Pundit

Pundit is a New Zealand-based online platform dedicated to current events and culture, providing insightful perspectives on important issues both locally and globally. The website was co-founded in late 2007 by Tim Watkin, who has a rich background as the former deputy editor of the Listener and has worked with the Guardian in the UK as well as producing shows like Q+A, The Vote, and The Nation. He currently serves as the Executive Producer of Podcasts at RNZ. His partner, Eleanor Black, has also made her mark as the former deputy editor at Next, an associate editor for California magazine, and as the Entertainment and Lifestyle Editor at Stuff. With the support of broadcaster Ian Fraser, Pundit officially launched in 2009.

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Are We Paying Enough Attention to the Working Class? — Pundit

2 weeks ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

A major American study suggests they are not? This column is about the white working class. In the US 2024 elections they mainly voted for Donald Trump. Had they voted with the white middle class, Trump would have lost the election with only 42 percent of voters instead of the 50 percent he actually won.
The 2025 Budget in a World of Trade Warfare — Pundit

3 weeks ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

The budget runup is far from easy. Budget 2025 day is Thursday 22 May. About a month earlier in a normal year, the macroeconomic forecasts would be completed (the fiscal ones would still be tidying up) and the main policy decisions would have been made (but there would still be a lot of policy detail to be worked on). This is not a normal year as Donald Trump zigzags from policy to policy.
Viennese Refugees Who Changed the Way We Think — Pundit

4 weeks ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

Four eighty-year-old books which are still vitally relevant today. Between 1942 and 1945, four refugees from Vienna each published a ground-breaking – seminal – book.* They left their country after Austria was taken over by fascists in 1934 and by Nazi Germany in 1938. Previously they had lived in ‘Red Vienna’; ruled by Social Democratic Workers' Party between 1918 and 1934, which had a brilliant record housing the population (but could be intrusive at the personal level).
Countervailing Trumpian Sense — Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

A modest attempt to analyse Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Alfred Marshall, whose text book was still in use 40 years after he died wrote ‘every short statement about economics is misleading with the possible exception of my present one.’ (The text book is 719 pages.) It’s a timely reminder that any short analysis of Trump’s tariff initiatives is likely to be misleading and any long one will be so riddled with caveats that it will be impenetrable.
Resource Management and Property Rights — Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

While there have been decades of complaints – from all sides – about the workings of the Resource Management Act (RMA), replacing is proving difficult. The Coalition Government is making another attempt.
Public-Private-Partnerships? - Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

New Zealand’s economic development has always been a partnership between the public and private sectors. Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) have become fashionable again, partly because of the government’s ambitions to accelerate infrastructural development. There is, of course, an ideological element too, while some of the opposition to them is also ideological. PPPs come in so many different forms that it is tedious to characterise them all. Some of those forms have been used in the past.
Why Do Cryptocurrencies Appear to Be So Valuable? — Pundit

1 month ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

It is said that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That may be an exaggeration but an even better response is to point out economists do know the difference. They did not at first. Classical economics thought that the price of something reflected the objective cost of producing it – as in the ‘labour theory of value’. (Note the word ‘value’ which was for long interchangeable with ‘price’.
Is the New Zealand Healthcare System Doing Badly? — Pundit

2 months ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

By international standards the New Zealand healthcare system appears satisfactory – certainly no worse generally than average. Yet it is undergoing another redisorganisation. While doing some unrelated work, I came across some international data on the healthcare sector which seemed to contradict my – and the conventional wisdom’s – view of the healthcare sector. Broadly, the sector seems to be performing relatively well and does not seem underfunded compared to other OECD healthcare systems.
Can We Ignore the Environment? — Pundit

2 months ago | pundit.co.nz | Brian Easton

Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is a compelling account of the interaction between humans and the environment. We would be unwise to ignore it. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Oxford professor of history Peter Frankopan was initially widely admired. But critics point out that the book exaggerated the significance of the land connection between Europe and East Asia.
Trump's UN vote a defining act that points to day of reckoning for NZ — Pundit

2 months ago | pundit.co.nz | Tim Watkin

Of all the headline-making, world-reshaping actions of the second Trump administration thus far, perhaps the most defining is the United States’ vote against the resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion and supporting Ukraine’s territorial authority.