Omicron and 6% Inflation – May The Saints Preserve Us!

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OMICRON HAS ARRIVED and, not unreasonably, its spread will monopolise the attention of our news media for weeks to come. But this latest variant of Covid-19 is very far from the only challenge facing New Zealanders. A highly disruptive economic phenomenon, not seen in this country for a whole generation, is making a disconcerting reappearance. An inflation rate significantly higher than the 1-2 percent per annum tolerated by the Reserve Bank since the late 1980s is threatening to further complicate an already fiendishly complex socio-economic equation.

The eradication of excessive inflation was the most important short-term objective of the neoliberal revolution. Squeezing constant price rises out of the system would be an achievement consumers were bound to notice. Indeed, the restoration of price stability would be presented – and largely accepted – as justification for the many other, often wrenching, upheavals of the reform period.

For the neoliberals, knocking inflation for six came with added benefits. At a stroke, the key justification for cost-of-living adjustments to wage rates would be removed. Back in the days when most wage-workers belonged to a trade union, rapid rises in the cost of goods and services was compensated for with corresponding rises in the cost of labour. This was the “wage-price spiral”, which most economists characterised as the fundamental explanation for inflation becoming economically “entrenched”. Their favourite metaphor was of a dog chasing its own tail.

It was absolutely crucial, they argued, not only to eliminate high inflation, but also to remove high “inflationary expectations” from the minds of wage- and salary-earners. So long as workers believed that prices were bound to rise over the period of their union-negotiated wage agreement, they would take care not only to secure an increase to cover the price rises that had already occurred, but also to secure an additional margin sufficient to cover future increases. Should the employers be prevailed upon to meet their employees’ wage demands, the typical response was to recover their costs by raising prices. Upwards and upwards inflation spiralled, to the general frustration of the whole population.

Particularly aggrieved were those on fixed incomes: transfer payments whose value, in almost every case, was progressively whittled away by excessive inflation rates. Even if adjusted to accommodate historic inflation, pensions and benefits were almost never adjusted to meet future increases in the cost of living. The inevitable loss of purchasing power meant that those on fixed incomes became poorer and poorer.

Not everybody living under high inflation was unhappy. People who borrowed heavily to purchase a house, for example, watched in glee as what had seemed a colossal mortgage continued to shrink, in a relative sense, until, after a few years of high inflation, it was reduced to a mere bagatelle. Thanks to the steady increases in their salaries, paying off the bank got easier and easier. What was not to like?

Plenty, if you were a coupon-clipping investor. If the rate of inflation exceeded the fixed rate of interest on a long-term investment, then your purchasing power was bound to suffer. The sum agreed for making your funds available to the borrower may have seemed generous when originally negotiated, but its value, in real terms, upon maturation could be much less so. Small wonder that the neoliberal economists’ recommended solution for excessive inflation – a sharp increase in the price of money – i.e. high interest rates – could always count on the vociferous support of the rentier class.

Jacking up interest rates, suddenly and substantially, certainly reduces inflation, but only at the deliberately incurred cost of crashing the economy.

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Without easy access to credit, marginal businesses falter and fail. Workers are laid off in their thousands, and the consequent savage reduction in overall purchasing power precipitates further waves of business failures and lay-offs. With demand for goods and services plummeting, any attempt to preserve a business’s income-stream by raising prices becomes commercially suicidal.

With unemployment rising steadily (along with the supply of labour) the ability of workers’ unions to extract pay rises from their bosses falls away to nothing. Increasingly, the individual worker’s purchasing power is maintained by his taking on more and more debt. An indebted worker is a quiescent worker, so the wage-price spiral ceases as abruptly as the effectiveness of the unions which set it in motion. Such inflation as remains in the system now works against the income share of the workforce, who find themselves working longer and harder for what is, in real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) terms – less.

Right now, New Zealand is at the pre-crashing the economy stage of the battle against inflation. But, with annual inflation nudging 6 percent, a level New Zealand has not seen for more than a decade, the demands of the neoliberal economists for a series of quite sharp interest rate rises are becoming ever more strident. They are deeply concerned that the combination of supply-chain interruptions raising demand (and, hence, prices) and a serious labour shortage allowing workers to bid-up their wages, are settling inflationary expectations into the nation’s consciousness.

