Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
The rise of a working rich in Australia
12 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, politics - Australia, poverty and inequality, survivor principle Tags: superstar wages, superstars, top 1%, top incomes
#WomensBoatToGaza @MaramaDavidson silent on Hamas rocket attacks
11 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in defence economics, laws of war, politics - New Zealand, war and peace Tags: Gaza Strip, Hamas, Israel, Left-wing hypocrisy, Middle-East politics, New Zealand Greens
#homeslessnessinquiry champions contracting-out @NZLabour @NZGreens @Maori_Party
10 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality Tags: homelessness
Did they swallow a dead rat! After complaining bitterly about the privatisation of social housing and the contracting out of government services and in particular social services generally, the New Zealand Labour Party, the New Zealand Greens and the Maori Party all accepted that part of the solution to better emergency housing services to the homelessness is to fund community housing providers to build them houses. A greater role for the private sector, be it the NGO sector, in solving pressing social problems.
Source: Cross-party enquiry into homelessness.
It is pious to say that NGOs should build new social housing but existing social housing should not be sold to them to administer better than the bureaucrats.
The private sector has always been the last line of the defence for the social safety net for the homeless. Hotels and motels are used for emergency housing. There are plenty of them and it takes very little time to book into one as long as WINZ sends along the documentation to guarantee payment.
The report of Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party included reference to the Kate Amore data on homelessness which comfirms its credibility. That data shows that homelessness has fallen significantly in NZ since 2001 and 2006.
Homelessness is a by-product of bureaucratic inefficiency. So few people are actually sleeping rough or in shelters on any one night that is really an issue of why are those people are not in a shelter or permanent social housing.
The problem of homelessness is the efficiency of the bureaucracy in identifying these people, putting them in temporary quarters be at a hotel or motel if necessary, and then moving them into social housing.
No one is surprised at a homelessness shelter is run by a church or charity all with the assistance of government funding. No one seriously expects bureaucrats to be any good at running homeless shelters or the hotels or motels where the homeless are occasionally booked in.
Lazy Australian top 0.1% only increased their income under @AustralianLabour
09 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, industrial organisation, politics - Australia, poverty and inequality, survivor principle Tags: antimarket bias, entrepreneurial alertness, superstar wages, superstars, top 1%, top incomes
Australia’s top income earners are a lazy lot. The top 0.1% only ever had a rising income share under a Labor government in the 1980s. Even the top 1% had a pretty lean time until the 1990s.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
Crime victimisation rates of Maori compared
08 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: crime and punishment, law and order, Maori economic development, racial discrimination
Source: New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey, Resources & downloads | New Zealand Ministry of Justice.
Source: New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey, Resources & downloads | New Zealand Ministry of Justice.
Australian @Greens vote share & Green 2nd preferences to @AustralianLabor
07 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia Tags: 2013 Australian federal election, 2016 Australian federal election, Australian Greens, The Australian Labour Party, Watermelons
Although the Australian Greens took a blow in 2013 in their vote after their coalition with the Australian Labour Party in 2010, their 2nd preferences to Labour been pretty stable for 10 years. About one in 6 Green voters 2nd preference the Liberals.
Blacks killed by police by threat level, January – September 2016
06 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: crime and punishment, law and order, police shootings
The U.S. incarceration rate is more than six times that of many developed countries.
06 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: crime and punishment, criminal deterrence, law and order
war against racks,
We Should Not Be Subjecting Children’s Brains To Wi-Fi Screens @drjillstein
04 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
Clip of the Gore Vidal vs. William F. Buckley Brawl
02 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, politics - USA
More on is there a Republican in the house?
02 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education, occupational choice, politics - USA
Source: Faculty Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology · Econ Journal Watch : Voter registration, academia, ideology, political parties, professors via Anti-Dismal: Latest issue of Econ Journal Watch.
Blacks and whites killed by police by threat level by threat level, January – September 2016
01 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: law and order, police shootings
Milton Friedman is said to have mesmerised several countries with a flying visit!?
30 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics, politics - Australia Tags: central banks, conspiracy theories, lags on monetary policy, monetary policy, rules versus discretion, The fatal conceit, The pretense to knowledge
Milton Friedman visited Australia in 1975. He spoke with government officials and appeared on the TV show Monday Conference. Apparently, that was enough for him to take over Australian monetary policy setting for the foreseeable future.
When working at the next desk to the monetary policy section in the late 1980s, I heard not a word of Friedman’s Svengali influence:
- The market determined interest rates, not the reserve bank was the mantra for several years. Joan Robinson would be proud that her 1975 visit was still holding the reins.
- Monetary policy was targeting the current account. Read Edwards’ bio of Keating and his extracts from very Keynesian treasury briefings to Keating signed by David Morgan that reminded me of macro101.
See Ed Nelson’s (2005) Monetary Policy Neglect and the Great Inflation in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who used contemporary news reports from 1970 to the early 1990s to uncover what was and was not ruling monetary policy. For example:
“As late as 1990, the governor of the Reserve Bank rejected central-bank inflation targeting as infeasible in Australia, and cited the need for other tools such as wages policy (AFR, October 18, 1990).”
Bernie Fraser was still sufficiently deprogrammed in 1993 to say that “…I am rather wary of inflation targets.” Easy to then announce one in the same speech when inflation was already 2-3%.
When as a commentator on a Treasury seminar paper in 1986, Peter Boxhall – fresh from the US and 1970s Chicago educated – suggested using monetary policy to reduce the inflation rate quickly to zero, David Morgan and Chris Higgins almost fell off their chairs. They had never heard of such radical ideas.
In their breathless protestations, neither were sufficiently in-tune with their Keynesian educations to remember the role of sticky wages or even the need for the monetary growth reductions to be gradual and, more importantly, credible as per Milton Freidman and as per Tom Sargent’s End of 4 big and two moderate inflations papers.
I was far too junior to point to this gap in their analytical memories about the role of sticky wages, and I was having far too much fun watching the intellectual cream of the Treasury senior management in full flight. At a much later meeting, another high flying deputy secretary was mystified as to why 18% mortgage rates were not reining in the current account in 1989.
Friedman’s Svengali influence did not extend to brainwashing in the monetarist creed that the lags on monetary policy were long and variable. The 1988 or 1989 budget papers put the lag on monetary policy at 1 year, which is short and rapier, if you ask me.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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