Afternoon roundup

It's been a while since last posting. The tabs...

• Gita Gopinath on Covid's lessons for inflation and central banking


• Long-Covid and labour markets. There is still far too little data on this. 


• Expect it to get weirder


• Be careful about audit studies that use racially-loaded names to signal race. They can signal other stuff at the same time. And they aren't perfect signals on race either. 


• Matt Levine on Silicon Valley Bank


• Very strong NZ public support for incentive payments to local councils. Good.


• Ian Powell on some of the messes in health system reforms. There will not be the back-end efficiencies the government may be looking for. Ian McCrae suggests these reforms for the next policy bonfire.


• Pattrick Smellie on lame government industry transformation plans


• I expect a NZ version of this would find similar results: the decline in marriage and the rise in social problems. 


• Doesn't it make more sense to finally deal with the messy problem of setting FBT on employer-provided parking than to try to FBT-exempt every single possible substitute for driving? Should sneakers be FBT-exempt for those who walk to work?


• Electricity generators warning that proposed Resource Management reforms are going to completely screw up building new power generation. 


• Rebecca Macfie argues that a pile of contractors wind up working for less than minimum wage and so contractor law reform was needed. I have difficulty squaring the assertion about low low contractor wages with the fact of very tight labour markets where hospitality and retail are having to pay margins above the minimum wage even at entry level. Is it illegal for these workers to just go and find a different job?


• 72% of Kiwis think that farmers should be allowed to use genetically modified grasses that reduce methane and nitrate emissions.


• It really looks like the guy running NZ's newly merged polytechs hasn't got a clue about academic freedom.