There is a great deal the neoliberal establishment will risk to eradicate those expectations – up to and including deliberately throwing the New Zealand economy into recession. As always, that will be very bad news for most of us, but quite encouraging news for some.

Any significant rise in interest rates will see thousands of mortgage holders default on their loans and lose their homes. The resulting surge in mortgagee sales, by expanding the supply of properties on the market, will precipitate a sharp fall in house prices across New Zealand.

While that is not an outcome likely to recommend itself to older home-owners accustomed to seeing the value of their property go up and up – not down and down – there will be many younger New Zealanders who are willing to admit, quietly and privately: “This anti-inflationary thing – it’s not so bad”.

 

 

64 COMMENTS

  1. Mind you, even paying for a cheap house would he a nightmare with high interest rates and low wages.

    That is why inflation must be kept high, so wages and be high and people can find jobs.

    Low inflation leads to poverty and low wages. Simple.

    • Yes millsy, people forget; we were paying over 20% interest on our first home mortgage!
      The transitory benefits from inflation to a few are nothing to the wholesale destruction. As the time value of money increases interests rates will naturally rise regardless of central bank actions, pension funds and savings destroyed and speculative safe havens become attractive

    • Through out the vast majority of history there has hardly ever been inflation (war aside) and ‘they’ prospered well.
      The only advantage of inflation is it allows the uber elites to make money by doing nothing (of use to mankind).
      Inflation is dilution of your savings and salary. And it’s what keeps us all debt slaves. Take away the illusionary wealth in houses and the share market and see how wealthy you really are.
      House price rises are invariable a reaction to currency dilution, i.e. future inflation.
      There is a 95+% correlation between the FED’s ‘money’ printing (it’s computerised digits invariably now !) and the stock market and house prices.
      i.e. they are ONLY going up due to dilution of the quality of the currency (p.s. it’s NOT money).

  2. The tax dodging rentier class will be circling the wagons ever ready to make a killing from the cheap housing that will be available to them at heavy discount. Nothing changes.

  3. In the short term during a continuing pandemic the Govt. needs to introduce another “transfer” payment, via IRD not MSD (that bit is important) of say several hundred dollars per week to all citizens–call it a Basic Income trial or whatever. The other “leg” is Rent Freeze and Rent Control and revisiting CGT.

    This would support some purchasing ability for all in the face of the massive shitstorm approaching.

    This is the time for the new gens to get politically organised and for a reboot of serious leftwing politics linked to direct action. The alternative is an NZ twist on MAGA where some dickhead empathises with the exploited, gains political power and then does exactly nothing for said exploited.

  4. So, if I have got this right the 1%, which includes our MPs, are crashing our economy via money printing, and imposing Lockdowns, and Lockdown lite (red) conditions…
    Lockdowns causes more pain, and suffering due to stress of the unknown

    • No, Nathan, you’ve got that all wrong.

      The economy grew strongly under lockdowns – too strongly for the neoliberals.

      They are now arguing that inflationary expectations are threatening to become embedded in the minds of workers and consumers. To prevent that from happening they are willing to crash the economy by hiking interest rates.

      Do try to keep up.

      • Neoliberal policy is a tool. The creators of this tool have every base covered here. There’s a reason why ‘build back better’ is a prominent slogan among the political class.

      • You forget to mention that inflationary expectation is now established in the mind of business owners. “money’s cheap my customers can afford to borrow more, might as well inch my prices up monthly like everyone else, ask for more and the customers will probably pay, I can always reduce the price if I have to”.

    • Can you give us a list of MP’s in the 1%er category or are you just making stuff up in the hope of scoring some political points.

        • Just noticed your comment. For fucks sake, do you know what the 1% are worth. It sure as hell is not attainable on an MP’s income.

