How is the environment going under the ravages of 21st century capitalism

Why do unilateral actions to combat global warming fail in Congress?

Why @NZGreens @nzlabour @GreenpeaceNZ hate applied welfare economics

Where is it easiest to start a business?

Chances of dying in a plane crash

Why Is The NRA So Powerful

@NZGreens @GreenpeaceNZ Senator Leyonhjelm on the blood on the hands of the modern Luddites

On the inefficiency of fuel efficiency standards

The Canadians are coming! The Canadians are buying up our land! What has @NZGreens to say about that?

Canada was the largest source of foreign investment during the period, as its pension fund bought 18 properties in a portfolio from AMP and increased its stake in Kaingaroa Forest.

Shocker! EPA chief admits nature can ‘restore’ itself (but only if the EPA caused the problem)

Abolish @StatisticsNZ @ReserveBankofNZ can collect CPI stats?!

https://twitter.com/JimRose69872629/status/632343302763773953

Creative destruction in taxi rent capitalisation

@metiria @NZGreens child poverty is driven by housing unaffordability – by Green opposition to RMA reform

Nothing much has happening to child poverty before housing costs in New Zealand since the early 1980s. It is after housing costs poverty that is crucifying the children in New Zealand.

image

Source: Bryan Perry, Household Incomes in New Zealand: trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2014 – Ministry of Social Development, Wellington (August 2015), Table F6 and table F7.

From HES 2013 to HES 2014 median household income rose 5% in real terms (5% above the CPI inflation rate)…

On the AHC moving line measures, child poverty rates in HES 2014 are around the same as their peak after the GFC. A good amount of the rise from HES 2013 to HES 2014 is due to the large rise in the BHC median, as noted above, rather than a change in the numbers in low income per se.

Bryan Perry (2015, pp. 3, 7).

The parties that oppose measures to increase the supply of land and reduce the cost of housing through reform of the Resource Management Act and its many restraints on the supply of land are the New Zealand Labour Party and New Zealand Greens.

How @equitablegrowth showed inequality helps growth when arguing inequality harms growth

The Washington Centre for Equitable Growth recently tweeted that inequality harms growth in the USA as compared to Sweden, France, Germany and the UK. It was relying on some dodgy OECD research.

The Washington Centre for Equitable Growth did not check their inequality ratios they tweeted against trends in economic growth and economic policy since 1970, which I have reproduced in figure 1. Germany is not included in figure 1 because German data on growth is thrown askew by German unification.

Figure 1: Real GDP per British, French and Swede aged 15-64,  2014 US$ (converted to 2014 price level with updated 2011 PPPs), 1.9 per cent detrended, 1970-2013

image

Source: Computed from OECD Stat Extract and The Conference Board. 2015. The Conference Board Total Economy Database™, May 2015, http://www.conference-board.org/data/economydatabase/

Figure 1 shows that France has been in a long-term decline since the late 1970s despite the blessings of a more equal society than the USA as championed by the Washington Centre for Equitable Growth. In figure 1, a flat line is growth in real GDP per working age person, PPP, at the same rate as the USA for the 20th century, which was 1.9% per year. A falling line in figure 1 indicates growth of less than 1.9% while a rising line indicates growth in real GDP per working age person, PPP, in excess of 1.9%. In figure 1, France hardly ever grew at the trend rate of growth for the USA of 1.9% per year and was frequently well below that rate.

Sweden tells a slightly different story in figure 1 because of regime change in the early 1990s when Sweden adopted more liberal economic policies where taxes and government spending were reduced:

The rapid growth of the state in the late 1960s and 1970s led to a large decline in Sweden’s relative economic performance. In 1975, Sweden was the 4th richest industrialised country in terms of GDP per head. By 1993, it had fallen to 14th.

That regime change reversed a long economic decline since 1970 under the egalitarian policies of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Under the Swedish Social Democratic Party, Sweden was almost always growing at less than the trend rate of growth of the USA, which was 1.9%. That position reversed only when there was a turn away from big government and high taxes.

Figure 1 tells a similar story for the British economy: a long economic decline in the 1970s when Britain was the sick man of Europe. Under Thatchernomics, Europe had a long economic boom for 20 years or more – see figure 1.

In the 1970s, under the high taxes of the Heath, Callaghan and Wilson administrations, as figure 1 shows, Britain was the sick man of Europe. With the election of the Thatcher Government, Britain soon grew at better than the US trend growth rate for nearly 20 years through few exceptions.

Swedosclerosis and Eurosclerosis compared

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