Joining in on the robot pileup
Here is me talking about robots. Here is the conclusion: One of the concerns is that even with current technology robots can essentially work for an implied wage of $4 an hour achieving many of the...
View ArticlePulling out the comparative advantage card
Since everyone is talking about the drop in manufacturing output and employment and trying to figure out “how to fix it” I thought I’d pull out the old comparative advantage card to show why it may not...
View ArticlePractical experimentation at Microsoft
The Microsoft Bing team responsible for conducting controlled experiments have a paper out that canvasses some practical problems they’ve come across in the thousands of experiments that they’ve run....
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If we have a bank tax, make it a deposit levy
I argue the deposit levy point (as a form of insurance) here. The only point I have to add is that some may say “why charge poor old depositors”. I’d note here that we need to think about the...
View ArticleLet’s be careful judging savers
Although my article might not give that impression at first glance – that is actually where I am in agreement with Bob Jones here. However, I’m also saying that the RBNZ governor isn’t wrong about...
View ArticleSeries on tax: Part 1 – why?
Huzzah, I am writing about tax on Rates Blog. In Part 1 I ask “why do we tax“. I get onto other issues later – in fact, this will be a five article series. Here all I do is combine the idea of...
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Series on tax: Part 2b – let’s experiment with explanations
In the second part of my series on taxation I wrote about distortion and burden. But I’m not sure whether my description about wedges and how people respond to prices was necessarily clear enough for...
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Series on tax: Part 3 – poll taxes, ability taxes, and fairness considerations
Over on Rates Blog they’ve popped up part three of the six part thing I’m writing about tax. Over here, we’ve blogged on part 1 and part 2, and added a part 2b for kicks. You’ll notice I’m doing...
View ArticleSeries on tax: Part 4 – A primer on income taxes
Over at Rates Blog they have popped up part 4 of the series on tax I’m popping together. Here are the blog posts linking to part 1, part 2, part 2b, and part 3. I would note this will at least be an...
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Series on tax: Part 5 – A primer on consumption tax
Yet more on tax – this is part 5. Here are the blog posts on part 1, part 2, part 2b, part 3, and part 4. The promised “Part 4b” is still in the pipeline – it’ll appear at some point. This time we...
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Rant time: House sales to non-residents
The rant isn’t here – it is over on interest.co.nz. I’d note that I’m relatively sensitive about the idea of prejudice and how social norms form against “groups”. Policy that is formed in this sense...
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CIS Winter Policy magazine
Via Stephen Kirchner I see the latest issue of the CIS Policy magazine has a new issue – the Winter 2013 one. I’ve contributed to this one, so I thought I’d point out that I’m blabbing on about...
View ArticleArticle on Rates Blog on inequality
I didnt’ realise it was “inequality fortnight” when I wrote this - it was just an article I needed to do before carrying on the “tax series” (as the next article there is on progressive taxation). So...
View ArticleSeries on tax: Part seven – externalities
We are nearing the end of the tax articles – after this one there is only “inflation tax” left! The current article is on the free lunch associated with externality taxes! As I say at the end of the...
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