The Shift To A More Socially Responsible Economic Policy Is Also Supported by Public Opnion – With Real Political Implications.
Listener Cover Story: 25 March 2000
Keywords: Political Economy & History; Social Policy
The success of Rogernomics depended on New Zealanders changing their beliefs. Reforming economic and political institutions would not have been enough. People also had to think about governing the economy in quite different ways. The rhetoric of the reformers was that New Zealand had been a “nanny state” that did everything for its people. New circumstances and a poor economic performance (So they claimed) required a greater reliance on private enterprise and a major reduction in the range of activities of the state. New Zealanders had to reject their dependence on nanny and take greater responsibility for themselves.
Listener: 18March, 2000.
Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy
Of course there were economists before Adam Smith (1723-1790) but he was the first to offer a reasonably comprehensive account of economic behaviour, founding the “classical” school of economics with its concern of how economies grow. His Wealth of Nations, published in 1776 on the eve of the American Revolution (which he supported), is a book which people quote rather than read, so its richness, its humanity and its subtlety tends to be lost. Smith, a professor of moral philosophy, later customs collector (and not as endeared to free trade as one might think), was a close friend of David Hume (1711-1776) who was also a Scottish philosopher and economist.
Paper to a Seminar at the Department of Oncology, King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Riyadh, on Tuesday 10 Dhu Al Qadah (15 February 2000).
Keywords Health, Regulation
Introduction (1)
There is a huge body of evidence that the smoking of tobacco shortens life expectancy and damages health before that. Many western nations, including New Zealand, have therefore taken measures to reduce and eliminate smoking. They have been largely successfully both in terms of reducing the quantity of tobacco consumed and tobacco induced morbidity and mortality, although there is a considerable lag between the reduction in consumption and the reduction in disease. In another group of countries, typically the poorer ones, tobacco consumption levels are low in most social groups. However there are fears that with increases in discretionary incomes and more persuasive marketing by the international tobacco companies smoking will increase to levels as high as the peaks that occurred recently in Western nations a generation ago. Between these two groups of nations are those whose smoking has already reached peak Western levels, but have not yet taken measures to reduce them. They are, in effect, a generation behind the Western nations in terms of when they began smoking and also when the smoking induced disease becomes evident. The best documented is Japan, but some Middle East countries may belong to this category.
Landfall, No 199, March 2000, p.54-55.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
The editor of Landfall invited submissions of 500 words to identify the most important event to influence (in this case) the New Zealand economy in the twentieth century.
The twentieth century New Zealand economy was shaped by its ability to ship refrigerated products to Britain. Its beginnings might be symbolised by the Dunedin leaving Port Chalmers on 15 February 1882 with the first cargo of frozen meat for London. Barriers to trading at a distance were significantly reduced. New Zealand was no longer confined to a low-density population on extensive sheep stations – a Falklands of the South Pacific – as the depletables which sustained the nineteenth century economy seals, whales, native timber, gold, other minerals -were exhausted. Now there was the possibility of a sustainable settlement based on family-owned farms of crossbred sheep or dairy cattle, supporting towns and, later, cities.
Health Issues, No 62, March 2000, p.27-30.
Keywords: Health;
We may be approaching a time in which we can have an honest discussion on how to fund the health system. The public discussion has been rarely so in the last decade, because too often there is a hidden ideological agenda advocating private funding – of privatisation.
Listener 4 March, 2000
Keywords: Education; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;
Last year, some of the media gave extensive coverage to claims that Lyprinol would cure cancer, even though the drug had never been tested on humans. How could some journalists, trained to be sceptical of outrageous claims and miracles, have let themselves be so mislead? Perhaps it reflects that far too many New Zealanders are fundamentally anti-science. As the post-election briefing of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology reported, we are interested in scientific discoveries and new technologies (of which our uptake seems to be among the world’s fastest). But we have no understanding of the scientific method, of how science comes to its conclusions.
