I keep seeing tweets like this – like multiple times a day for several weeks now:
"scientists can and should exercise their democratic rights to advocate for what they believe", says @petergluckman http://t.co/UZfo9HXzQE
— Nicola Gaston (@nicgaston) September 29, 2014
So I thought I should provide my thoughts.
I agree. Scientists are people and should be able to say what they believe in … as long as they:
Speaking of circle-jerking: "Their [economists] public arguments have an incestuous yet masturbatory quality that is exhausting to follow."
— Trixie (@HaikuCharlatan) September 23, 2014
Ummm, hmmm. Anyone able to translate this?
There is an excellent post about the Green party, and considering how to frame itself over here – I recommend reading it. Within the post, a lot was made about the term “sustainability” and the inappropriate nature of the “left-right” divide.
However, there is something I’d like to add. Read more
Note: Eric has written a much much better and more detailed post here – my post is just a knee-jerk expression of how I consider the issue, and the types of broad principles we need to think about.
One thing I missed during the election was the debate about whether government should pay for tertiary education. There were a number of people saying “we pay for kids to go to secondary school, why not pay for them to go to university?”.
We have to be clear about why we treat these things differently in order to answer this question – it isn’t just about cost, it is about equality of opportunity.
We fund secondary education as we believe it constitutes a minimum level of education and investment in ALL individuals in New Zealand – a level that is required to give people a fair crack at life and civic engagement. Some parents also decide to have additional tuition to regular secondary education, like Chemistry tuition Singapore, to give their children extra opportunities when entering a college.
We do not believe that tertiary education is required for all roles, all types of engagement, and for all people. As a result, we are instead subsidising a group of people who will undertake this type of education (and receive the return associated with this investment) by taxing those who are not interested in this type of higher level study. In other words, it is a transfer of resources from people on lower incomes who are less willing/able to take on higher education to those who (over their lifetime) will be on high incomes.
Secondary school education is paid for (and correspondingly compulsory for a long period) to offer opportunities. Tertiary education is not as heavily subsidised, as we are generally against regressive income transfers. We already subsidise it to a LARGE degree on the basis of assumed spillovers, and we offer interest free loans on the basis of “equalising opportunity” – but larger subsides would largely be a transfer to the rich hidden in the language of “transformational change” … just like industrial subsides to capitalists. I find it perplexing that people view such regressive transfers as “left wing” ….
Stoked to see Gareth Morgan’s post yesterday calling for a Blue-Green party. He sums it up well in this passage
A Bluegreen party would emphatically express New Zealanders’ preference for clever and clean as the way we want our dollars earned, while leaving National and Labour to fight over how social justice is best promoted – via National’s preference for capacity building through education and training, delivering more flexible employment and wage-setting practices; or via Labour’s penchant for widening and lifting of social assistance, greater progressivity of income tax, widening the tax base on income from capital, and greater protection of labour in the workplace.
Matt and I have been talking about this since 2008 when all the TVHE authors took a political compass test as a gimmick to provide content for the blog. Due to a combination of laziness, a lack of money and no desire to get involved in politics, we haven’t done anything about our great idea. That was 6 years ago and a lot has changed since, but we still think there is room for a centrist Green party and so are stoked to see Gareth using his profile to have a serious conversation about it.
Matt did a good post on this about a year ago (There is some pretty robust discussion in the comments section). When discussing the failed Progressive Greens party at the 1996 (which David Farrar mentions in his post on Gareth’s post) he noted: Read more
Hey all. I see that National has made child poverty a focus of their new term – cool. Obviously “Child Poverty in New Zealand” has been a persuasive book, and I really need to read and review it here.
This is an issue that is definitely important to consider, which means we need to think carefully about what issues we are looking at addressing, what policy tools there are, and what trade-offs exist when you use them.
I first noticed the National party focus from this tweet:
The right is a spent force in NZ politics. Left wing parties won 86% of the vote. http://t.co/VlcAFi67Kk "Key tackles child poverty" #nzpol
— Deborah Russell (@BeeFaerie) September 23, 2014
Followed by this tweet:
@_amberharlow They're not. Left wing agenda is being achieved by pressure on the Nats. Next up will be a register of foreign land sales.
— Deborah Russell (@BeeFaerie) September 23, 2014
Ignore the fact that this is a Labour person trying to claim that they’ve “won” some argument here – in truth this really illustrates to me how poor the “left vs right” divide is at saying anything. Child poverty and lack of opportunities is an important issue, moving towards restrictions on foreigners buying land is not comparable and not part of the “same agenda”. We can be internationalists and care about poverty.
Still, I’m getting off tack – I would like you guys to have a crack at stating some of the “problems” and policy “solutions” involved in the space of child poverty. If you know anyone who has some views on this, would you be able to send this to them and get them to write in the comments. I’d like to get a bunch of feedback in, and see if we can do a series of posts on the issue.
And in case someone turns up here saying economists don’t care or think about the issue, thereby illustrating they don’t know anything about either me or the economics discipline, read what I said about food in schools. And take into account that the vast majority of working economists I’ve talked to about that post have said they agree with me. And further note that economics is the study of trade-offs, we only agree with this policy as the trade-offs involved fit our personal value judgments, so we are more than accepting of disagreement – in that way, please try to come at us with a neutral stance 😉