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WHAT'S NEW |
8 September 2008, Roger Kerr
In New Zealand, electricity is a government-dominated industry and actual or threatened winter shortages have become routine. The problem has been compounded by regulatory interventions by both National and Labour-led governments. ...more.
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3 September 2008, Janet Albrechtsen
The problem with collecting buckets of dollars from an emissions trading system and showering that cash over consumers and businesses (to spare consumers higher costs) is that it kind of defeats the purpose of an ETS. An ETS is meant to alter behaviour through price signals. There is every indication that the ETS proposed by the Rudd Government will blunt the signals to the point where we don’t change our behaviour. ...more.
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29 August 2008,
A new OECD study, "Taxes and Economic Growth," examines national tax burdens and their impact on growth and incomes in member countries. It concludes that "corporate taxes are most harmful for growth, followed by personal income taxes, and then consumption taxes." The study adds that "investment is adversely affected by corporate taxation," and that the most profitable and rapidly growing companies tend to be the most sensitive to high business tax rates. ...more.
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29 August 2008, Roger Kerr
The Easterlin Paradox was always a dubious proposition. Simple observation suggests most people strive for a wealthier life for themselves and their children. I will believe otherwise when trade unions stop making wage claims. ...more.
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27 August 2008, David Brooks
It’s not globalization or immigration or computers per se that widen inequality. It’s the skills gap. Boosting educational attainment at the bottom is more promising than trying to reorganize the global economy. ...more.
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22 August 2008, L. Gordon Crovitz
Hong Kong is essentially irrelevant to trade talks because it practices unilateral free trade, with virtually no tariffs or other barriers. People here understand that imports, exports and the rigors of comparative advantage create individual opportunity and wealth. Enough, in Hong Kong's case, for it to have evolved under almost pure free trade from a rocky harbor into one of the wealthiest places on earth. ...more.
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20 August 2008, Gregg Easterbrook
Some of the current gloom-and-doom may be explained by the human propensity to romanticize the past. Just what past would we return to, anyway? The 1950s, when there was systemic prejudice against African-Americans, women and gays? The 1960s, when inflation-adjusted per capita income was far lower than today? The 1970s, when high inflation rates wiped out paychecks and high interest rates made home buying difficult? The 1980s, when investors and people with pension funds were rooting for the Dow Jones to break 2000? ...more.
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15 August 2008, Roger Kerr
With the Olympic Games in full swing, an analogy is relevant: Australia is already well ahead of New Zealand in the race for prosperity, and unless it wakes up from its slumber of the past 10-15 years Australia is likely to show this country a clean pair of heels. ...more.
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15 August 2008, Terry L. Anderson
Even on the first Earth Day in 1970, there were relatively few people who wouldcall themselves environmentalists, despite the fact that rivers were burning,children could not play outside due to smog, and species such as the bald eaglewere threatened with extinction. Today, on the other hand, when the air and waterare cleaner, more land is protected, and wildlife habitat is greatly improved, we areall environmentalists. ...more.
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13 August 2008, Anthony Browne
In the US there is a breed of ‘policy philanthropists’ who give vast amounts of money to promote ideas, believing that changing the nation’s ideas and policies has a bigger impact than funding a community project. Indeed, the creedal nation, united by a belief in freedom rather than by ethnicity, seems to have a great belief in the power of ideas to shape the future, reflected in their astonishingly vigorous factual literature. ...more.
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8 August 2008,
Washington is teeing up "the rich" for a big tax hike next year, as a way to make them "pay their fair share." Well, the latest IRS data have arrived on who paid what share of income taxes in 2006, and it's going to be hard for the rich to pay any more than they already do. The data show that the 2003 Bush tax cuts caused what may be the biggest increase in tax payments by the rich in American history. ...more.
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6 August 2008, Kevin Donnelly
Talk to tertiary academics, employers and parents and the consensus is that standards have fallen with many students leaving school unable to write a grammatically correct, lucid essay, complete basic algorithms without a calculator or demonstrate a broad knowledge of New Zealand’s history, social institutions and culture. ...more.
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4 August 2008, Roger Kerr
Those in the income bracket 0 – $10,000 (some 881,000 people or 21% of all taxpayers) pay just 1% of total income tax, according to the 2008 Budget documents. It follows that many people on very low incomes would derive little benefit from a tax-free zone. ...more.
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1 August 2008, Roger Kerr
We have here an important issue of public policy: what funding arrangements for tertiary education are in the overall public interest, as opposed to the special interests of student associations or tertiary providers? ...more.
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30 July 2008, John A. Baden
For thousands of years, there was no upward trend. Not until the mid 1800s did cities replace their populations through natural increase. Folks find these facts astounding; we take wealth and progress as given. We take deviations from this trend as aberrations to be fixed by politicians. And they may be—but only by political entrepreneurs who utilize technology and foster institutions favoring progress. As our founders noted, ethics in commerce fosters progress. ...more.
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25 July 2008, Wall Street Journal
Put another way, global warming is an economic, not a theological, question. It is not at all clear that huge expenditures today on slowing emissions will yield long-run benefits or even slow emissions. Research and development into sources of low-carbon energy is almost certainly more useful, and the G-8 pledged more funding for ...more.
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23 July 2008, Tyler Cowen
Ordinary people often question the benefits of international trade, and now many intellectuals are turning more skeptical, too. Yet the facts on the ground show that the current climate of economic doom and gloom simply isn’t warranted. The classic economic recipes of trade, investment and good incentives have never been more successful in generating huge gains in human welfare. ...more.
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