Damien Grant is of no use to anyone, but he is good at looking outside the square and seeing the enormous looming economic meltdown.
In his latest column, he points out the insanely optimistic Treasury outlook for economic growth and asks pertinent questions about how flimsy those insanely optimistic predictions are…
Are we in a cyclical downturn – or is this something darker?
The forecast wasn’t pretty even with this optimistic growth forecast: “Core Crown expenses grow from $139.0 billion in 2023/24 to $162.9 billion by 2028/29. The growth in core Crown expenses is driven by three key factors – increases in benefit expenses, increases in finance costs and forecast new spending.”
Meanwhile, revenue rises, mostly due to that imagined economic growth. The deficits, expected to fall from 2.4% of GDP in the current year to 1.8 in the next and surplus by 2028 are based on those economic growth figures that are wilfully optimistic.
…he’s merely saying what I’ve been screaming about all year, that this Government’s Austerity Agenda would borrow more than Labour for Tax Cuts we can’t afford but hollow out public spending.
Damien’s ‘solution’ (just like Hooton’s ‘solution’) is more bullshit free market liberalisation which will whore the common good off to corporations and the elites.
What Damien (and Hooton) misses is the enormity of what climate change will do and that NZs small population base has always required the State to be the economic foundation.
We need to raise revenue to fund the services we have, which requires new taxes, taxes that should be aimed at the wealthy and the elites who have enjoyed the rigged capitalism we have.
The Right Wing Redneck ZB Trolls be screaming that National’s budget is NOT an Austerity budget because the Government is borrowing more than Labour did.
Bullshit.
While National are technically borrowing more – IT IS FOR TAX CUTS AND LANDLORD TAX LOOPHOLES WE CANT AFFORD!
Take a look at the example of public health.
In the Budget, National allocated just 2.9% increase to health services but inflation was 3.3% and population growth 2.6% while an ageing population adds more to costs.
National gave 2.9% for health but we needed 8% to stand still, is the electorate dumb enough to fall for National’s latest manufactured public service crisis to introduce more failed free market reforms?
The Minister says we can’t afford $1.4billion for health but we could borrow $14billion for tax cuts, again is the electorate dumb enough to believe this?
We have progressively decreased taxing the richest to fund out public services until the public services fall over and the public scream ‘something must be done’ and the Right ‘here’s something’ and they privatise a little more and you get even less.
By underfunding public services and borrowing for tax cuts, the National Government Austerity Agenda has created hollow budgets and it is going to get far worse next year as the fall out from their Austerity agenda wrecks the economy.
The Political Right have traded in the common good for their donors interests.
Damien Grant’s column reminds us that the far right will attempt to use the next economic meltdown as a means to amputate public services even further.
There is an old saying in NZ politics, Labour is good for Capitalism, National is good for Capitalists.
Welcome to Crony Capitalism and as our public services get eroded by cheap tricks and numbers, this Government enrich their mates at the collective cost of us all.
The ease with which the sleepy hobbits of muddle NuZilind are led to give the rich more while hurting the poor is a Kiwi super power.
At some point as the economy tanks because of this Government’s deeply flawed policies, you are going to have to personally challenge your post covid bitterness and ask yourself hard questions over how you had that bitterness manipulated by the Right.
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Martyn – Short answer: No. Longer answer: No, but…
If the media choose to graphically highlight Grant Robertson’s steady ship approach back to surplus by 2027 verified by Treasury pre election whilst retaining a skilled workforce and a bouyant building programme ….compared to the absolute destructive clusterfuck of a situation that we are in now created in just 12 months by Luxon, Nicky ‘No Boats’ Willis and Seymour, then their should be…must be ..an early election…because this incompetence is untenable.
This is N.Z.’s future at stake here….and this is an extremely
serious situation….our people deserve better…much better.
Labour has nothing worth saying until [they] admit to the crime wave that is roger douglas then request a royal commission of inquiry into every arse he’s kissed, every ball he’s cupped and every life he’s destroyed since he left Labour in ruins to shit out the neo-nazi ACT Party.
