Most @BernieSanders’ supporters don’t want to #FeelTheBern in their hip-pocket

66 percent of Sanders supporters are unwilling to pay more than $1,000 in higher taxes for universal health care. This includes the 8 percent of Sanders supporters who aren’t willing to pay anything more!

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Source: Most Bernie Sanders supporters aren’t willing to pay for his revolution – Vox.

Sanders supporters want free public college tuition but 14 percent said they don’t want to pay additional taxes for it; another half said they would only pay up to $1,000 a year!

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Source: Most Bernie Sanders supporters aren’t willing to pay for his revolution – Vox.

New Zealand’s 16 flightless birds should count themselves lucky

The wealthy are more likely to support stricter environmental regulation

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I hope no one in @OxfamGB’s #taxhaven clip were fresh from a #TPPANoWay march?

I hope none in this clip protesting against tax havens as short changing everybody else were fresh from protesting how international economic agreements such as the TPPA infringe on the sovereignty of countries.

If you standing up for national sovereignty that includes standing up for the right of other countries doing things that you do not like within their own country.

If countries have the right to set taxes and tariffs as high as they like, they have just the same right to set them as low as they like.

All that plucky rhetoric of TPPA no way and how international economic agreements violate the sovereignty of countries and developing countries in particular is forgotten in a flash by Oxfam.

Oxfam manages the blinding hypocrisy of opposing the Transpacific Partnership on national sovereignty grounds and at the same time call for international treaties to bully small countries about their tax policies, which overrides their economic sovereignty.

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The sovereign rights of developing countries to find their own way does not extend to undermining the tax bases of the rich countries struggling to finance their welfare states.

The Pacific Islands, the once were heroes of the recent Paris climate talks, turn into pariahs once they start looking out for themselves and setting up offshore financial centres and tax havens.

Developing countries are free to impoverish themselves by embracing socialism, but if they decide to attract investment and jobs through low tax rates and offshore financial centres, a new form of colonialism is embraced by the reactionary left as embodied by Oxfam.

Buying 9 more houses than the Australians = dominating housing market says @nzherald

Chinese tax residents bought 321 Auckland properties (29.5 per cent of the total); Australian tax residents purchased 312 Auckland properties (28.6 per cent).

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Source: NZ Herald: New Zealand’s Latest News, Business, Sport, Weather, Travel, Technology, Entertainment, Politics, Finance, Health, Environment and Science.

Profits Are Progressive

Be careful for what you wish for when using irrationality as a rationale for the scope of government

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Source: Gary Lucas and Slavisa Tasic‘s "Behavioral Public Choice and the Law" (West Virginia Law Review, 2015) via Bryan Caplan

Psychological Bias as a Driver of Financial Regulation

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Psychological Bias as a Driver of Financial Regulation,” David Hirshleifer, European Financial Management, 14(5), November, (2008):856-874.

How Do You Deal With Painful Truths? Left vs. Right

How much does hourly solar power output vary?

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Oops, I overestimated the cost of doing nothing about global warming

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Source: Global Warming, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and The End of Doom, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty from Ron Bailey (2016) The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century.

Why is GST but not company tax incidence so easy to understand

image The tax incidence of sales taxes is understood by everybody but who pays company tax is stubbornly misunderstood. The seller is sending the tax cheque to the taxman does not fool anyone regarding who ultimately pays sales taxes.

Everyone expects that sales tax increases such as of the GST or VAT will be passed on to buyers but sometimes a little bit is absorbed in terms of lower profits by sellers if it is more than the market can bear.

When it comes to company taxes, this intuitive understanding of the economics of the incidence of taxes completely disappears. There is a strong belief that only investors pay the company tax in the form of dividends.

The notion that investors may reduce their investment and therefore the amount of capital with which workers can work is stoutly denied as is the implications for lower than otherwise wages because of this.

The possibility that the entire company tax may show up as lower wages when capital is internationally mobile is just not even contemplated. This is despite foreign direct investment being welcomed on the grounds that more capital means higher wages for local workers.

Likewise, when a factory is re-located offshore, it is understood that that will harm wages. That understanding does not carry through to company tax incidence when the factory relocates offshore because of low company taxes rather than import competition.

Submission to Porirua City Council on proposed #livingwage

A living wage at a local council will act as a hiring standard that stops low paid workers from being shortlisted for vacancies in the 129 council jobs affected by the proposed living wage increase.

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The Council must hire on merit so only those who currently earn about $19 in other jobs will be shortlisted. That is the law. The Council must hire the best available applicant. The minimum wage workers who currently fill these minimum wage jobs simply could not cannot be lawfully shortlisted.

It is explicit in the living wage literature that a living wage improves the quality of applicants for future vacancies.

When a living wage job is advertised, more qualified applicants will apply. This will crowd-out the existing workers had who shortlisted for these Council jobs. They will have to apply for other minimum wage jobs but pay rates to fund council jobs they can never win.

There is no way around this because of the duty of the Council to hire on merit.

All future vacancies covered by the living wage increase will be filled by workers who are currently better paid than the existing applicants who won those jobs in the past.

Any employer who unilaterally introduces a living wage is simply raising their hiring standards saying they will not hire applicants who do not currently earn the equivalent of the living wage in their previous job.

A living wage will exclude low paid worker from council jobs in the future. I have attached a more detailed analysis of the economics of a living wage as proposed by the Wellington City Council.

Does it Feel Good or Does it Do Good?

What role socialism in The Great Escape? @BernieSanders @JeremyCorbyn @JohnMcDonnellMP #feelthebern

A new World Bank study shows the dramatic reductions in global poverty and inequality as a result of the spread of market institutions and freer trade.

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Source: Capitalism, Global Trade, and the Reduction in Poverty and Inequality | Cato @ Liberty

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