The basic problem is that we (we: citizens) are / have become conditioned to see only headline numbers. That’s why we look at GDP as a productivity number (it’s not, it’s an economic output number not relating to productivity output from workers. And that’s still true even if it’s gpd per capita).
So all Minister Jones is doing here is talking to the headline. It sounds good, but it’s not.
And that - the extractive story with limited returns - is what we need to help people understand.
I understand. My first instinct is educate, educate, educate. John Oliver in the US does an amazing job of this - education through entertainment. If only we had something similar.
Until I think of something better, my instinct is to contribute - even if it's just drops to that ocean.
I also think this is why I felt annoyed at the subreddit moderators in the largest subreddit in New Zealand. They didn't need to run a political subreddit but to stifle and can views that can help our country seems bizarre. Is being informed and well researched a crime now?
They allow others to post freely but not me or other folks who I think are very smart and astute. Recently I was called a political commentator. I used to be just someone who would try to comment - but in being pushed out, I looked for another platform to see if I could help. So here I am.
Still - they have reach and I wish they used it more responsibly than two-siding misinformation.
To address it on a larger scale, I believe it needs resources, and one 'side' seems poor, for the most part.
Surprisingly I checked you out 🙄… and agree it’s better to say; to speak; to - in your words - contribute. And I think Substack is a better place than Reddit. At least for now… not sure it will last though…. There is a large volume of people wanting to connect with me (clearly fake profiles)… so that’s why I’m using my real name here… just to say
Closest to John Oliver's show we have here is White Man Behind A Desk on youtube. I quite like him, I reckon he does a stellar job with the resources he has. But there are very few Kiwi's paying attention to him.
As for Reddit... I would like to better understand who the mods are and their motivations on r/nz. Mods are a sore spot on Reddit (been on there for 15 years, Christ...) as it's an unelected position with a lot of secretive networking. That's why you can have someone "moderating" 1000's of subreddits, only to become active when quelling dissent against them e.g. awkwardtheturtle.
I doubt the NZ mods are being motivated by any special interest groups, and they probably do believe "it's not a political sub." Most of them are long term and still active redditors who moderate a sensible number of mostly NZ adjacent subs.
But I don't know. Just like with many people in power, you can only speculate on their true motivations.
About a decade ago, I worked in the National Accounts team at StatsNZ, having transferred from the Productivity statistics team.
The difference in analysis styles was quite stark between Productivity and Annual GDP. Productivity contained a lot more discussion of long run trends and industry / sector level context, including how various factors like technology shift, or structural changes to the economy (our time series went from 1978 to current year minus 2).
As you rightly point out, economic discussions are far more nuanced than GDP, or GDP per capita.
We looked at trends in returns to capital and the labour share, quality input indices, labour and capital inputs and their relationship to value add in the economy.
It told a story of huge changes in GDP unmatched by changes in real wages, but strangely more and more return on capital, while investment in productive capital stock lagged well behind our nearest neighbor.
All the while, the contribution of mining and oil and gas has been miniscule. And the other extraction industries, Ag, sort, fishing and forestry also diminished over time as our economy has diversified.
Now in a desperate grab, the unsustainable industries have banded together to install stool pigeons in government and squeeze every last concession they can out of our country.
That’s very interesting - that that depth of analysis went on — didn’t really appreciate the extent of it. The outcomes you refer to less surprising 😉. Do you know if that type of analysis is still being undertaken?
I seriously doubt it (sadly). The Productivity statistical output got handed to National Accounts and became somewhat bland. I was the technical contact for a couple of years, and tried to field questions from the Productivity Comission, and from folks overseas (Cypress, Malawi, Uganda to name but three).
There some good papers written by the likes of Eldon Paki, and Adam Tipper (colleagues in the Productivity Development team). They should be available on Stats Website.
Also look at the writings of Bill Rosenberg (I think) around 2012-15.
I was there from 2012 to 2015 and not having a background in economics, it was a huge learning curve. My own background is largely electronics, RF engineering, avionics and measurement science. But the last dozen years have been as some kind of data analyst.
Furthermore, they are not considering the opportunity cost of all the time, money and investment they are making try to bend NZ backwards for mining companies' benefit.
I've said it before on reddit, that mining and oil and gas is worth next to nothing for our economy. Honestly, the extraction companies must think us all fools.
And yet, some pro mining dickhead like Shane Jones will tell everyone how important it is that we do this destructive work.
I am genuinely curious, when this kind of mining is done in other countries, particularly "1st world" countries, how much do the country typically get out of it? Is 2% the norm, or well below it? Is there even a norm, or point of comparison to make? It just seems so insanely low to me that I really do not get what is going on or how people could defend this future possibility
Also PwC's Mining calculator shows royalty rates in Australia range from 5-30% - however, there are State and Federal taxes so I suspect it's a little more complex - and could even be higher - than that, but the range seems to be a reasonable ballpark.
The basic problem is that we (we: citizens) are / have become conditioned to see only headline numbers. That’s why we look at GDP as a productivity number (it’s not, it’s an economic output number not relating to productivity output from workers. And that’s still true even if it’s gpd per capita).
So all Minister Jones is doing here is talking to the headline. It sounds good, but it’s not.
And that - the extractive story with limited returns - is what we need to help people understand.
Thank you for an excellent point.
I wish I knew how to deal with that though… 🙄
I understand. My first instinct is educate, educate, educate. John Oliver in the US does an amazing job of this - education through entertainment. If only we had something similar.
Until I think of something better, my instinct is to contribute - even if it's just drops to that ocean.