@ Maori and @ Farmers? You, are the real power here. What are you going to do about that? How are you going to wield your power? Or will you *do the same things while expecting different results? Like drive tractors slowly and pointlessly here and there? Do a Haka while being ignored as fascist scum rejig laws to determine whether your cultural nuances are in fact threatening acts of terrorism?
Chris Hipkins has all but disappeared so he clearly knows the position he’s in. He daren’t start a fuss or our entire current political world will fall out of it’s corrupt orbit and crash land and in so doing will take out the 14 multi-billionaires, the 3118 multi-millionaires and send the dirty, greedy aussie banksters who’ve parasitised our domestic banking and financials yelping back to australia like arse kicked dingoes.
@ Maori? @ Farmers? What’s it going to be for 2025? A proper fucking statement-brawl in the pub car park or are you going to whimper home to smack the kids and the Missus then kick the dog instead?
*The quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is often attributed to Albert Einstein, but there is no evidence that he ever said it. The quote is actually attributed to Rita Mae Brown, a mystery novelist.
So there you go.
Rita Mae Brown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Mae_Brown
But I like to think that Albert and Rita might have got along just fine. Just like @ Farmers and @ Maori. It’s just that they don’t know it yet.
NB. If Maori reach out to farmers there’s something Maori should know.
Many Farmers are entirely polluted by the Blue Gas that puffs out of Federated Farmers. Did you know, that there was a farmers union about 80 years ago? It was destroyed by urban corporate’s to parasitise farming. Then, in 1936, a black cloud of toxic corruption spread over AO/NZ. It’s still here and it’s called the national party.
Very true. We need courts to exact justice against those who imposed privatization.
Observed about the NZ’s Labour party as long ago as the 1940s:
“They walked to vote them in and drove in their cars to vote them out.”
What came out of the Labour gathering to make voters think there is a party with answers and worth voting for .?
At the moment the National coalition is doing what they campaigned on by cutting the public service and trying to stop over the top spending.
There was no ‘over the top’ spending …that is a myth continually perpetuated by the right across the globe…that’s the only line they’ve got.
The U.K. went the one trick pony austerity route with disastrous consequences…the damage to society in general will span decades
into the future..
Thanks to Luxon, Willis and Seymour’s naive stupidity N.Z now
has itself locked into a nosedive
death spiral.
They were warned pre election, by economists of all stripes, not to do what they did, but their ego, vanity and hubris rule their tiny minds because they choose to believe their
own bullshit over facts.
The only option N.Z.has now is to get them the hell out of office as soon as possible…
Neither Luxon nor Willis are particularly likeable. Whereas people liked Ardern in her first term, Luxon especially just doesn’t gel. The silly PJ photo is a perfect example. Expensive Australian PJs. What’s that about? He can’t read the room. Perhaps Hooton is right. Luxon was out of the country when it mattered. As for Willis, the English degree doesn’t inspire confidence and means she relies on others. That’s ok to some extent but disastrous when she thinks Economics for Dummies will suffice. Neither has personal capital. Will Luxon be gone by March? Probably not, but he can’t have much time left.
Ennius “ Neither Luxon nor Willis are particularly likeable”. Yes.Even shyster Key doesn’t look quite so bad retrospectively. He put Luxon there, and that’s unfathomable, but the slimey fool’s arrogance and self-love is pretty repugnant and his and Willis’s intelligence deficits bad news for New Zealand.
All we need to do is tax capital in the same way that we tax labour.
The economic meltdown will be global in scale. It is not due to any specific person’s or party’s creation – other than that everyone just did what Jacinda wanted (which you can’t blame anyone for, since most of the planet was doing the exact same response). If only New Zealand melts down, your argument will hold – but I’m betting that won’t be the case. The hangover from the Covid-19 “mitigation” and subsequent bailout is far from over.
‘Increases in benefit spending’ so it’s all our problem is it, not a totally mismanaged drained economy run by a bunch of Mafia-copiers, with the country handed over first by Labour because they wanted to be first in something that business would pat them on the head for. And then happily picked up by National as would be expected even hoped by Labour, as they could then show that National were useless and just following Labour. And so the fire sale goes, and we hope not literally.
