St Andrew’s Study Trust lecture series: Living with Uncertainty; 4 September 2012 The notion of uncertainty – and risk, which as we shall see, is something else – is central to economics and the economies it describes. Of course there are external events which generate shocks like the Lisbon or Canterbury earthquakes. But today I…
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Listener: 1 September 1, 2012 New Zealand ran out of farmland in the mid-1950s. Of course, it has always been limited, but the opportunities to create new farms ran out and the existing ones were getting bigger, so the job opportunities on them did not increase. Countries short of farmland used to acquire more by…
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In the course of an appeal to the Social Security Appeal Authority I was asked to prepare an estimate of the income that the appealing family would require. Here follows my affidavit. The aim has been to keep the text in full, including those necessary for a court document. However there are a few changes…
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National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis, University of Waikato Seminar: 23 August, 2012 ( am grateful to Joan Metge and Ian Pool for assistance with various aspects of this paper; the errors remain mine.) This paper is based on Chapter 34 the book I am writing: Not in Narrow Seas, which is a history…
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Listener: 18 August, 2012. One of the reasons King Charles I was beheaded in 1649 was that, without Parliament’s approval, he raised taxes and spent the proceeds. Forty years later, after the Glorious Revolution, the English Parliament passed the Bill of Rights, requiring that the Crown tax or spend only with Parliament’s approval. That act…
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Anglican Chaplaincy Seminar, VUW, 8 August, 2012 I have been asked to talk about the history of child poverty. Social scientist don’t have much of a systematic account before the 1970s, although there is plenty of anecdote. It was the 1972 Royal Commission on Social Security which precipitated the upwelling in research and thinking about children, together with the…
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Listener: 4 August, 2012. This column has previously advocated making greater use of market mechanisms to allocate the use of water. New Zealand has a comparative abundance of water, but we benefit if it is allotted as efficiently as possible. Those familiar with the issue acknowledge the argument, but many point out that the “P”…
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Science Express: 2 August, 2012; Te Papa Tongarewa. I am writing a history of New Zealand from an economic perspective. It’s about two thirds complete – up to the 1970s, with 250,000 words of text – that is already about three conventionally sized books. Tonight I am going to talk about one aspect of the…
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Presentation to ‘Spirited Conversations’, Nelson, July 25, 2012. At a public meeting of the Tax Working Group, whose recommendations were the basis of the 2010 tax changes when GST was raised to the benefit of those on higher incomes, a member of the public raised the question of the role of fairness in their thinking….
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Listener: 21 July, 2012. Fortunately, the recently instituted deep-earth monitoring observed the magma slowly working its way to the surface. Breaking out, it pushed up a cone not unlike its twin, Rangitoto (some 600 years older), erupting to fill the skies with ash, bombs, rocks and poisonous gases. Given the warning, few lives were lost….
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Seminar in conjunction with the Business, Economics and Accounting History Network (BEAN) 13 July, 2012. The presentation was based upon an earlier seminar The Course of Prices: 1860 to Today (http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1639)
Listener: 7 July 7, 2012. I am appalled by the Prime Minister’s deferral of consideration of the age of entitlement for New Zealand Superannuation. Many think it should be raised from 65 years. Key said he was more focused on immediate issues than on longer-term ones. That is an appropriate attitude for a money-market dealer,…
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Sunday Star Times: 24 June, 2012 Keywords: Education; I was shown over a model Berlin dairy farm is 1990 when it was still in a Communist regime. They proudly displayed a cow which produced twice as much milk as the New Zealand average. Our farmers were unimpressed. Shoveling enough grain down the throat could get…
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Listener: 23 June, 2012 Keywords: Education; Macroeconomics & Money; Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine opens with a description of the American neo-liberals using Cyclone Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans as a chance to replace the city’s public school system with charter schools. This is but one of the book’s examples of their seizing opportunities following…
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Listener: 9 June, 2012. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity Despite the media extravaganza that still surrounds them, government Budgets are no longer the major economic statement of the year. The Government now has so many opportunities at…
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Listener: 26 May, 2010. Keywords: Business & Finance; Governance; Regulation & Taxation; The row that has erupted over the proposed SkyCity convention centre in Auckland involves gambling, but there are deeper fiscal issues. But this is not a column about gambling, even though a study I was involved with found that pokies were the most…
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Submitted to ‘New Zealand Herald’ but mot published. Keywords: Governance; Macroeconomics & Money; Could New Zealand have a financial crisis like the current Greek one? Anything is possible but the central government has a formidable series of institutional arrangements to reduce the probability of it happening together with prudently committed ministers of finance. History reminds…
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This is the revised version of a paper given to the a public health group in Lower Hutt, and a Presbyterian Church group in Hamilton. It is a development of an earlier paper “What Are Our Economic Priorities?” (http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1549) There is an accompanying PowerPoint presentation. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; I want to…
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PROBLEMS WITH EXPERTS New Zealand Books, Winter 2012, p.9. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; The New Zealand Economy: An Introduction by Ralph Lattimore & Shamubeel Eaqub (AUP) 170pp. $34.99. ISBN: 978-1-869404-89-5 The New Zealand Tax System: New Zealand Taxes in Comparative Perspective by Rob Salmond (Institute of Policy Studies) 129pp. $30.00. ISBN: 978-1-877347-45-0…
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Presentation for the Wellington Branch of the NZIIA, 15 May 2012 Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money; Next week, the government will present its annual budget to parliament. There will be a lot more media space given to it than – say – to this paper, but its significance is much less than is…
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