I am not sure that the government's economic policy can even be dignified by the title of "a rehash". Willis was on RNZ this morning proposing more foreign investment, more immigration and more tourism as the path to growth. In other words, more of what has caused many of New Zealand's present woes, with not a single new idea on offer. Sure, there may be some "growth" in the economy if tens of thousands of new immigrants and tourists arrive on our shores. Every person that comes over the border needs to be fed, housed, and moved around. You have a captive market, and even the most hapless economy will see an uptick in business with an increasing population. Yet this is a crass policy. It can only make a dumb economy dumber.
I meant a rehash in the sense National's proposed policies are a reuse of old ideas without significant change or improvement.
Rather than a coherent economic strategy, a repeat of policies such as increased immigration and tourism may have more of a political motivation - to help prop up the sagging housing market. The soft housing market will be a concern in National party heartlands, who base their wealth on the 'unearned increment' as Henry George put it.
Bernard Hickey's quip that the NZ economy is a 'housing market with bits tacked on' helps to capture the mentality of these people. Bernard is also right that such a strategy is less likely to work this time, due to the Reserve Bank restrictions on lending.
Interesting Joe. The current manoeuvres - let’s call it that - have a whiff of panic about them. Unfortunately, a shuffling of desk chairs and ministers and even ministries still fails to grapple with a nation in linear decline. Arresting falling living standards and funding a stable society is going to require some Leonardo Da Vinci level thinking, and frankly, with the mob currently in control, I’m not feeling like any of the ‘codes’ required to unlock prosperity are going to be deciphered anytime soon. More of the same…here we come.
IMHO the core of a successful strategy has to address growing wealth inequity, rather than just talk about it. Deeply unequal societies are more unstable, and their economies do not perform as well.
Good points. Economic development implies rationally guided qualitative change in the economy though not to the exclusion of quantitative growth. Simple "growth" on the other hand implies mere quantitative change of a random kind. The changed title of the ministry is more consistent with the actual approach of neo-liberal governments and so is more honest. However there is no reason to be sure that the ministry or its minister will successfully achieve even their modified, limited and fairly random new objective.
Differentiating between qualitative and quantitative growth is a good way of putting it - it goes to the heart of the weaknesses of the the use of "GDP' as a measure of the health of the economy. Sometimes 'degrowth' advocates fall into the same trap, and underestimate the extent by which we need the right kind of growth to move us to a low carbon economy.
Or maybe, the PM is just a PR hack, running a confidence scheme, who is maybe beginning to wake up to the fact they got fiscal prescriptive policy all wrong vis à vis monetary policy and he’s now deploying the political strategy of our era, (“doubling down” he even SAID so via his Twitter/X post the other day) and is cosplaying as a man with a fresh understanding of our markets and our times and attempting to appear that he is doing something—anything—to stay ahead of us? Worshipping at the same old altar of a god named “growth” won’t get him out of this pickle.
If he is were Liz Truss, the international markets would have ushered him off stage after a couple months and we woulda had a do-over at this. But since we’re such a backwater in the global markets they got away with it until now and the results are in: $NZD they’ve tanked so here comes the inflationary “growth” of a weak currency so let’s just rebrand the whole project and take credit for this thing we’ll now call growth. Yeah, that’s what we meant to do all along.
And with each month that goes by, we’re that much closer to saying, “See? Government is just no good at these things, the private markets can do this better. Let’s give it to them.” Then the PM and some of these ministers can all take starring roles at the private entities that get to take all of this over.
By and large I agree, but I think the lack of competence in this government goes beyond just Luxon. I am actually genuinely shocked at how bad Nicola Willis is. If the current National party caucus contain any more thoughtful types they have been thoroughly banished to Siberia.
I was thinking the other day that there seems to be more people in leadership positions in NZ right now who could be called 'empty' - they are the kind of people who focus on process and get very ratty if anyone dares bring up matters relating to content. Substance is alien to them so they take it as a threat. In that sense Luxon is their ideal leader.
Nikki Noboats apparently never even took a macro Econ course at Uni because, if she had, she’d have known that a restrictive fiscal policy on the heels of several years of RBNZ tight monetary policy would just rank the economy further defeating any supposed dreams of actually growing the size of the economy.
