ROBERT MacCULLOCH: Is National's Economic "Strategy" Already Unravelling?
- Administrator
- Nov 10, 2023
- 2 min read
When Tony Blair's New Labour government came to power in 1997, he pulled off a remarkable string of three election victories. The "trick" of this achievement stemmed from Blair's promotion of, in particular, the financial services industry in London, and his support for light-touch regulation. The entire UK economy was lifted. Tax revenues soared from that industry, even as bankers paid themselves huge bonuses. They loved Blair. So how did he placate the left of his party? Blair poured those tax revenues into "rebuilding" the National Health System, which was his main election promise. He won support from both right and left, at least for a time. The way Blair made it happen, though, was on the back of a booming economy, and that one industry in particular.
Meanwhile in NZ in 2023, our economy has barely been growing this past year. In GDP per capita terms, we're currently in recession. Total GDP is rising only on the back of soaring immigration. Without a Blair-style boom, how can National pay for the required investments in health-care, education and infrastructure? It can't. What large industry can National rely upon to engineer a boom? It is far from obvious.
The way out would have been for National to propose an entirely new approach to welfare, such as moving to a savings-based Singapore-style model, for example. But the party has no intention whatsoever of doing anything that could remotely be labelled as "radical" .. which means it can not appeal to any significant potential efficiency gains that will help ensure our welfare system can do more for the same level of existing funding.
This National government could well unravel.
Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. Rob blogs at Down To Earth Kiwi
AND THE BEAT GOES ON This article is absolutely typical of the NZ parroted version of Western neo-classical economic tripe. Predictably it doesn't even bother to distinguish between the productive real economy and the parasitic financial economy, AKA, the 'rentier', or 'FIRE economy' (Finance, Insurance, Real estate) in our broken Western models. It is made even worse by holding Tony Blair's policies as some sort of model when he is one of the most evil genocidal NWO SOBs ever to walk the planet - it was as though the entire article was conceived within a bubble that is completely bereft of global geopolitical facts or economic history. The status-quo morally bankrupt pseudo-science totally ignores the way Western countries create money - this alone…
People in governments get elected by promising to give people more of the things they want.
The things that the people want have to be paid for with tax revenues, that the people pay in the present, or debt, that this borrowed and has to be serviced and repaid by the people in the future. People like to believe that someone else pays for the things the government provides. They would not be seduced by election promises if they understood that they have to pay for the things they are promised themselves. The productive working people who produce and deliver consumer goods and services provide almost all of the money that is spent by people in governments!
They Pay as they Earn by…
That is why so many of us gave our party votes to ACT or NZF - to put some backbone into a National led Government. The fact that this coalition is taking a while to get going is because there are obviously some birth pains! Luxon has to man-up!
I think we all would agree Labour have absolutely wrecked our economy and turned us against each other so elements within their caucus could covertly unleash tribal socialism on us. Covid provided the perfect smokescreen.
Let's never forget there was one maori that created the unholy mess we now find ourselves in. Winston Peters is a master of deception, and is genius at manipulating the media. Unfortunately we have just learned that about 6% of the voting public have once again fallen for his brand of crap and given him yet another opportunity to be the so called kingmaker.
Anyone who has even a modest amount of business acumen understands it's dangerous to rely on one supplier. Luxon is undoubtedl…