Morning roundup

The worthies on the closing of the broswer tabs:

• Michael Reddell on the problems in the Tax Working Group's report. I've also been worried about exempting the NZ Superannuation Fund from tax - it introduces a distortion in favour of the Fund owning things better owned by others. I also worry about what happens to the government's incentive to fix housing supply if doing so creates tax losses. 
• Robin Oliver's interview on RNZ on the impracticabilities of the TWG capital gains tax proposal is very good. Ignore the partisan fights. This is the stuff the government has to figure out how it would deal with if it wants to go ahead with this mess.
• Blanchflower and Clark find that children do not raise happiness for singles, the divorced, separated or widowed, and that financial pressure makes having children less pleasurable. I imagine only the convenient policy implications for the government's wellbeing agenda will be noticed. There are also inconvenient policy implications. Those will receive less attention. 
• Arthur Grimes on the correlates of happiness and wellbeing
• Hopefully NZ doesn't follow America into the nuttiness of the culture wars. It's not a safe place. 
• What one guy in his spare time can do with NZES data. Despair by contrast at what StatsNZ has failed to achieve with its GSS data - and has prevented anyone else from achieving by keeping the CURFs locked down. 
• It is best when dumb ideas are critiqued by those on the same ideological side. Paul Krugman goes through the problems with MMT: No more Calvinball, please. 
• Former Chief Science Advisor Sir Peter Gluckman makes the case for letting NZ farmers use the GE ryegrass that absorbs nitrates and reduces methane emissions. It's stupid that we even have to make the argument given that the current government seems to care about global warming and nitrate pollution, but here we are. 
• Netflix is killing piracy. 
• Robert Caro on power