Was Aaron Sorkin right? Hollywood discriminates? Sacrifices profit to indulge sexism?
17 Dec 2014 1 Comment
The top 10% are a bunch of bludgers in New Zealand too
16 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of education, income redistribution, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: education premium, top 1%
Source: topincomes-parisschoolofeconomics
One reason why the top 10% in New Zealand have been a pretty ordinary lot compared to the USA is New Zealand’s university graduate premium – the college premium as it is known in the USA – is at the very bottom of the OECD ladder at about 18% – rock bottom 32nd out of 32 – the wooden spoon.
The College premium in the USA is about 64%, as shown in the OECD data below from OECD Education at Glance. Naturally, this high College premium in the USA should show up in well educated, highly skilled people earning a lot more than those that don’t go to college and don’t go to graduate school.
Stats link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932460515
Little wonder that the USA top 10% are breaking away from the pack. This slow increase in the income share of the top 10% since the early 1970s coincided with large numbers, including many more women in long duration professional degrees, going to university.
Prior to the mid-1970s, the College premium in the USA had been falling for about a decade because of large numbers of people going on to College and many of these two graduate school to get a draft deferment.
People married younger then so by the time people were at the end of College or graduate school, they were usually married with children and got of further draft deferment and aged out of the draft system.
@bryce_edwards New Zealand’s war on the poor – a fact check
15 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in economic history, income redistribution, labour economics, Marxist economics, politics - USA, technological progress Tags: Bryce Edwards, Leftover Left, poverty and inequality
Bryce Edwards has shown in today’s column that he knows nothing about inequality in New Zealand, despite the statistics being at his fingertips:
Under capitalism there’s always going to be a war against the poor.
The process by which we divide up the resources of any society normally involves exploiting the majority for the benefit of the minority.
It’s called inequality. And this is how it is in New Zealand: those who have the most power look for ways to extract that money for themselves, or at least retain the status quo.
Against this are those who want to have a more equal society. It’s an age-old political issue, and one that has traditionally been at the heart of the left-right political divide.
In 2014 this concern about inequality has been a key feature of politics, underpinning much of what has occur…
Although the rich appear to have been winning for three decades in their ‘war against the poor’, perhaps the tide is turning?
There’s still every indication of severe poverty and inequality in this country.
Firstly, inequality has not increased in New Zealand for at least 20 years when either measured in figure 1 by the Gini coefficient or in figure 2, the top 1% income shares. Both the Gini coefficient and the top 1% income shares have not risen for 20 years.
Figure 1: Gini coefficient New Zealand 1980-2015
Source: Bryan Perry, Household incomes in New Zealand: Trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2013. Ministry of Social Development (July 2014).
Figure 2: Top 1% income shares, USA, New Zealand and Australia, 1970-2012
Source: top incomes database
Secondly, the benefits of the economic boom that lasted 15 years from the early 1990s until the onset of the global financial crisis would spread broadly across all sections of the New Zealand community. As shown in figure 3, both before and after housing costs increased. As shown in figure 4, real household incomes increased pretty much evenly across all of the 10 income deciles between 1994 and 2013.
Figure 3: Real household income trends before housing costs (BHC) and after housing costs (AHC), 1982 to 2013 ($2013)
Source: Bryan Perry, Household incomes in New Zealand: Trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2013. Ministry of Social Development (July 2014).
Figure 4: Real household incomes (BHC), changes for top of income deciles, 1994 to 2013
Source: Bryan Perry, Household incomes in New Zealand: Trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2013. Ministry of Social Development (July 2014).
Thirdly, as shown in figure 5, between 1994 and 2010, real equivalised median household income rose 47% from 1994 to 2010; for Māori, this rise was 68%; for Pasifika, the rise was 77%. Median household income increases of nearly 50% in 16 years should be celebrated.
Figure 5: Real equivalised median household income (before housing costs) by ethnicity, 1988 to 2013 ($2013).
Source: Bryan Perry, Household incomes in New Zealand: Trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2013. Ministry of Social Development (July 2014).
The massive improvements in Māori incomes since 1992 were based on rising Māori employment rates, fewer Māori on benefits, more Māori moving into higher paying jobs, and greater Māori educational attainment. Māori unemployment reached a 20-year low of 8 per cent from 2005 to 2008.
Over the last more than two decades in New Zealand, there has been sustained income growth spread across all of New Zealand society contrary to the warmed over Marxism of Bryce Edwards. Perry (2014) reviews the data every year for the Ministry of Social Development. He concluded that:
Overall, there is no evidence of any sustained rise or fall in inequality in the last two decades.
The level of household disposable income inequality in New Zealand is a little above the OECD median.
The share of total income received by the top 1% of individuals is at the low end of the OECD rankings.
Bryce Edwards’ analysis was in the typical Marxist tradition – it had no gender analysis. He failed to mention that New Zealand has the smallest gender wage gap of all the industrialised countries.
As he did not notice these great successes in household incomes, incomes of every decile, Māori economic development and the empowerment of women, Bryce Edwards had nothing to add in terms of either consolidating or improving on them.
