What can Evony teach you about how money works?
We’re fond of games, and personally we learnt a lot about property & money from playing things like Cashflow, Hybrid Property Game & of course Monopoly.
So to continue our series in things to learn about money from unlikely games you just wouldn’t expect, we are proud to introduce; Nine things Evony can teach you about Economic theory, tax & the art of war.
For anyone who doesn’t know what Evony is, it’s an online real time game, similar to Civilisation. You build up a city with infrastructure, have to defend it from other (real) players, go and invade valleys for resources, or other cities for plunder. The game keeps going in real time even when you’re alseep. So you need to hope you have enough defense to see off any attacks while you sleep.
It’s very addictive. (And while it may well have the tag line “Free Forever” it can be bloody expensive if you want to buy Game Coins.)
In the game you get gold: from taxation, plunder or selling resources to other players that you ‘harvest’ from the land.
Resources you can harvest are;
- food, needed to feed your army, and workers;
- lumber, needed for building & weapons;
- stone, more building;
- iron, yet more building and some other weapons.
You can buy & sell these resources from other players through a marketplace if you wish.
So, what can Evony teach you about money?
1. Gambling & The Wheel of fortune.
Each day you get a free spin on the wheel of fortune, where you stand a chance of winning a random item which is useful to you in the game. Annoyingly the main screen keeps popping up all the really useful things you just wish you could get your hands on, that ‘other’ players have won on the wheel. Only they are the exception, not the norm. Unless you are a guy called DeMontfort, in which case you are an exceedingly lucky git!
So just like with the real lottery, you keep hearing about all the great thing other people have won. Except when you play, you only win crap. Having used my daily spin for a couple of weeks now, I’ve yet to win anything really useful. Mostly I’ve won resources, which I was building anyhow.
A bit like a free ticket for next weeks lottery.
2. Taxation
You need Tax revenue to pay for Academic research, buy resources in the marketplace, and pay the salary of your hero’s. Two things define how much tax revenue you get, your total population and your taxation percentage. The higher your taxation level, the less popular you are, and the lower your overall population, hence a reduced tax take.
Low tax(naturally) gives you low tax income. High tax (also) gives you low tax income.
Why governments need to spend millions on “working groups” to tell them this I have no idea. They should play Evony and save the money for really important stuff. Like expenses claims.
There is a balance between population and taxation levels, which is around 50% tax. Not that we’d like the Tax Working Group to suggest this to NZ govt., and just look at the starting exodus of people from the UK because of impending 50% tax rates. Tweaking your tax rate for optimum income isn’t necessarily the best policy if you want to grow your city.
Unfortunately in the game, a 50% tax rate means that you have to invest a huge amount of time & resources building housing for people, and only 50% of it is occupied. Lower your tax and more of your housing stock is occupied, and you have more people available to work in the fields or join the army.
So just like real life, low personal income tax attracts people to your city, who then work in productive functions. As a Govt. you then have to balance your spending so you don’t run out of money before you’ve built that shiny new Town Hall.
3. Plundering – a great historical tradition going back millenia. Today we call it war.
If you can’t, or don’t want to, harvest the resources you need from your own lands and build a sustainable economic base for your city then you can always steal it off of someone else.
Only you need an army to do that.
So you need some ‘basis’ things like; resources, buildings, academic research, idle population and a hero before you can do that.
Plus you’ll need defenses once you nick the stuff, so the other player can’t nick it back.
If you’re lazy with either attack or defense, you’ll lose the fight, your soldiers all die, and you have to replace them. Back to needing to harvest resources again.
4.It’s all about budgeting!
The game is all a big balancing act, which we more commonly call budgeting. If you have low taxation, then you need to plunder for gold. If you don’t invest in your own infrastructure (resources), then you need to plunder for the resources you need to build. And of course the bigger you want to build things, the more plundering you need to do. The more plundering you do, the further away you have to travel to do it, until in the end you invade a city because it’s building a catapult which could reach your city within 45 minutes.
