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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]
Stimulate Or Suffocate, In The Light Of Older Women's Spending?
Friday, 8 August 2025, 1:07 pm | Keith Rankin
My focus here is to look at the historical and recent employment rates of older women (aged over 55), and to consider the importance of their spending to the health or otherwise of the New Zealand economy. More >>
How Did New Zealand Compare In The First Half Of The 2020s?
Tuesday, 29 July 2025, 12:04 pm | Keith Rankin
All is not well in the New Zealand economy. And it's also quite unwell in some other countries, especially the North European Euro-zone countries, and the United Kingdom. More >>
Representation Versus Reality; Reaching A Low Point
Friday, 25 July 2025, 3:24 pm | Keith Rankin
In New Zealand, although we are allegedly at the 'bottom of the world', in the Far Southeast. We also pride ourselves as being in the West and in the Global North. What is genuinely true is that Aotearoa New Zealand is geographically very far from ... More >>
Letter From Westphalia, Germany; 6 June 1933
Friday, 18 July 2025, 11:45 am | Keith Rankin
Friday, 18 July 2025 On Saturday I came into possession of this letter , transcript below. I will note that the recipient of the letter is someone I know a bit about; I would like to know more about his time in London, circa 1930-1932. I understand ... More >>
Reporting International Migration: Less Than The Truth
Tuesday, 15 July 2025, 9:30 am | Keith Rankin
The total number of people who featured (in the period from June 2024 to May 2025) as either immigrants or emigrants was 264,000; that is, a number of people equivalent to five percent of New Zealand's total population featured as either a permanent ... More >>
Public Debt, Japan, And Wilful Blindness
Thursday, 10 July 2025, 2:11 pm | Keith Rankin
Despite its high government debt – actually, to a large extent because of its high government debt – Japan's is a creditor economy. Japan is not in debt to the rest of the world. Japan's national debt is non-existent. More >>
Palestine Israel: Implementing A One-State Solution
Wednesday, 25 June 2025, 5:01 pm | Keith Rankin
The never-viable notion of a two-nation-state division of 'Israel' should be dropped as a viable solution in favour of the promotion of a liberal bicultural (or multicultural) nation-state. More >>
America's Imperial 'Gift': 'Crusader Democracy' Versus 'Christian Nationalism'
Wednesday, 18 June 2025, 2:44 pm | Keith Rankin
America's empire today is partly formal, though mostly informal, with various grades of informality. The name 'America' itself is an imperial grab. The modern American-led crusading mentality represents a schism of Protestant Evangelism and Secular Liberalism. More >>
Clio: Whose Side Is 'History' On?
Friday, 13 June 2025, 4:43 pm | Keith Rankin
Is history binary? A judge of past behaviour with just two available options: thumbs-up, or thumbs-down? If you are not on the 'right side' of history, are you therefore on the 'wrong side'? Can there be a 'right side of history'? Given the contexts that ... More >>
Remembering New Zealand's Missing Tragedy
Monday, 9 June 2025, 5:38 pm | Keith Rankin
The forgotten tragedy was actually a twin-tragedy; two smaller (but not small) tragedies may more easily fall below the memory radar than one bigger tragedy. The dates were 22 July 1973 and January 1974. More >>
Equity Rights: UBI, SUI, BUI, HUI, Or GUI?
Friday, 6 June 2025, 5:20 pm | Keith Rankin
The missing ingredient from the capitalism that most of us know is 'public equity'. The crisis of capitalism can be addressed through development of public property rights, which we may call 'public equity'. It is the establishment of public property ... More >>
Who, Neither Politician Nor Monarch, Executed 100,000 Civilians In A Single Night?
Thursday, 29 May 2025, 4:51 pm | Keith Rankin
The main reason for the executions was some kind of 'impunity'; they did it because they could. The more they failed to bring the war to an end, the more they persevered in doing the executions that hadn't achieved their stated goals. Just one more city. More >>
Using Cuba 1962 To Explain Trump's Brinkmanship
Tuesday, 27 May 2025, 6:19 pm | Keith Rankin
Two longstanding mercantilist economic nations (China, European Union) and one mercantilist leader are slugging it out to see who can export more goods and services to the world; the prize being a mix of gold and virtual-gold, the proceeds of unbalanced trade. More >>
Zero-Sum Fiscal Narratives
Thursday, 22 May 2025, 11:34 am | Keith Rankin
Business sector deficits were substantially the norm in the twentieth century, but not since about 1990. Government balanced budgets were possible – though not normal – for much of the previous century. More >>
War In Sudan
Wednesday, 21 May 2025, 5:52 pm | Keith Rankin
The present Sudan Civil War is an international 'proxy war'; fuelled by extra-national powers – regional if not global. More >>
The Aratere And The New Zealand Main Trunk Line
Tuesday, 20 May 2025, 3:01 pm | Keith Rankin
After all, for over 100 years, before 1960, Wellington to Lyttelton was the essential 'main trunk' link between the two islands. More >>
Make Deficits Great Again: Maintaining A Pragmatic Balance
Friday, 9 May 2025, 3:28 pm | Keith Rankin
Just as the deficit countries are the world's 'spendthrifts', the surplus countries are the world's 'misers'. The global economy maintains a successful equilibrium so long as the willing spendthrifts balance out the insistent misers. More >>
The Great World War 1914-1945: Germany, Russia, Ukraine
Friday, 2 May 2025, 11:13 am | Keith Rankin
By looking at 1914 to 1945, as a single albeit complex conflict, we can easily see that the essence of the struggle was a conflict between the waxing German and Russian Empires; the central prizes were the Russian imperial territories of Ukraine and the Caucasus, and the waning Ottoman Empire. More >>
Barbecued Hamburgers And Churchill's Bestie
Thursday, 17 April 2025, 12:16 pm | Keith Rankin
Hamburg was, literally, a dry run for what came later; the aim was to maximise the number of barbecued civilians by, among other things, choosing perfect weather conditions for an experiment in incendiary murder. More >>
Rational Expectations, Intelligence, And War
Thursday, 10 April 2025, 4:23 pm | Keith Rankin
It is through our ManualI – our manual override, our consciousness, our awareness – that we have the opportunity to make rational valuations which incorporate morality. Our AutoI, while rational in its own terms, is also amoral. Our automatic benefit-cost ... More >>
