Pascal’s Bookie says…

Written By: - Date published: 1:05 pm, January 22nd, 2010 - 20 comments
Categories: tax - Tags:

Pascal’s Bookie said in comments

3 pretty graphs,

Median Income

Average income of the bottom decile

Average income of the Top decile

one of which has NZ in the top half of the oecd.

Lookie here

Source

20 comments on “Pascal’s Bookie says… ”

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  1. Leopold 1
    22 January 2010 at 1:54 pm

    O, for Luxembourg citizenship papers!

    • Sam 1.1
      22 January 2010 at 2:45 pm

      I reckon! What are they doing that seems to work so well?

      • vto 1.1.1
        22 January 2010 at 2:51 pm

        Dealing in diamonds and other ‘rich prick’ goodies. Most readers here wouldn’t be interested in any of that…

        But look what it can achieve !

      • Scott 1.1.2
        22 January 2010 at 3:43 pm

        It is the centre for a large number of EU institutions. And it has lots of banks. So it will be full of bureaucrats earning reasonable money, and bankers earning stupid money.

        • Uroskin 1.1.2.1
          22 January 2010 at 4:50 pm

          Luxembourg is where Belgians, French and Germans pop over to if they have some cash to stash away from the prying eyes of the tax man. I remember the regular car trips from Belgium with mum and dad well in the 1970s.
          Even though it’s not blacklisted country in terms of tax havens, the withholding tax on deposits is so much lower than in the home countries it makes it worthwhile to have a large part of its economy devoted to banking services.
          Also tank up the car at the same time, fuel taxes are seriously lower there.
          Having many EU institutions headquartered there helps too, of course. All that tax free eurocrat loot has to be spent somewhere.

          Lessons for NZ: attract some international agencies to set up shop here. Offer discreet personal banking services for overseas clients. Have a narrower gap between the top 10% and lowest decile incomes.

  2. Lanthanide 2
    22 January 2010 at 3:09 pm

    These graphs would be more striking if the Y scale was fixed for all of them. As it is, with a quick glance all 3 graphs look the same, except the maximum Y value on each is 40k, 18k and 100k. So the 3 graphs are actually in very different ballparks, but you wouldn’t figure that just by looking at them.

    • rainman 2.1
      22 January 2010 at 3:34 pm

      Doesn’t matter, they’re showing relativity.

      Interesting Aussie is in about the same place for both highest and lowest decile – does this indicate more equitable income distribution?

  3. tsmithfield 3
    22 January 2010 at 4:12 pm

    Look at whats been happening to the Euro recently though. The europeans might as well be being paid in monopoly money the way the Euro is depreciating at the moment.

    Also, it would be interesting to see those figures adjusted for living costs. It might tell a different story.

  4. tsmithfield 4
    22 January 2010 at 4:14 pm

    Furthermore, some of those countries ahead of us are nearly bankrupt anyway. Look up PIIGS on google if you don’t believe me.

    Even the UK is not in good shape at all at the moment. Hence the depreciating Euro as mentioned in my previous post. So, those wage figures might not mean that much, especially in the context of the poor shape a lot of those countries are in.

    • Pascal's bookie 4.1
      22 January 2010 at 5:09 pm

      They’re not wage figures, see link below, but JFTR…

      Income is defined as household disposable income in a particular year. It consists of earnings, self-employment and capital income and public cash transfers; income taxes and social security contributions paid by households are deducted. The income of the household is attributed to each of its members, with an adjustment to reflect differences in needs for households of different sizes (i.e. the needs of a household composed of four people are assumed to be twice as large as those of a person living alone).

  5. roger nome 5
    22 January 2010 at 4:27 pm

    Somehow, despite the clear facts, the right wingers will still deny that New Zealand is an unusually unequal society for one so developed. Something along an OECD data collecting conspiracy, etc ……

  6. Uroskin 6
    22 January 2010 at 5:00 pm

    “Even the UK is not in good shape at all at the moment. Hence the depreciating Euro”

    Given that the UK is not part of the eurozone, that causal link statement does not make sense.

  7. Pascal's bookie 7
    22 January 2010 at 5:07 pm

    The oecd page is here (someone could put that in the post? tah)

    The data seems to be from 05, so there have been tax cuts and wff and what not. But it’s still interesting and it’s not my fault the oecd is slow. (JFTR it’s in US dollars converted with purchasing parity to deal with the cost of living bidness for tsmithy. Your needs have been anticipated sir, all is as as you want.)

    It pokes holes in a few shibboleths though eg, ‘The poor in the US are actually ok compared to the average kiwi’ No they’re not. They’re worse off than our poor.

    And our wealthy are doing ok even when compared with the top deciles in the oecd.

    etc.

    [lprent: added ]

  8. Deus In Machina 8
    22 January 2010 at 5:34 pm

    “Even the UK is not in good shape at all at the moment. Hence the depreciating Euro’

    What?

    Oh, this post renewed my happiness in my european passport.

  9. tsmithfield 9
    22 January 2010 at 5:41 pm

    Uroskin “Remind me not to employ tsmithfield as currency trading advisor.
    euro versus US$: 10c up over the last 12 months”

    True. But over the last month or so its been falling off the planet. If the current trend continues (there is every reason to expect it will), the marginal gain will be erased very quickly.

    Just do a search for forex charts and see how the currency has gone over the last twelve months. At the time of the financial crisis the Euro plummeted against the US in a near-vertical dive. It has since regained a lot of ground but now is plummeting at about the same rate it did when the bottom fell out of the markets during the crash.

    Europe is even worse off than the US, and that is saying something.

  10. Uroskin 10
    23 January 2010 at 9:27 am

    Dollar lovers (and euro haters) should get things into perspective. The euro in the last few weeks only came off its historic highs against the US$, and that decline was hardly a fall off the cliff!, despite it being called a “concerted attack” against the euro
    The high euro is hurting Germany’s economy. The artificial link between Chinese and American currencies doesn’t help stabilising the world currency trading system either.

  11. prism 11
    24 January 2010 at 11:14 am

    Interesting how close NZ is to Oz in all the graphs. Makes a nonsense of all this rah rah about catching up to them. I think all these politicians have thought of a smokescreen, a paper tiger to hoist every time serious thought and discussion about NZ looks likely to break out.

    Heard Bill English’s son plays rugby and family very involved. I think that many of these good old (and young) boys in Parliament are rugby saturated and it carries over so they think in terms of competition when they think of politics. We have to try and beat Oz in the moshpit of politics.

  12. prism 12
    24 January 2010 at 11:25 am

    Somehow, despite the clear facts, the right wingers will still deny that New Zealand is an unusually unequal society for one so developed.
    I remember the shock I felt when one of my tutors at Polytech stated that we are not really one of the developed nations. That we are just on the fringe. That no other agricultural nation has managed to get to the wealth position we are in.
    And of course the actions of all our politicians have resulted in us losing the manufacturing jobs and expertise that we had in our supine response to international pressure and the quest for cheaper goods from overseas, so we are ever more dependent on ag and particularly dairy. The dairy interests are sounding like old-time landed feudal gentry as a result. They are the only game in town.
    Thought – I wonder if Auckland will be a feisty, individual voice from the moo-cows. There might be a use for this would-be different power bloc.

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