Do residential care workers deserve the big pay increase they are getting? The recent historic pay equity deal for aged and residential care workers raises a tricky clash between quite different accounts of how the economy should work. Many people think that workers should be paid at a rate that reflects their social worth; others…
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The report of the Productivity Commission on the Tertiary Education Sector “New Models of Tertiary Education” is complacent. The report observes that in the decade from 2001 to 2011, the ratio of non-academic and academic staff in the public tertiary educational system rose from about equal to six non-academics to five academics. In fact the number…
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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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Are Labour’s proposals for the changing the way the Reserve Bank operates sensible or nutty (as nutty as the current legislation)? Section 8 of the 1964 Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act stated that ‘monetary policy of the Government … shall be directed to the maintenance and promotion of economic and social welfare in New…
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Past policies of banging on about economic growth have failed. A new report argues we should strategise differently with more comprehensive goals. The response by some regional leaders to Julian Wood’s Growing Beyond Growth: Rethinking the Goals of Regional Development while not unexpected was so typical of much public policy discussion. They had not read (or understood)…
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Extracted from a paper delivered to Wellington South Rotary; 22 March 1. The US is No Longer The International Hegemon There have been only two global hegemons – states with political, economic and military predominance or control over all others.. One was Britain in the nineteenth century. It was replaced by the US from about…
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How do New Zealand’s university departments rank internationally? Once a year the QS World University Rankings on individual subject areas are published. This reports on the 2017 rankings for 46 subjects. Each of the subject rankings is compiled using four sources. The first two are QS’s global surveys of academics and employers, which are used to assess…
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A recent government report projects huge increases in employment but at least 72 percent of those jobs are to go to immigrants. I was a bit startled by a report recently released by the Ministry of Business Industry and Employment which forecast an extra 480,000 jobs over the next ten years. Those with a memory will recall…
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Regrettably, the government’s recent announcements on the public provision for retirement have added to the uncertainty the young face. The Government’s announced proposal to raise the age of eligibility for New Zealand Superannuation (NZS) is a real botch job. I’ll leave others to write about the political botch; here the focus is on the policy….
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This is a follow up ‘Brentry: How New Zealand Coped’, setting out some of the challenges which face New Zealand today. The strategic view that Britain needs to be in the EU remains universal among New Zealand strategists. However the Leaves did not vote geopolitically but on domestic considerations including, apparently, resentment of immigration and…
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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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Big data can be used for good and it can be used for evil. Some recent public research illustrates the former but there are doubts about some private uses. It is not generally realised that Statistics New Zealand has a large research database – the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) – containing microdata about people and households from…
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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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Far too much public commentary on wealth inequality obscures what is actually is going on. This column is a grump about the poor quality of public discourse. It is illustrated by the recent outburst over the distribution of wealth in New Zealand and some rather inept public responses to the recent re-publication of some data,…
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What can we learn about health care systems and the US from the muddle that America is getting into over Obamacare? Donald Trump is not particularly interested in policy. When he promised to replace Obamacare – the current US health system – with something which would be better, he was responding to the conflicting demands…
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International comparisons suggest that New Zealand secondary students are not doing well. It may even be that recent policy measures have worsened their performance. The 2015 results for the triennial OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) evaluation were reported just before Christmas so they did not get much coverage. We need to think about…
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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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A recent decision by New Zealand on Air in response to the changing media technologies raises a range of issues about how the platforms are used. The announcement by New Zealand on Air that it was changing its mode of funding is a reminder of the current turmoil in the media from the convergence of…
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