Some facts on the level of Australian taxes (3): Australian taxes on income are not particularly high http://t.co/xFCNANIycu— John Daley (@JohnDaley_) September 23, 2015
Some facts on the level of Australian taxes (2): The top rate of marginal tax is not particularly high http://t.co/TAbCKylQZv— John Daley (@JohnDaley_) September 23, 2015
In common with many previous climate summits, the Paris talks will be a futile gesture that will have no significant effect on the pace of global warming and holding the summit is a waste of taxpayers money.
The easy way to tell if there is anything going to happen at a climate summit is the seniority of the delegation.
The Chinese made it clear at the Copenhagen summit in 2009 that they were not interested in an agreement by sending a Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs to a key side meeting of the American and French presidents, the British Prime Minister and the German Chancellor. All subsequent policy manoeuvrings by the Chinese on global warming are an attempt to head off green tariffs on their exports.
The New Zealand Labour Party and New Zealand Greens both make much of the fact that when you privatise a state-owned enterprise the taxpayer is no longer entitled to dividends from the privatised business. The fact that the sale price is the net present value of those future dividends is a rating fallacy that is not the subject of this post.
Source: New Zealand Treasury – data released under the Official Information Act.
What is the subject of this post is whether there are indeed any dividends paid to taxpayers after capital injections. 2007 was the last year in which dividends to the taxpayer exceeded capital injections. The reason was that dog called KiwiRail.
I asked for information from the Treasury for as far back as 2000 but could only get information back to 2008 on the return on equity of the portfolio of state-owned enterprises to the taxpayer.
Source: New Zealand Treasury – released under Official Information Act.
Apparently, long-term information on the performance of the state-owned enterprise portfolio is not available. Anyone wanting to know the performance of an individual or group of listed companies simply looks at the share price was far back as they want. The prices of individual shares reflect market expectations of future dividends and future price movements, and they go up and down as new information is revealed. The history of a share price indicates the ups and downs of a company in one number far better than any other available indicator.
I also included the adjusted rate of return on equity taking out the two dogs in the portfolio: Solid Energy and KiwiRail.
Source: New Zealand Treasury – released under Official Information Act.
It is vital to permanent Tory rule that Jeremy Corbyn stay staunch to the principles and electoral strategy on which he was elected by Labour Party members and supporters to be their leader and alternative Prime Minister.
Whenever there is a crisis in the labour market, the standard policy response is send them on a course. That makes you look like you care and by the time they graduate the problem will probably fixed itself. Most problems do. I found this bureaucratic response to labour market crises to repeat itself over and over again while working in the bureaucracy.
The standard policy response to a normal problem in the labour market is send them on a course. Clever geeks as yourself sitting at your desk as a policy analysis or minister did well at university. You assume others will as well including those who have neither the ability or aptitude to succeed in education. Lowering university tuition fees and easing the terms of student loans simply means that those who do well at university will not have to pay back as much to the government. People who succeed at university already have above average IQs so they already had a good head start in life.
The standard solution to growing inequality is to send people on a course. Trouble is that just make smart people wealthier without helping the not so smart and increases the chance of smart men and women marrying off together. This increases the inequality between power couples and the rest.
The last thing Tories for Corbyn want is for Jeremy Corbyn to start compromising on his principles. Do not be corrupted by the baubles of office. Stay staunch to those ‘renegade Liberal’ principles that kept you in the wilderness for 30 years within the Labour Party. That will guarantee permanent Tory rule. We and the Trots want our £3 worth.
Yesterday’s hippies, today’s grumpy old man, believed they were sticking it to the man. The only real problem of the left wing of politics with authority was they and those like them were not in charge. Jeremy Frimer explains:
Together with my collaborators Dr. Danielle Gaucher and Nicola Schaefer, we asked both red and blue Americans to share their views about obeying liberal authorities (e.g., “obey an environmentalist”). In an article that we recent published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, we found that liberals were now the ones calling for obedience.
And when the authorities were viewed as ideologically neutral (e.g., office manager), liberals and conservatives agreed. Only when people perceived the authority to be conservative (e.g., religious authority) did conservatives show a positive bias…
Liberal versus conservative is like Yankee fans versus Red Socks fans. Each has its own flag to which it pledges allegiance. And each side has its own authorities to which it demands obedience.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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