Ryan Bridge: The OECD's report needs to be taken with a grain of salt

It's somewhat ironic the latest lecture we're getting from an office of global boffins is headquartered in Paris.

No offence to the French, but they're screaming out for lesson in basic economics.

Their debt-to-GDP ratio is 118%. Their debt is 60% above the EU limit.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 10/11/23

Ginny Andersen is copping questions on two fronts – her treatment of campaign volunteers and her Paris travel bill

Police Minister Ginny Andersen has not posted a statement on the government’s official website since 3 October – but she’s winning media attention, regardless.

The official statement – issued jointly with Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis – was about a youth justice programme branded “Circuit Breaker being launched in two new locations.

It wasn’t a huge vote winner and both ministers lost their seats at the general election, although they are back in Parliament on Labour’s list.

Don Brash: For how much longer will our kids stick around?

In a great many ways, New Zealand is an enormously attractive country to live in. We have a temperate climate, largely free of extremes of either heat or cold. We have magnificent mountains, and beautiful and uncrowded beaches. We produce enough food to feed ourselves many times over. In a water-short world, we have more fresh water, per person, than all but two countries in the world. We have abundant open spaces, with just five million people spread across an area larger than the United Kingdom. We have a robust democracy, with never the slightest suggestion that either the armed forces or a mob might try to overturn an election result.

But abstracting altogether from the immediate issues relating to the pandemic and the health and economic consequences of that, there are four major issues which threaten our future – five if we include climate change, but I don’t propose to discuss that given that nothing we do in New Zealand will have any measurable effect on the global climate. All of the other four issues are within our own ability to resolve if only we have the political will to do so.

Daniel Mitchell: OECD Economic Research Finds That Government Spending Harms Growth

At the risk of understatement, I’m not a fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Perhaps reflecting the mindset of the European governments that dominate its membership, the Paris-based international bureaucracy has morphed into a cheerleader for statist policies.

All of which was just fine from the perspective of the Obama Administration, which doubtlessly appreciated the OECD’s partisan work to promote class warfare and pimp for wasteful Keynesian spending.

Richard Rahn: Using Tax Money to Raise Taxes

If a member of Congress told you that he was going to use some of your hard-earned tax dollars to support an international organization that demands that you pay higher taxes, what would you say? 

Unfortunately, the question is not hypothetical, because that is exactly what is now happening. Congress is giving more than $70 million a year to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has morphed over the last two decades from an organization that promoted trade and growth policies to an organization that pushes for higher taxes, which will reduce economic growth.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: Funding no education fix

A prevailing myth of Australia’s left-leaning education establishment is that increased funding of government schools leads to improved educational outcomes.

Analysis of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment international tests across the past 14 years, however, shows increasing expenditure is not the solution.

The OECD’s Education at a Glance 2000, analysing results for 25 countries, including high-performing nations such as Japan and South Korea, concludes: “There seems to be neither a strong nor a consistent relationship between the volume of resources invested nationally and student outcomes.”