Nineteenth-century migrants may have come here to escape oppressive laws, but the laws migrated too. It was late in the twentieth century that we abolished one of the most oppressive ones. Our origins are less humane than we like to pretend. Wilkens Micawber was incarcerated in a debtors’ prison. It is said that he is…
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It is unclear why anyone is voting for Britain leaving the EU nor, in many cases, why they are voting for remain. What are the possible alternatives? How is Britain or New Zealand to function in an increasingly globalised world. As I put up this column, the Brits are about to vote on Brexit –…
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A major preoccupation of the budget was preparing for the next major financial crisis. To do so it is reducing government spending relative to GDP. Where do tax cuts fit in? Our politics reminds me those weekly serial movies where each week the heroine ends in an impossible situation but next week she miraculously escapes…
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The government has let the housing market deteriorate with measures which are insufficient, late and ineffective. As a first step we need to identify the underlying problems. The Prime Minister’s announcement that there is nothing new about homelessness is both an example of his strengths in reassuring the public that there is never really a…
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This is a condensed version of a paper given to a WEA Conference on 14 May, 2016, The initial invitation suggested I talk about the future economy and its relevance to adult education. I explained that the best advice I ever came across is ‘don’t make predictions, especially about the future’. You get a sense…
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WEA Conference, 14 May, 2016, Wellington. The initial invitation suggested I talk about the future economy and its relevance to adult education. I explained that the best advice I ever came across is ‘don’t make predictions, especially about the future’. You get a sense of the difficulties if you go back thirty years ago, say,…
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If it necessary to run a budget deficit then it should be spent in the interests of future generations, rather than on increased consumption to be paid for in the future. It is very easy to demand the government should run, or increase, its budget deficit, that is, it should spend more than its revenue…
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The social worth of a person in no way reflects their income or wealth. To confuse the two notions is to play into the values of the rich. My brother, Keith, died in the hospital wing of a Christchurch retirement home recently. He had been diagnosed with metastatic bowel cancer two years before, and had 22…
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Are we too generous about the civilian rights of non-doms, who do not pay tax on all their incomes? Bryan Gould has drawn attention to the dangers we face in New Zealand of foreign political interference by funding contributions to political activity. His apposite example is Chinese money being channeled into the change-the-flag campaign. Would it…
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(William) KEITH EASTON: 18 August 1944 – 26 April 2016 When I was about 12, the family was hit by a virus which made us lackadaisical and sleepy. I recall that on the afternoon it impacted on me, I struggled to meet my raspberry picking quota. Keith, 17 months younger, went down for a week….
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Responses to the flag referendum and the TPPA have parallels overseas such as supporting Trump in the US and Brexit in Britain. A sizeable proportion of the population think that the government is not listening to them and doesn’t care about them. Kiwiblog presents an impressive scatter-diagram which shows that the more an electorate voted…
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Are we entering a long period of secular stagnation in which interest rates are low? We cannot foresee all the implications. This has not been an easy column to write, and it may not be an easy one to read. Part of the problem is that there is no agreement within the economics profession as…
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The story of our national anthems might provide guidance for how to proceed with the flag. A recent Victoria University graduation ceremony invited everyone to sing The National Anthem. As we lustily, but not tunefully, sang God Defend New Zealand, I avoided the thought that while pedants would point out that New Zealand had two…
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The history of New Zealand is speculation on farm land which stokes up debt, with disastrous consequences when the bubble bursts. The New Zealand industry is going through another one. During the Great War, farm land prices boomed. When farm product prices collapsed in 1920, farmers walked off their land. It was not that the…
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A journalist’s list of the ten most important issues politically facing us did not mention inequality and poverty. Why? A month ago Fairfax political journalist Tracey Watkins listed the following ten areas to watch out for in the political year: Spies (especially the review and resulting legislation) Iraq (will the two year mission be extended?)…
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The government is restraining its spending on healthcare – perhaps by over $2 billion a year. Is that what we really want? A common assumption is that public spending on healthcare rises faster than GDP. There are three reasons behind this assumption. First, an aging population requires more healthcare. The over-65s consume more healthcare resources…
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The short answer is all trade reduces sovereignty to some extent. The TPPA is no exception, but its effect is probably small. Allow that we had to give away something, such as increased copyright extensions, for better access for our exports; the real issue for us in the TPPA is that it reduces ‘sovereignty’. To…
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A key issue may not be what is in the TPPA, but that by not adopting it we may ruin the other international agreements we are pursuing. In the 1960s I was an active member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It was a moral crusade with unrealisable objectives such as withdrawal from SEATO (a…
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World Sharemarkets Are Sneezing. What Does That Tell Us About the World Economy? Before discussing the state of the world economy – especially what is going on in China – it is useful to say something about the importance of the sharemarket (Americans call it ‘stock market’). It is far more important in pop-economics than…
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A book on the history of the Literary Fund raises broad questions of how our bureaucracy works. I was too closely involved with Elizabeth Caffin’s The Deepening Stream: A History of the New Zealand Literary Fund to review it. But it contributed to my understanding of some general issues; I think I am allowed to use the…
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