Legalize All Drugs by Jeff Miron
16 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, economics of regulation, law and economics, liberalism, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: Jeff Morin, marijuana decriminalisation, war on drugs
% of public cash benefits paid to the bottom income quintile, USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand – corrected
15 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, poverty and inequality
Australia does far better than any other country in targeting its welfare state to the bottom of the income distribution. Having an old age pension that is asset tested and income tested has a lot to do with that. New Zealand has an old age pension that is not income tested or asset tested. The USA has a contributory social insurance system that also ensures a considerable amount of its public social benefits are paid to the well off because they paid in Social Security taxes.
Source: OECD Income Distribution database, via http://oe.cd/idd
@janlogie The dramatic closing of the gender pay gap at the 10th percentile in the US, UK, Australia and NZ since 1970 but not at the 90th percentile!
15 Oct 2015 4 Comments
in discrimination, economic history, gender, human capital, labour economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: asymmetric marriage premium, compensating differentials, gender wage gap, marriage and divorce
It seems that the top 10% of men are so busy oppressing the top 10% of women that they forgot to keep up the violence inherent in the capitalist system against the bottom 10% of women. The gender pay gap at the bottom of the economic strata closed quite dramatically and consistently since 1970 or as far back as data was available in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and USA. Much of the closing of the gender pay gap for the low-paid was under the scourge of Reagan, Thatcher, Hawke and Keating and Rogernomics.
Source and Notes: OECD Employment Database. The gender gap plotted below is unadjusted. It is calculated as the difference between the 10th percentile earnings of men and the 10th percentile earnings of women relative to the 10th percentile earnings of men. Estimates of earnings used in the calculations refer to gross earnings of full-time wage and salary workers. However, this definition may slightly vary from one country to another.
By comparison to this dramatic liberation of women from the gender pay gap at the bottom, the gender pay gap for full-time employees has not really tapered down that much at the top of the income distribution and has been pretty flat for coming on 20 years. It seems the class war is over and has been won by women at the bottom but not at the top?
Younger, more educated women delay having families and can earn as much as their partners. bit.ly/1jw98Ky http://t.co/BaDIlBIBA2—
Ninja Economics (@NinjaEconomics) October 14, 2015
Rather than up the workers, the battle cry of the Posh Trots is up the managers, liberate them from insidious pay inequities imposed upon them by a vast sexist conspiracy of male managers.
Source and Notes: OECD Employment Database. The gender gap plotted below is unadjusted. It is calculated as the difference between the 10th percentile earnings of men and the 10th percentile earnings of women relative to the 10th percentile earnings of men. Estimates of earnings used in the calculations refer to gross earnings of full-time wage and salary workers. However, this definition may slightly vary from one country to another.
This failure to close the gender pay gap at the top requires more investigation. The available of reliable contraceptives in the late 1960s led to an explosion of investment by women in long duration professional education and in careers where absences because of motherhood in their 20s and 30s was penalised in terms of human capital depreciation and promotional opportunities.
The reason for the endurance of the gender pay gap at the top of the income distribution is compensating differentials. Women at the top were able to have it all.
Professional women could invest in a career and a family and mix-and-match according to their own preferences for career and family and timing of births rather than the preferences of others who looked upon them as some sort of pathfinder for their gender. It is at the top of the income distribution where short absences from the workplace can has very large consequences for wages and promotion.
@nzlabour @greencatherine @johnkeymp @actparty Australia and New Zealand country of asylum numbers since 1965
10 Oct 2015 1 Comment
in Economics of international refugee law, International law, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand Tags: Australia, economics of migration, refugees
Australia and New Zealand at times has taken in a great many refugees from abroad according to the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees data. Oddly enough these bursts of generosity coincided with a Liberal Country party government in Australia and National Party governments in New Zealand. The Left of New Zealand politics was too busy fighting to be nuclear free to make New Zealand a place of refuge for the victims of oppression when they had their hands on the wheels of power.
Source: UNHCR – UNHCR Statistical Online Population Database.
Because Australia took in so many hundreds of thousands of refugees, it is difficult to read the New Zealand data so I have reproduced the New Zealand data on refugees as a separate graph.
Source: UNHCR – UNHCR Statistical Online Population Database.
At times of crisis such as after the Vietnam War and the chaos in the Balkans, New Zealand has taken in a great many refugees – many times its current generosity.
What will it take to finish the Last Mile in ending extreme poverty
09 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: capitalism and freedom, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
What will it take to finish the “Last Mile” in ending extreme #poverty? brook.gs/1LiFT8E http://t.co/YxSZ36VCSW—
Brookings (@BrookingsInst) October 07, 2015
@jamespshaw @nzlabour @actparty inflow of asylum seekers into Australia and New Zealand since 1987
08 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in International law, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, war and peace Tags: asylum seekers, Australia, economics of migration, refugees
Data extracted on 08 Oct 2015 09:06 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat; Dataset: International Migration Database.
