OPINION

Last week, Thomas Coughlin reported that “the wellbeing framework that puts the ‘value of a statistical life’ at $4.7 million is coming under fire.” There is a lot to criticise about the wellbeing framework, and I am hardly one of its cheerleaders. But it is absurd to criticise it for trying to apply proper cost-benefit assessment – and even more absurd to criticise it for putting a value on statistical lives. Read more

As if to squeeze the most out of the short parliamentary term, the Government has been busy with a flurry of initiatives. Such a hurry can be costly. Read more

The Tax Working Group released this week its much-anticipated “Future of Tax” report, which recommends introducing a broad-based taxation of capital gains at full income rates. As proposed, the 33% headline rate would be one of the highest among industrialised economies. Read more

Canadian psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson has a lot to answer for. At least he does according to Auckland Peace Action spokesman Iris Krzyzosiak. Read more

Some folks take the wrong lesson from intermediate microeconomics – or never took the course in the first place. I worry that too many of them staff Wellington’s bureaus. Read more

If success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm, then German economics minister Peter Altmaier is on a winning streak. Just as Airbus was about to announce the end of its A380 production, Altmaier presented his vision for Germany’s future industrial policy. Read more

Only the officials at Inland Revenue know why they commissioned a poll on Kiwis’ attitudes to tax that included questions about the respondents’ general political orientation. Releasing the polling data should be part of fixing any perceived problems. Hamish Rutherford’s reporting at the Dominion Post raises questions about the Department’s political impartiality. Read more

“When equality is given to unequal things, the resultant will be unequal,” Plato once said. The ancient Greek philosopher would then have certainly condemned our local governance rules. Read more

Lime scooters are Satan’s own vehicle. If you ride one, you will lose control, scrape your knees, maybe even break a leg. Read more

What can politicians who care about value for money in government hope to achieve? Where should they focus their efforts? Read more

New Zealand gets a lot of things right that the rest of the world gets wrong. Where other countries screw up their goods and services taxes by exempting politically sensitive goods, New Zealand’s GST raises a lot of money at a relatively low tax rate by maintaining a broad base without exemptions. Read more

Some would say politics stinks. Others…would say that too. Read more

Anybody even remotely connected with housing, housing research, the building industry – or with the ability to fog a mirror by breathing on it – had to know it was near-impossible for the government to meet its KiwiBuild promises on its 10-year schedule. Our current planning rules, infrastructure financing mechanisms, building materials supply regulations, council incentives, zoning, training of construction workers, rules around letting more construction workers into the country, rules around foreign builders being able to build here, rules around foreign financing of building projects, Resource Management Act processes – all of it made any non-trivial KiwiBuild impossible. Read more

Readers will be familiar with that exasperating feeling of looking for something and not finding it. You know it should be there, but it is missing. Read more

Taxpayer guarantees for bank deposits are a can of worms. There should be a strong presumption against them. Those who chase higher returns should bear the risks themselves. Read more