Monthly Archives: March 1997

Capital Cattle: Are Today’s Students Being Milked by the Older Generation?

This entry was posted in Education, Listener on by .

Listener 29 March 1997.

Keywords: Education

Funding of tertiary education has changed dramatically from the days when virtually any eligible young person could go to university or a polytech mainly at the taxpayers expense. The new policy has been justified by “human capital theory”, which treats expenditure on education as if it is an investment which only enhances the student’s earning power. The commercial logic is people make private investment decisions about their education, deciding whether to go and which course to take, on the basis of the return to their income. There should be no public subsidies to distort their decisions.

A Permanent Revolution?

This entry was posted in Political Economy & History on by .

Revised version of lecture in the Stout Centre Seminar series “After the Revolution?”, 26 March, 1997, New Zealand Studies, July 1997, p.30-36.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

It is over twelve years since the beginning of the revolution of the “commercialisation of New Zealand”.[1] Twelve years after the fall of the Bastille the French revolution was over, and Napoleon ruled. Twelve years after the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian revolution was over and Stalin had expelled Trotsky and Buhkarin. Neither country returned to a period of some sort of normality, but nor was there the view that the revolution was incomplete, and needed to be progressed.

Profit or Public Good: There Is Logic to Roger Kerr’s Views on Business Respon

This entry was posted in Business & Finance, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Listener on by .

Listener 15 March, 1997

keywords Business Economics & Finance; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy

This column agrees with Roger Kerr, the executive director of the Business Roundtable, that “we should not confuse corporate social responsibility with gestures such as saving endangered species or sponsoring Christmas concerts in the park. If they are honest, most businesses that make these efforts admit they do to add value to their firm or brand.”

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

This entry was posted in Distributional Economics, Social Policy on by .

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.

Twist and Shrink:

This entry was posted in Listener, Macroeconomics & Money on by .

Australia’s Experience of A High External Deficit Has Relevance Here.
Listener: 1 March, 1997.

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

John Edwards, adviser to the Paul Keating when he was Australian Treasurer and Prime Minister, is far too uncritical of his former boss to make his Keating: The Inside Story a great biography. But if the book lacks insight into Keating’s persona, Edwards – an economist and currently Chief Economist for Société Générale in Sydney – provides a fascinating account of the economic policy making.