The US Federal Government is now paying over $1 trillion a year in interest on its $35 trillion debt. So they are paying more in interest than the entire GDP of New Zealand four times over.

The major contributors to the debt have been:

1. Obama $8.3 trillion
2. Trump $8.2 trillion
3. Biden $6.7 trillion
4. Bush $6.1 trillion

So their share of the debt is:

1. Obama 23.7%
2. Trump 23.4%
3. Biden 19.1%
4. Bush 17.4%

So the interest being paid due to each President’s policies are:

1. Obama $237 billion or $1,810/household
2. Trump $234 billion or $1,788/household
3. Biden $191 billion or $1,461/household
4. Bush $174 billion or $1,330/household

Overall each US household is paying $7,633 in interest payments on behalf of the last four Presidents. Sadly no matter who wins, the debt and interest will just continue to grow until one day the bubble collapses.

I have not checked all the stories out, but hugely one-sided reporting if true.

I wonder if Radio NZ did 30 stories covering the views of opponents of Maori Wards when Labour in 2021 without electoral mandate abolished referenda on them? They did so using urgency to push it through Parliament in under two weeks. I bet you Radio NZ had at most a handful of articles on it.

In 2023 National, ACT and NZ First were all on the record opposing the scrapping of referenda. They got elected in that knowledge. It was in their coalition agreements, yet it gets 30 articles on it.

An important paper from NZIER:

The discount rate is basically the estimated cost of borrowing or capital, used to calculate if a public sector project will produce a net positive benefit.

If it is set too low, you spend too much money on projects that are uneconomic and if it is set too high, you may decide not fund a project that is worth funding. So the rate used has a massive impact.

NZIER point out:

Since 2020, interest rates have risen significantly, but the Treasury has not updated the discount rate. This has caused the discount rate to become untethered from interest rates. The last time interest rates were at today’s level, the Treasury’s discount rate was 8.0% – three percentage points above the current value.

And they show this by this graph:

incredible that is hasn’t increased in the last few years. I would have thought 7% would be a suitable rate for now, based on the likely drop in interest rates occurring.

A very important cabinet circular:

The Government seeks to ensure that all New Zealanders, regardless of ethnicity or personal
identity, have access to public services that are appropriate and effective for them, and that
services are not arbitrarily allocated on the basis of ethnicity or any other aspect of identity. …

Cabinet expects agencies will recognise that there are many variables that can be used to identify and assess need, and that all variables should be considered before ethnic identity is automatically used to determine need.

So it is not a ban on any service based on ethnicity, but it sets a very high threshold – as opposed to the current near zero threshold.

Also Nicola Willis has announced:

“The Government also wants to ensure that Government contracts are awarded within a robust and merit-based framework that focuses on delivering public value.

“As such Cabinet has removed the previous Government’s target for 8% of government agencies’ annual contracts to be awarded to Māori businesses.

“This target risked a perception of discrimination and gave the impression of an uneven playing field for suppliers.

No perception about it. This was a terrible policy. Let’s say there are two companies competing for a government tender. Both produce work of the same quality and price.

One is owned by five people, who are all very wealthy. One of them has Maori ancestry through their great great great grand father. They qualify for the 8% quota. The other company is owned by five people, none of whom are very wealthy. They are a mix of races, but none of them Maori. They do not qualify.

The Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance released:

he Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance can reveal through Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act that Auckland Council spent $263,000 on four sets of stairs for Milford Beach’s Southern Walkway.

As part of council’s coastal asset renewals programme, the total figure adds up to $8,218.75 per step, replaced like-for-like with the addition of a handrail.

Staggering, even for local government.

You can get sets of outdoor steps for a few hundred dollars. I could even imagine you spending a few thousand dollars on them – but over $60,000 each is incredible.=

From Radio NZ

This is great. Emergency housing should be for emergencies and temporary.

Stuff reports:

Hundreds of explosions that erupted from handheld pagers across Beirut may have been the result of booby-trapped devices rather than a cyber attack, security experts have suggested.

The pagers, which were being used by Hezbollah officials to communicate privately, detonated across the Lebanese capital on Tuesday, reportedly injuring thousands of people, including civilians and militant fighters.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the explosions, but the dramatic attack triggered an obvious question: how did they do it?

