Well, if it’s frustrating to see major parties wrangle over spreadsheets it’s heartening to see someone try to unravel the narrative of each party’s campaign. Bill Kaye-Blake has laid out what he sees as the story of each party’s policies. He gives a nod to Deirdre McCloskey but I think Bill probably has a career in marketing with stories like this!
For National he thinks:
the hero is Government. Read more
I have just come back from a couple of days of presentations, and I had an idea. How would other bloggers feel about a post-election economic update at some point in early December? I could definitely do this – as long as I can get permission from my work place, a free venue, and an interest from the blogging community in NZ.
Any thoughts?
Look, I have no idea why Labour feels it is necessary to run their election campaign as a bunch of muppets – but they have, and in order to keep surprising everyone with their ridiculousness they have attacked the political neutrality of Statistics New Zealand.
The complaint is that Statistics New Zealand said that their trend measure of building activity was crawling up, at the same time there was a sharp seasonally adjusted drop in consents in September. The reason for this was that August was “strong” (relative to recent history) – so even with the decline September was a stroke higher than we have been used to, and the real “trend” measure of activity they have (and have always talked about) did increase.
Look, this isn’t just a case of Phil Twyford not being able to understand data – I mean, that is part of it it seems, but that isn’t the whole issue. I’ll even ignore that fact that Twyford seems to think political parties run the economy – a fallacy among politicians that gives them a sense of unwarranted self importance. The most confusing issue for me here is that anyone would think this is the best use of scarce time on the campaign trail – you can arbitrarily attack Statistics New Zealand and get zero votes (as it is such a non-issue), or you can be a competent politician and go out to try and get votes by talking to the public and showing them that you are the best option in terms of meeting their interests.
If Labour was a real opposition party, their members would be doing the second. Hopefully they will be by next election, so that I actually feel like I have a choice when that election comes along – a competent opposition is essential for democracy … just saying.
… and the difficulty humans have recognising them. Click through to xkcd for the, very worthwhile, rollover text.
Apparently fiscal forecasts are the cool new thing to blog about since both major parties are talking about them. As the frantic blogging shows, even political commentators are getting excited about their spreadsheets at the moment. However, the only consensus so far is that nobody really knows who’s right about what.
Thankfully economists have a lot of experience with forecasting, and the accompanying abuse when one gets it wrong. As Matt has written about many times previously, the main thing to remember is that forecasting isn’t about the numbers: it’s about the story. Your numbers, however good at the time, will always be overtaken by events and end up being wildly inaccurate. What’s important is the reasoning behind the numbers and how it stacks up. For example, the argument about accounting conventions that’s presently raging in the political blogs may or may not be good politics — that’s not my area of expertise — but it doesn’t seem to be adding to our understanding of either party’s policies. Whether borrowing to invest in the Super Fund adds to a particular measure of debt is fairly irrelevant and won’t change anyone’s views on the policy. What people care about is whether the government borrows to invest in it at all, and each party’s policy on that seems fairly well established. Read more
Well, shame on Greg Mankiw for failing to cover the eternal battle between the adherents of Smith and Keynes in his 101 course. More interestingly, he also reposted this from FlowingData.
