This is my latest NBR opinion, accessible at https://www.nbr.co.nz/node/230932 or below: It started as a few comments that weren’t seen as mainstream. Now it’s become a veritable tsunami. The Head of the Productivity Commission has just announced his disdain for GDP. He says it “is not a great measure of anything useful” and blames the profit-oriented shareholder model for our society’s ills. Even though it forms the basis of wealth creation in this nation. The Reserve Bank i

The news today is: "Treasury's admission that officials use 'professional judgement' to predict house prices, rather than a solid economic model, has shocked Green, National & ACT MPs, who are demanding answers. Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick says it's important because in 2020, Treasury predicted a house price fall, which informed Government & Reserve Bank decisions that, instead, saw house prices increase an historic 25 percent in one year. "We literally have it on the record, qu

New Zealand has long been struggling to achieve higher rates of innovation and productivity growth. In spite of the pro-market reforms in the 1980s, we're still performing poorly on this front. Some of us have consequently become suspicious that there maybe a lurking cause of the problem that's difficult for any government policy to overcome. A forthcoming article, called "The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors", in the American Economic Review,

Don Brash has defended the pro-market reforms of the 1980s in Newsroom: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/brash-non-je-ne-regrette-rien His article drew a scathing reply from political commentator, Brian Easton. He asserts that "People suffered as a result, Don, people suffered ... You can be sure that had the neoliberal policies succeeded, the Rogernomes would be loud in their self congratulations. Their silence, in Brash’s case in the key areas of macroeconomics and distribution,

The Otago Daily Times reports that a charitable trust has applied to Wellington’s High Court for judicial review of the Ministry of Social Development’s failure to prosecute a single case against any recipient of the wage subsidy. “As a result of MSD’s management of the wage subsidy scheme, the Foundation considers there has been a huge transfer of wealth to businesses that did not in the end experience the drop in revenue which might have been anticipated when the subsidy wa

A row has blown up today about how Mike King, a former comedian now best known for his work in mental health, had asked for funding for his 'Gumboot Friday' initiative but got nothing. He called it a "truly sad day". National MP Simon Bridges says King is right to think he's not getting multimillion-dollar contracts to run mental health services because he's too outspoken. "It absolutely is personal, they want to get rid of me, they really do", King told The AM Show. Bridges

The Kiwi government appears to be obscuring what went wrong with their Pfizer vaccine orders. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) reports: "Israel ... this month acknowledged paying $ 23.50 per dose on average to Pfizer and Moderna to obtain early shipments. Even at this high price, vaccinating the entire population of Israel costs the economy only as much as two days of lockdown". see https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n281 The BMJ reports that the US offered $19.50 and the E