Talk:Economy of New Zealand

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This article contains material from the CIA World Factbook (2005 edition) which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain.
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Contents

[edit] Inequality

Can anyone tell me the level of income inequality in New Zealand compared to other developed nations, including the United States? 216.174.165.54 20:31, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Look at List of countries by income equality.-gadfium 01:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re-write?

This page needs to be rewritten from scratch: this article was originally created by the CIA for the CIA World Factbook, and unsurprisingly, is, to be blunt, flatly untruthful. New Zealand's incomes were at highest-in-the-world levels several decades ago, and have declined by the better part of %20 over the last two decades.

Yes, 203.109.254.58, you are absolutely right. It reads like a Thatcherite propaganda press release. Is there a New Zealander with the approriate skill set in the house? (By the way, why don't you create yourself a user account? You are doing lots of good stuff around here, you might as well sign in as yourself.)
Tannin 19:49 Jan 11, 2003 (UTC)
Hi. I think "203.109.254.58" is actually my ISP's proxy-server IP, meaning anyone using my ISP becomes attributed to either that IP or one of several others. 4/5ths of what's under user-contributions for that address is other people's work, I know I don't know a thing about belly dancing :)
It would be difficult to find someone to write an article about New Zealand's economy, as the 'facts' to each individual depend on their political views, as NZ was an economic test-case etc etc.
I heartily agree. This is quite a "value-free" neoliberal summary of NZ's economic performance, and the 1984-1993 period really needs to be highlighted as distinct and highly important to the economy of NZ as a whole. Perhaps we need to have a sub-page from this linking to the 1984-1993 reforms specifically? I wrote an essay outlining the neoliberal, Keynesian, and Marxist interpretations of the 1945-1973 'Golden Weather' and the declining prospects post-1973, but it's 3000 words long and is perhaps not really Wikipedia-friendly. <2 hours later>...Right, I've put it here, kindof: WikiBooks: New Zealand Economics. Could someone please peruse it, comment, correct, and critique it, and perhaps summarise and link through from here? I would, but I'm still learning how to use Wiki (this is my first page :) ).
kabl00ey 15:16:12, 2005-09-01 (UTC)
It's very difficult to balance this without a "What-if" machine. NZ's incomes may have been high back then, but that's not to suggest that without the reforms, they would have simply stayed that way. Rather we could have ended up with a scenario where no reforms meant NZ ended up slipping much further down. It may not have, so unless we can get some solid evidence either way about the effects of the reforms the article should take a middle of the road approach. It seems more widely accepted that at least some of the reforms were necessary, but the more controversial ones should be given with multiple interpretations. Nichlemn 08:07, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

=== "Impressive Growth in the 21st Century" isn't part of "Economic Reforms of the 1980s".

There were major economic reforms between 1984 and 1991. But the major reforms started in 1985 and were mostly done by 1991 when the Employment Contracts Act came in.

This article lumps New Zealand's impressive economic growth from 1999-2007 in as the second paragraph of the section on the reforms that took place 1984-1991. Even if you think there's a causal link (and we could argue about that), they are not part of the same thing! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.154.239.116 (talk) 02:04, August 30, 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Hrmmm

It's widely believed regardless of politics, that NZ was radically reformed to a free market economy it a very very short period of time and there were teething problems with this. There have been several academic articles citing NZ in this regard....

[edit] New Zealand's GDP

New Zealand's PPP GDP is now at US$92bn not US$78bn. Article needs updating.

==

The article definitely needs a rewrite/update. I'm not an expert at all (just a high school student looking up some last minute information for exams!) but even I can see that.

"New Zealand has a very small current account deficit of 8-9% of GDP." "The large current account deficit, which stood at more than 6.5% of GDP in 2000, has been a constant source of concern for New Zealand policymakers and has now hit 9% to date as of March 2006."

Is it large or small? And what is it now?

I might work on it after I finish exams, but if someone else knows more about this, it'd be great if they could step in... Simulato (talk) 08:01, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I've asked the editor who recently changed this part of the article to reply to your question, and in the meantime restored the article to its previous state for consistency.-gadfium 08:49, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... I used small because for a deficit, 8-9% is small (as we are already assuming its going to be negative anyways). But compared to other industrial nations e.g. Britain and Japan it is quite bad. And after reading my amendments again, it is wrong to word it like I did so, in the context it was given. But also, it would be better to compare it with public debt, as this will also be relevant for readers. The public debt is only 21.2% of GDP (CIA 2006 est.). It would be nice if this remark is mentioned next to it. --Waqas1987 (talk) 12:38, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

added some more context information. Ingolfson (talk) 10:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dependent Economies:

Shouldn't there be some mention of the economies of other nations that are heavily dependent on New Zealand, particularly Pacific Island Nations like Tonga, Niue, Samoa, Tokelau, Solomon Islands etc. for trade and development aid and what-not, because from what I've seen this article focuses mainly on the foreign trade that NZ relies on. Taifarious1 01:09, 8 June 2008 (UTC)