Brian Easton

Paper to the Unichem-Life Pharmacy Conference, Rotorua, 31 August 2003.

Keywords: Health;

You might expect an economist to focus on the state of public spending on health. Certainly were I the minister of finance I would. Indeed in a recent speech Michael Cullen expressed some dismay because since 1996 we have been increasing health spending faster than GDP and yet the problem of inadequate health funding appears unresolved.

Extended families, who happen to have a common Maori ancestor, have as much right to their family inheritance as do Europeans.
Listener: 23 August, 2003.

A fundamental principle of the political right has been to support private-property rights as a bulwark against the power of the state. Economists have added that economies with well-protected private-property rights tend to have higher standards of living, because economic actors are able to plan with more security. The 1980s Labour government thought this so important that it strengthened private-property rights by such policies as privatisation, leading many to assume that it had shifted to the political right.

Listener: 16 August, 2002

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

Joseph Stiglitz may be the most important economist outside government in today’s world. He first came to notice as the editor of the collected works of Paul Samuelson, the second most important economist of the 20th century. Stiglitz went on to innovate in economic theory (receiving a Nobel Prize in 2001 in the economics of information), write a number of major textbooks and hold positions in many major universities. From 1993 he served on Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, going on to work in the World Bank in 1997. In 2000 he was forced out by a US administration who found his criticisms of them and the International Monetary Fund uncomfortable.

How seriously should we take the argument that higher taxes equal lower growth?

Listener: 9 August, 2003

Keywords: Regulation & Taxation;

New Zealand economics is bedevilled by slavishly imitating inappropriate overseas analyses. A nice example of this colonial cringe is the Business Roundtable’s annual celebration of “Tax Freedom Day”, the day on which they deem that we have paid our taxes with all our subsequent income tax-free. This year it said that it was somewhere between April 23 and May 17. (It has difficulties deciding what are taxes.)

Listener: 9 August, 2003.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

With sex no longer secret, we move on to the mysteries of corporations and their couplings with governments. Investigative journalists, among whom American Greg Palast is exceptional, today lift the curtains from the corporate bedroom windows. This book describes his recent investigations.