Wealth’s Political Stealth
The work of economist and social philosopher James Buchanan (1919-2013) came to prominence in the mid-1980s when he was awarded the Economics Prize in honour of Alfred Nobel and when his thinking was...
View ArticlePressures to be Selfish
When I looked at James Buchanan’s theory of public choice, I was struck by how it reflected an American institutional setting; Our political system is different. Even so, our colonial mentality meant...
View ArticleAn Alternative to Neoliberalism?
Are we at a turning point in our politics? I don’t mean whether we have a new government. That is a matter for the voters; the polls say that either they are very volatile or that the polls are very...
View ArticlePolitics Makes Strange Bedfellows
Summary (which is less numerically challenging)read more
View ArticleIn Praise of Public Servants
Steven Joyce, National’s campaign manager, must have thought he had Labour out cold when he claimed that its spending plans announced during the election were enormous and unsustainable. He proved to...
View ArticleWhy Voters Will Be Disappointed by the Election Outcome.
This paper tries to evaluate various coalitions on the basis of their political ideologies. It uses the scores given to parties by the TVNZ website Vote-Compass, which identifies two dimensions:...
View ArticleSue Bradford: Constant Radical
My first memory of Sue Bradford is of the feisty speech she gave to the 1984 Economic Summit Conference pleading that a greater commitment be given to the people she worked with – those on the margins...
View ArticlePast Rationality: Th 2017 Nobel Award for Economics
Good science is essentially a subversive activity. Most scientists work within the existing paradigm – the framework of the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology commonly accepted by the...
View ArticleWhither Coalition Government?
The public understanding of election outcomes remains dominated by a misunderstood account of the old electoral system which was not based on proportional representation. One commentator said...
View ArticleHow Have We Changed?
Prime Minister Jacinda Arden is younger than any member of the outgoing National cabinet and is the youngest in the new one, even if you include the Greens. In contrast, Deputy Prime Minister Winston...
View ArticleHow to Have More Coherent and Directed Child Policy and Support Services.
One of the successes of the fourth Labour (Lange-Douglas) Government was the restructuring of the scattered environmental responsibilities of the bureaucracy into three agencies: the Ministry for the...
View ArticleReducing Child Poverty
Over forty years ago, researchers identified that children and their families were bulk of the poor It was not possible to do this earlier because there was not the data. The Muldoon Government began...
View ArticleHow far right is New Zealand?
Ben Mack’s ‘How the far right is poisoning New Zealand’ was such a distorted account of New Zealand politics that it was initially considered satire.read more
View ArticleRemembering Holodomor; The Great Ukrainian Famine
The fourth Saturday in each November is Holodomor Remembrance Day which recalls the great Ukrainian famine of 1932-3 in which 2.4m to 7m died in a population of about 30m. The intensity of the distress...
View ArticleTrade Deals are about Winners AND Losers
Economics students have ‘comparative advantage’ drummed into them. The intuition seems commonsense; specialise in what you (or the country) do well and exchange the surplus for what you are not as good...
View ArticleWhat is Central Banking Really About?
During Graeme Wheeler’s five-year term as the Governor of the Reserve Bank (RBNZ), consumer prices rose 1.05 per cent annually.read more
View ArticleIs Another Global Fiscal Crisis Imminent?
Niall Ferguson is known for his provocative, contrarian views and a number of books, including The Ascent of Money. I am not in a position to judge him as a historian – although a chair at Harvard is...
View ArticleSocial Investment is Fashionable at the Moment.
Once upon a time, say 80 years ago back in the days of the First Labour government, ‘social investment’ referred to the government spending, including on education, health and children, which in the...
View ArticleWhat is New with the HYEFU?
Each December, six months after the budget, the Treasury reports on the state of the economy and the government accounts. Since the August Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update nothing much has...
View ArticleThe Fallacy of the Uniformed Celebrity Opinion
Bill Gallagher (he’s a knight), chief executive of the Gallagher Group, claimed that the ‘Treaty [of Waitangi] papers on display at Te Papa were fraudulent documents’ as well as making other...
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