‘Not in Narrow Seas’ identifies six hinges. This presentation focuses on whether we are at another hinge. Perhaps that is the last part of the book although the Covid Crisis occurred after the book went to the printer. We use its historical insights to understand the present.
Economics Column: New Zealand Herald, 19 Jume 2020. These are historic times we are living through, so there is illumination, and some comfort, to be derived from contemplating our history. A richly informative contribution to that is Brian Easton’s latest book Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand . It is…
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’Not in Narrow Seas’, published by VUP, was released to bookshops in the week of May 23. Here are some web-based items on the book.
That William Soltau Davidson does not appear more prominently in our general histories reflects their neglect of the central role of farming.
An edited extract from Brian Easton’s new book ‘Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand’.
Published in The VUP Home Reader 2020 p.131-143
To be published by Victoria University Press in May 2020 Here is the publisher’s announcement. Here is the publisher’s description of the author.
A Conversation with My Country by Alan Duff
Bob Scott Lecture Series on Inequality, 25 June 2019. (See also Have We Abandoned the Egalitarian Society?) What I want to do this evening is examine egalitarianism. In particular, New Zealand is a less egalitarian society today than it was when I was growing up in the 1950s. Why? How? The structure of the paper…
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A discussion on ‘Nights’ with Bryan Crump. 28 May, 2019 The audio is here. See also here.
Justin Gregory’s “Eyewitness” account of the 1996 Wool Price Shock used a lot of material from me. Here is the audio. I’ve republished the text (which is a little different in structure) to enable the search facility on the website to be used. If you’d asked them at the start of the year, most Kiwis…
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This was submitted to a British news publication in late December, but was not published. Brexit is a great puzzle to New Zealanders. Britain and New Zealand are affectionate cousins with common ancestors back in the nineteenth century. We have gone our own ways; even so we have views of the other’s ways. New Zealand’s…
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Dale Husband | May 15, 2018 This was published in e-tangata. Brian Easton is a 75-year-old economist, statistician, academic, historian, columnist, and author. For much of his career, he’s made a specialty of explaining to New Zealanders what’s going right and what’s going wrong in our economy. In his latest book, Heke Tangata, which was commissioned…
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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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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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