All of which can be minimised by budgeting well, spreading the investment of your resources back into making more resources, building more housing, or increasing infrastructure. All the time keeping people happy.
5. Hero’s – today we call them leaders, less politely we’d call them politicians.
In a very odd parallel here, you recruit your hero from an inn.
Where they hang out until someone gives them a job.
Only then, they demand a feasting hall be built in their honour, and they hang out there while you pay them a salary for, well, feasting.
The more hero’s you have, the bigger your feasting hall needs to be. Which takes time, gold, resources etc.
I don’t need to say much more on that do I? 
6. Hero’s – part 2.
- In order to enhance the speed at which your people build things, you need a good mayor with high political acumen.
- In order to enhance the speed at which your academics under take research, you need a highly intelligent hero.
- In order to train your armies quicker and win more battles you need a hero with high military skill. Ideally you should have two of these, one to head off and fight a battle, while the other stays at home training more armies.
Typically these three attributes are not found in one person, and ideally you actually need four hero’s to make your city run well. For example if you demote your mayor, so you can send him off to battle, then the population slows down their working speed – i.e. while you leader is off fighting a war in another country productivity goes down.
Amazing how well this matches real life through the centuries eh? Of course if you want to fight lots, either for plunder or conquest, you’ll need more military leaders. Which require a bigger feasting hall, larger inn’s and higher salaries. And if you want to ‘entertain’ a foreign ‘dignitary’, we call them leaders who have been taken hostage in a fight, you need a bigger feasting hall! (yet again)
Basically, provide your politicians heroes with lots of perks, particularly alcohol, and they will love you and do what you want them to.
7. The Marketplace: commodity trading is a great way to make money.
The marketplace allows you to buy and sell the four basic resources with other players. Prices fluctuate a lot, even during a day. However, just like a real economy & stock market you can place an order for a quantity of food at the price you’re willing to pay, and wait for a seller to come along and accept that offer. Just like real stocks, you can see the highest prices people want to buy stuff at, and the lowest prices people are willing to sell at. A very active market has a small, or non-existent difference. A slow market for resources not in demand will have a big difference.
So just like the real economy, you have a price at which sellers are willing to accept for their item (let’s call it a house), and a price buyers are willing to pay for that same item, and eventually there has to be a compromise in price by one party for the sale to happen. And just like the real economy, you have lots of people selling food, so the price is low, and as a buyer you can ’shop around’, i.e. wait, until a seller comes along who is willing to meet your (low) price.
8. Academic research.
Part of the game requires you to research scientific advances to help you progress in the game. i.e. build things quicker, get a better defense, attack or movement speed to your armies. So just like the real world, where academics need research grants from Govt., here you have to pay gold & food for those academics to figure out how to make a faster wheel. And just like the real world, with a highly intelligent academic honoured in your feasting hall, academic research progresses faster. Academic research is one of those thing to invest in early, so when you’re trying to build a really big something, it only takes a day or two instead of weeks (real time!)
9. Alliances
Alliances are very important. A good alliance will come to your aid when you are being attacked by sending troops to help defend your city, or other troops to attack the city of the person attacking you. A really good alliance will also make donations of resources when you need them, to help you build your city or army. They’re also there to give sage advice. So whether it’s friends, neighbours, work colleagues, fellow countrymen, other countries you know well, or countries you can’t even spell – joining an alliance and working together means you all benefit.
Bake a bigger pie.
Failing that, your alliance may plunder the pie’s of other alliances, but teamwork always gets you more pies in the long run than playing fighting alone.
Fascinating numbers
Filed under: For the numpties amongst us, Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, NZIS & Immigration issues
Well, okay, perhaps not for a lot of people. However, I’m one of those sick puppies (meow) who finds spreadsheets and numbers quite fascinating when they tell you something interesting.
