Source: Workers’ Compensation: Growing Along with Productivity.
Workers’ Compensation: Growing Along with Productivity
04 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, politics - USA Tags: living standards, measurement error, middle class stagnation, wage stagnation
How did the State Department’s secure email server communicate with @HillaryClinton’s?
02 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in managerial economics, organisational economics, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election, email privacy, information security, Internet privacy, privacy
My only experience with secure email networks is pretty pesky filters stopping you from sending confidential material outside the network. The emails bounced.
![secure-email-links[1]](https://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/secure-email-links1.jpg "secure-email-links[1]")
I do not understand how a secure email server could communicate with one that is not such as Hillary Clinton’s private email server thin the secure network without a special dispensation.
With hundreds of thousands use secure email servers in the US government, the network administrator would have to have filters that bounce emails with keywords and classifications.
More sensible agencies that handle classified materials do not allowstaff to take work home. If they do, it must be on a secure laptop with no capacity to print or download.
The effects of cutting the Australian company tax by one percentage point
02 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, public economics Tags: Australia, company tax, international tax competition, tax incidents, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment
Will @NZLabour have any list MPs in 2017 after deal with @NZGreens?
02 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: 2017 New Zealand election, MMP, New Zealand Greens, New Zealand Labour Party, tactical voting
There is a memorandum of understanding agreed yesterday between the New Zealand Labour Party and the New Zealand Greens. There is some speculation that there will be more coordination over electorate votes so that the Labour Party wins more electorate seats.
Labour has five list MPs at the moment. Winning a few more electorate seats will mean that the leader of the party and a future leader may be out of parliament if there is more tactical voting.
Unless this tactical voting leads to an overhang in parliament with Labour holding more electoral seats than it is entitled to on the basis of its party vote, it seems to be shooting itself in the foot.
$5.2 billion in rail spending since 2003 budget @JulieAnneGenter @JordNZ
02 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, transport economics Tags: celebrity technologies, expressive voting, KiwiRail, network economics, picking losers, picking winners, rational irrationality, urban transport
$5.2 billion in rail spending since the 2003 budget! This $5.2 billion does not include any spending on urban rail, commuter train networks or their electrification. The $5.2 billion since the 2003 budget is for the passenger and freight network, not the urban metro contracts
Source: New Zealand Budget Papers, various years.
Desperately waiting for that dividend the taxpayers lose if any of these assets are privatised. The spending listed below in the two charts includes loans, capital injections and the purchase of the track and of the train operator itself. The latter was purchased for $690 million which was soon written down to zero.
Source: New Zealand Budget Papers, various years.
There is no table because the table format breaks down when blogged.
At various times, OnTrack and KiwiRail was subsidiaries of the New Zealand Railways Corporation, which was the holding company. Now OnTrack is a division of KiwiRail.
Sensible Sentencing Trust mistaken to oppose plea bargaining @sst_nz
01 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: crime and punishment, game theory, law and order, plea-bargaining
The sensible sentencing trust wants to greatly curtail if not abolish plea-bargaining. Its petition is motivated by a recent plea bargain where a particularly horrendous child murder was pleaded down to two manslaughter guilty pleas.
I have no knowledge of the details of that case or the plea-bargain other than a male and female caregiver were charged with the brutal murder of a 3-year-old child in their foster care.
My speculation is two guilty pleas to manslaughter is better than one of the accused getting off through a cutthroat defence.
In this defence, the co-accused blame each other for the worst and minimises their own culpability. Sometimes this backfires. The jury convicts both on the evidence of the other but ignores self-serving testimony. But sometimes a cutthroat defence works and a guilty goes free.
A few years ago a father was accused of murdering his 3 month old twins. The chief witness against him was their mother.
By the end of the trial, his defence counsel made the mother look far more guilty than the accused. So much so that the jury returned a not guilty verdict in 10 minutes.One of the two did it, but the jury could not work out which one so there was reasonable doubt.
In the case motivating the petition to abolish plea-bargaining, the accused pleaded down to manslaughter pleas. Both are certain to be punished rather than one perhaps get off.
Plea-bargain are a compromise but they are still justice. The punishment is less but is more certain. Plea-bargaining allows scarce prosecution resources to be better targeted, which means more convictions in those cases that do go to trial.
