What happens when a metropolitan area has way too many governments – The Washington Post
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, Federalism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: local government
The OECD, in a report on the "Metropolitan Century" we’ve just entered, found across all of its member countries that when you double the number of municipalities per 100,000 residents within a single metropolitan area, regional labour productivity falls by 5 to 6 percent.
In short: the more little governments you have, the less productive the entire local economy is.
via What happens when a metropolitan area has way too many governments – The Washington Post.
The anti-vaccination movement is drawn equally from across the political spectrum
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: anti-vaccination movement, antiscience left, Green Left, opinion polls
Few UK green party voters are green: Green Party voters look like Lib Dems, think like Labour voters
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: expressive voting, protest voters, Uk Greens, UK politics, voter demographics
Fewer the mushrooming green party vote in the UK too much at all about the environment. It certainly not the major reason for going green.
Green voters are not radically left-wing on economic issues nor are they primarily driven by environmental concerns. How, therefore, can we explain their decision to vote for a party with a far-left, environmentalist agenda?
One way is to look at who prospective Green voters turned to in previous elections…. Around half voted for the Liberal Democrats in 2010 and around a third voted for the junior coalition partner in both 2005 and 2010. There are a number of ways of interpreting this.
First, Liberal Democrats and Green voters traditionally hold similar socio-demographic profiles. Both are likely to be university educated and to work in professional or managerial jobs.
Second, the Lib Dems were, until the 2010 election, the protest vote of many on the left. Since entering government, they have lost this niche and, subsequently, have seen their poll ratings plummet.
Third, the Greens now have a monopoly on certain policies that they once shared with Nick Clegg’s party – for example, ending university tuition fees.
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Al Gore Buys CA Shoreline Mansion…Awkward
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
Al Gore has snapped up an ocean front property in California. Obviously, rising sea levels are not any time soon for him when it comes to putting his money where his mouth is. The only explanation is that Mr. Gore does not actually believe his predictions of doom.
Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito/ Santa Barbara CA -area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.
The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
Some of the most memorable images from Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, are the graphics that show how rising ocean levels will dramatically alter our planet’s coastlines. As Greenland’s ice sheets collapse, Gore predicts that our shores will be flooded and sea-bordering cities will sink beneath the water leaving millions of people homeless. His narration tells the audience that, due to global warming, melting ice could release enough water to cause at 20-foot rise in sea level “in the near future.” Al PT…
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The Un-discussed Foreign Policy Alternative | Coyote Blog
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: ISIS, Middle-East politics, non-interventionist foreign policy
Why is there not a third alternative to be at least considered — that there is something really broken in a lot of Islam as practiced today (just as there was a lot of sh*t broken with Christianity in, say, the 14th-16th centuries) and that Islam as practiced in many Middle Eastern countries is wildly illiberal (way more illiberal than any failings of Israel, though you wouldn’t know that if you were living on a college campus). But, that we don’t need to saddle up the troops and try to change things by force…
Yes, I know the first response to all folks like me who advocate for non-intervention is “Munich” and “Czechoslovakia”. So be it. But if we sent in the military every time someone yelled “appeasement” our aircraft would be worn out from moving troops around. And we seem to be totally able to ignore atrocities and awful rulers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
As a minimum, I would like to see a coalition of Arab states coming to us and publicly asking us for help — not this usual Middle East BS we hear that Saudi Ariabi (or whoever) really in private wants us there but publicly they will still lambaste us. Without this support we can win the war but we have no moral authority (as we did after WWII) in the peace. Which is one reason so many of our interventions in the Middle East and North Africa fail.
via The Un-discussed Foreign Policy Alternative | Coyote Blog.
Strong public support for school choice in the USA
18 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: charter schools, School choice
HT: Stephen Franks
Cigarette smuggling in the United States on a state-by-state basis
18 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of crime, law and economics, macroeconomics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, public economics, taxation Tags: smuggling, tax avoidance, tobacco regulation, tobacco taxation
Who benefits from a minimum wage increase in the USA
17 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, labour economics, minimum wage, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: poverty and inequality
HT David_Boaz’s Tweet – https://twitter.com/David_Boaz/status/477910953548197888?s=09
Ricardian equivalence alert: Millennials and the funding of their retirements
17 Feb 2015 5 Comments
Abolish by-elections in the New Zealand Parliament
16 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, politics - New Zealand
When an electorate seat becomes vacant in the New Zealand House of Representatives, there is a by-election. When there is a list seat vacancy, the vacancies are filled by the next person on the party list.
In Parliament of 120, and with mixed member proportional representation (MMP), virtually all New Zealand elections are close and have coalition governments. Through defections, since the introduction of MMP in 1996, two governments have lost their majority on the floor of the house and had to work for every vote or had to form into a new coalition in the middle of the Parliamentary term.
The major parties – the Labour Party and the National Party – have never won a majority in their own right. The National Party has 60 out of 121 seats in the current House of Representatives. That’s the closest anyone has got to governing in their own right. The Labour Party is never won more than 50 seats in the New Zealand Parliament since introduction of MMP.
There is a by-election shortly. It’s in a safe National Party seat. If the current casual vacancy and by-election was in a marginal seat, it’s possible that a by-election could upset the result of the recent General Election and distort the proportionality of Parliament.
The whole point of proportional representation is the parties win seats in Parliament equal to their party vote.
The solution to this constitutional risk is to abolish by-elections. In the Australian Senate, vacancies are filled by nominee of the same party from which the departing senator came from.
Casual vacancies in the House of Representatives for electorate seats could be filled by the next person on the party list or by a nominee of the registered political party from which the departing MP was elected in the General Election. That second option would allow the electorate seat to be filled by a party member who lives in the local area rather than the next member of the party list who could come from anywhere in the New Zealand.
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