So much to my surprise, we found at the weekend that Immigration now have a statistics page on their website. Seems to have been there for a while too. So kudos to INZ for releasing the information as part of open Govt.
So what can these numbers tell us?
Well for starters download the Excel files, since you can play with the numbers. Thankfully someone at INZ knows how to use Excel and has created lots of pivot tables – yippee. Although they’ve not created enough graphs I think. Graphics, pictures, we need to see more coloured lines.
So, if you really want to find out how many parents, originally resident in the UK made an application for NZ residency, via the London branch in a random month anytime in the last 14 years – you can! Download R6 – Residence applications accepted for processing.
Want to know how many of those people applying got approved or declined? – Download R2 Residence decisions by month.
Of course, it may have been too simple to put all those numbers into a single spreadsheet. Still, the info is there.
So you can indeed see how many people applied from each coutry, broken down by month, and which stream, whether they were primary or secondary applicants, and whether they got accepted or not. There’s loads more statistical info buried in them thar’ numbers, so I may start coming out with interesting factoids. Personally, I’m interested to see if anyone from a ‘first world’ country managed to get into NZ via the ‘humanitarian’ stream – normally reserved for refugee’s of the non-economic variety.
Of course more really interesting stuff is buried in R8 – Residence applications on hand. INZ talk a lot about having a large workload, lots of decisions to make etc. Which they do. How much of a workload is this? Well take a look at R8, these are all the applications that people have made to come to NZ. Whether or not INZ have even started working on the application or not. One of the few graphis provided in the three noted sheets is below, ranging from July 2000 on the left through to January 2010 on the right. {you can click on the image to load it full size}
Uncapped family sponsorship (non-Kiwi family of Kiwi citizens) has grown steadly since 2000 from approx 3,000 to almost 7,000 per year.
Parent & Adult sibling capped family sponsorship applications have gone from ~4,500 to ~10,500 – with no change in the number of places made available. And anyone wonders why there’s a queue?
For a big wow!, the Business/Skilled migrant stream peaked at a queue of ~51,500 applications at the end of 2002.. Dunno what happened there, but I’m sure gonna go find out.
Stay tuned for more (possibly useless) interesting factoids.
Tax Working Group – Why?
Filed under: Economics, For the numpties amongst us, Future Finances, General Budgeting, Investing in general, Jobs & Work, Property Investing
(Other than whacking “rich pricks” over the head with a big stick for being greedy of course.)
Well, for a start – the National Government claims it doesn’t actually want to increase overall tax. And if you believe that – I’m the tooth fairy.
What they want to do is move away from taxing income, to taxing capital – or wealth. For the purposes of this – you need to understand that Wealth is not about how much you earn – it’s about how much you own. So if you have scrimped and saved and accumulated assets that are worth money – they want to tax you on it. Because as previously discussed, it’s not fair that you scrimped and saved to accumulate wealth.
And if Income Tax is too high – it discourages people from getting better jobs and earning more money because they will lose too much of it in tax. And that of course means they have less money to spend. And economies don’t grow if people don’t spend.
The other main goal is to “align the tax rates”. This is because at the moment, the top rate of personal tax is 38%, whereas tax on trusts is 33% and tax on companies is 30%. Which means that taxpayers who would normally be charged 38% can “hide” their income in trusts and companies to reduce their tax.
So dropping the top tax rate to 30% should stop us having to do this.
To see why in theory they need to do this – you need to look at what happened when Michael “I hate rich people, even though I earned a whopping $276,000 a year plus tax-free expenses” Cullen, introduced the 39% income tax bracket.
What this shows is that the year after the tax was introduced, there was a huge spike in the number of people paying tax on 60k a year income, because they used measures to legally reduce their incomes down to that level.
So in trying to tax “rich” people – they kinda failed.
Now – the new government wants to make it “fairer” and stop that happening. Unfortunately there is every chance this too will fail – because in general – the richer people are, the more they can move and are prepared to make choices about where they live and what taxes they will pay. And there’s always loopholes.