@NZNationalParty @nzlabour @NZGreens inflow of asylum seekers into #UK #Canada, #Australia and #NewZealand since 1980
08 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, Economics of international refugee law, International law, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, population economics Tags: Australia, British politics, economics of migration, refugees
New Zealand’s intake of asylum seekers has been embarrassingly low. The left-wing parties in New Zealand should be ashamed of themselves given the way they wear their international consciences on their sleeves about New Zealand being above it all morally, nuclear free, and can lecture the rest about war, peace and compassion from on high.
Data extracted on 08 Oct 2015 09:06 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat; Dataset: International Migration Database.
The UK absorbed an immense number of asylum seekers in the 1990 as did Canada. The data stops in 2013.
Top 10 countries of foreign birth for Australian residents
07 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, population economics
@jamespeshaw nails the #TPPA policy trade-off @NZGreens
06 Oct 2015 1 Comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, international economic law, international economics, International law, law and economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, property rights Tags: conspiracy theories, David Friedman, foreign direct investment, free trade agreements, FTI, international investment law, Leftover Left, New Zealand Greens, preferential trading agreements, TPPA, Twitter left
About 1% more GDP but higher drug prices.
Source: No increased medicine costs under TPPA | Stuff.co.nz
.@MSF: Patients and treatment providers in developing countries the big losers of the #TPP bit.ly/TPPconcludes http://t.co/cbikANleyA—
MSF Access Campaign (@MSF_access) October 05, 2015
The next best arguments James Shaw made were xenophobia about foreign investment in land and some vast conspiracy theory regarding endangered dolphins.
When your next best argument is foreigners are coming to buy up all our land, you are playing from a weak populist hand. About half of million New Zealand born live in other countries.
About 80% of these live in Australia, the great majority as residents rather than as citizens. These New Zealanders living in Australia and elsewhere need protection under international agreements to ensure they are not the victim of populist outbreaks against the sale of land to foreigners.
Source: Statistics New Zealand.
In addition, if a foreigner wants to pay over the odds for my house I am glad to separate a fool from his money.
Source: Statistics New Zealand.
New Zealand has a strong interest in protecting the rights of its own expatriates as well as New Zealand foreign investors to buy land in other countries. As David Friedman explains:
Much more commonly, [economic imperialism] is used by Marxists to describe–and attack–foreign investment in “developing” (i.e., poor) nations. The implication of the term is that such investment is only a subtler equivalent of military imperialism–a way by which capitalists in rich and powerful countries control and exploit the inhabitants of poor and weak countries.
There is one interesting feature of such “economic imperialism” that seems to have escaped the notice of most of those who use the term. Developing countries are generally labour rich and capital poor; developed countries are, relatively, capital rich and labour poor. One result is that in developing countries, the return on labour is low and the return on capital is high–wages are low and profits high. That is why they are attractive to foreign investors.
To the extent that foreign investment occurs, it raises the amount of capital in the country, driving wages up and profits down. The effect is exactly analogous to the effect of free migration. If people move from labour-rich countries to labour-poor ones, they drive wages down and rents and profits up in the countries they go to, while having the opposite effect in the countries they come from.
If capital moves from capital-rich countries to capital-poor ones, it drives profits down and wages up in the countries it goes to and has the opposite effect in the countries it comes from. The people who attack “economic imperialism” generally regard themselves as champions of the poor and oppressed.
To the extent that they succeed in preventing foreign investment in poor countries, they are benefiting the capitalists of those countries by holding up profits and injuring the workers by holding down wages. It would be interesting to know how much of the clamour against foreign investment in such countries is due to Marxist ideologues who do not understand this and how much is financed by local capitalists who do.
@nzlabour @NZGreens @jamespeshaw cannot tell the crims from the injustice in the tough new Australian laws on deporting criminals
05 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, International law, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand
Australia is introduced tough new deportation laws for noncitizens of bad character that sweep up New Zealanders who may have lived in Australia since childhood.
The new laws provide for automatic deportation of noncitizen criminals. The Immigration Minister used to decide if a criminal who was not an Australian resident was to be deported. Deportations are now automatic, although there are some exemptions and the opportunity for the Minister to intervene in special cases.
Anyone sentenced to more than a year in prison, or for a child-sex related offence automatically loses their visa and is detained to await deportation. This can include cumulative sentences over decades. Anyone spends a total of more one year in a prison is not a petty offender.
If you are a guest in another country, that is not a citizen, you do not go around messing up the place and making a nuisance of yourself. Sooner or later your host will lose patience and send you on your way.
There are injustices in these deportation laws because of a quirk of the New Zealand citizenship law. Some New Zealanders living in Australia cannot pass on their New Zealand citizenship to their children through decent. You cannot become an Australian citizen simply by being born there.
The injustice therefore is some of these New Zealanders who are Samoans whose children spend most of their lives in Australia will be deported back to Samoa because they have Samoan citizenship. They have neither New Zealand nor Australian citizenship.
It is one thing for a criminal to be deported from Australia to New Zealand – both are developed countries. It is another to be deported to a backward Pacific island.
If the New Zealand Labor Party and the New Zealand Greens would take time out for standing up for New Zealand criminals at home and abroad, they might be able to plead with greater success for a deal for these children of New Zealanders who find themselves in a quirky citizenship status. For these children of New Zealanders, their deportation is unusually harsh because they end up back in Samoa, not New Zealand.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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