CoveragePost
May 27, 2022
Essay by Keith Rankin. Problems make the world go round. Many of us – maybe the majority of workers, and certainly the majority of well-paid workers – earn our living addressing problems. A problem-free world would represent a major crisis for modern social-capitalism. (Yet standard economic theory continues to present the productive economy as a ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Narrow Vision: Subsidised Cars and Street Immunity" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/27/keith-rankin-essay-narrow-vision-subsidised-cars-and-street-immunity/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Narrow Vision: Subsidised Cars and Street Immunity">Read more</a>
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May 26, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Many of the reported counts of Covid19 cases and deaths now better reflect reporting variations rather than actual health data. These charts indicate the new stories that are increasingly falling under the international media radar. I show both the ‘bigger countries’ (with populations of more than half a million), and ‘all ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19 Country Update: Week ending 22 May 2022" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/26/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-country-update-week-ending-22-may-2022/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19 Country Update: Week ending 22 May 2022">Read more</a>
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May 20, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. We know that New Zealand has one of the world’s lowest mortality outcomes, so far, in the Covid19 pandemic. (So has North Korea.) It’s still far too early to access the costs incurred – loss of utility enjoyed by actual and ‘would-have-been’ New Zealand residents – and is also too early ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: New Zealand deaths coming into winter 2022" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/20/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-new-zealand-deaths-coming-into-winter-2022/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: New Zealand deaths coming into winter 2022">Read more</a>
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May 13, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Modern ‘western’ governments are known as ‘liberal democracies’. While each political party in a liberal democracy has a ‘policy agenda’ which it would like to implement, only single-party governments have a realistic opportunity to fully implement their agenda; and they typically need multiple terms of single party (or near single party) ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Liberal Democracy in the new neonationalist era: The Three ‘O’s" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/13/keith-rankin-essay-liberal-democracy-in-the-new-neonationalist-era-the-three-os/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Liberal Democracy in the new neonationalist era: The Three ‘O’s">Read more</a>
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May 6, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The countries shown here have rates of Covid19 mortality comparable with each other, and – with one exception – have recent ‘excess deaths’ data. We should note that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has just released its world Covid19 mortality estimates for the pandemic so far, suggesting a death toll ‘from’ ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: Deaths from March 2021 in Comparable Countries" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/06/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-deaths-from-march-2021-in-comparable-countries/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: Deaths from March 2021 in Comparable Countries">Read more</a>
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May 4, 2022
Essay by Keith Rankin. There is more than one useful perspective on the present Russian war in Ukraine. None of these put the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin’s Russian war machine in anything other than an egregious light; Mr Putin is a geopolitical warrior of the worst order. He believes that he is waging a war ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Secession tribulations, and the United States’ Civil War" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/05/04/keith-rankin-essay-secession-tribulations-and-the-united-states-civil-war/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Secession tribulations, and the United States’ Civil War">Read more</a>
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April 21, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The new (though not unfamiliar to older New Zealanders) crisis of 2022 (and most likely beyond) has become, alternatively, a ‘cost of living’ or an ‘inflation’ crisis. The public discussion treats these two ‘enemies of the people’ as one and the same thing. But they are not. Indeed such conflation is ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Problem of Price Increases: ‘Cost of Living’ versus ‘Inflation’" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/04/21/keith-rankin-essay-problem-of-price-increases-cost-of-living-versus-inflation/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Problem of Price Increases: ‘Cost of Living’ versus ‘Inflation’">Read more</a>
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April 13, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. These charts show reported cases and deaths for the week ending 10 April. We have now reached a stage where the world has largely moved on from the Covid19 pandemic, so ‘official’ recording is far from the diligent process that existed for most of the last two years. Throughout the pandemic, ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: ‘Official’ Cases and Deaths" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/04/13/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-official-cases-and-deaths/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: ‘Official’ Cases and Deaths">Read more</a>
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April 7, 2022
Essay by Keith Rankin. Earlier this week the final report from the IPCC (press release) on climate change was released. While it indicates that it is still technically possible to limit global warming to 1½ degrees; such an outcome is both unlikely and may require more than lots of trees to pull excess carbon from ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Global Warming: Considering the Lesser Evils" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/04/07/keith-rankin-essay-global-warming-considering-the-lesser-evils/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Global Warming: Considering the Lesser Evils">Read more</a>
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March 26, 2022
Analysis Keith Rankin. One of the major themes in my life, as a baby-boomer growing up in the 1960s, has been the relationship between ‘man’ (aka humankind) and ‘nature’. Science – especially applied science, and western philosophy – was presented as a progressive economic project which involved ‘taming nature’. And indeed there were successes, many ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Nature: Friend or Foe?" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/03/26/keith-rankin-essay-nature-friend-or-foe/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Nature: Friend or Foe?">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
March 24, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. These charts each compare, for the second year of the covid pandemic, a country with comparatively low mortality with another country with higher pandemic-related mortality. Each chart is to the same scale. And for each country, I will note its mask-mandate levels through the pandemic. USA and France France has performed ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19 Deaths and Facemasks: some rich countries compared" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/03/24/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-deaths-and-facemasks-some-rich-countries-compared/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19 Deaths and Facemasks: some rich countries compared">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
March 23, 2022
Analysis by Keith Rankin. On 1 December 2021 the CCCFA (Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act) entered Aotearoa New Zealand with more stealth than the Omicron BA2 variant. It resulted in unintended consequences that were (and are) entirely predictable. There are two sets of ‘unintended but predictable consequences’: those consequences that make anxious and desperate ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Borrowing Hurdles: Unintended Consequences arising from Wilful Blindness" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2022/03/23/keith-rankin-analysis-borrowing-hurdles-unintended-consequences-arising-from-wilful-blindness/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Borrowing Hurdles: Unintended Consequences arising from Wilful Blindness">Read more</a>
