Given my uncertainty about who to vote for the the next New Zealand general election I’ve been exploring registered political parties wikipedia pages. While looking I noticed that a number of smaller parties tended to favour a financial transactions tax (Progressives, Alliance, Democrats, and Direct Democracy). Looking at the parties websites, the only party I […]
There is talk in the air that the New Zealand government may one day look at “income splitting” as a form of providing tax relief. Income splitting changes the fundamental economic unit that is taxed from the individual to the household. The most likely form of income splitting we could see in New Zealand would […]
In a widely expected move, the RBNZ left the official cash rate unchanged in April. As a result, primary interest turned to the statement. In the statement the RBNZ admitted that economic activity has weakened more markedly than they expected in March. However, they placed the labour market, government spending, and commodity prices that will […]
Tomorrow will see the Reserve Bank make a decision on whether to change the official cash rate from its current level of 8.25%. Although some commentators believe that the slowing pace of domestic economic activity merits a rate cut, most economists agree that leaving rates unchanged at the moment would be prudent. Here’s why:
Yesterday we had the dual announcements of both Fisher and Paykel and ANZ moving work overseas. The Standard has taken issue with this activity. Particularly, two posts at the Standard lamented the “exploitation” of foreign workers and stated that consumers should stand up to protect domestic jobs. On a separate note we have seen the […]
Why is everyone acting so surprised about the fact that biofuel regulation will (and has) led to higher food prices? We said it would in August (well to be fair, Keith Woodford from Lincoln University said it before us, and other people were saying it before that 😉 ). However, unlike some commentators, we do […]