Ordinary French, Germans, Italians and Danish pay much higher marginal tax rates and that is before their high rates of GST.
Data extracted on 30 Jan 2016 03:08 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat.
@TrevorMallard what next for #TPPANoWay? Repeal CER?
31 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, international economics, International law, law and economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, television, TV shows Tags: CER, closer economic relations, Hollywood economics, ISDS, preferential trading agreements, rational irrationality, single market, TPPA, Twitter left
New Zealand filmmakers have used trade treaties to pry open access to foreign markets by challenging failures to honour promises of nondiscrimination in trade and investment in the Federal Court of Australia.
This should please the Twitter Left because they are also a film going left as are most members of the educated middle class as a point of identity and snobbery.
Back in the day, New Zealand television programming was sold cheaply into the Australian market. Many cultural and other products are exported into foreign markets and sold for whatever they can get above the price of shipping or digital transmission. What else explains all that rubbish on cable TV?
Under the Closer Economic Relations agreement that creates a single market between Australia and New Zealand, New Zealand made television programming content must be treated the same way as Australian content so it was included in their 50% local content rules for commercial television back from whenever I remember this story from.
There was a Federal Court of Australia case that ruled that New Zealand television programming was Australian content programming for the purposes of the relevant media regulations because of Closer Economic Relations.
From the late 1990s, with revival of the New Zealand film and television industry, New Zealand content was starting to flood the Australian market, especially in the off-season in the summer when stations were looking for cheap content to fill a low ratings period.
Naturally, this Kiwi invasion did not please the rent seeking Australian television programme production industry and many a mendicant actor, writer and producer
Where there is a will, where there is a way: minimum quality standards are introduced into the Australian content rules defined by price – a price that happen to be above what the television stations used to pay for New Zealand made programming in the off-season.
This court victory in favour of various New Zealand film industry in enforcing a trade and investment treaty puts the Twitter left in a bit of a conundrum. Which is more important? The New Zealand film industry or their hatred of globalisation and the rule of law.
US, Australian and NZ all-in average personal income tax rates at average wage by family type
26 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, public economics Tags: Australia, earned income tax credit, family tax credits, family taxation, in-work tax credits, working for families
NZ, Oz & US real housing price index, January 1975 – September 2015 @philtwyford @JulieAnneGenter
14 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of regulation, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, urban economics
Notice that New Zealand housing prices were pretty flat until the passage of the Resource Management Act in 1993.
Here’s how Scandinavian countries pay for their spending
14 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, public economics Tags: growth of government, Norway, size of government, Sweden
It is the 1960s hippies who are letting marijuana decriminalisation down at the ballot box
11 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: baby boomers, marijuana decriminalisation, rational irrationality, voter demographics
The rise of the working rich in Australia – top income compositions since 1954
08 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, human capital, labour economics, politics - Australia, poverty and inequality Tags: Australia, superstar wages, superstars, top incomes, working rich
Over the course of the post-war period top incomes in Australia turned into top wage earners. It is unfortunate that information is not available on the extent to which business incomes make up the balance of top incomes as distinct from dividend incomes.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
The New Zealand top 1% is still bone lazy – top 1% income shares USA, New Zealand and Australia since 1913
08 Jan 2016 2 Comments
in applied price theory, economic history, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: Australia, Leftover Left, top 1%
What slackers. Despite 30 years of neoliberalism oppressing the unions and working class, the top 1% in New Zealand (and Australia) are unable to do any better in terms of their share of national income than in the good old days of pre-1984 New Zealand looked upon with such fondness by the the Leftover Left.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
Rooms per person across the OECD member countries
07 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, population economics, urban economics Tags: housing economics, living standards
There are quite large differences in the number of rooms per person in the European offshoots and the countries in Europe. Americans have much more room per person than the much exalted welfare states of northern Europe.
Source: OECD Better Life Index – Data extracted on 07 Jan 2016 06:55 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat
How much lower is youth voter turnout across the OECD?
23 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: rational ignorance, voter turnout
Old age poverty rates in the G7, Australia, New Zealand and Korea
17 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in labour economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, public economics Tags: old age poverty, old-age pension, social insurance, welfare state
#itsnotchoice @povertymonitor @PlunketNZ % Australian, NZ and US sole parents who do not work
13 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in gender, labour economics, labour supply, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, welfare reform Tags: 1996 U.S. welfare reforms, child poverty, single parents, sole parents
The only major success in reducing sole parent beneficiary numbers anywhere has been time limits introduced as part of the 1996 US federal welfare reforms. Time limits on welfare for single parents reduced caseloads by two thirds, 90% in some states.
Source and Notes: OECD Family Database; Australian data are available only from 2005.
The subsequent declines in welfare participation rates and gains in employment were largest among the single mothers previously thought to be most disadvantaged: young (ages 18-29), mothers with children aged under seven, high school drop-outs, and black and Hispanic mothers. These low-skilled single mothers were thought to face the greatest barriers to employment. Blank (2002) found that
nobody of any political persuasion predicted or would have believed possible the magnitude of change that occurred in the behaviour of low-income single-parent families.
With the enactment of welfare reform in 1996, black child poverty fell by more than a quarter to 30% in 2001. Over a six-year period after welfare reform, 1.2 million black children were lifted out of poverty. In 2001, despite a recession, the poverty rate for black children was at the lowest point in national history. Employment are never married mothers increased by 50% after the US reforms; employment a single mothers with less than a high school education increased by two thirds; employment of single mothers aged of 18 in 24 approximately doubled.
This great success of US welfare reforms was that after decades of no progress in their war on poverty, poverty among both single mothers and black children declined dramatically.
Are women just too smart to be computer scientists?
08 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, managerial economics, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: economics of personality traits, gender wage gap, reversing gender gap
Women started drifting away from computer science in the mid-1980s. The interpretation put forward by the professional grievance industry, that is, by National Public Radio in the USA is:
The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers.
These early personal computers weren’t much more than toys. You could play pong or simple shooting games, maybe do some word processing.
And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys. This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks were, and it created techie culture.
Source: NPR
Another interpretation is there are systematic differences between teenage boys and teenage girls in verbal and written skills. Young women moved away from enrolling in computer…
View original post 224 more words
Vaccines by the numbers
08 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics, politics - Australia, politics - USA Tags: anti-vaccination movement, antiscience left, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, cranks, Leftover Left, New Zealand Greens, quackery, vaccinations, vaccines
How much of the gender pay gap is explained across the OECD?
06 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, econometerics, gender, labour economics, politics - Australia, politics - USA
There are vast differences in the percentage of the gender wage gap that is left unexplained after adjusting for age, work experience, hours worked, education and job characteristics.
Closing the Gender Gap: Act Now – © OECD 2012 – OECD Secretariat estimates, based on EUSILC (2008), HILDA (2009), CPS (2008), KLIPS (2007), SLID (2008), JHPS (2009), CASEN (2009) and ENIGH (2010) (Annex III.A3).
Attributing this residual in gender pay gaps to discrimination implies vast differences in sex discrimination between countries with similar cultures. Furthermore, a large part of the gender wage gap is unexplained in countries such as Scandinavia which are held up as models in commitment to gender equality and have many family friendly policies including maternity leave that is generous by New Zealand and American standards.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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