I am not sure that the government's economic policy can even be dignified by the title of "a rehash". Willis was on RNZ this morning proposing more foreign investment, more immigration and more tourism as the path to growth. In other words, more of what has caused many of New Zealand's present woes, with not a single new idea on offer. Sure, there may be some "growth" in the economy if tens of thousands of new immigrants and tourists arrive on our shores. Every person that comes over the border needs to be fed, housed, and moved around. You have a captive market, and even the most hapless economy will see an uptick in business with an increasing population. Yet this is a crass policy. It can only make a dumb economy dumber.
I meant a rehash in the sense National's proposed policies are a reuse of old ideas without significant change or improvement.
Rather than a coherent economic strategy, a repeat of policies such as increased immigration and tourism may have more of a political motivation - to help prop up the sagging housing market. The soft housing market will be a concern in National party heartlands, who base their wealth on the 'unearned increment' as Henry George put it.
Bernard Hickey's quip that the NZ economy is a 'housing market with bits tacked on' helps to capture the mentality of these people. Bernard is also right that such a strategy is less likely to work this time, due to the Reserve Bank restrictions on lending.
Interesting Joe. The current manoeuvres - let’s call it that - have a whiff of panic about them. Unfortunately, a shuffling of desk chairs and ministers and even ministries still fails to grapple with a nation in linear decline. Arresting falling living standards and funding a stable society is going to require some Leonardo Da Vinci level thinking, and frankly, with the mob currently in control, I’m not feeling like any of the ‘codes’ required to unlock prosperity are going to be deciphered anytime soon. More of the same…here we come.
Hi James - I completely agree!
IMHO the core of a successful strategy has to address growing wealth inequity, rather than just talk about it. Deeply unequal societies are more unstable, and their economies do not perform as well.
Good points. Economic development implies rationally guided qualitative change in the economy though not to the exclusion of quantitative growth. Simple "growth" on the other hand implies mere quantitative change of a random kind. The changed title of the ministry is more consistent with the actual approach of neo-liberal governments and so is more honest. However there is no reason to be sure that the ministry or its minister will successfully achieve even their modified, limited and fairly random new objective.
Thanks Geoff for your comment.
Differentiating between qualitative and quantitative growth is a good way of putting it - it goes to the heart of the weaknesses of the the use of "GDP' as a measure of the health of the economy. Sometimes 'degrowth' advocates fall into the same trap, and underestimate the extent by which we need the right kind of growth to move us to a low carbon economy.
Or maybe, the PM is just a PR hack, running a confidence scheme, who is maybe beginning to wake up to the fact they got fiscal prescriptive policy all wrong vis à vis monetary policy and he’s now deploying the political strategy of our era, (“doubling down” he even SAID so via his Twitter/X post the other day) and is cosplaying as a man with a fresh understanding of our markets and our times and attempting to appear that he is doing something—anything—to stay ahead of us? Worshipping at the same old altar of a god named “growth” won’t get him out of this pickle.
If he is were Liz Truss, the international markets would have ushered him off stage after a couple months and we woulda had a do-over at this. But since we’re such a backwater in the global markets they got away with it until now and the results are in: $NZD they’ve tanked so here comes the inflationary “growth” of a weak currency so let’s just rebrand the whole project and take credit for this thing we’ll now call growth. Yeah, that’s what we meant to do all along.
And with each month that goes by, we’re that much closer to saying, “See? Government is just no good at these things, the private markets can do this better. Let’s give it to them.” Then the PM and some of these ministers can all take starring roles at the private entities that get to take all of this over.
Thanks Mark for your comment.
By and large I agree, but I think the lack of competence in this government goes beyond just Luxon. I am actually genuinely shocked at how bad Nicola Willis is. If the current National party caucus contain any more thoughtful types they have been thoroughly banished to Siberia.
I was thinking the other day that there seems to be more people in leadership positions in NZ right now who could be called 'empty' - they are the kind of people who focus on process and get very ratty if anyone dares bring up matters relating to content. Substance is alien to them so they take it as a threat. In that sense Luxon is their ideal leader.
Nikki Noboats apparently never even took a macro Econ course at Uni because, if she had, she’d have known that a restrictive fiscal policy on the heels of several years of RBNZ tight monetary policy would just rank the economy further defeating any supposed dreams of actually growing the size of the economy.