Why does the Left hang together and the Right hang separately?
Listener 29 November, 2003.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
Despite it being 10 years since a referendum committed New Zealand to MMP, many commentators still think in terms of the old winner-takes-all (WTA) regime. They suggested that voters were illogical because in last year’s election Labour won more of the list vote in many National-won seats. But seats are still won on a WTA basis, so the shrewd elector –– apparently smarter than many commentators –– gave their electorate vote to the least objectionable front-runner. So those who were anti-Labour tended to vote National.
This is a much longer version of a review published in New Zealand Economic Papers, 37(1), December 2003 295-302.
Keywords: Governance; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;
Treasury Secretary from 1986 to 1993, Graham Scott, got it quite wrong when he said shortly after the 1987 election, ‘I’m interested in getting back to the old money-bags role, what Treasury did in the nineteenth century – the core of the finance ministry is its old functions. That’s our knitting.’ Historian Malcolm McKinnon is too polite to point out this is another example of an ahistorical economist misrepresenting the past. Except by his writing a history of the Treasury.
Listener 15 November, 2003.
Keywords: Social Policy;
In 1998 our life expectancy at 65 was 17.6 years, so over half those who go onto New Zealand superannuation pass their 80th birthday. In 1898, when the much less generous Old Age Pension was introduced, life expectancy at the 65-year-old age of eligibility was 13 years. Over the century the average life expectancy at 65 has increased by almost five years. Can the state pension be as relatively generous as longevity increases?
Listener: 1 November, 2003.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Does it strike you as odd that we drink wine and eat cheeses from Europe and yet New Zealand exports them there? Or that Germans drive Renaults and the French drive Volkswagens? The phenomenon puzzled economists, too. Renaults and Volkswagens are different cars, but they are not that different. Neither the German nor French economies would collapse if they could not import cars: perhaps local manufacturers would make the foreign models, although substantial economies of scale keep the costs of this specialisation down (and diminishing costs of distance make the inter-regional trade possible). Consumers would be only marginally worse off.