Following Landes (1971), plea bargaining is a rational response to the costs of trial for prosecutors intent on maximizing the sum of punishments imposed on defendants as a class and for defendants seeking to minimize the expected costs of punishment to them as individuals.
A plea-bargain spares witnesses the ordeal of a trial; justice is speedier, less a severe but more certain as there is no chance of the not guilty verdict at trail. Testifying against an accused found not guilty because a reasonable doubt rather than actual innocence must be disheartening.
Who said mobile phone networks were not contestable?
31 May 2016 Leave a comment
in industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, survivor principle, technological progress Tags: anti-trust economics, barriers to entry, competition law, creative destruction, network goods, The meaning of competition
Source: New Zealand Commerce Commission.
No @sarahinthesen8 this is not acceptable. Stopping the boats saved hundreds of lives
30 May 2016 Leave a comment
in Economics of international refugee law, international economic law, International law, labour economics, politics - Australia Tags: Australian Greens, avoiding difficult choices, economics of immigration, Leftover Left, rational irrationality
People who enter illegally by boat do not increase the number of refugees of Australia admits in any one year. They change who was granted asylum within the same fixed quota. Increasing the quota will not change incentives for illegal entry if illegal entry allows for settlement in Australia.
Remember this every time the Left says the government invented the Internet
30 May 2016 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, politics - USA, Public Choice, survivor principle Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, industry policy, Internet, picking roses, picking winners
Gap in GDP per Australian, Canadian, French, German, Japanese, New Zealander and British hour worked with the USA
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economic history, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, public economics Tags: Australia, British economy, Canada, Eurosclerosis, France, Germany, Japan, labour productivity, measurement error, taxation and labour supply
This data tells more of a story than I expected. Firstly, New Zealand has not been catching up with the USA. Japan stopped catching up with the USA in 1990. Canada has been drifting away from the USA for a good 30 years now in labour productivity.
Data extracted on 28 May 2016 05:15 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat from OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2016 – en – OECD.
Australia has not been catching up with the USA much at all since 1970. It has maintained a pretty consistent gap with New Zealand despite all the talk of a resource boom in the Australia; you cannot spot it in this date are here.
Germany and France caught up pretty much with the USA by 1990. Oddly, Eurosclerosis applied from then on terms of growth in income per capita.
European labour productivity data is hard to assess because their high taxes lead to a smaller services sector where the services can be do-it-yourself. This pumps up European labour productivity because of smaller sectors with low productivity growth.
@PikettyLeMonde pension fund socialism has finished taking over #capitalism #Piketty
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, financial economics, politics - USA, public economics Tags: company tax, Leftover Left, pension fund socialism, Peter Drucker, tax havens, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, Twitter left
Peter Drucker first pointed out in the 70s that the retirement savings of ordinary workers will end up opening the majority of public listed companies. That day has come much to the disappointment of the Leftover Left ranging from Thomas Piketty to Max Rashbrooke.
Source: CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: US Corporate Stock: The Transition in Who Owns It.
Any call for higher taxes on investment incomes and capital and even tax havens is an attack on the retirement savings of ordinary workers.
“GMO’s are Dangerous!” – Not
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, environmental economics, health economics, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: Anti-Science left, GMOs
#NeverTrump but why no #neverBernie, only #feelthebern?
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election, Leftover Left, reactionary left, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply, Twitter left
Why have no Democrats formed the equivalent of #NeverTrump?
Bernie Sanders is not even a member of their party. Have they no principles?
Many of their republican opponents do in rejecting Trump and planning to vote for either Clinton or Gary Johnson.
Sanders is an old socialist throwback whose economic policies would plunge the American economy into a deep recession harming most of all those that Democrats claim to represent.
Sander’s mind is just as inflexible as that of Trump as is his unwillingness to learn from events.
What is freighted by road? @TransportBlog @JulieAnneGenter
26 May 2016 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, survivor principle, transport economics Tags: celebrity technologies, New Zealand Greens
What is freighted by rail? @TransportBlog @JulieAnneGenter
25 May 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, transport economics Tags: celebrity technologies, New Zealand Greens
The Greens want to expand rail freight but stop mining coal which is 1/5 of rail tonnage.
Source: Ministry of Transport (2014). National Freight Demand Study 2014.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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