Rodney Hide's Book

Thanks to Rick Giles, I've recently completed Rodney Hide's new book, "My Year of Living Dangerously".

My Year of Living Dangerously is a short autobiography of Rodney Hide's life, most importantly, his recent years. In it, Rodney talks about how he grew up into a working class, individualistic family, his years of living and working in the North Sea on oil rigs, and his recent activities, from the 2005 election to getting fit and competing in swimming races, and his participation in the hit show "Dancing With the Stars.

My Year of Living Dangerously, while by no means a ground breaking book, is certainly good for recreational reading if you have a few hours to spare in the day. It's easy to read, and makes for good reading for anyone interested in Rodney and the ACT Party.

7.5/10 from me.

I Won Prebble's Book

For entering the ACT on Campus essay competition, I won a rather simple book by Richard Prebble (former leader of ACT, and, to the best of my knowledge, the softener of many of ACT's policies). According to Leighton Smith:

"It destroys Socialist theories forever".

Please show me how.

"Cowboy Capitalism"

I've just finished reading "Cowboy Capitalism", a book which looks at some of the European myths about American "Cowboy Capitalism", and compares it with European ''Comfy Capitalism''. It does a very good job at explaining how many European myths, for instance about Americans having three or four jobs and living in constant fear of being fired, are just that. It also explains how American "Cowboy Capitalism" is better for an economy to be flexible, to have a low level of unemployment, and to adapt to new technologies (like the computer revolution), and how European "Comfy Capitalism" makes an economy inflexible.

"Cowboy Capitalism" is packed with many interesting and surprising statistics and survey results, about how more people from France, Germany and Italy (the three European nations looked at in this book) actually feel less secure in their jobs and feel less satisfied with their lives than many Americans. It also explains how the welfare state provides disincentives to work for many recipients, and how the dysfunctional European welfare states actually redistribute a large percentage of money gathered
from the lower to upper classes.

I would recommend "Cowboy Capitalism" to anyone looking for the
truth, especially in Europe and definitely in America, about the life
many Americans actually do lead. Rest assured, it is quite different
to what Michael Moore, Paul Krugman and Gerhard Schroder say and
will make you think about if Euro Capitalism really is better than
American Capitalism.

A 9/10 from me.

NZ's Minimum Wage Lifted by nearly ten percent

Article

Here's an idea: Why don't we lift the Minimum Wage up to $1,000,000 per week instead? That'd make everyone rich, wouldn't it?

The truth on the minimum wage here.

His book here.