Like us for example – who moved from the UK to get away from 51% tax on our income and new and more colourful taxes being imposed left right and centre.
So in general terms, lowering the top tax bracket is a good thing. I just can’t get my head round why taxing people who have invested is a good thing to replace it with. It’s kind of a big incentive not to be financially stable and able to support yourself in retirement.
Personally – in the perfect word in which I am the benevolent dictator for life – I would insist that Governments have to stick to strict budgets, have to stop throwing money away, and treat the money they take in taxes with some respect, and the taxpayers as something other than a constant deep well of extra funds every time they fail to stick to their budgets. Like setting an $11 million budget to refurbish the Supreme Court building and then spending $81 million instead because taxpayers won’t complain.
Which is like budgeting to retile your bathroom, and deciding instead to knock your 3 bed house down and build a 70 bedroom mansion instead, and demanding the overspend from your boss.
The thing about this is that if we as the people overspend each month – we cannot in fact go to our bosses and demand that they pay us more. But the government can do that with tax – because if you don’t pay it – they can send you to jail.
So while the “why” may be sensible and in some ways a good thing – it’s kinda fixing the wrong problem. We don’t need to give them any more taxes – they need to stop wasting the money they already screw out of us.
Please bear in mind that the Tax Working Group changes are recomendations – and may not happen.
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Tax isn’t fair – deal with it.
Filed under: Economics, For the numpties amongst us, Future Finances, Investing in general, Property Investing
Over the next year or so, there could be some huge changes to the way you will be taxed in New Zealand. There are a lot of strange assumptions, which are driving the recommended changes. A bunch of “experts” and academics called the “Tax Working Group” have come up with recommendations. However, here I thought it worth going back to one of the basic assumptions – A fair tax.
The headline at the moment is that property investors don’t pay tax, and in fact rort the system by getting tax refunds. This is because if you make any losses in your rental properties (and most of us do because rents in New Zealand are kept artificially low) then you can offset these against your income from a job and therefore pay less Income tax.It is blatantly ignored that you can do this with any business.Property investors (like us) are thought of as greedy “rich pricks” (a term coined by the typically potty-mouthed ex-finance minister Michael Cullen).
Of course, we personally are considered even more evil and greedy because Hubby has a well-paid job. It escapes most people that we worked our arses off to get qualified in order to earn that money. It’s not fair!
So – why do people think it’s unfair that we use a system to allow us to pay less tax?
Because most people have been conned into thinking that Tax is inevitable. Like death. Only it isn’t.
The fact is you do not have to be in anyway rich to legally cut your taxes. You just have to be smart. You also need to get your head round the fact that paying money you earn to someone else is not actually fair, and that the richer you are – the more you pay – is even less fair.
Let’s put it this way:
- If someone comes into your house and steals your TV – you go to the police and make a report. You make a claim against your insurance and get the money back to replace the TV.
- You don’t for one minute consider it fair that someone has come into your home and taken something that they may not be able to afford, and therefore have a right to steal it from you, because it’s not fair that you had the money to buy it and they didn’t.
- And yet – the government takes say 30% of the money you earn, and gives it to someone else. And you think this is OK because it’s called tax.
Here is something else to think about:
- While there is no “tax-free limit” to earnings for low income people the way there is in the UK, the bottom 40% of households pay no income tax because they get benefits to compensate.
- Yet the top 10% of earners in New Zealand pay 42% of the total income tax take.
- If you take out the 40% of people that effectively pay no tax because they get refunds distributed from higher tax payers, we are then responsible for a whopping 76% of the income tax take.
And yet we are the greedy ones for not wanting to pay so much of what we work our butts off to earn. Hell alone knows how much we would collectively pay if we didn’t have a way of offsetting tax.
It’s also worth noting that the HUGE tax benefit that property investors fleece off the government in Tax Refunds accounts for just 1.6% of the entire tax take.
