The title of the post is the headline from the TVNZ story from tonight’s news.
Questioned by ONE News political editor Guyon Espiner, the Finance Minister said the government is concerned about the gap between rich and poor but admitted the Budget will not alter the current divide.
Such a missed opportunity to go beyond “having concerns” to actually doing something. It has been talked about on this site and elsewhere that The Spirit Level and other research shows that more equal societies are in fact more prosperous societies. It feels like common sense to me that if we harness everyone’s potential that our collective well-being will increase.
Sadly this Budget relies on some pretty out-dated views about tax cuts leading to growth. There is no certainty around that, and more than a little evidence that quite the opposite will occur. There is almost no likelihood of sustainable growth with this government’s approach, but given that the environment basically did not rate a mention in the Budget speech, perhaps that is no surprise.
This was not a Budget done in the shadow of the recession as last year. There was a chance to address inequality and map out a path to sustainable growth. Sadly, neither chance was taken.
@Falafulu :Hmmmmmmmm! Econophysisywhat? “incomes and wealth behave suspiciously like atoms.”
Sounds more like a funny form of economic Hunduism!
It’d be more convincing if the title was “Illuminate professor explains economic redistribution! ” Lol
One could make a chart comparing the distribution of chicken wings throughout southeast Asia and guess what, it would behave suspiciously like atoms!
I think capitalism trading on materialism is more likely to factor as a true cause for the cyclic phenomena of wealth inequlity.
The stupid thing about it is the wealthy parties always end up doing themselves in by doing over others, crashes and bankruptcies are inevitable.
Poor uncle Sam went to the cupboard to get a bone but the cupboard was dry! America is technically bankrupt, it has no reasonable way of getting out of it for the next two thousand years or so without riding itself of some major liabilities. the future is very bleak because that’s the net result of rampant capitalism!
I’m in favor of any government that has a well balanced plan of decreasing liability whilst increasing asset values.Unfortunately it calls for a little bit of individual responsibility from the people.
Cullen wasn’t bad but I do think he was a little to heavy with the dirty word and turned off the mtv generation “saving”
The amount of tax you pay is immaterial. The figure you need to be concerned with is how much you’re being paid.
Consider: The economies in the world that are doing much better than us also have much higher taxes.
No we shouldn’t. It is provably bad for everyone including the well off. Anybody who says we should just accept it is a psychopath.
Can someone who created the Superfund AND kiwisaver siad to have discouraged saving? Perhaps he was just savings neutral, no one was worse off, saving or no (tongue in cheek).
@Levi, before you jump into mocking, you should refrain, listen, look and then cross the busy intersection, because it is obvious that have no clue to the background of the story that I linked to , since Grant deleted the references that may have helped you out, in my last message.
Let me help you out here. Read article #1, which was written for the general public, so you will have no problem in grasping the concepts that the author is talking about. The rest, #2, #3 and #4 are free PDF downloadable pre-prints peer reviewed econophysics papers that (final revised versions) were published in Physica Journal. Paper #2 is the original research paper from physicist Yakovenko that you mocked in your comment above. Paper #3, is a recent paper (2009) from Yakovenko et al, so there is a list of references there for you to dig it up and learn more and may be your understanding can come to a thermal equilibrium and see the point/s made by those researchers. Paper #4 is the algorithm implemented by Brian Hayes (article in Ref #1).
From American Scientist
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#1) Follow the Money (7 page article)
Pre-prints
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#2) Statistical mechanics of money
#3) Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income
#4) Wealth distributions in asset exchange models
I suggest that you read the peer review papers I have cited above so that you can fully grasp of what the researchers put forward in their arguments, which is relevant to this blog post on wealth inequality.
Are you an economist Levi? If you are then I am surprised that you haven’t heard of thermo-dynamic economics? Have you heard of the Black-Scholes (Merton) model in financial economics? Dr. Scholes and Dr Merton won the economics Nobel Prize in 1997 for their work in developing the option pricing model which is named in their honour. Look it up on wikipedia and see their derivation of using heat equation to derive a formula for pricing European-style options.
@Loota, you’re arguing on semantics and have no relevance to what Dr Yakovenko was saying in his New York Times magazine’s article. I suggest you read Ref #1, because the term “natural” that I used was from that author (Brian Hayes). So, stop trying with yourself.
@T Bastard, as usual, your comment (or reply) to my message is always irrelevant & useless. You didn’t attempt to put forward a counter-argument to that described by Dr Yakovenko’s New York Times magazine’s article. Again, stop trying to argue with yourself.
Now, I have linked to research references above for those who replied to my previous message, so I suggest you read them first and then we can discuss. I am not going to waste my time in pointless debates about the semantics that some of you here seemed to be engaged in. I am not going to reply further and waste my time if the focus of the discussion is on word semantics rather than the point (wealth inequality) being highlighted in those researches of which I have linked to above.
Loota: “trading currency from your own home is not rocket science”….clearly! That is why most people who do it are uneducated, unskilled and managed to accumulate a net worth of $50million or so…..