Equivocation and dissembling have been integral parts of political life. How should we judge them? Among the sinners the drunk porter in Macbeth welcomes into hell is the ‘equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale’. Equivocation is a theme of the play; Shakespeare is thought to have been influenced by the…
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With most parties having announced their lists for the next election, we need to think about how the system works. As some day it may happen that an MP must be found They’re put upon the list – I’ve got a little list Of political offenders who are always safe and sound And who never…
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Jenny Shipley says the middle class has captured the welfare state. But did she understand what the welfare state actually meant before she began attacking it? In her interview with Guy Espiner, Jenny Shipley regretted that the ‘middle class’ were still beneficiaries of the welfare state. Now the term ‘class’ is a summary of a…
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Managing the government’s fiscal deficit need not mean cutting social expenditure. An economic Austerian is someone who advocates cutting government spending, particularly social expenditures, in order to eliminate a government’s fiscal deficits. (The name is a portmanteau of ‘austerity’ and ‘Austrian’ from the neoliberal ‘Austrian School of Economics’.) While Austerian policies are currently most evidently…
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AUT Briefing Papers May 16, 2018 The neologism ‘Austerian’ is a portmanteau of ‘austerity’ and ‘Austrian’ (School of Economics). It became extensively used after the Global Financial Crisis. It describes the policies of those countries which had to restrain public and private spending because lenders were unwilling to provide the funds for their budget deficits….
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If Jim Bolger now opposes Ruthanasia, why did he preside over its implementation? I quite understand Jim Bolger’s rejection of neo-liberalism. Bolger is an active Catholic (as is Bill English); neoliberal ideology is a long way from Catholic social teaching. Ironically, there was a Papal Encyclical, Centesimus Annus, in 1991 as Bolger presided over the neoliberal policies…
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This is based on a note that I prepared for a journalist. It is a lead into the next column which is on ‘Brexit: How New Zealand Might Cope’. New Zealand has an unusual situation in the world economy. Despite being among the affluent economies, its success is vitally dependent upon the export of some…
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Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade— A breath can make them, as a breath has made:…
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Although completed a decade ago, Tony Judt’s history of postwar Europe presaged some of the challenges that it faces today. Shortly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, one of our greatest contemporary historians Tony Judt resolved to write a book to sort his thinking out. It took fifteen years, but the resulting Postwar:…
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Economists and policy analysts have paid insufficient attention to the distributional consequences of change. Hence the rise of the angries. In order to get to this column’s conclusion I am going to recall a little of my scholarly journey. When I came back from England in 1970, I looked around for a research area. Distributional…
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How does a post-truth world work? Some psychological findings may be useful. (The Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘post-truth’ is ‘Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’ The Dictionary labelled it the word of the year 2016.) This columnist is…
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Your In-tray is piled high. Dear Bill, I recall when you first entered Parliament 26 years ago, it was widely thought you were prime-ministerial material. You’ve made it. Congratulations. National was going through the extremist phase of Ruthanasia and Jennicide at the time. You were marked as someone who came from the great National progressive…
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Could the alienated grumpies have a greater effect on New Zealand political life? This was written before John Key announced his resignation. Other than perhaps the tense I think there is no need for revision. Unfortunately most analysis on the American elections focuses on who voted but, as Bob Chapman pointed out, the Non-Vote Party…
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The alienated Angries who supported Brexit and Trump are not going to go away. If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. Arch-imperialist Rudyard Kipling’s bitter couplet, written shortly after the death of his son at Loos in September 1915, is an alternative view…
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Paper to the Fabian Society, 12 October, 2016 While we continue to chew over the carcass of the Fourth Labour Government – the Lange-Douglas one – we pay little attention to the subsequent Fifth Labour Government. Yet the Clark-Cullen one is greatly shaping the current Labour Opposition and the current National Government. It will,…
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Our nearest neighbour, New Caledonia, has a very different political economy. Will it vote for full independence from France in 2018 – also leaving the European Union? New Zealand shares a continent with the European Union. Admittedly 93 percent of Zealandia is submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean but at its most north-western are the islands…
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In too many areas the government is avoiding taking policy decisions. When it has to its panic measures are knee-jerk and quick-fix. Just nine years ago, John Key, then leader of the opposition, spoke to the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Contractors Federation about housing affordability which he described then as a ‘crisis reached…
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Too much of pop-economics is misleading to the point close to being lying. No wonder there is a widespread rejection of it by the populace. Journalists and other populisers get away with an economics which does not quite lie, but is often very misleading. This applies to Brexit, but let’s start off with the TPPA…
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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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