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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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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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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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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The Ethnic Future for New Zealand Is Unknown. But It Will Be Diverse and Different The promise of increased future ethnic diversity is undoubtedly true, but often the statistical projections are both misleading and obscure the real issues. Each Population Census asks the respondents’ ethnicity. That is not their race, which is a genetic notion….
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A report on social services by the Productivity Commission raises serious problems about the quality of analysis in New Zealand. There is a widely held perception that the Productivity Commission, which makes recommendations to the government on how to increase productivity, is neoliberal. Partly that is because the commission was set up at the instigation…
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Travel extends the mind. Here are some of the things I learned from a recent trip to Greece: about the age of the human condition, about how civilisations end with environmental depletion, about the stresses to the current Greek economy and about how trivial are New Zealand news websites. There are remnants of wall frescos…
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We need to distinguish the sovereign state from the people it governs, and the other political institutions between. Things are moving so fast in the financial negotiations between Greece and the Troika (European Central Bank, European Union, International Monetary Fund) that there is little point in my trying to comment on them. But there is…
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The following response to three questions (in italics) was published in a prestigious Uruguayan weekly newspaper “Brecha“. It may be of interest because I am responding to the Latin American economic debate which is slightly different from the New Zealand one (but only slightly). Sorry for the included material necessary for an audience outside New…
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Those on the left of politics have a choice between defending their past achievements or taking up the challenges which face us. The Democratic Left is in disarray throughout the world. It is mainly out of power (but that has been true for most of its history); when it is in power it looks awfully…
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You may have been surprised at the outcome of the recent British elections, but New Zealand’s experience shows you should not have been surprised that you were surprised While writing my history of New Zealand, I wondered about whether it would be possible to assess people’s attitudes before there were surveys. Writers often impose their…
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The EU remains central to New Zealand’s destiny Pundit: 23 December, 2014. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History; Suppose Britain exited the European Union of 28 countries. I am not recommending it; they would probably be worse off economically. Nor am I predicting it, although sometimes politics produces odd outcomes….
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It is one thing being in Opposition complaining about what has happened in government; it is another thing to have a viable policy. Pundit: 3 December, 2014. Keywords: Political Economy & History; It was unfortunate that the first public issue that Andrew Little had to deal with was the Roger Sutton affair. Here was the…
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The election demonstrated deep divisions. Will the next three years make them worse or help heal the rift? And where will the pressure points be? Pundit: 13 October, 2014. Keywords: Political Economy & History; Will we see New Zealanders marching in the streets during the next three years? I don’t mean protests in which the…
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If National can adapt to change, why can’t Labour? Pundit: 7 October, 2014 Keywords: Political Economy & History; Once upon a time National was a party dominated by farmers and their rural base. Its first townie leader, Sid Holland, had to have a farm bought for him in the 1940s, to maintain…
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One of the biggest issues missed during the election campaign was the sustainability of National’s economic, environmental and even social policies. So what do you do if the government’s not thinking long-term? Pundit: 29 September, 2014. Keywords: Environment & Resources; Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History; Social Policy; Behavioural economics is…
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If voters can see the commonality between Labour and the Greens, why can’t political analysts? Pundit: 22 September, 2014 Keywords: Political Economy & History; Most political analysis in New Zealand seems trapped in the two-party winner-takes-all world, or perhaps they are numerically challenged by the number which comes after two. Whichever,…
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On the eve of the election, let’s not forget the influence of ‘dollar-voters’ on the outcome Pundit: 10 September, 2014 Keywords: Political Economy & History; A modern society uses two main ways for regulating its public life; politics and the market. In principle the political ideal is ‘one person, one vote’, whereas markets are driven…
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In the economic contest between communist China. and democratic India what matters is people. Listener: 9 August, 2014 Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Political Economy & History; The debate in the 1950s was whether the Chinese economy would do better than the Indian one. Both countries had become independent in the late 1940s,…
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