  5. Let me try and be the first to mention the rapacious, manipulative, unimaginably greedy foreign ( Australian ) owned retail banks who legendarily take everything that’s not nailed down while returning nothing except social decay, but wait? There’s more! They take more from us AO/NZ’ers than from anyone else! Look it up?
    If the NZ reserve bankster has cheap money (debt) to pimp then who better to do that than retail banking to a suckered and exhausted populace trying to avoid becoming diseased while looking over their shoulder at a house that’s supposed to be A. A home and B Has to be ‘worth’ more than an entire Spanish region because that’s what the mortgage says it must.
    The mortgage aka a ‘dead pledge’ doesn’t sound that sexy when said slowly does it?
    (late Middle English: from Old French, literally ‘dead pledge’, from mort (from Latin mortuus ‘dead’) + gage ‘pledge’.)
    This, on RNZ.
    Aw bless… The bnz’s taking up the challenge to be socially responsible. Am I wrong or is that irony, at the very least, surely, that’s irony?
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/460141/bnz-finds-12-000-abusive-online-banking-transactions-over-six-months
    Just to make sure you know this.
    You do know that all of this… all of it… everything financial in AO/NZ’s a swindle swaddled in lies, right? You do know that, don’t you?
    Financially, everything you see and everything you read and hear is a matrix of lies and cruel misinformation twisted up by logical fallacies to enslave you.
    That most basic tenet of neoliberal-capitalism is that you must be worth more to others, who will make sure they do the least for it, than you are to yourself. And if you’re not playing by their rules you can pull up a doorway and sleep in it to only dream of a dead pledge.

  6. 1996. The land value of the price of ‘property’ was removed from the inflation calculation.
    So, if we were to factor in that part that is missing in the current inflation figure, the ‘Land Value’ and add it to the current rate of inflation of 6%. We’d be looking at an additional 20%+.

    Finally, a ‘stuff’ journo nailed the lies Carmel Suckapolonie has been spouting about the low unemployment rate of 3.9%. It’s not. It’s 11.7%. She obviously doesn’t read her own Ministry’s quarterly data, “When Labour took office, there were 289,788 on a main benefit, or 9.7 per cent of the working-age population. The bulk of today’s beneficiaries are on Jobseeker Support, which has rocketed from 123,042 four years ago, to 187,989 today. That’s a 53 per cent increase. As a proportion of the working-age population, it has leapt from 4.1 per cent to 6.0 per cent.

    Work and Income’s data and the wider picture is far less flattering. The quarterly fall is a drop in the bucket of the surge in benefit dependency under Labour’s watch over the past four years.

    Currently, 368,172 Kiwis are the recipient of a main benefit, 11.7 per cent of the working-age population, whether it be Jobseeker Support, Sole Parent Support or Supported Living.”

    So, how much more bs can the NZ public take? I’m kinda thinking that its not the farmers that are pumping effluent into the environment ay?

  7. 6% is the official *government* measure of inflation. A government that has been lying to us for decades. If you want to really know what inflation is look at real assets, e.g. houses. Houses still do what houses did. The New Zealand population has not doubled in 5 years, but house prices have. This pattern is repeated in all other real assets from stocks to gold to chairs.

    Please stop repeating the lie. Inflation has been over 10% for decades and is closer to 30% right now.

    We don’t have a housing crisis – we have a crisis of the rule of law, people’s wealth is being stolen and redistributed to the ruling classes.

  8. Inflation is (invariably) caused by two things, and neither have to do with the working class trying to ‘play catch up’ with the effects of inflation. That is just a useful mantra for the ‘too dumb’ to understand and let the crooks off the hook, by pointing the finger else where.

    1) Creating money out of thin air. This used to be a Monarch/Govt ‘thing’ and partly explains why taxes (outside of wars) usually didn’t exist for the vast majority. i.e. the MASSIVE profits gained from this exercise ‘went to the state’.
    2) Loss of confidence in the currency (it is NOT money; only Gold and Silver are real money, every thing else is credit. Mr Morgans quote I believe). People then spend as they expect prices to keep rising. Known as velocity of money.

    So stupidly ‘we’ gave the ‘uber elites’ the power to create ‘money’ out of thin air and then charge interest; a double wammy. Great work if you can be the one sitting on your arse creating ‘money’. Look at creation of F.E.D 1913, or the book Jeckyl island. Uk did it with the B.O.E BUT there was an expanding empire so a lot of the negatives were off set by new wealthy being creating ‘soon after’. So it could be argued this was just ‘good borrowing’.
    That then creates ‘too much ‘money’ in the system for no increase in goods (and services) so more money chases the same products, eventually causes price rises.