Heroes lean over and take the wheel when the bus driver slumps over the wheel after a heart attack. Labour had a heart removal and now is under permanent tranquilisation. When and how is the appropriate way for heroes to act? Are Maori ready or are all the young ones imbued with university-ideas with tikanga attached, and neoliberalism efficiency to be grimly applied? As that is what I fear. Especially from the women who have that apparently eternal feminine idea that anything they think/feel must be right.
I think call King Charles III in as referee. We can get his permission to try some new civil management practices between a Joint Council of committed pakeha and Maori not to forget observers with a voice so as not to overlook the Turrkish takeaway providers, the Filipino ones, the many Indians. the Vietnam-Thai partnership,, etc. We have invited them in as well as accepting refugees from the whole-o-mess abroad probably caused by 5 Eyes activity in other nations which were operating reasonably well and some better than the so-called advanced western nations when seeing under the covers.
Should just limit voting for central government to citizens only.
The vast swathes of migrants with no political nous or understanding of NZ political history will have deleterious effects on NZ.
Witness all the indian migrants, permanent residents – not citizens – voting National cos Sunny says so.
Its imbecilic. NZ stands alone as the only dumb western country that doesn’t limit central govt voting to citizens only.
Actually, immigration has two purposes. The first is to provide cheap labour for the benefit of lazy capital. The second is to dilute nationalist sentiment in order to extend the duration of the colonialist regime. Premier Vogel explicitly stated this to be the purpose of the mass immigration which he initiated and which persists to this day.
Nothing has changed. The colonialists won’t withdraw the right to vote from non-citizens. Why would they? It is one of the ploys which helps to keep them in power.
Yes. But not the election after.
“At some point as the economy tanks because of this Government’s deeply flawed policies…”.
If the economy tanked because of the current government’s budget-slashing policies then the problem is easily fixed in one of two ways. Either the current government does a re-think, or in two years time the other side of the House get another go at putting things right.
But what if the problem is structural? And what if that structural problem arises out of a set of dogmatic political assumptions which are shared by virtually all parties in parliament? Then your only solution is a structural fix through abandoning of the colonialist mindset which had worked pretty well for the first seven decades of last century but is hardly likely to continue delivering the goods into the present century. That implies that the solution cannot come from within parliament. It can only come through the actions of some extra-parliamentary force.
We entered fully into the world economy in 1984. Prof Jane Kelsey sought to bring important ramifications to us but our governments wear their scholarly achievements lightly.
Will Hutton has written a thorough study of the world financial approach in his –
‘The World We’re In’ 2002. None of our fulminating is going to get us out of this one in any sort of easy, tidy, managed order.
The write up from the cover:
https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/264412
“To understand the global economy, Hutton argues, one must first understand the United States where, over the past thirty years, the forces of conservatism have achieved such supremacy as to reduce liberalism to a term of abuse.” “The results have been dire: America is a weaker, fragmented society and its greatest prides – its commitment to democracy and opportunity for all – have been enfeebled by the conservative advance. Even its economic strengths are oversold and misunderstood.
This has not shaken the stranglehold of conservative beliefs in the U.S., with American economic hegemony spreading them across the globe.”.
“But Britain and Europe are different. Ours is a civilisation predicated on values and priorities distinct from America’s current leanings: our attitudes towards property, equality, social solidarity and the public realm are strikingly divergent. Hutton argues that it is Europe and not the U.S. that is far nearer to building a highly efficient and socially fair economy. Europe should not be afraid to stand up against the American version of globalisation, and champion the cause of a reinvigorated international society – taking over the mantle now abandoned by the U.S.”
“In The World We’re In, Hutton argues it is time for Britain to stop vacillating between two cultures and make common cause with its continental partners – to reject the conservative orthodoxy in favour of the shared European beliefs of obligations, rights, and fairness.”–BOOK JACKET.
what I cant believe is the deathly silence from the media and the squashed middle .If this was a Labour government they would be baying for the heads of Willis and Luxon daily .Every week for 3 years we had the media setting out on a monday to target a minister and ruin their life if posable .Now we have ministers wasting billions of dollars that were invested to progress housing and to bring transport across a dangerous body of water into the real world .And hardly a murmur from the media .The fact that the PM takes no port folio is reason enough to question what he is really doing for NZ ? BUT THE QUESTION IS NEVER RAISED .In the mean time he is allowed to carry on running his own realestate business racking in a million in tax free income because he is entitled .Then he jets off to some obscure meeting where he walks around shakes a few hands and talks shit about how good he is at hustling up trade for NZ .wHERE IS THE EVIDENCE THAT HE HAS DONE A DEAL OF ANY SORT FOR NZ .?