Yep – we are about to get nailed to a cross then burned alive for a whopping 1.6% of the total tax budget – which will then be given to other people. I personally don’t think any of this is going to make that 40% who want our blood any richer.
But I could be wrong.
Over the next week or so we will be going over the recommendations (and they are just that – recommendations) and highlighting what they mean – good and bad.
If you want to see a good and funny illustration of why “tax cuts for the rich” are so wrongly maligned – have a look at this blog post: How tax cuts work.
And for some interesting facts about just how many evil greedy property investors there are in New Zealand – read Are Kiwis really obsessed with property?
And for a light hearted look at just what we personally think of the Inland Revenue (in any country) – take a look at Inland revenue Humour.
Bad news for couch potatoes
The Dom Post (and other news papers) report about an Australian study. Published 12th January 2010 in the journal Circulation undertaken by Baker IDI the study has found that watching TV can shorten your life span – irrespective of what you actually die from.
Now this is firstly one of those articles that makes me angry for the lack of useful information. Then I just laugh at the continued abuse of statistics and think the study can’t really say that – can it?
So what does the Dom Post say?
Each hour of watching TV increases your chance of early death by 11%. Even if you are a super fit decathlon champ, you still run the same risk. Unless you get up now and then to change the channel manually instead of using the remote control. Hmm, not good news. Not sure about the motivation to partake in any health/fitness activity if not using the remote control is more conducive to a longer life.
Except they are talking about any seated/sedentary ‘activity’. Eeeekkks, err, what can I do at work where there isn’t a TV I can change the channel on???? Or while I’m driving, sitting on the train, reading a book, eating dinner or indeed sleeping? Let alone writing a blog entry.
Still good news for Nintendo Wii users, who aren’t sitting down all the time to play computer games.
My problem with the Dom Post article? <rant on>
- Each hour over how many hours?
- How much of an earlier death? a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade – there’s a very wide margin here dammit..
- Should I not get on international flights of nine hours or more, since my chance of early death is then increased by at least 99%?
- Watch four hours of TV per day, and you’ve got a 46% change of early death compared with those who only watch 2 hours per day. – err I thought it was 11% for each extra hour? That’s 23% for each extra hour.
And that’s just the start..
Just because some people watch more than the average amount of TV, doesn’t actually prove a ’cause & effect’ correlation with death.
You can bet that 100% of those who suffered premature death also;
- Drank water
- Breathed air
- Slept
- Ate meat or vegetables
So there you go, if you want to avoid a premature death you should also refrain from eating (while seated!), drinking, sleeping or breathing. - oh, err, well perhaps if you did that you’d be dead a lot sooner than watching TV. So therefore I have conclusively proven that watching TV is better for your health than not breathing. taa daa!!
<rant off>
We have to dig around and find the same news story on the WSJ before we discover that;
The hours of watching TV was recorded on a questionnaire at the start of the study (1999), & never verified during the six year study.
hmm…
The hours of TV watching per day they are comparing is <2, 2-4 & >4.
“Premature death” is actually, did the person die during the six years of the study? Irrespective of how old they were (random sampling so that’s okay) when the study started.
During the study 284 out of of some 9,000 people died.
How does that compare with average mortality rates for Australians? Aussie Govt statistics indicate a general mortality rate out of 100,000 people of 853 for men & 552 for women. In the study population of 9,000 that would equate to ~124 deaths.
So on the face of it, if you can find out what all those people were doing with their lives during the study, you might be able to answer why more than twice as many of them died as you would statistically expect.
The study split people into three groups based on hours of TV watched. <2, 2-4, >4. Smokers or former smokers were 41%, 48% & 57% respectively of the study participants. Hmm, could there be a correlation of smoking to premature death??
Once you read the study, yes I did since I’m always keen to go back to the source material instead of relying on the integrity of the media process, you can also find the following;
(highlights only since I just didn’t understand the academic article, which is fine, I’m not a cardiac specialist)
The ‘all deaths’ mortality rate for those watching less than 3 hours of TV per day, was less than the national average. {p5 table A}
All of the statistics have a 95% confidence rate.