    So the poor are always playing catch up to price rises caused by and purely for the benefit of the ‘uber elites’.
    We’re then feed the B.S that wage rises are the crime, so pressure is put on the poor to tighten their belts so the uber elites can sit on their ever more comfortable arses.

    Look up the Cantillion effect for how the normal rich and middle class do OK out of it also, but to a lesser degree. ‘Crumbs off the table’ so to speak.

    • Actually inflation is created by either the quantity of money in the economy or the velocity of which money moves around so you are only half correct.

      Velocity is generally created when consumers feel the value of a dollar is going to be worth less tomorrow than it is today, hence its far better to spend what you have today because saving it for tomorrow will purchase less. Just look at hyperinflation when literally you’d sit down for a meal and the price would increase before you even finished eating it. Once velocity sets in it’s difficult to curb, normally this is done by govts reducing the amount of money in circulation – eg austerity.

      Our inflation is caused by the govt flooding the economy with money. Yes it was needed at the time (every finance minister had done the same) but the key is knowing when to stop. Robertson is like a drunken sailor though…well it’s not his money, and his salary will be set by the salaries commission, who’ll take inflation into account.

      BTW yes the economy looks good. All that cash flowing around will do that, as inflation is normally the “result” of a growing economy, however it can work the other way; on purposely increasing inflation to stimulate growth.

      The real shit hits the fan when you have both, govt stimulated inflation and higher and higher velocity. This may get ugly… At least we have a Reserve Bank Governor who knows what he’s doing (insert sarcasm here)

    • just like fiat currency gold and silver are an unspoken agreement of worth, a soft yellow metal with no real use (other than decorative too soft for tool use) has no intrinsic worth except scarcity and it’s pretty you can’t even eat it…we all choose to agree it has value just like paper currency and hoarders bank on the illusion of golds worth holding.
      Now a tin of baked beans or a mars bar, they have intrinsic value.

    • Kevin
      This isnt wrong as you stated; its additional to the other reasons you give.
      Inflation is (invariably) caused by two things, and neither have to do with the working class trying to ‘play catch up’ with the effects of inflation. That is just a useful mantra for the ‘too dumb’ to understand and let the crooks off the hook, by pointing the finger else where.

    • We’ve already listened to the megaphones of ACT Party’s lies.
      Asset sales, GST, tax cuts for the wealthy, get rid of unproductive New Zealanders by having voluntary euthanasia. Oh did I mention the other ACT megaphoned gems that Government should get out of the housing market and let the ‘market do it better’; get out of hospitals and schools by private hospitals and education vouchers and public-private partnerships.
      Next, no doubt, as weel as their category of asset theft, ACT will suggest 20% personal tax, 20% business tax and GST at 20%.
      These ACT recipes for economic success (sic.)will ‘stimulate the economy’ and allow money to “trickle-down” to the ‘needy and the poor’.
      You can take your ACT ‘economic roadways to prosperity and trickle-down wealth’ and put the promises, and the megaphones where the sun doesn’t shine!
      I’ll elaborate on that last conundrum of darkness – where your social responsibility and soul used to live when you used to be humans, instead of mouthpieces for neoliberal claptrap and lies.

      • ACT haven’t had a fresh economic idea since the 80s lightweight thinkers who desperately need a library card

        • By thinking, did you mean Richard Prebble’s “I’ve been thinking”. Don Brash’s “I’ve been thinking about iwi/kiwi”. Rodney Hyde “I’ve been dancing” and David Seymour’s gripping sequel “I’ve been dancing too”. All these classic pos’s will come to good use when we run out of toilet paper during supply chain problems from Omicron.

      • Interesting trying to pretend to be looking at the state of things and why, but see voluntary euthanasia as simply an economic matter. In truth, are you an economist?

        • Interesting, that I gave the readers here a litany of the ACT manifesto of shame and some people (well you really) seem to only focus on one that you think applies to you. Is it because you are grey Mr, Ms, Mrs, Dr Warbler?

          One of the great mysteries of life, is that people can be myopic, or selective in their focus. It’s a mystery similar to where all the spare socks and biros go in the world, and, why when you drop a piece of toast, it always lands butter/jammy side down.