One theory is the explosions were the result of an unprecedented cyber attack, with hackers somehow overheating and destroying the pagers remotely.

Another is supply chain sabotage, with Israel able to booby trap hundreds of pagers destined for use by Hezbollah.

A cyber attack could have involved manipulating these devices and causing their batteries to overheat. Lithium batteries will smoke or melt if overheated and can catch on fire, with past fires reported on gadgets including smartphones, e-bikes or scooters.

This is fascinating. Instinctively I don’t think it is overheating as a fire is not the same as an explosion. Not sure we’ll ever find out, but I will predict pager use is about to plummet!

Hezbollah is recognised as a terrorist entity by over 60 countries including the EU, UK, US, the Arab League, and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Interesting speculation here.

The Herald reports:

Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has acknowledged the economic challenges facing residents in the capital, saying she’s “feeling the crunch” too and recently sold her car to help pay the bills.

The mayor’s annual salary has increased to $189,799 following a 3.7% pay rise in July. She also won $1.4 million through Lotto in 2002.

Maybe if rates were not going up 20%, then an adult with no children on almost $200,000 a year wouldn’t be forced to sell their car!

The Herald reports:

A person has died on Mount Ruapehu.

Local iwi have placed a rāhui over the Tūroa ski area. …

“The rāhui acknowledges the sacredness of our maunga, the sacredness of the loss of life and acknowledges the family’s loss.”

The rāhui meant operations on the ski area would be paused to allow for a “quiet time” to heal the mountain.

“This is done to uplift the spirit of the deceased and restore the elements to make it safe for visitors to return,” the statement said.

Mountains don’t have spirit. They don’t have feelings. They don’t get sad when someone dies on them., Mountains are made of rock and soil. The rocks are mainly silicon and oxygen.

I wouldn’t have a problem with a place being closed because of mourning the loss of life. That is not superstition. But to give credence to claims that rocks need time to heal because someone died on them is just more mixing science and mythology.

I love mythology. I love reading about and studying the Greek Gods, the Roman Gods, the Norse Gods and the Maori Gods. They all have a wonderful place to play in culture. But they have no place to play in science or law.

I love the Media Insider columns by Shayne Currie. They are my first read in the Herald. It is rare for me to disagree with one, but I must do so with this one on Google.

Media Minister Paul Goldsmith faces a huge test of will as he oversees a new law in the face of strident opposition from one of the world’s biggest tech companies. Some industry and Government insiders accuse Google of employing bullying tactics. Shayne Currie reports.

Tech giant Google – whose New Zealand operation made almost $1 billion last financial year – has been accused of employing hardball tactics with the Government and media companies over a planned new law which would force it to pay for the journalism and news content that help drive its business model.

Several sources have alleged Google’s tactics include threatening to not renew existing contracts with media companies, while the new law goes through Parliament.

One source said the tactics were tantamount to bullying. “They’re playing their usual games, being as obnoxious as they can be.”

First of all the statement that journalism and news content help drive their business model is an assertion made by media companies, but is far from a fact. An article here points out less than 2% of searches new news related, and most of them don’t have ads on them. Media of course have the choice of setting their content not to be useable by Google. However none of them have done so – presumably because they benefit from doing so.

Secondly who is the bully. The organisations trying to force a company to hand over money to keep them happy, or the company saying it doesn’t want to hand over money?

The media are the bullies – trying to get the government to pass a law to steal money from Internet companies and pass ist on to them.

Todd Stephenson released:

ACT MP Todd Stephenson has lodged a member’s bill in Parliament’s ballot to extend eligibility for End of Life Choice services.

The End of Life Choice (Extended Eligibility) Amendment Bill removes the requirement for a terminally ill person to demonstrate a six-month prognosis, while retaining all other safeguards. …

This means the criteria would then be:

• is aged 18 years or over
• is in an advanced state of irreversible decline in physical capability
• experiences unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that the person considers tolerable
• is competent to make an informed decision about assisted dying.

I’m in favour.

