The big issue concerning Labour’s grass roots is a bit of a surprise. Listener: 17 October, 2013 Keywords: Distributional Economics; Political Economy & History; The popular party vote that elected David Cunliffe leader of the Labour Party reveals much about what the party grass roots think. They gave a lower significance to…
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Max Rashbrooke and his contributors have begun a valuable discussion about wealth distribution in New Zealand – but it is no more than a starting point, and one with huge gaps. Listener:10 October, 2013 Keywords: Distributional Economics; Social Policy; In recent years, debates about income inequality in rich countries have become prominent…
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Keywords: Distributional Economics; Growth & Innovation; Statistics; I have just realised that we can calculate Amartya Sen’s ‘real income’ measure for New Zealand for a 30 year period, by combining our Statistics New Zealand estimates of national income with the Ministry of Social Development estimates of household gini coefficients. This note describes how this…
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Nelson Spirited Conversations; 24 July, 2013. (Revised) Keywords: Distributional Economics; Political Economy & History; On a recent television program New Zealander Robert Wade, Professor of Development Studies at the London School of Economics, suggested that New Zealand might be ruled by 1 percent of the population, say 35,000 adults. The Deputy Prime Minister,…
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A note prepared for discussion in September 2012. Keywords: Business & Finance; Distributional Economics; Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation; Macroeconomics & Money; What is the Purpose of the Economy? * The purpose of the New Zealand economy is to maintain and increase the wellbeing of all New Zealanders. It is neither the…
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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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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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THE TOO HARD BASKET Listener: 19 January, 2012. Keywords: Environment & Resources; Distributional Economics; Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History; Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy; Every government has issues it hopes will go away. They don’t. Here are some for our one. Our Emissions Trading Scheme is looking like a dog’s breakfast, and/or something…
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PSA Journal, March 2010. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Regulation & Taxation; In my Commercialisation of New Zealand there is a chapter on ‘the abandoning of equity’, of how under Rogernomics social fairness went steadily down in the policy priorities. The report on tax reform by the Victoria University of Wellington Tax Working Group (TWG) confirms the…
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From the section ‘The Economy and the City’ released February 2010. Keywords: Distributional Economics Te Ara is New Zealand’s On-line Encyclopaedia. The primary author of its section on the Income and Wealth Distributions ( www.teara.govt.nz/en/income-and-wealth-distribution ) was Brian Easton. For other of his contributions The Economy: www.teara.govt.nz/en/economy New Zealand’s economic history: www.teara.govt.nz/en/economic-history
Making the emissions trading scheme “affordable” may hit future generations hard. Listener: 10 October, 2009. Keywords: Environment & Resources; Distributional Economics; Global warming is a consequence of a market failure: polluters emit chemicals without having to pay the price of their emissions. Some sort of taxation regime would no doubt make the…
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Societies with great inequality are more prone to poor health, social hostility and crime. Listener: 29 August, 2009. Keywords: Distributional Economics; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; When I was working on the problems of inequality and poverty in the 1970s, my colleagues joked I was a social economist, even if they spent more time…
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Tax, Saving Welfare and Retirement: Have We Lost our Way? Symposium, Retirement Policy and Research Centre, University of Auckland, 16 July, 2009 Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Maynard Keynes Keywords: Distributional Economics; History of Ideas, Methodology &…
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What the electoral economic debate is really about. Listener: 9 August 2008. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Growth & Innovation; Although the rhetoric of economic debate is about accelerating economic growth, the reality of politics is mainly about redistributing income. Merrill Lynch told the Australian insurance industry it would make a $200 million…
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Note prepared 6 April, 2008. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Statistics; The conventional Engel Curve relates expenditure on (usually) food (F) to aggregate household (usually) expenditure (X). Since it is a one-to-one relation it my be mathematically inverted to (1) X = f(F, z) where z is a vector of other variables which…
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The Weekend Herald of November 10, 2007 devoted three pages, to a Newsweek article which was strong on anecdote and opinion and weak on analysis and facts. I submitted the following note. They took a fortnight to tell me they had more important things to deal with. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Globalisation & Trade; …
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This note was commissioned by the Sunday Star Times (5 August, 2007) Keywords: Distributional Economics; Macroeconomics & Money; Social Policy; In the year to June 2004, 3.7% of all households suffered ‘mortgage stress’ defined as having at least 40% of their disposable income being used to service their mortgage. This definition of mortgage stress…
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Maori incomes are catching up, but there’s a long way to go. Listener: 7 April, 2007. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Maori; Sometimes I am proud of New Zealand’s achievements in race relations. Not that they are perfect; far from it. But we try, we acknowledge our past failures (sometimes reluctantly) and we can…
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Are middle-income earners missing out as those at the top get richer? Not lately. Listener: March 10, 2007. Keywords: Distributional Economics; There is a theory that people on middle incomes are not doing as well as those at the top. Either their jobs are disappearing, their pay is being depressed, or both….
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Keywords: Distributional Economics; Maori; Statistics; The following summarises the income statistics used in the Listener economics columns of the March 11 & 25, and April 7. The data is derived directly from the official Population Census for the relevant years. As the column details, it is reported income including social security benefits, before tax and…
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