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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 5]
New Zealand Superannuation: The Rules Versus Common Sense
Tuesday, 21 September 2021, 12:25 pm | Keith Rankin
Radio New Zealand ( Checkpoint ) ran stories last week about New Zealanders aged over 65 stranded in Australia who are at risk of having their pensions ('New Zealand Superannuation') stopped, and then having to repay the funds they received while ... More >>
Indo-Pacific: The World's New Geopolitical Buzzword
Friday, 17 September 2021, 12:05 pm | Keith Rankin
I have been watching the sudden rise to prominence of the word 'Indo-Pacific' these last couple of months. These last couple of days it may have been the most repeated word on Radio New Zealand. According to Wikipedia today, Indo-Pacific is "biogeographic ... More >>
Breaking NZ’s Covid Siege: What Needs to be Done, and When
Monday, 13 September 2021, 9:25 am | Keith Rankin
New Zealand is under siege from Covid19. We can learn some things from medieval city sieges. A traditional siege takes place in a fortress, and the besieging agent waits outside the wall or the moat. The defenders also waited, in a battle of attrition; ... More >>
Quarantine, an effective temporary Public Health measure
Wednesday, 8 September 2021, 2:04 pm | Keith Rankin
Public Health measures are restrictive 'health' imposts by an authority over some or all of the people subject to that authority. In most cases they are both 'merit goods' (having benefits which people ought to be willing to pay for), and 'public ... More >>
Pandemic Feedback
Friday, 3 September 2021, 2:35 pm | Keith Rankin
Dynamic living processes get into feedback loops. The most common is a negative feedback loop, whereby processes self-regulate; when something happens then something else happens, in response, to offset the initial event. If it gets cold, we put on ... More >>
Positively Medieval
Tuesday, 31 August 2021, 12:52 pm | Keith Rankin
Following the completion of the Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan, I heard Helen Clark on the radio news say, among other things, that the Taliban are a "medieval theocracy". While she's literally correct, 'medieval' has unfortunately become ... More >>
Covid-Delta, Science, and the Problem of Known Unknowns
Friday, 20 August 2021, 4:42 pm | Keith Rankin
It's a known known that the late Donald Rumsfeld's principal legacy to the world is the following quote: "As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there ... More >>
Loss Of Language, And The Future Of Science
Friday, 13 August 2021, 5:15 pm | Keith Rankin
In our age of unnuanced media reporting, cynicism, and political correctness, words and meanings are subject – perhaps increasingly – to an effective process of cancellation. It's not a new process, in the past certain words might be replaced ... More >>
Territorial Fundamentalism In Our Post-Globalisation Era
Tuesday, 3 August 2021, 4:48 pm | Keith Rankin
We have this pretty fiction that the world is made up of approximately 200 politically autonomous nation-states. This in the entrenched 'Wilsonian' view of the political world that, in particular, was sort-of realised after World War One; a view that ... More >>
Inflation Fears, Bullshit Costs, And Inappropriate Policy
Friday, 16 July 2021, 1:12 pm | Keith Rankin
It is true that New Zealand – and the rest of the world – now faces substantial inflation pressure. As the 2020s unfold, the biggest macroeconomic story – as in the 1920s after World War 1 – is likely to be about how we address these pressures ... More >>
Unrented Rentals And Property Hoarders
Monday, 5 July 2021, 4:24 pm | Keith Rankin
I was encouraged to hear Nicola Willis, National Party's spokesperson on housing, make the key point that the central problem in New Zealand's housing crisis is that of people being squeezed out of the private rental market . I made this point and ... More >>
Allegations, Abuse, Echo-Chambers And Youth
Friday, 2 July 2021, 4:28 pm | Keith Rankin
On Monday, as I drove from Kerikeri to Kamo, on Radio New Zealand Kathryn Ryan was interviewing students from Christchurch Girls High School, who were commenting on vague but serious claims of sexual abuse, with the finger being pointed mainly at ... More >>
Policies For Reducing The Environmental Costs Of Urban Transport
Thursday, 17 June 2021, 4:42 pm | Keith Rankin
Environmental costs are a big deal, which need to be properly factored into our economic decision-making. Last week the Government announced a rebate scheme for electric and hybrid vehicles . These days we emphasise the very important greenhouse ... More >>
China, The Coronavirus, Australia, And A Yearning For World War 3
Wednesday, 2 June 2021, 11:42 am | Keith Rankin
There has been a lot of western angst shown towards China this year, only a miniscule amount of which can be attributed to geopolitical threats coming from China. Leading the charge of the anti-China brigade is Australia. I commented about a month ago ... More >>
Covid19 Is Far From Gone, Though Probably Not As Bad In India As Many Believe
Tuesday, 25 May 2021, 9:19 am | Keith Rankin
Covid19 is far from finished in the world's more economically developed countries. And we – who live in these countries – continue to display a restrained racism towards large culturally different nations such as India and China. For example, ... More >>
The Seventy-Thirty Problem, And The Māori Health Authority
Friday, 21 May 2021, 4:27 pm | Keith Rankin
When policymakers try to fix things, they often mess up because of the way the problem is formulated and the ways that subsequent policies are targeted. A classic example was the Closing the Gaps initiative in the early 2000s. The problem – albeit simplified ... More >>
The New Zealand Government’s 'Public Finance Rabbithole'
Wednesday, 12 May 2021, 11:50 am | Keith Rankin
Last week, out of left field, the government placed a three-year embargo on normal public sector wage bargaining, essentially a salary freeze. While there has been a certain amount of backtracking since, it is clear that the government has been ... More >>
Calling Out China
Tuesday, 4 May 2021, 2:33 pm | Keith Rankin
Keith Rankin, 29 April 2021 We humans seem to have a need to coalesce into tribes, and we do this by identifying – and sometimes demonising, or holding in condescension – others who are not us. We also like to anthropomorphise, treating ... More >>
Money, Housing, And King Canute
Thursday, 22 April 2021, 4:07 pm | Keith Rankin
Stories last week from Radio New Zealand: Expert analysis: low interest rates vs soaring house prices , Nine to Noon , 15 April 2021. And refer to: Arthur Grimes: How to fix a broken Auckland? Add 150,000 homes to crash prices by 40% ; The Spinoff, ... More >>
Covid-19 And The Common Cold
Thursday, 8 April 2021, 9:03 am | Keith Rankin
Is the worst of Covid-19 yet to come? The most recent wave of Covid19 is, I suspect, much more significant than the headlines so far would suggest. This phase started in Europe, has been very evident in South America, and is now apparent in Asia (eg ... More >>