Translated into English that means a 5% chance that they’re wrong in their conclusions. While with a lot of stats that’s a fairly good result, if you’re suggesting to people they change their behavior you need a higher confidence level. And you need to check whether the information people are giving you is accurate.
If the bank only had a 95% confidence level that you were going to pay back your mortgage, they wouldn’t lend you the money! Still, if the bank doesn’t verify your claimed income before the lend you $1m, then what do they think is going to happen? Anyone heard of liar loans recently??
<rant off>
So there we go. An article I shall ignore for the moment. Time to get up and change the channel on the TV.
How shall we pay it back? By having a plan!
Filed under: Cost of living, Economics, For the numpties amongst us, Future Finances, General Budgeting, Hubby's Views
I was working on an event about CFO’s the other month, and needed some humour to illustrate advice you don’t want from current or former Financial Chiefs. With much joy, I found this;
And the following interview conducted by the BBC, of a UK Govt minister talking about how the UK Govt. is going to pay back the 606Bn UKP debt it’s due to rack up in the next couple of years. As I can’t find the link anymore you’re have to forgive the slight paraphrasing. The interview really did go something like this;
BBC Interviewer -- How will you pay it back?
MP -- by having a plan!
BBC -- and what’s the plan?
MP -- The plan is to pay it back!
BBC- Yes, and what is the plan?
MP -- The plan involves passing legislation saying that we’re going to do this, it’ll have targets!
BBC -- Yes, and we have targets for everything including NHS waiting lists, University education etc. and none of them have been met.
MP -- No they haven’t, and that’s because of the 18 years of Conservative Govt ruining the economy, but this is different.
BBC -- How?
MP -- Because we’re the Govt, we say we’re going to do it and we have a plan.
BBC -- Yes, with respect minister, having a piece of legislation doesn’t tell any of us how you are going to find 606Bn pounds over the next four years (assuming you win the election), to pay back this debt. How can you possibly pay back this much money without making savage cuts to public spending?
MP -- Well, it’s quite simple -- we have a plan. To pass legislation. Which will have targets. And we wont need to cut any public spending, because public spending is what will drive the economic growth to bring us out of recession.
BBC -- So lets be clear, you’re not going to cut spending, you’re not going to raise taxes significantly, where is the money going to come from?
MP -- As I said, it’s really quite simple, we’re going to have a plan.
BBC -- And the plan.. -- oh forget it.
The financial crisis explained
Filed under: Banks, For the numpties amongst us, Hubby's Views
As explained by a ‘banker’ -- thanks to The Now Show (18/12 again);
“In laymans terms it works like this; if you get yourself into financial difficulty, say you fail to manage your own finances properly and are incompetent enough to get yourself into enormous debt, with absolutely no hope of paying it back -- the bank takes your money.
If on the other hand your bank fails to manage it’s finances properly, is incompetent enough to get itself into enormous debt with absolutely no hope of paying it back -- the bank takes your money.
It’s really very simple”
Which also reminds me of The Two John’s, explaining the financial crisis {watch with some irony for the Google ad’s for GE Money, Kiwibank etc.. -- hmm, someone didn’t think about what to exclude from the key words};
Dr Seuss does COP15
In case anyone missed it, world leaders took (emission offset) flights, along with 15,000 others (more emission offset) to Copenhagen to save the planet the other week. There were some protestors, who burnt things -- I’m not sure that quite follows with the whole not emiting any CO2, ho hum.
Here’s a summary from Dr Seuss, courtesy of The Now Show, 18/12/09, Marcus Brigstocke.
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Are we a Menace to Society?
Filed under: For the numpties amongst us, Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, NZIS & Immigration issues
There are numerous exploitative activities that laws are there to protect us from. Because sometimes you just can’t patch stupid. Some laws result in a penalty of a slapped wrist and a pocket change fine. Others lead to years in jail.