The Spectator reports:

The price we’ve been sold for, £100 million, speaks to that belief in our potential. We were valued at £20 million when we separated from the Daily Telegraph in 2005. Since then, the magazine market has fallen by about two-thirds but our subscriptions have more than doubled. This five times valuation increase is, to put it mildly, rare in our industry. The auction attracted 22 potential bidders, including some of the greatest and most respected names in British and European publishing. Not bad for a publication with barely three dozen journalists. 

This deal is vindication of The Spectator’s unusual business model. In this trade, there is always pressure to go for the digital ‘quick wins’ (clickbait articles, advertorials, etc.) but we rejected this as a false economy – so commercial that it’s uncommercial. It would take us downmarket, deform our character and, ergo, reduce the company’s value. So we went the other way, using our success to double down on the magazine’s finest traditions in the belief that quality of writing matters above all. We did a lot that went against the conventional digital wisdom. We put together a different business model and a unique way of working, based on close collaboration between all departments and journalists equally comfortable with print, digital and broadcast.  

When other publications were shedding sub-editors, we poached the best ones we could find. When newspapers shrank their books sections, we proudly kept Sam Leith’s at ten-plus pages and gave him a podcast. We created a research team who apply perhaps the most robust pre-publication scrutiny on Fleet Street (mindful that it matters more than ever that readers can trust the facts they read). When other weeklies started cutting costs by not printing over Easter and the summer, we put more effort than ever into the issues released in those holiday periods. 

I am a huge fan of the Spectator and they have shown how quality can be profitable. Their daily podcast, Coffee House Shot, is also a must listen.

Lukje Pierson writes:

A few weeks back, Wellington City Council published a story summarising what thousands of us think of its priorities for the next decade. Buried on page 40, you’ll find what Wellingtonians really think of the council’s controversial new cycleways. It turns out just 30% of us are happy, while 60% want to see the work reduced, or stopped altogether.

In other words, twice as many Wellingtonians oppose council’s cycling network as support it.

This is not hugely surprising.

Wellington’s cycleway shambles has become a regular topic all over town, but I’ve never met anyone opposed to cycleways in principle – we’re an environmentally and socially conscious city, and most agree cycling should be a choice in our transport mix.

So why are we all so outraged?

For a start, we’re doing them atrociously. Our streets have become littered with a mishmash of painted strips, cones and poles, stapled bits of plastic, incoherent road markings and routes that weave in and out of parked cars and through groups of pedestrians at bus stops.

Then there’s the impact on parking. Aside from the obvious inconvenience, removing parking from the central city alone has cost council $8m annually in lost revenue – directly contributing to record rates rises.

The best cycleways should be removed from roads, not created by abolishing car parks or taking away lanes.

This, to me, goes to the heart of the problem with Wellington’s diabolical cycleways. Council is quite literally bulldozing ahead with $111m more of this work, ignoring the pleas of our emergency services, struggling small business owners, vulnerable healthcare workers and two thirds of Wellingtonians just trying to get by, in favour of cycling extremism.

This story isn’t over, but we can all see how it ends. Far from being environmentally and socially conscious, council will double down on a privileged few, while making the city less liveable for everybody else – and force the rest of us to pay for it, at a time we can least afford to.

It is a wealth transfer from the many to the few!

CNN reports:

A person has been detained in connection to the incident at Trump International Golf Club on Sunday, according to a law enforcement source.

Secret Service fired at the suspect, according to multiple sources.

A long gun has been recovered, according to the source.

Officials believe an armed individual intended to target former President Donald Trump at his golf club, according to sources briefed on the matter.

It’s nice to live in a country where (IIRC) no one has ever tried to shoot a politician. Trying to take people’s choices away through violence is the opposite of democracy.

Simon O’Connor writes:

In a month or so, we will see over one thousand New Zealanders having ended their lives by euthanasia.   This is based on the Ministry of Health’s latest reports on euthanasia/assisted suicide state that since the law came into effect (November 2021) till June this year, 867 people have died already.

My opposition to euthanasia is well known but I think many people will still find this number very high for a ‘service’ that has been running for just under three years. 

