Dom post article: The technocrat’s tax
Give an independent body (akin to the RBNZ) the ability to set tax rates
Discuss (but preferably read the article first 🙂 )
Dom post article: Time for a fiscal stimulus?
In today’s Dom Post column we discuss whether a fiscal stimulus is necessary at the moment – our conclusion is that it is not.
Four criticisms I would have of my own logic are:
- There may be distributional reasons why you would want to change spending,
- An “improvement” in government spending would be beneficial,
- In the face of sticky prices and reference based utility from consumption (that marginal utility from consumption depends on consumption in the previous periods) there could be a role for stabilisation even if the shock is permanent.
- Fiscal policy is better targetted.
My answers to these would be:
How could the first half of the year only be a 0.5% decline in GDP?
That is the topic of my Dom Post article this week.