Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, October 16th, 2016 - 31 comments
Hickey in The Herald on Sunday: “Our household debt to income ratio of 165 per cent is now about 5 per cent above those previous highs of 2008 and rising quickly as debt rises around twice as fast as incomes.”
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, September 20th, 2016 - 54 comments
Paul Romer is an economist highly respected by his peers, and about to become the Chief Economist at the World Bank. He’s also just published a paper rubbishing the last 3 decades of macroeconomics.
Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times is challenging fractional reserve banking. It’s certainly time for some new ideas.
Written By: - Date published: 1:22 pm, August 26th, 2016 - 10 comments
Robertson: “What is the economic paradigm that will meet the challenge of world of less secure work, more automation?”
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, August 19th, 2016 - 122 comments
New Zealand is slowly losing faith with this Government and this is why.
Written By: - Date published: 8:05 am, August 15th, 2016 - 30 comments
Our wages are too low generally, and this is one of the main economic challenges that we face. A few more employers committing to paying a living wage would be a good place to start.
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, August 14th, 2016 - 55 comments
An elegant graph explains why free trade is a good thing, but why it is causing a backlash in rich “Western” countries.
Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, August 12th, 2016 - 91 comments
Reprinted with permission, by Deborah Russell from Left Side Story: What do New Zealanders actually earn? And why we need to understand these figures.
Written By: - Date published: 12:46 pm, August 11th, 2016 - 88 comments
Until we sort out our housing and unemployment problems it is surely time to reign in NZ’s currently record levels of immigration.
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, August 11th, 2016 - 28 comments
The Reserve Bank just cut the OCR to a historic low of 2%. And no it’s not good (economic) news.
Written By: - Date published: 7:54 am, August 8th, 2016 - 69 comments
Globalisation is facing a popular revolt. Economist Joseph Stiglitz explains why.
Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, August 5th, 2016 - 35 comments
In a sign of just how stressed our economy is: “Inland Revenue is chasing employers for unpaid KiwiSaver contributions worth tens of millions of dollars.”
Written By: - Date published: 7:12 am, August 1st, 2016 - 190 comments
When the Auckland housing bubble bursts a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money. They won’t be able to say they weren’t warned.
Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, July 29th, 2016 - 25 comments
The Herald (Liam Dann) had a Terminator themed piece on the future of work yesterday. If only there was a party that was thinking about these long term issues!
Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, July 24th, 2016 - 23 comments
Rod Oram’s Sunday Star-Times, reprinted on Facebook here, adds yet another voice to the chorous of economic warnings: “Our Road Runner economy is zooming towards the cliff-edge”…
Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, July 15th, 2016 - 23 comments
The fiction that National is doing a competent job of managing the economy is entirely due, now that the boom from Dairy and Christchurch rebuilding is ending, to immigration and rising house prices.
They are now riding a bolting horse that they cannot dismount, caused by their own inaction.
Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, June 22nd, 2016 - 149 comments
It’s basically flat-lining – only partially animated by immigration and a housing bubble.
Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, June 14th, 2016 - 136 comments
Scientists and experts have been knowingly understating the unfolding climate change catastrophe to governments and decision makers. Why? For the sake of what is “politically palatable”.
Written By: - Date published: 10:26 am, June 12th, 2016 - 133 comments
Hickey: “Helping employers to bring in low-skilled migrants instead of investing in new technology and becoming more productive so they can pay local workers more is essentially stunting our productivity and real GDP per capita.”
Written By: - Date published: 1:55 pm, May 29th, 2016 - 30 comments
“It is possible to live in a society with a world view that does not include empire”
– Winona LaDuke
Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, May 27th, 2016 - 31 comments

— Deborah Russell
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, May 26th, 2016 - 84 comments
Live coverage of the budget starts around 2pm.
Well that was boring.
Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, May 26th, 2016 - 20 comments
Budget day! Here’s a little light reading to get us started. Write your own line for the budget!
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, May 19th, 2016 - 21 comments
Small: “Only this week Prime Minister John Key managed to spend one, save it and outline a plan to give it back to taxpayers all at the same time.”
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, April 28th, 2016 - 122 comments
Add it to our record debt, our record pollution, our record housing unaffordability, our rising inequality, our terrible carbon emissions…
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, April 20th, 2016 - 21 comments
The global economy has been stuck in an ongoing crisis since 2008. Printing more money won’t fix it, but it looks like we’re going to try it anyway.
Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, April 16th, 2016 - 57 comments
Brighter Future. Cusp of Something Special. Tell it to the newly jobless.
Written By: - Date published: 7:17 am, April 14th, 2016 - 72 comments
Our “business leaders” are doing an objectively poor job. Perhaps instead of insulting Kiwi workers as “pretty damned hopeless”, Bill English should be taking aim at these captains of industry.
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, April 1st, 2016 - 221 comments
Imperator Fish warns us of the terrifying cost of Labour’s UBI.
It’s even worse than you think.
Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, March 27th, 2016 - 200 comments
Bernard Hickey makes some excellent points on the Unconditional Basic Income / Guaranteed Minimum Income.
Written By: - Date published: 7:32 am, March 26th, 2016 - 167 comments
National’s only idea this term has just been shot down by the public. Meanwhile Labour has been thinking about the future and the issues that confront NZ.
Written By: - Date published: 3:05 pm, March 23rd, 2016 - 69 comments
Labour’s Future of Work Conference is under way. There is a page with information and live stream here.
Looking to the future – planning to adapt and protect people – this is work a government should be doing. In this case, a government in waiting…
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