During the same time period around 100,000 NZers have died, so euthanasia is contributing to around 1% of that. Rates in other countries where it is legal range from 0.4% to 4% so 1% seems pretty ordinary.

When we take the latest quarterly report (end of June) and look back over the previous twelve months, there is a reported total of 347 deaths by euthanasia/assisted suicide.  However, when you read the annual report from the Register that covers the same time period, she says there were 344 deaths.

The same discrepancies exist when you compare the number of applications for assisted suicide/euthanasia.  The quarterly reports say 847, while the annual report say 834.

While there is probably a benign explanation for this, I agree it is bad for the numbers to vary on something as important as this.

The reports also note that only one in every one hundred people are being referred for a psychological assessment when requesting euthanasia or assisted dying.  This is extraordinarily low, indicating that doctors are either missing the signs or ignoring them.

Every day we see headlines about significant and widespread mental health issues in New Zealand and yet we are somehow to believe that only 1% of all those seeking euthanasia have psychological issues worthy of further consideration. 

This doesn’t surprise me as the criteria for euthanasia is so tight – you must be in unbearable pain and expected to die within six months. If the criteria was less strict, I would expect far more psychological assessments.

Up until very recently, the three person body known as the  End of Life Review Committee, has never been fully constituted.  This committee is meant to comprise of a medical professional (doctor), a health professional (e.g. a nurse), and an ethicist. Since euthanasia became legal the review committee has struggled to have either an ethicist or a doctor on the panel.

I was unaware of this. It is good the panel is now complete.

The sad irony is that the government fully funds euthanasia but refuses to fully – or even better – fund palliative care.  Euthanasia ends life prematurely.  Palliative care gives life to the very end.   I know which one I would preference funding for.

It would be nice to fund both but I don’t think it is quite a trade off. The cost of an assisted death to the taxpayer is $1,087.20 so a total cost of say $500,000 a year compared to the cost of palliative care of $186 million a year. You could even argue that euthanasia reduces the cost of palliative care.

Stuff reports:

Australian break dancer Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn has been ranked No.1 according to the official World Dance Sport Federation (WDSF) world rankings for professional breakers for September.

Raygun returned to Australia on Monday to the unexpected ranking, despite her last place finish in Paris.

Hilarious. In other news Gerry Brownlee has been ranked the number 1 sprinter in the world, Peter Dinklage has been ranked the No 1 high jumper in the world and John Bobbitt the No 1 pole vaulter.

An interesting article at the Herald where ten top economists are asked to critique the Covid-19 economic response. Some common themes were:

• People hate inflation
• Monetary policy eventually works
• quantitative easing and long-term committed lending operations were especially bad
• Temporary fiscal expansion was appropriate but not long-term fiscal expansion
• New Zealand policymakers got it wrong with both the Government and RBNZ sharing in some of the blame
• the quality of fiscal decisions is more important than the quantity
• excessive provision of free money ends up causing inflation
• Actions by both the Reserve Bank and Finance Minister over the pandemic were ultimately failures
• Covid became an excuse to do anything as opposed to targeted Covid relief, AKA a slush fund

This tweet with data from the UK has gone viral. It does raise some interesting questions.

Firstly it is important to note that the vast vast majority of all three groups are not incarcerated sex offenders.

99.9997% of UK women are not incarcerated sex offenders, 99.96% of UK men are not incarcerated sex offenders and 99.8% of transwomen are not.

The data should not be treated as precise as the population of transwomen in the UK is not known precisely. But what you can conclude is that men are far far more likely than women to be in prison for sexual offending, and transwomen are as likely or more likely as men to be in prison for sexual offending.

Sentencing discrepancies could explain some of this – but not enough to close the huge gap between men and women. And it is of course no surprise to anyone that more men commit sexual offences.

The imprisonment rate for transwomen is arguably more surprising. Now again we’re only talking 2 in 1,000 so it is only the relative rate which is high, not the absolute rate. One possible explanation is that the data only reflects people’s current gender identity, and not their gender identity when sentenced. Could a number of inmates have changed their gender identity after conviction, so that they are moved to a different prison? What proportion of the 92 offenders are in a women’s prison, and did they start their sentence in one?