by frog
08 Wire, Dancer at the Standard and Grant Robertson each saw the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business survey released yesterday and responded reflexively, either congratulating the Labour Party or putting the boot into the National Party. While that’s a fair, if somewhat typically tribal, response to New Zealand being ranked the second easiest country in the world in which to do business, it does raise the question of what exactly it is we are ranking. Remember this is a survey by the World Bank so it is not necessarily devoid of political and economic bias.
So among the sub-categories of the ten topics that New Zealand was ranked on were the ease and cheapness with which you can get rid of workers, how much you have to pay if you go bankrupt, the regulations that constrain businesses (which I assume include important environmental protections like the Resource Management Act), the smallness of the amount of tax that businesses need to pay and the extent of director liability if something goes wrong.
And the result is New Zealand shares the top four placing with social democracies like Singapore, Hong Kong (China) and the United States. Meanwhile a bit further down the ladder sit most Scandinavians Norway (10) Iceland (11), Finland (14) and Sweden at (17). Which, if you admire those countries’ social well-being, just goes to show that ease of doing business does not a complete society make.
I’m not saying that ease of doing business is a bad thing, but let’s remember that sometimes regulations, environmental protections and workers rights are there for a reason, and before we celebrate their absence we should check why other democratic countries chose to retain them.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare by frog on Thu, September 11th, 2008
Tags: , business, world bank
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Frog, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t refer to The Standard as a hive-mind. When you see a post on an issue it’s not because we’ve all sat around and come to an editorial decision, it’s because someone’s seen it and decided to write a post. My views are quite different, and if I have time I’ll write a post on it. That’s not helped when people are going around saying “The Standard” already has an opinion.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Tane
I would appreciate it if you stopped telling lies at the Standard, I would also appreciate it if you stopped using my tax dollars to fund the Labour party/ EPMU website.
While I may not agree with most of what Frog has to say he/she at least lets many of us voice an opinion that differs where as we all know any deviation from the Labour party line results in a ban from the EPMU/Labour Standard.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Apologies Tane, will amend accordingly.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Thanks frog.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
Frog
If you look at the evidence, you’ll find that New Zealand has far more protections for workers than the others at the top of the World Bank’s list. Four weeks leave, stronger collective bargaining rights, and paid parental leave just to name three.
Ditto for environmental regulations – I’d be interested if you can find a study showing New Zealand’s level of environmental “laissez-faireness” the same as Singapore, Hong Kong, or the US. I don’t think you can.
What this all shows is that New Zealand is so far ahead of the pack in terms of keeping compliance and bureaucratic costs low that we’re still at the top of the world even as we provide good protections for workers. That sounds like cause for celebration to me – and it certainly doesn’t sound like the picture of the New Zealand workplace the National party has been peddling.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)
“Frog, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t refer to The Standard as a hive-mind.”
Tane, That’s a really, really odd thing to say. Because The Standard is a hive-mind. Seriously.
Standard english usage is to treat groups, publications and organisations as if they are things that have views. People talk about “what the Listener says” or “what the Washington Post says” or “what the Economist says” on an issue. They’re really often talking about the view of an individual columnist, even though other columnists in the Listener, WaPo or Economist may well disagree with that one.
A blog *will* be treated as having a view, and a viewpoint. It may be conflicted view or viewpoint on an issue. And it’s not the same as your viewpoint, as you are merely one of the contributors to The Standard. But that’s how our language works – and how our minds work. Likewise about what “the Labour Party” thinks or what “the US govt believes”. Of course you lose information by acting like this – “the Labour Party” usually has lots of different views within it, not to mention the US govt. But then a single person is rarely as single-minded as we pretend either.
If you really care then Daniel Dennett’s book “The Intentional Stance” is probably the best intro philosophical work on the topic.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0 (0)