It’s a crucial part of the mythology around National Party Governments that they are “good economic managers”, as their new leader, Simon Bridges, is repeating. The business commentariat repeat it endlessly too. How true is this?
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It’s refreshing to start a new year with the hope that the change of Government has brought. Many of its initiatives take additional government spending so one of the Government’s big challenges is to ensure it has the revenue to carry out its programme, and the willingness to spend it.
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Wages are important socially and economically, but wages are low in New Zealand. We are in a low wage rut, dependent on low wage industries like agriculture and tourism. Low wages contribute to New Zealand’s high income inequality which has many negative effects. We have evidence that high inequality can lead to social breakdown as… Read more »
Read more... In August, the Centre for Labour, Employment and Work (CLEW) at Victoria University released their annual analysis of collective employment agreements (CEAs). It shows again that people who are part of a collective get better pay rises: the union pay premium. For the year to June 2017 CLEW finds that on average wages in collectives… Read more »
Read more... We won’t know for a while which parties will make up the new New Zealand Government. Whoever it is will face the same challenges. The most likely shocks to New Zealand’s economy are from the international economy and from a crash in the housing market. There are still many concerns in Europe, the US, even… Read more »
Read more... A new report on inequalities in wages, salaries and the income of the self-employed finds growing inequalities in the income they earned per hour over the period 1998 to 2015. To a reasonable approximation, two-thirds of employees are paid below the average wage and they received either very low wages or experienced low wage growth,… Read more »
Read more... The heat of the general election campaign is rising so I suppose it is the time that you’d expect more than usual numbers of fake facts to be tossed around. You’d also hope that there would be more than the usual journalistic checking of them. Here’s a check of a couple of fake facts to… Read more »
Read more... The share of income that working people receive from all the income generated by their work – the labour income share – is important for many reasons and has long been of interest. It is a measure of income inequality because the richest people in the country tend to make most of their money from… Read more »
Read more... The Budget last week was, as expected, an election year Budget. Many low and middle income families will welcome the relief of some extra money in their pockets. But much more could have gone to them rather than to high income earners, and there would have been funding left over to address problems like the… Read more »
Read more... On 25 May, the Government will announce its last Budget before the election. Budgets are always political statements whose facts are difficult to spot amid the tornado-like spin, but pre-election Budgets are even more so. But it is worth stating the obvious: Budgets should be about making lives better for New Zealanders. Finance Minister Steven… Read more »
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