Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
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 22]
Keith Rankin: Peasants versus Pedants
Monday, 15 January 2001, 8:46 am | Keith Rankin
I hesitate to bring up the divisive topic about which millennium is the real millennium. But I do so for two reasons. First, I am interested in the sociology of the divide. Why did the issue polarise us to the extent that we lost interest in what should ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Vector Vexation
Thursday, 21 December 2000, 9:54 am | Keith Rankin
In 1999, Vector, formerly Mercury Energy and before that the Auckland Electric Power Board, paid a dividend of $107m to its owner, the Auckland Energy Consumers Trust (AECT) (see press release on Scoop ). The raison d'être of the AECT is to distribute ... More >>
Keith Rankin: The New American debate
Thursday, 14 December 2000, 9:47 am | Keith Rankin
At last there are signs in the United States that at least some influential people realise that, if we are to distribute income equitably in the world's modern high productivity economies, the labour market that we take for granted just cannot do ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Home Expensive Home
Thursday, 7 December 2000, 9:33 am | Keith Rankin
The OECD report on the New Zealand economy released last Thursday suggested, among other things, that the New Zealand government should tax the imputed income on owner occupied housing. Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen, promptly dismissed the ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Autistic Economics?
Thursday, 30 November 2000, 9:42 am | Keith Rankin
In June this year, a group of economics students at one of France's leading tertiary institutes, the École Normale Supérieure, revolted. They were objecting to the obsession with abstract mathematical modelling that dominates economics education worldwide. ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Demand Versus Supply
Thursday, 23 November 2000, 9:39 am | Keith Rankin
Labour MP Georgina Beyer said in Parliament a couple of weeks ago that "prostitution is a demand-driven activity". She's wrong. Sure, all goods and services that are freely sold have a demand. But a demand-driven industry is one that expands when ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Premature Congratulation?
Thursday, 16 November 2000, 9:36 am | Keith Rankin
Who'll be inaugurated as president of the United States in January? Should we care? George Bush junior was congratulated as the winner more than a week ago. But it may be a while yet before we can be sure, given the time that the American legal system ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Maori: colonised or colonist?
Thursday, 9 November 2000, 8:59 am | Keith Rankin
The "colonisation debate" in New Zealand suffers because too few non-Maori New Zealanders know our country's history, and too many Maori know how to exploit that historical illiteracy. The irony is that a film released this year, Feathers ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Oh Auckland!
Thursday, 2 November 2000, 8:39 am | Keith Rankin
Auckland’s public policymakers have a longstanding problem; indecisiveness. One Tree Hill is just the latest example. More >>
GDP Gloom?
Thursday, 26 October 2000, 11:05 am | Keith Rankin
The economy seems to be stagnating. Real GDP (gross domestic product) for the three months to June 30 is, on a seasonally adjusted basis, 0.7 percent down on the previous three months. Yet, if we look a bit deeper, we find that real GDP for the June quarter ... More >>
The Public Stake In Private Business
Thursday, 19 October 2000, 10:21 am | Keith Rankin
John Carr, a disillusioned neoliberal American kiwiphile, has published in the Herald two full-page open letters on the state of the New Zealand economy. The second was on Monday, 16 October (see www.ilovenz.co.nz/letter2.htm). One interesting statement ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Super Solution. What's the Problem?
Thursday, 12 October 2000, 9:41 am | Keith Rankin
Michael Cullen's public superannuation scheme is a bit of a worry. Like the self-regulating free-market economy it's an elegant, indeed clever, solution. One problem, though, is that an elegant solution imposed upon an inelegant world becomes a straightjacket. ... More >>
Keith Rankin: The Big S-Word
Thursday, 5 October 2000, 3:14 pm | Keith Rankin
Don Brash said it for the first time since 1982. Stagflation. Sounds like a rush of male deer. But it's a case of mixed metaphors. Dr Brash has scared the horses. More >>
Keith Rankin: Bronze, Gold and Silver
Thursday, 28 September 2000, 9:58 am | Keith Rankin
Once again, New Zealand is experiencing the biennial disappointment of athletic underachievement. Even our ratio of bronze medals per capita doesn't look that brilliant. More >>
Keith Rankin: Leaving Godzone
Thursday, 21 September 2000, 8:42 am | Keith Rankin
A report by investment bank ABN Amro suggests that New Zealand is in for a long spell of net emigration and that house prices will fall by about 15%. This report was the subject of a Question to Parliament yesterday from Opposition leader Jenny Shipley. More >>
Keith Rankin: Taxing Times
Thursday, 14 September 2000, 10:10 am | Keith Rankin
There's nothing like a big rise in either fuel prices or taxes to stir up a bit of direct democracy, of the revolting petit bourgeoisie kind. More >>
Rankin: Conquest and Trauma in our Archipelago
Thursday, 7 September 2000, 8:40 am | Keith Rankin
Tariana Turia's controversial comments about Maori being victims of "post-colonial traumatic stress disorder" and her analogy between the holocaust and the fate of Taranaki Maori raise a number of issues and deserve to be taken seriously. More >>
Keith Rankin's Thursday Column: Shocking Prices?
Thursday, 31 August 2000, 9:10 am | Keith Rankin
Retail petrol prices are up 50% since around this time last year. It's just one issue behind the malaise that's going round. It seems such a pity to waste the year 2000 - the millennium year - worrying about the kinds of price change that represent no ... More >>
Keith Rankin's Thursday Column: Valuing Lives
Thursday, 24 August 2000, 8:58 am | Keith Rankin
The tragedy of the Russian submarine 'Kursk' reveals much about how our value systems have changed, for the better, in 100 years. Economic development, democracy, press freedom, and globalisation have created a world in which the slaughter of human beings ... More >>
Keith Rankin's Thursday Column: Fair Shares
Thursday, 17 August 2000, 9:33 am | Keith Rankin
Yesterday, to the relief of just about everyone, Reserve Bank Governor did not raise the Official Cash Rate, the interest rate that 'tells' financial markets what interest rates should be. Also, and to the relief of many, the Employment Relations Bill was ... More >>
