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Well, now we know what is likely to happen with taxes under a Labour government. National’s promised inflation-indexing of the lower income bracket tax thresholds will be gone, we will likely have some kind of water tax, but big changes like capital gains taxes are off the table until after a report from a Tax Working Group and the 2020 election. Read more

Elections are not quite the advance auctions of stolen goods that H.L. Mencken warned about. Read more

New Zealand, you’ve done it again. You’ve one-upped Australia, and not even on purpose this time. Read more

For the politically-inclined, last night's finance debate has been one of many. Over the last couple of weeks, Steven Joyce and Grant Robertson have had time to rehearse their talking points, refine their responses to perfection, and anticipate each other's every move. Read more

The popularity of John Maynard Keynes is as cyclical as the business cycles he wanted to abolish. But beyond his macroeconomics, Keynes left us a fine observation on the power of ideas. Read more

“There’s a hole in your budget, dear Labour, dear Labour, there’s a hole in your budget, dear Labour, a hole.” It is a pity that Finance Minister Steven Joyce did not sing his Monday press conference. It would have been an appropriate start to a week of political theatre. Read more

In 1936 the much-quoted US journalist HL Mencken wrote“government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods”. So here we are in 2017, preparing to vote in yet another government spending auction of someone else’s money. Read more

We just don’t know how lucky we are to live in New Zealand. In Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, John Watson decided that the world had gone mad when he found instructions on the side of a packet of toothpicks. Read more