Every national and local government should include this pie chart with tax assessments
11 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
Economics New Zealand: Did we move too quickly?
09 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in macroeconomics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: monetary policy
The first Paul Krugman on efficiency wage arguments for a higher minimum wage
09 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in labour economics, minimum wage, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: George Bush derangement syndrome, living wage, Paul Krugman, public intellectuals
HT: economistsview
the number of terrorist incidents driven by religion has increased dramatically since 2000
07 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, economics of religion, law and economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: war against terror
HT: wonkblog
A clickable timeline of central banking activity during the 2008 financial crisis
05 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
Why popularist politics work: People Are Terrible at Estimating Income Inequality
05 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of information, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: expressive voting, poverty and inequality, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, the top 1%, urban myths
Does global warming denial and the anti-vaccination movement march to the same anti-science step?
03 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in climate change, economics of information, economics of media and culture, environmental economics, global warming, health economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: anti-vaccination movement, climate alarmists, expressive politics, expressive voting, psychology of persuasion
In the last post, I presented evidence, collected as part of the CCP Vaccine Risk Perception study, that showed that the trope has no meaningful connection to fact.
Those who accept and reject human evolution, those who believe in and those who are skeptical about climate change, all overwhelmingly agree that vaccine risks are low and vaccine benefits high.
The idea that either climate change skepticism or disbelief in evolution denotes hostility to science or lack of comprehension of science is false, too. That’s something that a large number of social science studies show. The CCP Vaccine Risk study doesn’t add anything to that body of evidence.
Vaccination rates are a serious issue. Do those that are trying to lift vaccination rates think they going to get anywhere by calling people stupid, corrupt and in the pay of a multinational.
Of course not. This matter is serious. It’s a real public health risk.
People are persuaded to vaccinate through gentle messages providing facts in a way they can understand that also respects their knowledge, their intellect, and their concerns for the safety of the children. You don’t win people over by insulting them.
The climate alarmists are so insulting because they have no interest in persuading the people that are actually talking to. They are reaching out to members on the audience were are on the margin, and appealing to their political base, including the fundraising base by showing how staunch they are in slaying the Dragon.
Evidence of mass kidnappings of Occupy protesters
03 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: activists, do gooders, expressive voting, Left-wing hypocrisy, occupy movement, superstar effect
Because the most-popular songs now stay on the charts for months, the relative value of a hit has exploded.
The top 1 percent of bands and solo artists now earn 77 percent of all revenue from recorded music, media researchers report. And even though the amount of digital music sold has surged, the 10 best-selling tracks command 82 percent more of the market than they did a decade ago.
The advent of do-it-yourself artists in the digital age may have grown music’s long tail, but its fat head keeps getting fatter.
The only explanation for the failure of the Twitter Left to protest against this concentration or of wealth and massive rise in ticket prices to the downtrodden young public that go to concerts is a mass kidnapping of the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Australia is number 9 in taxing investment income – corrected
03 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics Tags: capital gains tax, company tax, efficient taxes, optimal taxes
Why Can’t Public Transit Be Free? – The Atlantic
01 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, transport economics Tags: activists, do gooders, free public transport, The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge
The earliest urban experiment in free public transit took place in Rome in the early 1970s. The city, plagued by unbearable traffic congestion, tried making its public buses free.
At first, many passengers were confused: “There must be a trick,” a 62-year-old Roman carpenter told The New York Times as he boarded one bus. Then riders grew irritable. One “woman commuter” predicted that “swarms of kids and mixed-up people will ride around all day just because it doesn’t cost anything.”
Romans couldn’t be bothered to ditch their cars—the buses were only half-full during the mid-day rush hour, “when hundreds of thousands battle their way home for a plate of spaghetti.” Six months after the failed, costly experiment, a cash-strapped Rome reinstated its fare system.
Three similar experiments in the U.S.—in Denver, Colorado, and Trenton, New Jersey, in the late 70s, and in Austin, Texas, around 1990—also proved unfruitful and shaped the way American policy makers viewed the question of free public transit.
All three were attempts to coax commuters out of their cars and onto subway platforms and buses. While they succeeded in increasing ridership, the new riders they brought in were people who were already walking or biking to work. For that reason, they were seen as failures.
A 2002 report released by the National Center for Transportation Research indicated that the lack of fares attracted hordes of young people, who brought with them a culture of vandalism, graffiti, and bad behavior—which all necessitated costly maintenance. The lure of “free,” the report implied, attracted the “wrong” crowd—the “right” crowd, of course, being wealthier people with cars, who aren’t very sensitive to price changes.
HT: http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-cant-public-transit-be-free/384929/
Deflation and Depression: Is There an Empirical Link?
31 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, Euro crisis, great depression, great recession, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: deflation, fiscal policy, liquidity traps, monetary policy, stabilisation policy
Deflation has a bad reputation. People blame deflation for causing the great depression in the 1930s. What worse reputation can you get as a self-respecting macroeconomic phenomena?
The inconvenient truth for this urban legend is empirical evidence of deflation leading to a depression is rather weak.
The most obvious is confounding evidence, is up until the great depression, deflation was commonplace. In the late 19th century, deflation coincided with strong growth, growth so strong that it was called the Industrial Revolution.
For deflation to be a depressing force, something must have happened in the lead up to the Great Depression to change the impact of deflation on economic growth.
Atkeson and Kehoe in the AER looked into the relationship between deflation and depressions and came up empty-handed.
Deflation and depression do seem to have been linked during the 1930s. But in the rest of the data for 17 countries and more than 100 years, there is virtually no evidence of such a link.
Deflation and Depression: Is There an Empirical Link?
Andrew Atkeson, and Patrick J. Kehoe, 2004.
Are deflation and depression empirically linked? No, concludes a broad historical study of inflation and real output growth rates. Deflation and depression do seem to have been linked during the 1930s. But in the rest of the data for 17 countries and more than 100 years, there is virtually no evidence of such a link.
View original post 1,842 more words
The middle class has been shrinking for half a century because…
31 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: middle class stagnation, poverty and inequality
The New York Times passed over as quickly as it could the fact that up until the year 2000 the middle class was shrinking because more of them are moving into the upper middle class and the rich.
ISIS sympathizer’s road to jihad — from Canada to Syria to Iraq — tracked one Tweet at a time
31 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: ISIS, Middle-East politics, Twitter, war on terror
You must read the maps showing with his tweets.
This gives you hope when idiots like this can be recruited by the Jihadists. This tosser is not the first moron recruited into their ranks with their locator button on in their twitter account.
Link to share: Blasphemous artwork removed from Paris exhibition (due to Islamist threats)
30 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of religion, liberalism, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: Blasphemy, Censorship, free speech, freedom from religion, Freedom of religion, religious bigotry, religious tolerance, terrorism, The Age of Enlightenment
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments