Category Archives: Social Policy

Chapter 10: Entitlement and Taxation

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A chapter of Globalisation and Welfare State

Keywords: Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy;

How should social security beneficiary who has some additional income be treated? There are numerous institutional arrangements but for economic purposes the crucial question is summarized in the `effective marginal tax rate’ (EMTR). Consider a beneficiary (or indeed any other person) who obtains an extra dollar of income, perhaps from working, perhaps a return from investments or a private pension. The additional dollar may be taxed, there may be a surcharge, the benefit may be abated or treated as taxable income, some other benefit may be reduced …. The possibilities are numerous. The economist focuses on how much additional income the beneficiary has in the hand (called `disposable’ income because that is what the individual has to spend), irrespective of the institutional arrangement to reduce it. Suppose the amount is X cents (say, 60 cents). Then the EMTR is 100-X percent (e.g. 40 percent). (1)

Chapter 7: Assessing a Poverty Line

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A chapter of Globalisation and Welfare State

Keywords: Distributional Economics; Social Policy;

As Chapter 3 reported, poverty has long been a phenomenon in New Zealand life. Yet in the 1970s poverty research expanded. A poverty income line was established, numbers of people below the line were calculated, some behavioral investigations were undertaken, ethnographic studies increased, and some policy measures were undertaken to reduce the incidence of poverty.

Chapter 6: Gender in the Welfare State

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A chapter of Globalisation and Welfare State

Keywords: Distributional Economics; Labour Studies; Social Policy;

The issue of gender excites a passion which makes dispassionate observation and analysis nigh on impossible. We all have views about how gender relations should be organized, so that any changes are welcomed or a challenged according to those views. The debate is so dominated by judgements of proper relations, it has no understanding of what is happening.

Chapter 3: the Progress Of Poverty

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A chapter of Globalisation and Welfare State

Keywords: Distributional Economics; Social Policy;

Bill Sutch characterized the progress of nineteenth and early twentieth century New Zealand in a book title of Poverty and Progress (and also The Quest for Security).(1) Certainly there was poverty in that period, which was a major driving force for social and institutional change. It would be foolish to compare the hardships of those times with those of today. As we shall see in Interregnum 1, a major development in the 1970s was recognition that poverty was simply an absolute notion of hardship but a relative one, so that rising affluence did not automatically eliminate it. Yet there is much to be learned from the earlier poverty and policy debates.

Chapter 2: Welfare Based on Categories

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A chapter of Globalisation and Welfare State

Keywords: Social Policy;

Gosta Espinger-Anderson characterized the New Zealand welfare state as a `”liberal” welfare state, in which means-tested assistance, or modest universal transfers or modest social-insurance plans predominate.’ (1) He put New Zealand with Australia, the United States, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom, in the most primitive group of the 18 nations he looked at. However his classification procedure was based solely upon entitlements to old-age pensions, sickness benefits, and unemployment insurance, and evaluated under the assumption that contributory systems were superior. Frank Castles argued that this categorization is inappropriate because it does not distinguish between those welfare states which are minimalist (most typically the United States), commonly called `residual’ welfare states, and those like New Zealand and Australia where delivery is more through the labour market and other non-social security mechanisms. (2)

Prologue: A Unique Welfare State – and a Changing One

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A chapter of Globalisation and Welfare State

Keywords: Social Policy;

In a classic study of welfare states, Gosta Espinger-Anderson argued that all rich capitalist countries were welfare states, and that they could be classified into three groups. (1) He categorized New Zealand at that time (i.e. up to 1990), with Australia, in the same group as United States of America. Frank Castles argued vigorously that there are in fact four types of welfare states, because Australia and New Zealand are quite distinctive from the US and Switzerland. He called them `workers’ welfare states’. (2)

Globalization and a Welfare State

This entry was posted in Distributional Economics, Globalisation & Trade, Labour Studies, Regulation & Taxation, Social Policy on by .

Keywords: Distributional Economics; Globalisation & Trade; Labour Studies; Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy;

In 1997 I commenced writing a book Globalization and a Welfare State. I finished about three fifths of the first draft and stopped. This was partly because other matters were using my energies, but also because I felt that the book was too technical and would not find a commercial market in New Zealand. I am putting the book on the website for those people who might be interested in some aspects of its contents.

Fiscal Surplus: Social Deficit:

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Even If the Economy is Doing Well, the People May Not BeListener: 29 November, 1997.

Keywords: Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy;

The table below shows the government’s current spending on employees, goods and services. It does not include spending on transfers such as social security benefits or debt servicing. It includes spending by local government as well as central government. The most important items are health and education, but there is also spending on government administration and advice, on law and order, on the environment, on the arts and so on.

Divided We Stand: An Accord May Not Be Possible, but Progress on Retirement Poli

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Listener 15 November 1997.

Keywords: Social Policy;

That 92 percent of voters rejected the proposed Retirement Superannuation Scheme tells us just how out of touch officials are with the public. Instructed to devise the best possible scheme, they chose a privatisation of New Zealand Superannuation akin to ACT’s 1996 election manifesto proposal. Despite a massive advertising campaign, support barely exceeded the ACT election share, indicating just how ill-advised the proposal was.

