Labour’s desperate attempt at sabotage

Labour is making a last-ditch desperate attempt to sabotage the partial sale of Mighty River Power.

Shares in Mighty River Power go on sale today, but Labour is warning potential investors it plans to makes changes in the electricity sector if elected next year. . .

He won’t say what the changes will be, only that is was fair to warn potential investors.

“What we’re most concerned about is the rise in power prices and the fact that when these assets are sold the likelihood is that power prices are going to go up and that the companies are going to be increasingly held in foreign hands.” . .

The Labour leader is playing at being David Shearerpisos again.

There are no details on what they’d do because there is nothing they could do. If he’d asked his Finance Spokesman, David Parker, he’d know that.

Power prices went up far more steeply in the nine year’s when Labour was last in government than they have since National took over in 2008.

At a public meeting, when he was a Minister, Parker was asked about power prices and said he’d joined Labour because of Max Bradford’s electricity reforms.

In response to a question about why Labour had done nothing to reverse the changes or moderate them he said it was too late, there was nothing the government could do.

Shearer’s latest release is empty rhetoric. It displays the party’s contempt for, and ignorance of ,business and provides another reason to ensure they won’t be leading the government after next year’s election.

Shearer wants hands-on our money

David Shearer is trying to convince us we’d be better with a more hands-on government.

What he means is he wants his hands on more of our money to redistribute in ways that will help some at the cost of many.

The some he helps won’t necessarily be those in need and the many it costs won’t only be those who can afford it.

He doesn’t back up his desire for a more hands-on approach with facts, possibly because, the facts wouldn’t back him up.

Hands-on economies are struggling and countries which have weathered the global financial crisis better, are those which have a less hands-on approach.

The countries that best weathered the crisis were exactly those that have followed the so-called neoliberal agenda.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the world’s six freest economies are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Canada (see table).

These six have avoided anything like the deep and prolonged recessions of more interventionist countries.

The IMF continues to forecast higher growth for the six than for countries further down the freedom list.

Even more important, both unemployment and youth unemployment are lower in the more free-market economies.

“Hand’s-on” countries like Sweden seem unable to design an economic system that avoids a quarter of their young people being unemployed.  In the six freest economies, youth unemployment is half socialist Europe’s. . . 

New Zealand’s youth unemployment is higher than it was because of a left-wing hands-on approach, the removal of the youth wage.

. . . Still, Mr Shearer has done us a favour by launching a “hands-on / hands-off” debate.

It highlights the risks of departing from successful free-market economics towards the kind of EU-style interventionism first begun by Jim Anderton and continued ever since.

We have  clear choice.

There’s the hands-on our money approach of David Shearerpisos and Labour’s potential coalition partners.

Or the more moderate approach of National and its allies which prefer to address the barriers to growth and employment then allow people to get on with their lives and businesses.

Inflation 83%

Another quote of the day from Facebook:

 

Steven Joyce

I see Labour’s housing policy has been hit by inflation already. Prices for Akl houses up 83% in 2 months – now $550k!

UPDATE: And another one (from someone else):

Just so funny. With all his grandiose spending promises I will start calling him David Shearerpisos. Because he and Russell Norman will make us like Greece. . .