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.
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
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.
More on the emergence of Generation Rent in New Zealand
28 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, politics - New Zealand, urban economics Tags: Generation Rent, housing affordability
Discharge without conviction is for offences more serious than argy-bargy after closing time
28 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, politics - New Zealand
People get discharges without convictions for offences far more serious than a little bit too much argy-bargy after a few too many with friends after closing time.
Source: Discharge without conviction numbers slump | Radio New Zealand News.
If an offences serious enough to jeopardise your job, an employer would sack you in any case because you are found guilty rather than the entry of a conviction. Allowing criminals to conceal their criminal convictions from future employers allows them to conceal their bad character. It puts law-abiding citizens at a disadvantage to criminals.
Nice members of the middle class are put off committing offences in the first place because of career concerns. In any case, the Spent Convictions Act allows a way out after 7 years.
A few years ago, the Court of Appeal tightened up the criteria to a conviction being all out of proportion of the offence. That means burglars, robbers, sex offenders and thugs got away with it still but less so in the past.
In the past, you just come to court and asked for discharge without conviction. Now you must produce a considerable amount of evidence of the undue career cost.
.@PPTANews @TraceyMartinMP made best ever argument 4 #charterschools @maori_party
28 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, politics - New Zealand
Talk about giving the giving the game away. The only way a state school can do as well as a chartered school in delivering to students is giving it more money than a chartered school can do to deliver the same results.
That is the best ever argument for a charter school, they provide better value for the education dollar. Is my logic faulty?
When did Canberra policy makers accept that inflation was a monetary phenomenon?
27 Sep 2016 3 Comments
in business cycles, economic history, macroeconomics, monetarism, monetary economics, politics - Australia Tags: central banks, monetary policy, The Great Inflation
Australian policymakers from at least 1971 viewed inflation as not a consequence of their monetary policy decisions. There were repeated references by them to wage-price spirals and both unsuccessful (1977) and successful attempts (1981) at wage freezes.
The prices and incomes accord from 1983 onwards was just another 1970s wage tax trade-off. An Incomes policy attributes inflation to non-monetary factors, as did Fraser and Lynch regularly.
• It was not until 1980 that the Fraser government’s monetary policy became genuinely anti-inflationary. With a lag, these changes halved inflation to the mid-single digits by 1983. The implementation lag on the 1975 Monday conference programme must have been long and variable and lasted for a three year window!? Three years out of 20 is hardly a monetarist hegemony!
• Australia had lower CPI inflation in the 1980s than the 1970s, but this was marred by rebounds in 1985–86 and 1988–90 to near 9%.
The monetary policy regime change in the late 1980s was triggered by factors besides rising inflation: a demonic view of currant account.
After several years of high interest rates, the budget papers forecasted a moderate slowing:
• The budget GDP forecast for 1990-91 was 2% with an actual of minus 0.4%; for inflation the actual and forecast were 5.3% versus 6.5%; 1989-90 inflation rate was 8% with GDP growth of 3.3%.
• In 1991-92, the budget GDP forecast was 1.5% with an actual of 2.1%; for inflation the actual and forecast were 1.9% versus 3.8%.
• In 1992-93, the budget papers forecast for inflation 3% for an actual of 1%.
• In 1993-94, the budget forecast for inflation 3.5% for an actual of 1.8%.
The monetarists in the Treasury, entranced as they were by Friedman’s 1975 visit, still had not clicked to the link between a tight monetary policy and low inflation as late as 1993. Australia pursued a stop-go monetary policy from 1971 to the early 1990s.
I worked in the next desk to the monetary policy section in the Prime Minister’s Department in the 1980s. They were determined that market set interest rates, not monetary policy.
I suggest you read the biography of keating by john edwards(?) – his economic advisor in the late 1980s.
Edwards quotes from numerous Treasury briefings to Keating. the Treasury remembered their Keynesian educations well, as did those at DPMC. the prices and incomes accord was very Keynesian: inflation as a non-monetary phenomenon
Mentioning Friedman’s name in the 1980s at job interviews would have been extremely career limiting. Not much better in the early 1990s. Back in the late 1980s, Friedman was graduating from ‘a wild man in the wings’ to just a suspicious character in policy circles.
If you name dropped Hayek in the 1980s and 1990s, any sign of name recognition would have indicated that you were been interviewed by people who were very widely read.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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