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Keith Rankin
Political Economist, Scoop Columnist
Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s.
Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like.
Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
Keith Rankin - Latest News [Page 1]
Ancient Ancestry, Israel And Palestine
Wednesday, 25 September 2024, 6:16 pm | Keith Rankin
Why cannot these Levantine people just settle with each other, create a post-apartheid liberal secular state in which all races & religions are constitutionally equal, & compensate the descendants of the dispossessed for the loss of their land? And More >>
Outremer In Palestine: Lessons From The Twelfth Century
Tuesday, 20 August 2024, 6:41 pm | Keith Rankin
If we see Israel as a settler-colonial proxy for its Christian patron, the United States of America, then the current events in the Holy Land can very much be understood as a post-medieval Crusade. More >>
A Personal Tax Credit (PTC) Of $150 For New Zealand
Thursday, 15 August 2024, 5:45 pm | Keith Rankin
My proposal is to pay a personal tax credit of $150 per week to every New Zealand resident aged over 18. More >>
Department Of Mum And Dad
Wednesday, 14 August 2024, 6:00 pm | Keith Rankin
The principal private source of income support for young adults is the Department of Mum and Dad. (The second most important source of private income support is charity; the third most important source is begging and other forms of recipient-initiated ... More >>
Political Crisis In Bangladesh: Lessons For Aotearoa New Zealand
Tuesday, 6 August 2024, 4:48 pm | Keith Rankin
History is history, warts and all; that dictum applies to all identity groups. More >>
Tax Cuts: 1982 And 2024
Wednesday, 31 July 2024, 4:12 pm | Keith Rankin
The official context here is that the income tax scale has been subject to 'bracket creep', meaning that average tax rates have increased because of rising price levels; bracket creep benefits the government's coffers at the expense of wage workers. More >>
Peter Turchin's "End Times"; Some Comments
Friday, 26 July 2024, 10:42 am | Keith Rankin
The essence of the structural-dynamic model is the alternation of integrative and disintegrative long-phases of nation's histories. And, from his earlier work, there's a strong sense that civilisations go through three of four of these alternations ... More >>
Is Inflation Really Too High?
Tuesday, 23 July 2024, 2:19 pm | Keith Rankin
What New Zealand was experiencing earlier this decade was a spike in cost increases resulting from the Covid19 pandemic and from the Russia-Ukraine war. That's not inflation. It was just costs incurred which humanity had to absorb. More >>
New Zealand's Joe (Biden/Ward) Moment
Tuesday, 16 July 2024, 5:34 pm | Keith Rankin
Joseph Ward's 'Biden moment' bisected 1925 to 1933 period, enabling 1929 and most of 1930 to be relatively good years for New Zealand in the midst of a disastrous run of circumstance compounded by unbending economic liberalism of William Downie ... More >>
France's Two-Ballot Voting System, And Its New Zealand Antecedent
Friday, 12 July 2024, 12:40 pm | Keith Rankin
The French two-ballot voting system, used in France's Fifth Republic (1958 constitution) is a variant of the Australian preferential system, and the multi-ballot systems used for electing presidents and leaders of political parties. More >>
World War Two: Baddies And Goodies
Tuesday, 26 March 2024, 3:30 pm | Keith Rankin
My earlier article – Can 'Good' be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil framing of international conflicts makes it difficult for participants – especially those who are convinced they are ... More >>
Can 'Good' Be The Greater Evil?
Tuesday, 26 March 2024, 10:27 am | Keith Rankin
Much of our conflict in the world has been (at least at the time it was happening) framed as Good versus Evil, and with Good therefore having a moral imperative to prevail 'at any cost'. Once upon a time – and in my lifetime – many of us regarded ... More >>
Tax Cuts?
Monday, 25 March 2024, 2:23 pm | Keith Rankin
Do we need real income-tax cuts this year? Probably not. Do we need nominal income-tax cuts? Yes, we do. The government should go ahead with its proposed tax cuts, but only to low- and middle-income earners. The tax cuts should compensate for the inflationary ... More >>
Economic Performance: New Zealand versus Japan
Wednesday, 20 March 2024, 4:28 pm | Keith Rankin
Tomorrow we will see the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data for New Zealand. It's worth looking today, however, at what the situation is before that data release (with its revisions as well as new data). And in context by comparing New Zealand ... More >>
Empty Rentals And 'Investor'-friendly Taxes
Monday, 11 March 2024, 4:27 pm | Keith Rankin
This morning on RNZ's Morning Report, Revenue Minister Simon Watts admitted that it was a legitimate option for 'landlords' to leave their houses empty. (Refer Revenue Minister on mortgage tax deductions for landlords , RNZ 11 March 2024.) The official ... More >>
Interest Costs, The Cost-of-Living, And The Cost-of-Government
Thursday, 7 March 2024, 3:01 pm | Keith Rankin
In Question Time in Parliament, yesterday, Finance Minister Nicola Willis was asked a question about the extent of the cost of government debt-servicing. The answer, in short, was 'a lot'; and she mentioned that the cost had been assessed on an interest-only ... More >>
Collective Versus Individual: Māori Versus 'Maoris'
Thursday, 1 February 2024, 1:45 pm | Keith Rankin
Collectiveness at it most potent has been called asabiyya by macrohistorian and cliodynamicist Peter Turchin. At its least potent , collectiveness is a recipe for social division, top-heaviness, escalating inequality, and societal breakdown. The ... More >>
Collective Versus Individual: Māori Versus 'Maoris'
Thursday, 1 February 2024, 1:42 pm | Keith Rankin
Collectiveness at it most potent has been called asabiyya by macrohistorian and cliodynamicist Peter Turchin. At its least potent , collectiveness is a recipe for social division, top-heaviness, escalating inequality, and societal breakdown. The ... More >>
Secular Cycles And Empires
Tuesday, 30 January 2024, 1:49 pm | Keith Rankin
Peter Turchin, author of End Times , has spent many years researching cliodynamics . His works in the 2000s include Secular Cycles (2009) and War and Peace and Wa r (2007). A central concept in communicating his research is that of asabiyya , a word ... More >>
To Be (a) Liberal
Thursday, 18 January 2024, 2:12 pm | Keith Rankin
I enjoy Bryce Edwards' Political Roundup as a succinct and pertinent summary of current New Zealand politics. But, in The Liberal v Conservative anguish over the direction of NZ politics ( NZ Herald , 3 January 2024) Edwards corrupts the word ... More >>