          If it helps you, just ignore the ‘voluntary euthanasia’ solution to old age and terminal illness.

  9. P.S. Interest rate rises is a scam. It really only works when you have a functioning local economy that makes things. It’s just a way to shake already struggling home owners out of real assets and transfer the wealth to the ruling classes – having saddled the those people with huge debts that they still have to pay off regardless of whether they are living in the houses or not. And if it is really bad it destroys the economy and depresses wages so the level where buying a house is still needlessly expensive.

    The alternative, in NZ at least, is spending the money on infrastructure instead of giving it to banks, but I doubt Jacinda is aloud to do that even if she wanted to.

  10. how come higher wages (more money in the economy) is inflationary and low interest rates – cheaper money so more money in the economy isn’t?
    oh that’s right the ‘cheap money’ is shoveled to oz by our banks through kiwi households overleveraged debt burden so never hits our actual real economy
    ..whereas the evil inflationary pay/benefit rises are spent here in the local economy and that helps our SMEs but hey why do that?

  11. In reality, the true rate of inflation for most NZers has been much higher than the official rate of inflation for some time. Significant rises in the cost of food, fuel and electricity never seem to be reflected in the official rate in the same way they are on the bills that arrive very month. The inflation of the seventies and eighties was caused by the twin effects of the oil shocks from the Opec embargoes and the move away from fixed exchange rates caused by the US need to pay for the Vietnam war. Wage rises were a response to these, not the cause of them. Since then the central banks need to stamp on the brakes at the first sign of good economic growth has seen wages unable to keep up with the escalating cost of living leading to the falling living standards and social depravation we have seen in the west. There was some hope when the Reserve Bank act was reviewed, but that was tinkering around the edges to avoid scaring the horses. The current inflation is a supply issue not a demand issue. Cranking down on the demand will simply fuel a recession without fixing the problem and driving many businesses and families who survived covid thus far, under.

  12. Chris, two things (IMHO and I am not an expert but taking a punt here):
    1. You say: The resulting surge in mortgagee sales, by expanding the supply of properties on the market, will precipitate a sharp fall in house prices across New Zealand. I say: you are dreaming….investors will snap them up left right and centre!
    2. I had to smile at your panicky headline! After all, we do have a saint to preserve us so what the worry – St Jacinda. She ‘s good at this ‘economics thing’ isn’t she?

    • It only took her 11 years, 9 as an opposition MP and 2 as a Prime Minister to finally figure out what GDP meant, so yep, were in safe hands.

    • Why would investors snap up these properties when the red tape is increasing. You literally cannot rent out some houses legally. You can live there but not rent them out.
      You can only live in one house at a time.

      • Glen, why snap them up?
        I can’t say it simpler: because they make soooooooo much more money that your money in the bank. Even without claiming interest or offsetting costs. The red tape will be soon forgotten. As for mortagee sales, that could be an almost brand-new home that the owner cannot afford any longer. And as for not renting legally, where does that come from??? Whether you own 2 or 20 or 200 houses, you can rent out…er…all of them if you like. You just have to pay the relevant taxes on any profits. Get it?

      • make your hovels not slums is the quick answer to that one…oh yeah and stop assuming your tax free investments can have a continued upward ride….in short welcome to the real world where people do actually pay tax on income…tough innit?

  13. ‘6% Inflation’ ???

    The price of Brent crude has risen around 60% over the past year, i.e. from around $56 to around $86 [US dollars]. 30/50 = 60%.

    https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/46

    And the Kiwi has fallen against the greenback from low the 70 cent range to current 67 cents.

    So the actual price increase for internationally-traded oil is well over 60%.

    Since the entire NZ economy is predicated on using imported motor fuels made from Brent (or other crudes that have risen similarly), and since oil is a proxy for everything economic in this petroleum-based society. it naturally follows that there will be the biggest financial-economic implosion in history very soon.

    Needless to say, the vast majority of people, utterly dependent on irrational confidence for survival, say: “You’re too gloomy. That will never happen.” Even as it happens right under their noses.

    Undoubtedly, the LINO government’s response to the dire predicament we are now in, as a consequence of decades of denial of reality, will be a rallying call, heralded by: “Build more roads,” which has been one of the the stock answers to practically everything for the past several decades.

