Source: Housing affordability: The Social Report 2016 – Te pūrongo oranga tangata from Perry (2015), Ministry of Social Development, using data from Statistics New Zealand’s Household Economic Survey.
Spot Generation Rent in New Zealand
25 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - New Zealand, urban economics Tags: Generation Rent, housing affordability
House crowding continues long run fall despite the dead hand of neoliberalism
24 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality
Clinton’s New Ad on @realdonaldtrump Mocking Women’s Appearance #NeverTrump
24 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of media and culture, gender, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election
50% of @PaulineHansonOz @OneNationAus votes come from @AustralianLabor voters
22 Sep 2016 1 Comment
in constitutional political economy, politics - Australia, Public Choice Tags: 2016 Australian federal election, antiforeign bias, antimarket bias, expressive voting, free trade, globalisation, left-wing popularism, makework bias, rational irrationality, right-wing popularism
How can Pauline Hanson be an extreme right-winger if half of her votes come from people who 2nd preference the Australian Labour Party? This strong support for her populism has been well-known since she won the safest Labour Party seed in Queensland in the 1996 Australian Federal Election but is hardly ever mentioned by the media or her critics.
Source: Antony Green’s Election Blog: Preference Flows at the 2016 Federal Election.
It should be therefore no surprise that a lot of her views have popular support because she has support across the political spectrum. Not knowing that will means you will be not very good at combating her views which you simply do not understand where they come from.
Few of her supporters see themselves as extremists and will be insulted when you suggest they are. Listen here dummy is no way to win back votes of people who just voted for you recently.
Hanson’s support among Labour voters is increasing. Only 42% of her voters gave their 2nd preference to Labour in previous federal elections for the House of Representatives.
What Wasn’t Said in “Wealth Inequality In America”
22 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - USA, population economics, poverty and inequality Tags: top 1%
Would ceasefires have shortened WWII? The American Civil War? #Syrianconflict
22 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in defence economics, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: American Civil War, game theory, Middle-East politics, Syrian Civil War, World War II
Edward Luttwak in his essay Give War a Chance speculated that if there was a United Nations in the 1860s, there would still be UN peacekeepers stationed between the warring Union and Confederate troops on the Mason Dixon line as of this day.
If you can work out a way in which ceasefires would have shorten World War II in either the European or Pacific theatres, you have got a better crystal ball than me.
There were long interludes on the Western front; several years in which the Nazis fortified the French beaches while the Allies built up their invasion force in England. For all practical purposes, there is a land-forces ceasefire from Dunkirk to D-Day across the English Channel.
Luttwak wrote that cease-fires permit space for both sides to heal while only intensifying and prolonging the struggle once the cease fire ends — and it almost always ends.
This was true in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949. It is true of the dozen of ceases fires in Gaza negotiated by the Security Council. It was true of all the cease-fires that failed in the fall of Yugoslavia with Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians who negotiated month-long cease fires where
John Stevenson studied 170 ceasefires. He pretty much vindicated the position that each side uses the lull in the fighting to regroup, rebuild and reinforce when for when the fighting starts again.
Ceasefires are perplexing in the many sided civil war in Syria. Aside from the Kurds, it is hard to work out who you want to win.
The Kurds just want to be left alone with their own country.
But Turkey is not happy about that prospect nor is Iraq.
A useful guide to Who's Who in the Syrian Civil War. And how many fighter they have.
Chart by @EP_ThinkTank https://t.co/oGbN4A67w0—
Paul Kirby (@paul1kirby) February 09, 2016
You can work out who you want to lose territory but as for who might replace them, maybe the free Syrian army is a bit of an improvement.
Who's Fighting in Syria
(or: Why more intl focus won't fix this) https://t.co/RLo7kTtyK5—
ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) November 15, 2015
There will be a bloodbath in reprisals if any of the other sides win apart from the Kurds. The Kurds are only willing to fight as far into Syria as they need to defend their own territory.
How to show that unions & income inequality are unrelated when attempting to show a link
22 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in human capital, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA, unions Tags: superstar wages, superstars, top 1%
Fight for $15 tried to show a link between unions and rising income inequality but all it managed to show that unions went into decline several decades before inequality started to rise.
Ethnic differences in household incomes in the USA
16 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA Tags: racial discrimination, racial wage gaps
@Greens @PaulineHansonOz are peas in a pod
15 Sep 2016 1 Comment
in international economics, politics - Australia
This chart from coming on 20 years ago by Lyndon Rowe illustrates that the Australian Greens, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and a now-defunct Australian political party of self-proclaimed do-gooders have plenty in common and still do.
Pauline Hanson and the Australian Greens will vote the same way many times despite the Greens self-righteously boycotting the maiden speech of a fellow economic nationalist.
The war on alcohol and the war on drugs were symbiotic campaigns
14 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics, economics of regulation, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: economics of prohibition, war on drugs
NZ inflation rate since 1991 with 1% CPI bias adjustment
13 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, inflation targeting, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: CPI bias, inflation rate
The inflation rate is overstated by about 1% each year because of difficulties in measuring new goods entering the consumer price index and improvements in the quality of existing goods in the consumer price index. With that adjustment of 1% in the chart below, a common measure of that bias, New Zealand has had zero to negative inflation for four years
Source: Reserve Bank of New Zealand Key Statistics.
One of the reasons for an inflation target band of 1 to 3% is an inflation rate of 1% is actually an inflation rate of 0%.
Land affordability, not housing affordability is the problem to be solved
11 Sep 2016 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, politics - New Zealand, urban economics
The Greens and Labour both want to build 100,000 affordable houses over 10 years. Neither explain where the land will come from. Nor do the Greens explain how to make houses more affordability without making land cheaper.
Labour is the best of the two parties because they propose to abolish the Auckland urban limit and the constraint on land supply which that represents. 
The Greens propose to get to where they want to go with taxes and bans on foreign buyers. Those proposals of the Greens do not increase the amount of land available and therefore the number of houses that will be built.
9/11 was 15 years ago
11 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - USA, war and peace Tags: 9/11, war on terror
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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