The Green Party’s “Poverty Action Plan” is all about tackling poverty, although the outcomes may differ from what the party expects. While it is meant to help struggling Kiwis, the plan will instead provoke emigration, disincentivise work and saving and stifle investment in education and skills, capital, enterprise and innovation. Read more
The ACT party has announced its new employment insurance policy that allows a taxpayer to claim 55% of their average weekly earnings if they lost their job. Oliver Hartwich talks to Kerre McIvor on Newstalk ZB about this scheme. Read more
Pulling New Zealand out of the fiscal hole opened up by Covid-19 will require a lot of new spending, which the government has already announced. But the crisis also offers the country a chance to rethink its expensive retirement schemes like Kiwisaver, the New Zealand Superannuation and the Superannuation Fund. Read more
Use of the disembodied “we” in official policy documents usually suggests a false agreement about future resource use when, in fact, there are deeply entrenched opposing interests. To fail to acknowledge the conflict is to fail to resolve it. Read more
I don’t know why people are getting so worked up about private details being leaked to MPs. If the Covid-19 crisis taught us anything, it’s that privacy has no place in the “new normal.” The mantra of the internet is that information “wants” to be free, as if data itself has agency. Read more
If the Covid-19 pandemic had happened in a non-election year, would this or any Government’s response have been different? At the best of times, election campaigning can be a distraction for politicians. Read more
The Green Party has declared its wealth tax will be a red line in any coalition negotiations. And because Labour knows this, the larger party left the door wide open. Read more
The Government’s plan to recover from the Covid-19 crisis has essentially been about finding new ways to spend. As a result, public debt is expected to increase from 19% of GDP in 2019 to a whopping 54% by 2024 and remain elevated for decades to come. Read more
The concept of modern monetary theory is back. This set of economic ideas has been around for a while but has risen to prominence recently through the work of American economist and adviser to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, Stephanie Kelton, whose book 'The Deficit Myth' was released in June. Read more
Some conversations are difficult, but critical. This week, Sir Peter Gluckman, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, and Rob Fyfe released a short ‘conversation paper’ called Re-engaging New Zealand with the World. Read more
As a Millennial, a worrying new trend among my generation is to simply cancel what you don’t like. Sure, some things might be outdated and it isn’t for me to tell a private company what it can or can’t do with a product. Read more
The Green Party’s “Poverty Action Plan” is all about tackling poverty, although the outcomes may differ from what the party expects. While it is meant to help struggling New Zealanders, the plan will instead disincentivise work, saving, investment in education and skills, capital, enterprise and innovation. Read more
The proverb “All that glitters is not gold” is a line from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Any doubts about the Bard’s wisdom were dispelled this month when New Zealand’s “gold standard” quarantining was shown to be fool’s gold. Read more
We all know the analogy about barring gates after the horse has bolted from the barn. It speaks to the futility of doing something too late solve a problem. Read more
When Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled on the legality of the European Central Bank’s asset purchase programme on 5 May, it sent shockwaves through financial markets. In one fell swoop, the red-robed judges accused the ECB of going beyond its mandate of monetary policy and the European Court of Justice of covering up the breach. Read more