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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The more one is certain about the state of an economy, the more one is likely to be wrong; the more one is certain about the state of an economy, the greater the media coverage. No wonder the public is confused. I shan’t add to the confusion. In quick summary, the New Zealand’s economic growth…
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How Much of New Zealand Has to Be Owned and Controlled by Foreigners? This year is the fortieth anniversary of the founding of CAFCA – the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa – a Christchurch-based, but national, activist organisation. It ‘promotes the concept of an independent Aotearoa based on policies of economic, military and political…
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This was an introduction to a presentation by Stephen Jacobi: “TPP – Where to from Here (And How Did We Get Here Anyway)?” To a NZIIA lecture, 2 September 2015. (Some editing) It was suggested I first say a few words about the context in which the TPP and other trade negotiations are occurring. At…
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The flag debate tells us something about the quality of design in New Zealand I am not going to tell you about the right choice for New Zealand’s flag. That would invalidate the point of the column. Certainly I shall vote for one; much of my response will be an instinctive opinion. What I shall…
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Also notes for Radio NZ Nights with Brian Crump: 11 August, 2014 The indications are that economic growth is slowing down from the boom rates of the last few years. The slowdown may turn into a contraction – that is, output may fall. There is a view that the contraction began in the middle of 2015. (It is…
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Trust Us? If you think you know what has been going on with the TPP, you have not been following closely enough. However, here are a few matters for clarification. Trade negotiations used to be like the following. Japan wants better access to the US market for the cars it produces, while the US wants…
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Allow me to share a puzzle. Public sector outsourcing (a.k.a. ‘contracting out’) has been increasing in recent decades. It is not the same as ‘privatisation’ because the government retains the role as a funder but it outsources the task to a private provider – which may be a corporation or non-government organisation. A recent prominent…
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Fracking has changed the energy outlook, with major geopolitical implications About a decade ago, there was much concern about ‘peak oil’ – that the production of oil would peak and then fall off quickly leaving the world’s transport system stranded. The idea is really an extension of the two hundred year old insight of Thomas…
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Whatever the answer, what are we going to do about it? Steven Joyce, Minister of Economic Development and most other economic things, was hardly helpful when he dismissed talk of an economic recession on a recent TV3 The Nation on Saturday. Economists outside officialdom can guess what his officials were generally telling him. It probably…
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Whatever the answer, what are we going to do about it? Steven Joyce, Minister of Economic Development and most other economic things, was hardly helpful when he dismissed talk of an economic recession on a recent TV3 The Nation on Saturday. Economists outside officialdom can guess what his officials were generally telling him. It probably…
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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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Recent publications suggest that the children who live at the bottom in economies with high inequality have reduced life chances. The grandfather of modern distributional research is Tony Atkinson, a British economist who began in the 1960s a lifetime career studying the British and world income distributions and other related ones. He has been described…
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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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Should membership of Kiwisaver be compulsory? Research, some of it thirty years old, points in that direction. The current debate over the future of Kiwisaver is largely bereft of developments in economics over the last thirty or so years. Rather the frame has been an approach to human behaviour which we know does not reflect…
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The US senate has given trade promotion authority to the President. What next? Will the TPP agreement be acceptable, and to whom? Unfortunately trade negotiations are riddled with acronyms. I have listed the ones used here at the end of the article. The US Senate has finally passed the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). This is…
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The 2015 Budget did not deal with children’s poverty but it did put a down payment. (This is based on a presentation to a Child Poverty Action Group Post-budget Breakfast.) The budget begins by identifying five ‘fiscal priorities’. Three are about the fiscal deficit and the track of the fiscal debt, one is about ACC…
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There is a lot of chatter about the government’s budget deficit but, politics aside, why does it matter? Rob Muldoon famously remarked that the typical New Zealander would not know a budget deficit if he or she tripped over it in the street. Knowing a little bit about it I have puzzled as to how…
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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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