Monthly Archive: November 2011

Nov
16
2011

Competitive vs comparative advantage

Some business leaders in New Zealand have decided to lay bare the reasons why we shouldn’t manage the economy like a company. They think A successful business needs a competitive advantage. A successful country is no different. Actually, it is very different. As the WTO says: …it is meaningless to say a country has a …

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/11/16/competitive-vs-comparative-advantage/

Nov
16
2011

The top 1%: A few facts

There have been protests about the amount of income going to the top 1%.  In of itself, I have never thought we could tell too much about what is the “right” distribution of income with a certain number – after all, we would expect the top 1% to have significantly more income in some sense. …

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/11/16/the-top-1-a-few-facts/

Nov
15
2011

Rationality and scope in economics

Whenever someone is busy attempting to have a heart-to-heart with me, I have one catch all statement I always pull out: Hold yourself to a high standard that you can feel proud of, but never base your expectations or judgments of others on that standard The usual resp0nse to this is “that’s f’ing obvious”, “no …

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/11/15/rationality-and-scope-in-economics/

Nov
14
2011

Twitter gets it

#FirstWorldProblems is awesome and FirstWorldLife is also good. Read it sarcastically, and read it to give some context if possible.

Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/11/14/twitter-gets-it/

Nov
11
2011

Why the minimum wage trade-off is important for the left and right

When it comes to conclusions about the broad labour market that are accepted world wide, the idea that a higher minimum wage leads to lower levels of total employment is one of the most accepted. That is why it was interesting to see Patrick Gower suggest that Treasury didn’t believe this was the case – …

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/11/11/why-the-minimum-wage-trade-off-is-important-for-the-left-and-right/

Nov
11
2011

A point on capital/capital gains taxes

There are two big themes I’m hearing from people this election: We need some types of tax, to make people we think should be paying tax pay more tax – lets do this with a capital/capital gains tax We need to save more as a nation. FYI, taking capital gains implies reducing the rate of …

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/11/11/a-point-on-capitalcapital-gains-taxes/

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