greater than money in for any significant period of time, a CEO who's getting paid what Key gets paid will be looking for a new job. Managers are paid based on the value proposition of their employment. What's the value proposition of employing a bunch of farmers and accountants to oversee social services, policing and healthcare?
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Celebrity doesn't confer authority.
Neither does being a reformed merchant banker, Craig. Key was well out of line with his comment, and you know it.
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As I said in another thread, while not objecting to MPs being paid well, I am far from thrilled that they're well seated above the 95th percentile of national income. I suspect that ministers are at more like the 98th or 99th percentile. Unfortunately Stats NZ don't publish income statistics at any greater degree of granularity than a huge band of above (from memory) $1080/week. Even with that being the upper quintile MPs are still in no danger of being considered low-paid.
What disturbs me more is that we pay highly-trained medical professionals considerably less than we pay MPs. An opposition list MP gets more than a junior doctor, and ministers are getting more than senior doctors (assuming no private consulting practice). That, as far as I am concerned, is a total nonsense. Being an MP requires no training, no particular experience, and certainly carries no life-in-their-hands responsibility.
At best we should be indexing parliamentarians' pay to median doctors' pay in the public health system (watch the lightning-fast pay increases!), and personally I'd say tie it to the median wage. Multiples thereof, to be sure, but indexed to the median wage all the same. Say par for list MPs, one-and-a-half times for electorate MPs, double for ministers and party leaders, two-and-a-half-times for the deputy PM, and triple for the PM. That would put English on a shade under $70k (2.5*52*$537) (sorry for the 2008 median income, I can't find this year's figures and I doubt that they're terribly much more), and Key on just under $84k.
Want more money? Run the country in a way that improves the median income. That tends to rule out flogging shit off to your cut-through mates who'll run it into the ground by employing as few low-wage monkeys as possible, and also tends to rule out doing things that weaken collective bargaining and other tools for improving wages. Basically it means that treating employees well is important, instead of a despicable option that gets in the way of making money.
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Scott, so that would be roughly half of them in any given Session? ;)
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That doesn't mean MPs are overpaid, though.
I, personally, think there's something very, very wrong when elected officials are earning above even the 85th - never mind the 95th! - percentile of national income distribution. We're not the developing world, for crying out loud.
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Scott, that would make sense about removing himself as both trustee and beneficiary. Hadn't thought of that angle. And you're probably right that it's that easy to get around the expenses rules. After all, they're not answerable to IRD for this shit so it really doesn't have to be airtight. Close enough is good enough and all that.
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Plus, NO benefit is easy to get in NZ.
Not only are benefits not easy to get, even when you're on them you're screwed if you need extra money for, say, dental work. A friend's a DPB mother (three kids to the same father, who she divorced because he was an abusive fuck, before anyone goes down that particular corridor) and needs some work done including a root canal. Subtracting the cost of the root canal, the best that WINZ can offer her is a collection of loans (loans, not grants!) that come to less than 2/3 the cost of what she needs done. Add in the root canal and it's probably not even half.
Without getting into the expense of dentistry, it's a mightily fucked-up system that puts very low limits on how much it will loan you to get something as important as basic dental work. It's not like she's wanting her teeth whitened or straightened.