Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Tupuranga Aotearoa

Statistics NZ has just released a new interactive tool called Tupuranga Aotearoa to show change over time.

Here I selected social > income inequality. Oh. Decreasing up until the recession.

What a surprise. Not.



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6 comments:

JC said...

That doesn't look right (unless I'm reading it wrong). My understanding is that inequality *decreased* during the recession because the rich suffered losses to their assets such as investments whilst the poor had their Govt entitlements protected.

JC

6:34 PM
Lindsay Mitchell said...

JC, (I think without checking) the median household income dropped due to what you identified. So relative inequality didn't increase particularly.

But this graph depicts absolute incomes and many working poor lost income from reduced self-employment; the waged from reduced hours and redundancies.

That's my take on it anyway.

7:00 PM
Psycho Milt said...

Aren't we looking there at a steady increase up until the point Labour decided to mitigate the effects by topping up wages from social welfare (otherwise known as Working for Families)? Which means, if NACT had got their way back in the mid-2000s and the WfF "communism by stealth" hadn't been implemented, that graph would be needing a higher x-axis.

7:44 AM
Lindsay Mitchell said...

Quite probably. But I would still rather see the improved incomes coming from employers rather than the taxpayer. It is the employer that gets the benefit from labour. Earned income tax credits are used the world over and praised by the left. But in the next breath they slate the "greedy capitalist" they are subsidising. Rock and a hard place stuff from which I don't see an easy escape.

9:43 AM
Anonymous said...

Just goes to show NZ's problem is far to much "inequality" - not to little. But really, even discussing equality concedes the argument to the communists.


(otherwise known as Working for Families)

Except on National Radio, where Kathryn Ryan called it what it is: communism

It is the employer that gets the benefit from labour.

It 's the employers money feeding, housing and clothing, the workers family, educating their kids and paying for their hospitals, ministries and goodness knows what else!

11:15 AM
Psycho Milt said...

But I would still rather see the improved incomes coming from employers rather than the taxpayer.

No disagreement here!

1:17 PM

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