Was the 1990s in the USA a boom period or business as usual?
15 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
Source: Edward Prescott
Further evidence of the dynamic, deregulated nature of the New Zealand labour market
15 Dec 2014 2 Comments
in economics of regulation, labour economics, law and economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, unemployment Tags: employment law, employment protection, labour market dynamics, labour market regulation
The chart below shows that New Zealand is far more flexible than Western Europe and is pretty near the USA in terms of people moving in and out of the unemployment pool every month with great ease. There are very high outflow rates from unemployment among the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic economies. The economies of Continental Europe stand in stark contrast. Unemployment outflow rates in these economies lie below 10% at a monthly frequency.
Source: Unemployment Dynamics in the OECD, Elsby, Hobijn and Şahin (2013).
Global warming – where there is and is not a consensus to deny | Ordinary Times
14 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, climate change, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, Karl Popper, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: climate alarmism, expressive voting, global warming
The motte for climate change activists are the following:
- Global temperatures are rising.
- Greenhouse gases lead to increased temperatures.
- Greenhouse gases emitted by humans have led to measurable increases in temperature beyond what would have occurred without any humans.
The above points are highly defensible because Science. I believe they are true (though I do so only via trust in others rather than having evaluated any of the research involved personally).
Activists, however, do not sit in this motte for long. They often go on to make a lot of other claims in the bailey:
- Long-term projections of the Earth’s climate are accurate.
- Catastrophe will result in a few decades due to human carbon emissions.
- Nuclear energy is not a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
- Carbon capture is not viable.
- Geoengineering is not viable.
- Unilateral subsidization of renewables by Western industrialized nations is an effective way to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases.
- Subsidies of energy-efficient products are a better use of resources rather than research and development.
- Subsidizing vehicles that pollute less than other vehicles will provide a net reduction in greenhouse emissions.
- LEED-certified buildings are more energy-efficient than old buildings.
- Building new LEED-certified buildings reduces net greenhouse emissions relative to not building them.
- Sending oil by railcar will result in less net emissions than sending oil through a pipeline (e.g. the Keystone pipeline).
Not all activists make all of these claims, but I think most make at least some claims that are less defensible than those in the motte.
The end result is that anyone who opposes any of the views, even questionable ones sitting in the bailey, can be branded an anti-science denialist. Strictly speaking, this is unfair since there certainly isn’t a scientific consensus on questions like whether it makes sense to spend thousands of dollars subsidizing Chevy Volts while taxing bicycles and safety helmets at 8%.
via An Example of the Motte and Bailey Doctrine | Ordinary Times.
Yoo: The Feinstein Report Cannot Deny a Clear Record of Success
13 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: interrogation techniques, war on terror
Gun-control advocates are seriously losing public opinion – The Washington Post
12 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, politics - USA Tags: gun control
The torture report’s one glaring weakness – The Washington Post
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: congressional accountability, expressive voting, interrogation techniques, Left-wing hypocrisy, wawar against terror
A more honest report would have squarely faced the arguments made by former CIA officials that key members of Congress were informed about interrogation practices and, far from objecting, condoned the very CIA activities we now judge to have been wrong.
“There’s great hypocrisy in politicians’ criticism of the CIA’s interrogation program,” wrote Jose Rodriguez, the CIA deputy director who oversaw it, in last weekend’s Washington Post.
That allegation deserves a serious response, rather than the stonewall it got from Feinstein.
“The CIA briefed Congress approximately 30 times” on interrogation,according to six former CIA directors or deputy directors in an article Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal. “The briefings were detailed and graphic and drew reactions that ranged from approval to no objection.”
…History (including the latest dark chapter on interrogation) suggests that members are for questionable activities when they’re politically popular, and against them when public opinion shifts.
Ex-CIA Directors: Interrogations Saved Lives – WSJ
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in politics - USA, war and peace Tags: interrogation techniques, war against terror
The program was invaluable in three critical ways:
• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.
• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.
• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.
Is the sneer "libertarian" a secret handshake among the Left over Left?
11 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: Leftover Left
What puzzles me when a commentator denounces the government, a politician or a policy as libertarian, how many in the general media audience know what a libertarian is?
Hardly anyone knows what neoliberalism is apart from the fact they appear to be right wing, or the right wing of the Labour Party, or anyone to the right of you on the left. As for libertarians, they barely register in the polls.
Prior to the presidential runs of Ron Paul and now the prominence of Senator Rand Paul, libertarians were little known in the USA.
As for New Zealand or Australia, libertarians are also seriously unknown.
The Liberal Democratic Party in the Australian Senate and the ACT party in the New Zealand House of Representatives are known as right wing parties to the general public. This is rather than as a classical liberal or libertarian party, even though a number of their members are either classical liberals or libertarians.
Why then do left-wing media commentators insist on using a sustained sneer that is largely unintelligible to most of their media audience?
I surmise that they are signalling to their left-wing audience that are one of us: that the commentator is hard left, far too knowledgeable about the obscure parties of the right, and is an American political junkie to boot.
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