In New Zealand there has been an email going around suggesting that everyone should stop purchasing petrol from selected retailers (such as BP) in order to start a price war. Now I accept that this doesn’t make much sense in the face of no collusion – which currently appears to be what is going on […]
Over at the excellent LAANTA blog, Terence has written a couple of posts discussing issues I have raised here. The first post covers our discussions on Utilitarianism. Fundamentally I think we have reached a point where our only disagreement stems from value judgments (specifically what we view as the fundamental measure of value, something I […]
Tracy Watkins indicated that the National is in a pickle surrounding compulsory employer contributions in Kiwisaver. One way of keeping these contributions and regaining the support of business would be for National to allow wage cuts on the basis of entry into Kiwisaver (with its compulsory employer contribution). The Standard laments such a move, however […]
Well we have had an action packed quarter haven’t we – bad employment numbers, bad retail numbers, bad inflation numbers, and tax cuts. Of course I’ve stated that all these things imply more inflation, but its not what I think thats important – its what the Reserve Bank thinks that matters. On June 5th we […]
Conjecture is rife regarding why petrol prices have risen so strongly. There are a number of common explanations: Rising demand for oil, The weak US dollar, increasing the US$ price, Peak Oil (Infometrics article requires a subscription), Negative real interest rates in the US (as not mining the oil is the same as investing in […]
So far we have discussed Kiwisaver and national savings in fairly loose terms. We know that (part of) the purpose of Kiwisaver was to increase national savings and that our interest in national savings stems from the fact that we want New Zealand to have more productive capital. So before we can discuss the myriad […]