OPINION

We should not pay through the roof for small safety benefits, argues Bryce Wilkinson How would you react to being told that government regulations have added 50 percent to the cost of replacing a tin roof on a house? I ask because a long-standing professional builder told me in a chance encounter shortly before Christmas that scaffolding requirements under the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 mean that a small re-roofing job that would have otherwise cost $4,000 may now cost $6,000. Read more

In my last column of 2014, I wrote that European leaders usually pick the least appealing policy option and still manage to make it worse (A Greek olive branch for Steve Keen, 18 December). Maybe that was a premature assessment. Read more

Oh, the perils of the silly season. If your office is typical, you’re in a mad dash trying to finish everything that needs to be done before Christmas. Read more

In a series of articles earlier this year, we introduced Insights readers to some basic ideas from the wonderful world of economics. Today, we are releasing the compilation of pieces in a short pamphlet, The ABC of Economic Literacy. Read more

For anyone who has used Uber, knows someone who has used it, or is aware it exists, the crowd consensus seems to be that it is pretty great. Uber, which recently entered the New Zealand market, is an app that offers an alternative to taxis by allowing users to order a driver to get them to their destination for a set price. Read more

Only until a couple of years ago, it would have been unthinkable to suggest that New Zealand could hold some policy lessons for Australia, let alone that it could be seen as a model that Australia might wish to emulate. Australians had become used to regarding New Zealanders as their poorer cousins. Read more

When you publish a report with the title Poverty of Wealth: Why minerals need to be part of the rural economy, it is best to prepare yourself for some strong responses to your work, and to quickly grow a thick skin. Feedback from green groups, politicians, officials, and the online communities who populate the comments sections of various websites are all obvious sources of critical feedback. Read more

America got a little bit crazier this week. I’m not talking about the Ferguson riots, round two, which make me ever-grateful that New Zealand maintains an unarmed constabulary. Read more

“A change-over from an increasing to a declining population may be very disastrous,” John Maynard Keynes once reflected. This may be so, but a declining working-age population could prove even worse. Read more

Sitting in one of New Zealand’s urban centres, it is tempting to look across the various data points and conclude that all is well with the country. Yes, dairy and log prices have pared back substantially over recent months, but almost every other economic indicator is improving, holding its own, or lingering below warning levels, as in the case of inflation. Read more

There are many emotions that Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler is likely to provoke, depending on the state of your bank account, but sympathy for this modern Beowulf is hardly the first choice. Yet that is exactly what I felt for the technocrat last week when he announced that he was thinking about delving deeper into his economic toolbox in the hopes of finding a gizmo that could zap more heat out of the housing market. Read more

It was always going to be a bittersweet victory: whoever won the Labour leadership battle would immediately be thrust into the war of winning back voters. And boy has Andrew Little been thrust into a war: the Labour Party has faced a stunning defeat domestically, within the wider context of an international left-wing demise. Read more

A spending spree after an unexpected Christmas bonus is something we can all understand. Maybe it isn’t the best way of planning your finances, but it isn’t going to really do any harm. Read more

In 2009, I wrote a piece on the social costs of drugs for NORML; it appeared in their NORML News magazine. The police later sought to have several issues of NORML News deemed Objectionable; some articles described hashish production methods. Read more

Fish don’t know they are swimming in water. Similarly, many Kiwis don’t know they are living in freedom. Read more