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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 4]
Omicron Covid And Political Narrative
Thursday, 24 February 2022, 4:28 pm | Keith Rankin
The mainstream political narrative that emerged in late March 2020 was a 'narrative of fear' which set up the Covid19 coronavirus as a 'tricky' enemy that was out to get us by finding ways through our defences; and that we had to build collective ... More >>
Russian Ambitions? Transnistria And Kaliningrad
Wednesday, 23 February 2022, 11:22 am | Keith Rankin
Having watched Vladimir Putin's somewhat rambling speech on Al Jazeera yesterday, I think we can be sure that he does have a clear ambition to create an empire based on the ethnic concept of the Viking 'Rus' (refer my recent Living with Ambiguity ... More >>
Geopolitics, Russia And Ukraine: Living With Ambiguity
Tuesday, 15 February 2022, 5:02 pm | Keith Rankin
Why is Russia encircling Ukraine with what looks very much like an invasion force? The first principle in answering such a question is that one should never take the simple media-reported statements of any of the major protagonists at face value. ... More >>
Nations, Territories, And Conflict
Monday, 14 February 2022, 4:44 pm | Keith Rankin
At the heart of the present geopolitical conflict centred on Ukraine is a divergent set of views at to what constitutes a 'nation'. Rival Views of Nationality Firstly, 'nation-states' as we know them today arguably date to the 1645 Peace (or Treaties) ... More >>
Unemployment Insurance?
Thursday, 10 February 2022, 4:22 pm | Keith Rankin
The government's latest scheme is a form of government unemployment insurance. Interestingly, both the anti-poverty groups and the neoliberal New Zealand Initiative think tank see this scheme as problematic, very much as a 'solution looking for a problem'. ... More >>
Visualising A Way Out Of The Pandemic
Tuesday, 21 December 2021, 4:05 pm | Keith Rankin
Public policy has a number of biases. One is that certain real or alleged emergencies require (or seem to require) an urgent policy intervention. The result is a consortium of elected politicians, bureaucrat officials, and expert technocrats get on board, ... More >>
Science, Scientists, And Scientism
Monday, 6 December 2021, 9:13 am | Keith Rankin
Science, in the not-so-recent-past, has often had a bad press. It's been personified, particularly by the political left, as Frankenstein, as agents of capitalism, classical liberalism, colonialism, sexism (yang over yin), eugenics, and god-like pretension. ... More >>
Basic Universal Income And Economic Rights
Tuesday, 30 November 2021, 12:37 pm | Keith Rankin
"Broad growth is only going to come when you put money in the hands of people, and that's why we talk about a Universal Basic Income". [Ritu Dewan, Indian Society of Labour Economics]. (From How long before India's economy recovers , 'Context ... More >>
Bulgaria, The Balkans, And Distrust
Thursday, 25 November 2021, 12:17 pm | Keith Rankin
Yesterday morning I awoke to this story about a bus crash in Bulgaria: Dozens killed in Bulgaria bus fire, including children . I thought immediately about how unusual it is in New Zealand to hear a story about Bulgaria. In the context that Bulgaria ... More >>
Who's The Thief?
Tuesday, 23 November 2021, 2:31 pm | Keith Rankin
Cartoon Strip 1 Imagine a two-panel cartoon strip. Each panel has an apple tree and two people. In the first panel, the tree has eight apples, all low-hanging. In the second panel, the apples have all been picked. One person (A) has one apple in ... More >>
'Influenza' Pandemics In New Zealand's Past
Thursday, 18 November 2021, 2:24 pm | Keith Rankin
On Tuesday (16 Nov) I was concerned to hear this story on RNZ's Checkpoint ( National distances itself from ex-MP after video with discredited academic ). My concern here is not particularly with the "discredited academic", although no academic ... More >>
Covid19: Vaccine Hesitancy And Distrust, By Governments
Friday, 12 November 2021, 12:12 pm | Keith Rankin
While governments are now mandating many people to take Covid19 vaccines, government hesitancy towards vaccines and vaccination – much of it seemingly due to overprioritisation of perceived 'cost' issues – remains a problem of significant consequence. The ... More >>
Covid19 Death Semantics
Tuesday, 9 November 2021, 12:33 pm | Keith Rankin
Last year the Government was careful to count anybody who died with a Covid19-positive status as a Covid19 death. Now we keep hearing about such deaths which the government is saying will need to be referred to the coroner before we can establish what they ... More >>
Influenza: Global Epidemic 2017 Versus The Flu Season Of 2019/20
Thursday, 4 November 2021, 9:30 am | Keith Rankin
The global influenza epidemic of late 2016 to early 2018 was a pandemic in all but name. For the United States, see The Perfect Storm Behind This Year's Nasty Flu Season , The Atlantic 14 Jan 2018; and Last year's flu broke records for deaths and illnesses ... More >>
Covid19: Revaccinate Now, And Address Influenza Too
Thursday, 28 October 2021, 11:34 am | Keith Rankin
In its pandemic response, the New Zealand government has consistently been tardy, and then found itself playing catch-up, having to 'go hard' (indeed a 'world-leading' hardest) on account of its lack of preparedness. Further, having gone hard, there ... More >>
Covid19 Premier League: Spectrum Of Public Health Choices
Thursday, 14 October 2021, 11:30 am | Keith Rankin
Now is as good a time as any to evaluate and reflect on the public health policy choices made in the period from February to April 2020, re the Covid19 pandemic. Here I have postulated a 'league' of 12 economically advanced countries which have ... More >>
Global Housing Crisis, Human Rights, And Entitlement Finance
Thursday, 7 October 2021, 4:27 pm | Keith Rankin
This last week I watched Push: The Global Housing Crisis on Al Jazeera , featuring Leilani Farha, Canadian lawyer and former United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing. She is now leader of The Shift (the global movement to secure the human ... More >>
Covid Immunity Calculus
Thursday, 30 September 2021, 4:36 pm | Keith Rankin
Quiz Questions: Which foreign country or territory is closest to New Zealand by jetplane? Which foreign country or territory had the world's highest per capita incidence of Covid19 last week? Before giving the answers, I would note that the worst-affected ... More >>
Vaccination Rates And The Population Denominator
Monday, 27 September 2021, 2:57 pm | Keith Rankin
We are learning that, in the absence of high levels of natural immunity to Covid19, New Zealand will need extremely high vaccination rates before it can repudiate its growing 'hermit kingdom' status. (It is important to note that the expression 'hermit ... More >>
Table Of Excess Deaths From Covid19
Friday, 24 September 2021, 8:57 am | Keith Rankin
The table below uses raw-death data published downloaded from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count to predict what death numbers would have occurred in 2020 and 2021 had there been no Covid19 pandemic. The actual death numbers are compared with the predicted (counterfactual) ... More >>