The DIA (Dept of Internal Affairs) have recently scored a success against a major menace to society, “Herbal King”.
The people at Herbal King ran a large network marketing company, using internet and email as their main communications mechanism. Sales commission for the two New Zealanders at the top of the tree alone was $2m USD over a four month period. So that’s upwards of $12m NZD a year for sending a bunch of emails – nice work if you can get it.
Only this is spam – so it’s illegal.
Their punishment, a $100k fine ($200k being the max). Plus an enforcement order saying, “I’ve been a naughty boy and I promise not to do it again”.
Whoopy Do. 
If you were vaguely involved and didn’t help the officers holding a search warrant when they came knocking, you could have be fined $2,000 and gone to jail for 3 months. Not that you needed to have been earning any of the commission, just that you knew these people were doing something illegal and you didn’t help those investigating when they asked for your co-operation.
So how does this compare with giving free informal advice to someone who is thinking about emigration to NZ?
A $100k fine or up to seven years in jail.
For earning no money, only talking with one person and not involving anyone else in your “conspiracy”.
In true University style:
Discuss, compare and contrast what this teaches us when breaking the law in New Zealand and it’s various penalties. Make specific reference to picking something which impacts a huge number of people, you can make lots of money from, has a minimal civil or criminal penalty, and is really difficult to prove or enforce.
Also consider the economic impact of convincing someone to spend $100 dollars on your herbal product, compared with the economic impact ($100k on top of GDP) for convincing someone that moving to NZ is a really good idea.
For extra credit, consider how much money someone can make selling pills, with how much money someone makes when providing free advice. And discuss how much jail time is appropriate in either case.
For further extra credit discuss why Mr Cunliffe’s response (below) demonstrates the politicians don’t live on ‘palnet (sic) electorate’, and consider why MP’s should be exempt from this law if it is there to prevent so much damage or exploitation being done.
7 December 2005 Subject Social Issues
10978 (2005). Dr Pita Sharples to the Minister of Immigration (07 Dec 2005): What is the justification for the provision in the Immigration Advisors Licensing Bill to sentence non-licensed immigration advisors to seven years maximum imprisonment?
Hon David Cunliffe (Minister of Immigration) replied: The seven years maximum imprisonment is consistent with the Immigration Act 1987, which provides for terms of imprisonment of up to seven years for comparable offences. The penalty is in place to deter people from attempting to earn a potentially significant income by providing immigration advice without a licence, and recognises the potentially serious consequences for victims of incompetent or unethical immigration advice.
Emigration myths & vitriol
Filed under: For the numpties amongst us, Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Jobs & Work, Life in New Zealand, NZIS & Immigration issues
I have to admit that I once voted for Winston Peters. Party vote only, during the 2005 election. I thought he was a good chap to keep in Parliament, in opposition to keep biting at the Govt. and being a bit of a useful trouble maker. In what can only be described as an outstanding political move, Helen Clark made him foreign minister, and silenced him completely. Kudos to Ms Clark. That’s old news though.
Only how he’s out of a job, and trying to get back in. Making ridiculous claims about emmigration that would have anyone purporting to give immigration advice heading to prison for seven years. And since he’s not an MP, he isn’t exempt anymore. Hmm, I wonder if the IAA are listening? Perhaps there’s a cell spare next to Phillip Field?
Kiwiblog has a lot of interesting comments on this. Although since I don’t really do short, I thought I’d be better writing my thoughts up here.
So to be fair, did Winston Peters say anything I could agree with? Well yes;
“We know that the Immigration Service is possibly the most incompetent and dysfunctional government agency of all“
That’s it though.
So what’s he said that’s got me so irrked?
‘When it comes to immigration NZ is being taken for a sucker. People are coming to NZ as migrants – but many use us as a transit camp. These people stay just long enough to get permanent residency so they can bring their families over – often elderly parents – and then they move on to Aussie. We are being left with the care of elderly parents – while Aussie gets the workers. This sort of scam –and others like it – must end.”