Measuring Poverty: Some Problems

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Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, November 1997 (9), p.171-179. (1)

Keywords: Distributional Economics; Social Policy;

While it is easy to be compassionate over the magnitude and situation of the poor, it is not in their interest for researchers to be as equally sentimental in the analysis and measurement of poverty. Estimates which are not developed rigorously may be misleading, and may be so in a way which could be used against the interests of the poor. Where an estimate of the numbers of the poor is overly generous, the resolution of reducing poverty appear excessively expensive, and may delay the facing up to the issues. Wrong assessments of the composition of the poor may result in policy targeting the wrong groups. Thus policies based on faulty data are likely to be inefficient and wasteful, and in the end to be manipulated against the interests of the poor.

Thus it is incumbent on social scientists to scrutinize the work on poverty, to ensure that it is seeking high standards of analytical rigor. A recent paper by Stephens, Waldegrave and Frater (Stephens et al, 1995 – henceforth SWF) provides a useful basis to do this, albeit some of the problems it raises appear elsewhere.

Crisis What Crisis? The Aging Problem Needs to Be Tackled Soberly.

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Listener 6 September 1997

Keywords: Social Policy;

One of the safest rules of politics is that any claim there is a crisis is really an excuse to justify a policy. There may be a problem but, typically, converting it into a “crisis” distorts the analysis, resulting in a twisted policy prescription. Sadly, but not surprisingly, this is true for the current superannuation debate.

The Sweet Hereafter: Will You Be Better off Under RSS?

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Listener 9 August 1997

Keywords: Social Policy;

In this column I assume that the government’s proposed Retirement Savings Scheme (RSS) works the way the government says it will. In which case the RSS is a privatization of the current New Zealand Superannuation (NZS), where instead of the government taking responsibility for the funding, the private sector does, albeit under considerable government regulation.

The Commercialisation Of New Zealand

This entry was posted in Governance, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Political Economy & History, Regulation & Taxation, Social Policy on by .


Auckland University Press, 1997. 288pp.

Well-known economist and commentator Brian Easton describes the origins, theory, history and politics of the dramatic change in economic policy in New Zealand from Robert Muldoon’s interventionism to Roger Douglas’s commercialisation and beyond. It is graphically illustrated with case studies including health, education, broadcasting, environment and heritage, government administration, the labour market, cultural policy and science. Lively broad ranging and controversial, this is a valuable commentary on the ‘more-market’ prevalent in New Zealand from the mid 1980s. (Publisher’s blurb)

Children Of the Poor: How Poverty Could Destroy New Zealand’s Future

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New Zealand Books March 1997, p.14-16.

Keywords: Distributional Economics; Social Policy;

In 1980 the National Government withdrew the government subsidy to CORSO, nominally because it had produced a film which said that there was poverty in New Zealand. Sixteen years later a National Prime Minister was arguing what kind of poverty and how extensive it is, while the Treasury Briefing to the Incoming Government 1996 even tried to measure the extent of poverty (they called it “hardship”) although, as we shall see, not very well.

from Welfare State to Civil Society: (review)

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Towards Welfare that Works in New Zealand by David Green.
First published in New Zealand Books Issue 23, June 1996, as “The Bankruptcy of the New Fundamentalism”. Republished in Under Review: A Selection from New Zealand Books 1991-1996 (ed Lauris Edmond, Harry Ricketts & Bill Sewell) p.179-184.

Keywords: Social Policy;

In Making a Difference, Ruth Richardson says that she was “more likely than Jim [Bolger] to talk about the [1991] benefit cuts in moralistic terms.” Leaving aside the fragging of her prime minister, which seems to be one of the main purposes of her auto-hagiography, there is an interest in what the ex-minister of finance meant by “moralistic terms”. I think she means, for Richardson finds it easier to claim the high ground than to climb it, that dependency on the state is wrong, although the fog descends as we try to unravel what she thinks is right. In practice she was not so much on a hilltop, but on a wharf surrounded by people struggling in the water almost afloat by state owned lifebuoys. Her strategy is to withdraw the public buoyancy. She seems delighted to see a handful of the survivors learning to swim, while the sinking rest are ignored. This morality, which costs the moralist nothing, is complicated by policies which make it more difficult to climb onto the wharf: fearsomely high effective marginal tax rates on the poor (which the moralist’s policies raised), and rising unemployment (for there were 10 percent more unemployed when she left office than when she began it, plus higher disguised unemployment).

Risky Retirement

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What You Get Out is What You Put in is A Worrying Principle for A Retiement Scheme.
Listener: 4 May, 1996.

Keywords: Social Policy;

When I began preparing this column the political party ACT had a well established policy, based on principles with which if one did not agree, at least one could understand. They have since changed their leader who has announced that parts of the policy would be changed to make them electorally attractive. Thus far their policy on retirement has not been altered, but it may be. However I am more interested in the principles. Because the ACT proposal is (or was) the most extreme scheme, it nicely illustrates key issues.

The External Impact on the Family Firm

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This was a Draft Chapter for Report on the Family and Societal Change Programme project which was never published. (March 1996)

Keywords: Globalisation & International Trade; Labour Studies; Social Policy;

Introduction

The internal activities of and relationships within a firm (or other economic agency such as a government department), are heavily influenced by the external pressures on the firm. As the case studies in the next four chapters will show the three firms and one government department have experienced major changes inside them, especially in terms of the industrial relations and its impact on the family life of workers. To understand the pressures for these internal changes we need to provide a context of the changes in the firm’s external environment.