Posts by Matthew Hooton
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Polity: Let the big lies flow, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Yes, although once you're above $25b it all becomes a bit academic.
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Polity: The Taxpayers' Union rides again!, in reply to James Littlewood*,
extinguishing the debate before it’s even been had.
Except the debate has been going on since the 1960s. Unless they mean a non-universal universal basic income.
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Polity: Let the big lies flow, in reply to Keir Leslie,
My column notes that if set at Jobseekers it would cost more like $43b, plus maybe $6b for extra support for children. This is gross of course, but you don't get to take off the full $25b because that includes National Superannuation.
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Polity: Let the big lies flow, in reply to Keir Leslie,
My $86b figure is an annual figure based on three assumptions: (1) it is universal from age 18, (2) there are no losers and (3) you can do away with other welfare schemes to remove means testing and eliminate the problem of high EMTRs. This is a gross figure, so you can subtract the current annual cost of the welfare state, $25 billion. This still leaves a gap. You can bridge that gap through extra revenue sources or dropping one or all of the assumptions. But saying "it's a lie" is just an attack that avoids dealing with the policy assumptions or the maths.
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Polity: Let the big lies flow, in reply to Stephen Judd,
“I estimate Stephen’s car likely cost a MILLION DOLLARS”.
“That is a lie”.I think if you explain to Stephen how you reached the million dollar figure, he ought to say more than "that is a lie" and ought instead to say something like, "no your first and second assumptions are wrong, so it was much much less than that - definitely less than $100,000 but more than $10,000." This is especially so if you are trying to impress the people listening to the conversation that you are capable of running, say, a household budget and would not spend $1m on a car.
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Polity: The Taxpayers' Union rides again!, in reply to linger,
you can quite validly accuse people of lying, obfuscation, or bad faith if they base their example costings on assumptions they know to be unrealistic.
You assume bad faith, but a UBI has always been understood since first proposed by Milton Friedman among others in the 1960s to provide a basic income that someone could live on (basically - no frills of course), and for it to be universal.
If someone makes a calculation on these assumptions you can't say they are acting in bad faith, let alone that they are lying, especially if you then refuse to rule out any of these assumptions by saying "hey, $200 a week is just an idea, not a policy".
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Polity: The Taxpayers' Union rides again!, in reply to Angela Hart,
Are you suggesting that political parties should not allow public discussion of significant policy possibilities?
I think that if you genuinely want a policy discussion, you need to put some parameters and/or numbers around what you might consider. Otherwise you're just saying to voters "hey, how about $200 a week?" out of any context. And if you don't do that, you can't then say that people are lying if they say, "well, if the looked like this, it would cost $X - is that what you are suggesting?"
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Polity: The Taxpayers' Union rides again!, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
I think this is a very good point. If the Labour "contractor" writing the blog doesn't like the numbers provided by Farrar, Williams, me in the NBR tomorrow or the Welfare Working Group paper you link to, perhaps it would be best for Labour to put some parameters around the ideas they are considering, rather than calling people liars and shills. For example, perhaps Labour could say that the UBI they are looking at would not be universal. Or that other welfare programmes would remain untouched. Or something that is a little bit more credible than the claim other people aren't allowed to try to work out what a UBI (which I support in principle) might cost.
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You can't really accuse people of lying about the likely cost of a policy when you refuse to put any numbers around it yourself.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Perhaps because you are driving on a motorway and you have 99.9% of your attention on the high speed two-dimensional traffic matrix you are involved in?
I understand your point - but you are quite wrong to describe the Grafton Gully motorway between 8 and 9 am as a "high-speed" environment. Average vehicle speed would usually be less than walking speed.
As I said, it looks like a fantastic new initiative, and I am surprised how under-utilised it seems to be in the middle of the morning commute.