A lot of New Zealand policy discussion and debate is holisitc – we say we want a set of outcomes, these outcomes are desirable, these are the outcomes we need to achieve. In essence, they are saying there are a set of states “we” could be in as a society and we should strive to […]
We wrote about the milk price investigation here, all very exciting. However, a new article on the stuff site started with this: Dairy market heavyweight Fonterra is artificially inflating the price of milk in New Zealand in a deliberate campaign to lessen competition What? This is beyond my understanding – I need someone to get […]
There is talk about the Commerce Commission investigating milk prices in New Zealand. An interesting passage from this piece states: At the moment, we basically have a monopoly supplier of milk and two supermarkets selling it,” she said. “I think an inquiry could be a really good thing for consumers. I think this is a […]
There is an interesting post over at John Taylor’s blog (ht Greg Mankiw). In it he shows that government spending as a % of GDP has a strong positive correlation with unemployment, and that investment as a % of GDP has a strong negative correlation. His conclusion is to focus on cutting taxes to increase […]
No, I’m not talking about the cycleway – although if Bill English does want to cut “nice to haves” surely this is a place to start 😉 I’m talking about this comment from Ganesh Nana, where I both agree with him and disagree with him simultaneously. The plans (to cut spending) were criticised by BERL […]
I found this write up strange. We are being told that student that are overseas should pay back their student loan more quickly to “help Canterbury”. We are told that it is a “win-win” because it gets money into the economy, it lowers the budget deficit, and it means the students don’t need to pay […]