    • Yes. I agree. The “Build more roads” campaign has served both Labour led and National led Governments very well but the tires are now treading too thin. Labour branched out and promised 100,000 new State houses but failed to deliver. They came up with the idea that charities contribute to these 100,000 new house builds at a time when not only government funding to our prime charities was being scaled back, but also private donations were diminished due to successive disasters such as the 2010/2011 Christchurch earthquakes, then the Covid-19 pandemic; there’d also been a global financial meltdown in 2007 which also contributed towards people and charities having less funds available.

      Each time we get a change of government, they borrow more money, and then the country gets further into debt. I understand that there have been natural disasters, I understand that funds were needed for repairing our roads and building new schools, but for goodness sake, there was money allocated towards the building of 100,000 new State homes over the course of ten years and, now, several years down the line, there are nowhere near 100,000 new State houses to show for it!!

  14. What ever the causes for inflation,
    (personally I think it is linked to the price of petrol),
    The Reserve Bank has failed in the one job it has to do.

  15. There is an underlying factor to the wage price spiral that Social Credit identified a long time ago.Back when the money supply issued as debt by the banks was at least controlled in it’s overall volume by the Reserve Ratio imposed by the Reserve bank.
    Even back then while loans were repaid ultimately by the recycling of someone else’s debt somewhere in the system , so that a new loan to one participant repaid and thus cancelled the money created in the first. Keeping the overall money supply either constant or increasing at a managed rate reflecting increases in the overall size of the economy.
    What was always left out of this equation was where the money was to come from to make the interest payments. There is no mechanism in the banking system for this factor, so the result overall has always been that debt must always be rising in the economy as a proportion of the money supply. interest rates increases only increase the rate at which unpayable debt increases. So now 70 odd years after the reset of Bretton Woods , and the abandonment of any control of how much debt banks should issue, debt has now completely overwhelmed the money supply. So that is to say that all the money in the world cannot discharge even a tiny fraction of the world’s debt. Hence though it is not acknowledged , the need for now unending QE , the continuation of must lead to an endless spiral of inflation which as the created money begins to leak out of the corporate/banking world as it is now doing; Ending the QE or normalising interest rates will cause an immediate complete collapse . The collapse will take longer via the inflation route but it will be just as certain.
    D J S

  16. Well burn a candle for St. Jacinda then, she and her sturdy trusty friend, the most honorable Grant Roberton surely will do something about that pesky inflation soon – any day now, after they instruct Winz to send some Food vouchers for the poor who sadly can’t even afford a sandwich on their starvation benefits.

  17. A perfect storm is brewing for winter:
    Increasing interest rates
    Supply chain disruptions; and
    Omnishambles
    No real ability for further quantitative easing

    Buckle up

  18. Wait a minute, you mean to say that printing 10’s of billions of dollars out of thin air increased inflation (and that is especially affecting the most vulnerable negatively and making all the mega-rich mega-richer)? But, but, but I thought Keynesian Economics (aka MMT) with massive handouts to people not working is what we all wanted and needed to save us from the evil capitalisms!? I thought money was “free”!

    • except the massive handouts you speak of–go to big business and the bourgeoise NOT the actual people of NZ…working or not

  19. If you look at some of the people who lost their homes in the 1980’s due to the high interest rates, many of them are still renting today and have never been able to buy another home of their own.

    This is why direct government intervention is needed to assist in curbing high inflation and high interest rates. Mechanisms such as rent controls and also being able to reduce taxes such as rates on properties, GST, and Excise Taxation by looking at alternative methods of tax like a Mansion Tax, a comprehensive Inheritance Tax, a Financial Transactions Tax.

    Otherwise, we’re looking at five dollar a litre petrol in 2024 and fifty dollars for a lamb roast. These are simply hypothetical examples I know, but it is the reality of a life they we’re looking at if changed are not made in the taxation and pricing of goods areas.

  20. Your are thoughtful Chris. The needle had got stuck in the groove, reproducing the same result whatever the plaint of the listeners in general. Covid has shaken up the kaleidoscope, altering the settings, whether liked or not. We have to work to rearrange them in a more satisfactory way going forward, before the sound of loud, unhappy cries becomes the new version of the old accepted cacophony.