Err – nope. While there are indeed many refugee’s who stay in transit camps for five years while fleeing war in their own countries. I wouldn’t classify five years as a ’stay just long enough’ approach. You have to be an NZ citizen to move to Australia exercising your right as a Kiwi. So people are only doing what every other commited Kiwi is doing.
There are many migrants who have been in NZ for 5, 10 or 15 years, and have not for whatever reason, decided to apply for NZ Citizenship. I don’t see any less commitment from them than from those of us who apply for NZ Citizenship.
As to bringing elderly parents over, well that takes being here for three years as a permanent resident before you can sponsor parents. That process takes two or more years at the moment. Again, a five year commitment to NZ before family are reunited in the same country again.
So are we bringing over our parents to sponge off the NZ taxpayer (of which we are one)? Well, to qualify for an NZ state pension, you have to have been a resident for 10 years, five of those after the age of 50. So in total if you want to sponge off of the NZ taxpayer, you need to have a 15 year plan. Again, doesn’t sound like a sure fire high paying quick win scam to me.
Now there’s probably a presumption of being a taxpayer in that time, however it doesn’t stipulate you have to have been working. Just resident. But if you’re living here, then just like everyone else every $ you spend has GST attached to it.
“Every person we allow into NZ as a permanent resident will sooner or later be a claim on the state pension system. And often they are claiming on our social welfare and health system within a very short time of arrival. “
Sooner or later? Well the oldest age at which you can emigrate as a skilled migrant is 55. Wait ten years, and then you qualify for a pension. Not exactly soon in my mind. As to the later, well heck, contributing to the tax base for 10 years and paying the pensions of existing pensioners doesn’t qualify me somehow?? WTF!
As to claiming on social welfare & health systems in a very short time of arrival. Again, lets just accept tax payers can do that, and think about those elderly parents just champing at the bit to bleed NZ dry in ten years time of $310 a week (or it’s equivalent at the time.)
You get the picture.
If I had $600k+ NZD sitting in a savings account at the moment it would pay me just ~$350 per week interest (which I get to pay tax on of course). A 3% return for a ten year investment? Well, I doubt I’ll be able to retire happily on that.
As to the health system, well again once you’ve waited three years to sponsor parents & two years during the application processing, part of sponsoring your sponging elderly parents is a commitment to ‘reimburse’ the NZ Health system for any costs the Govt. feels like claiming off of you for the first two years while they are here. And they don’t qualify for WINZ in that time either.
Yep – that sounds like a sure fire strategy to ensure someone else pays the cost of care for ‘growing old’ in a very short time.
“These people are feasting on your pension pie. And they will be feasting on it for 10 – 20 or possibly 30 years. The pension pie you and other Kiwis paid for”
It’s at this point that I stop getting all uppity with such inflammatory codswallop and start laughing.
Bake a bigger pie. It’s a principle I picked up from a book I was reading a while ago.(The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan & Robin Koval, which is happily available via Google books for free!) NZIS are indeed baking a bigger pie, I should be fair and give them credit. Current pensioners are not living off of the contributions they have made through their working lives – that paid for the pensioners at the time. No, it’s those contributing taxes now who are paying for the current set of pensioners to eat their pie. The more taxpayers there are, the bigger the pie. So, if anything Grey Power should be demanding NZIS increase the number of emigrants allowed into the country. Since those are the people who are paying for them to have pie.
Perhaps I’d better go on to plan B – and apply for a job as an MP. Sponging off the NZ taxpayer for 3+ years, with cut price travel, all expenses for living in Wellington taken care of, allowances for this that and the other. I get to vote on my own pay rise, and enshrine in law my future benefits in various forms including a final salary pension not measured against average income.
So I’ve found something else I can agree with Winston on;
“This sort of scam –and others like it – must end.”
