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| Last Updated: Aug 15th, 2008 - 11:26:43 |
Newsletters
:
2007 Newsletters
:
23 February 2007
Thought for the Day
How to not quite tell the truth.
The government statistics show that there are 2,115,000 people employed for one hour a week or more and of those, 97,500 would like to work for more hours.
They also show that there are 79,100 people unemployed, 60,500 available but not actively seeking work and 22,000 who are actively seeking work but are not available at that moment. This makes a total (their figures) of 161,800 people who are classified as JOBLESS by the official statistics.
So our UNEMPLOYMENT rate is 3.5% but our JOBLESS rate is 7.1%, and the UNDEREMPLOYED rate is 4.3%. The statistics are collected - it is just how you report them that counts.
Feb 9, 2007, 16:31
Newsletters
:
2007 Newsletters
:
23 February 2007
Making Kids Worthless: Social Security's Contribution to the Fertility Crisis
"The best solution is also the simplest: get the state out of the way."
After many successful years in politics one senior politician assured me that government is the problem - not the solution.
How often do we see governments, with the best of intentions, passing laws to help us and in so doing create a moral hazard that causes large sections of the population to behave in an unpredicted fashion. This has happened so often now that whatever problem the government attempts to solve I will predict that the end result will be the opposite of what is expected and that the people the government claims to be helping will be worst off.
Perhaps we have discovered a new law of political science! Let us test it in New Zealand over the next few years. Whenever the do-gooders propose a law to assist a group of citizens I predict that they will be hurt by that law. All we need to prove my law is wrong is just one case to the contrary.
Although it is not an example of politicians playing with the economy here is a case in point. . .
Jan 26, 2007, 16:12
Newsletters
:
2007 Newsletters
:
23 February 2007
Going Nowhere
Zimbabwe is an object lesson to us all. It once had a thriving agricultural economy and was the "bread basket" of Africa. Bad policies destroyed the farming base and the strategy of just printing more money to keep people happy has failed miserably.
Zimbabwe is an extreme case but it is instructive to see the effects of run-away inflation on a country. The inflation is caused not by consumer price increases but by Magabe printing too much money. Consumer price increases are the RESULT of printing too much money!
Last year the Reserve Bank issued (M3) an extra 16.5% worth of money. We are lucky that our problem is only about one-hundredth of Zimbabwe's!
Read what the Economist has to say about Mugabe. . .
Jan 22, 2007, 10:07
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