Category Archive

The recent Basic Income debate has brought to light both criticisms of the existing welfare system, and of alternatives to it, such as the Big Kahuna’s tax and welfare proposal. Criticism is the easy part, designing something which would work … Read More

Lately Rodney Hide has informed us that multinationals equilibrate their after-tax returns across all the markets they operate in. So if one country (NZ for example) hikes up company taxes then the multinationals simply invest elsewhere where the after-tax return … Read More

There’s been a lot of debate this week about a basic income policy, and not all of it has been well-informed. Indeed some of it is pretty low level. Quote from the New Zealand Herald March 24th: Well John, the … Read More

In the last few days a thoroughly researched report by the Brainwave Trust has summed up the evidence regarding the risks and benefits of early childhood care/education (ECE). Despite concerns that the conclusions are scaremongering and the fact that Family … Read More

The New Zealand Initiative have released the first of their three reports on poverty in New Zealand. This first report is focussed on discussing measures of poverty but also touches on factors contributing to poverty as well as some interesting … Read More

This morning on Radio NZ we see a story about a school in Auckland where parents are so poor their kids can not participate in school sporting activities. This is on the back of an OECD report released  yesterday which … Read More

Last week we heard that women earn significantly (14% to be exact) less than men. Today we heard that the gender pay gap is the same in the public sector, although it is up to 39% in some organisations. But … Read More

One response to our series on child poverty last week was that instead of giving the poor money we should force them (particularly solo Mums) to work. Commenters pointed to the tough US welfare reforms in the 1990s as an … Read More