A friend (OK OK a facebook contact) sent me this link.
Without being all right wing and going on and on about how ACT was sent here to save our souls (god forbid!) it does have to be said that some of the dichotomies mentioned on the page are indeed interesting. For those that don’t click links check out below.
So we want to be a first world country and still retain our egalatarianism and yet we find ourselves able to;
- have an Export Year at the same time as post float highs of the NZ dollar,
- see massive investment in the domestic housing market and be happy with the absence of investment in the productive sector,
- have an export award for selling coal to China and worry about carbon emissions in New Zealand,
- have a Ministry for Economic Development that has no time for industry,
- be happy with investments that operate with negative cash flow on expectation of a tax free terminal gain while all the time giving tax breaks on the losses,
- have rampant exchange rate, driven by domestic inflation and yet have massive growth in public spending at local and national level and want to have the immigration taps wide open,
- argue that Kiwi made can mean made in China,
- expect that research and development will stay here (for ever) as production goes off-shore today,
- watch our icon companies leave for greener pastures and in a policy sense do nothing but shrug and say such is the world,
- punish one side of the economy (export) for the sins of the other (domestic) and expect behaviour to change,
- promote endless increases in regulation and compliance in New Zealand, while promoting trade deals with regimes whose labour laws amount to little more than slavery,
- look into the face of an energy crisis and a need to avoid carbon emissions but then arrange matters so it costs millions to try and dam a river,
- watch the external sector die, and not even debate how domestic inflation can be controlled without the adverse consequences on the export sector,
- ignore what is happening in the world and just keep pushing the same policy buttons that worked under different circumstances but don’t work now.
Food for thought?
