Utopia, you are standing in it!

Back in 2020 and 2021, in and around the straight economics and economic policy posts, there were quite a few on aspects of the Covid experience in New Zealand, particularly in a cross-country comparative light.

More recently, you see from time to time suggestions that New Zealand’s experience may have been so good that in fact excess mortality here since Covid began might actually have been negative (in which case, fewer people would have died than might have been expected had Covid never come along.

A couple of alternative perspectives on that caught my eye in the last couple of months, both from academics, one from a physicist and one from an economist.

The first was a very very long Twitter thread from Professor Michael Fuhrer at Monash in Melbourne. His thread starts with this tweet

and after reviewing the evidence, and granting that

he concludes that

All of which…

Dr Bryce Wilkinson says when debating tax, don’t forget spending quality:

An IRD report on effective rates of tax attracted much public attention last week.

It was launched by the Minister of Revenue, David Parker.

In proposing that high income people are not taxed enough, Parker asserted in the report’s foreword that: “New Zealand is not a highly taxed nation”.

This claim is false.

Parker’s case is that we “sit in the middle of the OECD in terms of total taxes as a proportion of the economy.” That is like claiming that an obese person in New Zealand is not obese by American standards. So what?

Not being as bad as the worst doesn’t make it good.

Member countries of the OECD commonly have big (and problematic) welfare states. This gives them amongst the highest government tax and spending burdens in the world, New Zealand included.

On the Heritage Foundation’s…

News source  Stuff  has reported almost 100 wealthy New Zealanders have signed an open letter to the government to say they want to pay more tax.

Said to be inspired by global initiative Millionaires for Humanity, 96 wealthy individuals have told the government they recognise the current tax system is unfair, allowing wealthy people to pay less tax, while other New Zealanders who struggle day-to-day pay more.

Those who signed include Sir Ian Taylor, Phillip Mills, of gym chain Les Mills, company director Rob Campbell, actress Robyn Malcolm and Dame Susan Devoy.

The letter says they recognise the benefits of tax; that it “funds everything from the teachers who give our children a great start, to the Department of Conservation rangers who look after our environment, through to healthcare professionals on whom we all rely”, and it asks the government to fix the tax system.

After a shaky start to his reign, the king intended his coronation to bolster his personal image and agenda ahead of the 1626 Parliament. However, things didn’t go according to plan, as Dr Paul Hunneyball of our Lords 1558-1603 section explains…

Little went right for Charles I in the opening months of his reign. Following his accession in March 1625, a major outbreak of the plague in London forced him to delay his coronation. His war against Spain, which had initially boosted his popularity, was fast becoming a liability, prohibitively expensive to maintain, and with no prospect of a decisive victory. His marriage to the Catholic princess Henrietta Maria was intended to seal a military alliance with France, but almost from the start this union was prone to tensions and misunderstandings, at both the personal and diplomatic levels. The marriage was also unpopular with Charles’s Protestant subjects, while anxiety…

Every so often a historical monograph produces a heated debate that places the author on the defensive for his or her views.  In our current world the term “wokeness” has worked its way into discussions of what should be taught and explored about our past.  The general view of those who are champions of this line of reasoning is that anything that disturbs our view of the past, places whites in an unfavorable light, and explores issues such as slavery, anti-immigration, possible racism, misogyny, etc. should not be taught in our schools.  This has led to book banning, violence when school boards meetings, and politicians who like to raise the woke agenda as a tool to gain or retain political power.  

In this environment enters Nigel Biggar’s new book, COLONIALISM: A MORAL RECKONING which supports the idea that the British Empire was not fundamentally racist, unequal or shamelessly violent…

• Bryce Edwards writes – 

The Green Party should be very high in the opinion polls right now. Historically, when Labour is low in the polls the Greens tend to be the recipients of progressive voters looking for an alternative. A huge proportion of the 50 per cent vote Labour got in 2020 are now disillusioned with the Labour Government and casting around for another party to place their trust in at the election.

The current policy environment is also highly favourable to the Greens. Voters say that they are especially concerned with issues which the Greens have the ability to campaign strongly on: climate change, housing, inequality, tax reform, and the cost of living.

2023 should therefore be The Year of the Greens. Yet it’s not. Instead, the Greens are struggling in the polls – averaging only about nine per cent, well below where they’ve polled in the past. And…

Narratives matter in public policy, often in an unfortunate manner.

• People used to believe (and some still do) that the Great Depression was caused by capitalism and that President Roosevelt’s interventions rescued the economy. Those people arewrong.
• People used to believe (and some still do) that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by Wall Street “greed” and that laws such as Dodd-Frank will protect us in the future. Those people arewrong.

Another narrative is that the industrial revolution was a horrible period in American economic history that produced immense wealth for so-called robber barons while leading to suffering and deprivation for everyone else.

Today, we will look at why that is nonsense.

We’ll start with this chart from Oxford University’s Our World in Data. As you can see, per-capita GDP increased sharply in the latter part of the 19th century (the period most associated…

Nuclear power’s timely renaissance is being led by Canada and the US, with plenty of others following suit. Any country that’s serious about reliable and affordable electricity is getting serious about nuclear power.

Britain is crab-walking away from its offshore wind power disaster, with its government recently announcing plans to pump up nuclear power generation, including by investing heavily in Small Modular Reactor technology.

Nuclear power is the only, stand-alone generation source that can deliver reliable, affordable power without generating CO2 gas, in the process, which means nuclear should be the perfect candidate for those fretting about carbon dioxide gas emissions in the electricity generation sector.

Putting aside worries about the direction the weather might take in future, the self-inflicted wind and solar calamity playing out in Europe has focused attention on the need to have power around-the-clock, whatever the weather.

Australia’s Federal Shadow Minister for Climate Change and…

Charles III has now been formally crowned as Kingin a ceremony with deep historical roots that reflect the institution’s long history. But what about the monarchy’s future? Craig Prescott discusses whether the UK is willing to consider the major constitutional change of becoming a republic, and concludes that should such a change take place, it will need to coincide with an underlying change in political culture in order to be anything other than symbolic.

The British public, as Brexit underlined, is not necessarily averse to major constitutional change. The start of a new reign provides an opportunity to reappraise the monarchy. Such a reappraisal is already taking place in many of the 14 Commonwealth realms.

In June 2022, Australia appointed an Assistant Minister for the Republic, with the intention that Australia will move towards becoming a republic after the next election, due in 2025. Over the next few…