They need to be gone ASAP but the media will cover them and print lies about how good they have done and cover up the real carnage that is the real NZ .
I think that Martyn is under estimating the extent of the problem facing the New Zealand economy. He may want to see it as a consequence of the policies of the present government, and no doubt those policies are a factor. However while for reasons of political partisanship it may be tempting to put the whole blame on the present government we should resist the temptation to do so.
I believe that the problem is primarily structural and is not strictly economic. To understand that you need to step back from the multi-partisan consensus that has prevailed in New Zealand since the fourth Labour government, which holds that politics and economics operate in separate spheres. As it happens this is a “neo-liberal”, “monetarist” and “free market” doctrine, but more importantly, it is a false doctrine. The assumption of the Lange government was that New Zealand could have a neo-liberal economic system sitting alongside a caring social welfare state, and that it could have a productive economy dominated by foreign capital and dedicated to foreign trade while pursuing an independent foreign policy. Thirty years ago Bruce Jesson explained why this could not be the case, but who was listening? At the time it seemed to the left that these things were not connected, or, if they were, they could be effectively disconnected. The folly of that belief is now becoming more apparent, as the neo-liberal “global capitalist” New Zealand state pursues a militaristic overtly pro-American foreign policy, adopts policies towards the poor which range from indifference (under Labour) to outright contempt (under the present ACT dominated coalition) and seeks to nullify the Treaty of Waitangi. In other words, all the areas which we were told neo-liberalism would “not be allowed touch” it is now taken into its maw.
So the first thing we have to do is get rid of the notion that nothing is connected. From what we eat for breakfast to the drugs we take to foreign policy and economic policy, everything is connected. Is the government’s provision of free vaping kits unrelated to its foreign and economic policy? Not at all. It is out to corner the drug market on behalf of the British and American tobacco companies which financed it into power. It’s social policies are predicated on getting a whole generation of New Zealanders addicted to licit drugs.
To come back to the economic “crisis” (actually only a 1% decline in GDP, but seriously hurting a large number of people who have been thrown out of work) I can confidently predict that it will not be overcome under any colonialist government. I can also safely predict that a solution to New Zealand’s predicament will not come without a great deal of struggle and sacrifice on our part. Regardless of what we choose to do, one way or another the colonialist regime will make us suffer. It is better that we should suffer in the fight for our nation and our freedom than as abject slaves of Anglo-American imperialism.
Well saID Geoff ^^^^^^^^^^^.
Good comment spot on Geoff F.
Emotional rubbish.
And you would surely know David Seymour
Mindless fuckwit
Just a fart really
Once again a comment that needs to be read a few times and digested with an open mind .
I think my Will Hutton piece under the previous GF comment was meant to come under this 2nd piece and trail at the end of the comments. Hutton has written worthy material that enlightens but for me depresses, as to the current economics and the inhumanity of the policies in favour of amassing wealth and power. The world is swerving from people considerations to bluntly thrust following widely-accepted behaviours that are customary for the middle class and socially mobile to follow neoliberalism and conform, comply and obey in an amoral way. I think we can observe this for instance, in our civil administrators in NZ/AO.
Fucking brilliant
Austerity doesn’t work except under very strict circumstances. And even then it’s a toss up. We’ve known that austerity doesn’t work for a number of years now, and yet it seems to be an article of faith with some – perhaps all – conservatives. Christ even the IMF has finally decided that austerity doesn’t work, after promoting it and ruining economies for years. Fuck – there are times and I just don’t know what to say.
My question to this government is who is actually going to pay for fast track, who will work in fast track because many of our workers have headed overseas.