  21. Phony inflation figures generated from a phony economy. But at least I can understand why certain figures aren’t calculated in ‘official’ inflation numbers, given the excuse the moneyed class needs to be able to keep the working class in line.

    • Yes the increasing price of petrol is just completely phony, when they ask for $2.65 a litre I just pay $1.90, because what do they know hey?

      • Fair point, hence I need to elaborate on my point. There are a lot of figures not included in the official inflation numbers, meaning these inflation numbers barely reflect the real world we live in, henceforth, they are phoney. But yes, I absolutely get your point.

  22. Since yesterday:

    13:46 pm CDT 25/01/2022

    Brent Crude(March Contract)
    87.86 +1.84%

    https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/46

    Obviously the price of crude oil cannot continue to rise at an annual rate of 700%. Market manipulation and demand destruction will undoubtedly cause a fall in international oil prices at some stage, which will be followed by another series of rises, as the value of fiat currencies plummets.

    Opportunists are not slow to promote electric cars, despite the fact that the price of lithium ore needed for batteries has skyrocketed over the past few months, and despite the fact that NZ has been importing dirty Indonesian coal to keep the electricity grid functioning.

    Undoubtedly, mealy-mouthed politicians will pretend they have everything under control and that we are on the cusp of “a better, brighter future.”

    mealy-mouthed

    ADJECTIVE
    afraid to speak frankly or straightforwardly.

  23. BREAKING NEWS!

    Another dictate from the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment!

    You have to wear your ‘Mask’ properly.

    An instruction manual to be released soon as!

    The price of N95 masks has increased in value. $14.75 each!

  24. danny if pricks walk around with their masks at half mast then there needs to be standard so the numpties can be told to sort their shit out.
    yes the price of masks is outrageous, the scandal lies in what suppliers bought them for compared to the price they sell them for all down the chain…ie the mark up..and let’s face it shortage and hikes is an acceptable business practice in good ‘ol NZ

    DON’T WORRY there will be scoping exercise to form a standing committee that will report back in ohhh let’s say 5yrs…so no worries

    • like the supplier, you too could have bought masks at a cheaper price when they were available. and, the reason these Masks went up sharply is the government. After all they just went out and basically told people – poor people – that their cloth masks are no good anymore, and that they now need to wear government approved apparal.
      How bout Dear Jacinda Ardern – PM , Dear Andrew Little – Minister of Health, Dear Grant Robertson – Minister of Finances – and all the other Ministers of Bullshit get together and a. put a stop to price gauging, b. send masks to every household free of charge, c. put a limit on purchase for individuals. You know, rationing.
      The problem that you have is that the studentbrigade that is Labour “Elite’ in government never really spend a day in the world of the unwashed proletariat, thus they have their masks – they can afford them, and surely their masks will be paid for by the tax payer, and the rest can get fucked.
      What this did, is essentially punishing the poor for being poor, forcing the poor to stay home and out of mind out of sight for lack of a St. Jacinda Ardern approved Mask.

      • I did buy masks well in advance sabine but that doesn’t make gouging the NZ public now, ok…you know what will happen the poor/unprepared will go with worn out or no mask…that’s reality and it will help exactly no one.

  25. We are expecting the price of petrol to reach $3.00 a litre or higher by the end of this year. What will it be by the end of next year if government intervention does not take place? Around $4.00 a litre or higher, I estimate.

    The price of food has increased. Takeaways, like KFC, McDonald’s, etc, and even items like fish and chips. This is partly to do with the increase in the minimum wage; and also partly to do with inflation, as the higher cost of products, say fish, mayonnaise, water, flavorings, potatoes in some regions, cheese, make it necessary for these retailers
    to implement price hikes. The supermarkets, as retailers, are following this same pattern so everyday household goods are becoming more expensive as well. Once again, government intervention is needed.

    The triple threat here, to the pay packet of the average New Zealand family, is high rent. Rent goes up to meet demands on property rates, which frequently go up in price. Most New Zealand Councils are overloaded with debt and a lot of their assets have stagnated in value; therefore, any government intervention in the form of rent controls should be taken on only in conjunction with Central Government working alongside the respective Councils to alleviate their debt obligations from a long term objective.

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