I also think this is why I felt annoyed at the subreddit moderators in the largest subreddit in New Zealand. They didn't need to run a political subreddit but to stifle and can views that can help our country seems bizarre. Is being informed and well researched a crime now?
They allow others to post freely but not me or other folks who I think are very smart and astute. Recently I was called a political commentator. I used to be just someone who would try to comment - but in being pushed out, I looked for another platform to see if I could help. So here I am.
Still - they have reach and I wish they used it more responsibly than two-siding misinformation.
To address it on a larger scale, I believe it needs resources, and one 'side' seems poor, for the most part.
Surprisingly I checked you out 🙄… and agree it’s better to say; to speak; to - in your words - contribute. And I think Substack is a better place than Reddit. At least for now… not sure it will last though…. There is a large volume of people wanting to connect with me (clearly fake profiles)… so that’s why I’m using my real name here… just to say
Closest to John Oliver's show we have here is White Man Behind A Desk on youtube. I quite like him, I reckon he does a stellar job with the resources he has. But there are very few Kiwi's paying attention to him.
As for Reddit... I would like to better understand who the mods are and their motivations on r/nz. Mods are a sore spot on Reddit (been on there for 15 years, Christ...) as it's an unelected position with a lot of secretive networking. That's why you can have someone "moderating" 1000's of subreddits, only to become active when quelling dissent against them e.g. awkwardtheturtle.
I doubt the NZ mods are being motivated by any special interest groups, and they probably do believe "it's not a political sub." Most of them are long term and still active redditors who moderate a sensible number of mostly NZ adjacent subs.
But I don't know. Just like with many people in power, you can only speculate on their true motivations.
I think you're right about the secret networking actually. I was naive.
About a decade ago, I worked in the National Accounts team at StatsNZ, having transferred from the Productivity statistics team.
The difference in analysis styles was quite stark between Productivity and Annual GDP. Productivity contained a lot more discussion of long run trends and industry / sector level context, including how various factors like technology shift, or structural changes to the economy (our time series went from 1978 to current year minus 2).
As you rightly point out, economic discussions are far more nuanced than GDP, or GDP per capita.
We looked at trends in returns to capital and the labour share, quality input indices, labour and capital inputs and their relationship to value add in the economy.
It told a story of huge changes in GDP unmatched by changes in real wages, but strangely more and more return on capital, while investment in productive capital stock lagged well behind our nearest neighbor.
All the while, the contribution of mining and oil and gas has been miniscule. And the other extraction industries, Ag, sort, fishing and forestry also diminished over time as our economy has diversified.
Now in a desperate grab, the unsustainable industries have banded together to install stool pigeons in government and squeeze every last concession they can out of our country.
That’s very interesting - that that depth of analysis went on — didn’t really appreciate the extent of it. The outcomes you refer to less surprising 😉. Do you know if that type of analysis is still being undertaken?
I seriously doubt it (sadly). The Productivity statistical output got handed to National Accounts and became somewhat bland. I was the technical contact for a couple of years, and tried to field questions from the Productivity Comission, and from folks overseas (Cypress, Malawi, Uganda to name but three).
There some good papers written by the likes of Eldon Paki, and Adam Tipper (colleagues in the Productivity Development team). They should be available on Stats Website.
Also look at the writings of Bill Rosenberg (I think) around 2012-15.
I was there from 2012 to 2015 and not having a background in economics, it was a huge learning curve. My own background is largely electronics, RF engineering, avionics and measurement science. But the last dozen years have been as some kind of data analyst.
Thanks. Thats fundamentally sad. I'll go digging
The mining companies that are already in New Zealand won't clean up their toxic results here or overseas
https://bsky.app/profile/nzheretic.bsky.social/post/3kpdb5bbsn32j
Some quick maths.
In 2035, if they reach their aspirational target of $2bn in exports, we'd get $40mn.
The.Tui oilfield clean up cost us almost $500mn.
So.......that's 7-8 years before get it back.
Furthermore, they are not considering the opportunity cost of all the time, money and investment they are making try to bend NZ backwards for mining companies' benefit.
The economics of this is daft, to put it lightly.
They never have in the history of mining eh.
wow - that 2% is something I've not heard of before. Crickey
I've said it before on reddit, that mining and oil and gas is worth next to nothing for our economy. Honestly, the extraction companies must think us all fools.
And yet, some pro mining dickhead like Shane Jones will tell everyone how important it is that we do this destructive work.
It appears so.
And put simply, he and his Coalition buddies need to show us their personal and party donation roll.
I bet that's an honour-roll of iniquity.
(Foggydoggy on reddit btw)
So great to see you!
I am genuinely curious, when this kind of mining is done in other countries, particularly "1st world" countries, how much do the country typically get out of it? Is 2% the norm, or well below it? Is there even a norm, or point of comparison to make? It just seems so insanely low to me that I really do not get what is going on or how people could defend this future possibility
Good morning,
It depends on the country, but let's look at a few examples like James has started.
e.g. Queensland Australia notes royalty rates between 7-30%. It also depends on the mineral though e.g. coal versus uranium or iron ore etc.
https://qro.qld.gov.au/royalty/calculate-mineral/rates/
Also PwC's Mining calculator shows royalty rates in Australia range from 5-30% - however, there are State and Federal taxes so I suspect it's a little more complex - and could even be higher - than that, but the range seems to be a reasonable ballpark.
Here's Western Australia's mineral royalties information. It looks to me like it's minimum 2.5% but dependant on mineral type. (Can go higher)
https://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/Minerals/Royalties-1544.aspx
Thank you for sharing this, it is greatly appreciated ^w^