Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news that global factories are no longer expanding as fast as we head into the last two months of 2022.
But first, there was another sizeable fall in dairy prices at the auction earlier today. Overall prices fell another -3.9% in USD terms, and on the rising Kiwi dollar, prices were down a substantial -6.6% in NZD terms. These falls are mounting up now. Very weak Chinese demand, including from their foodservice industry is kneecapping these commodities. SMP was down -8.5%, WMP was down -3.4%. All this is happening despite falling global milk production. Overall prices are now back to levels we last had in January 2021 with the bull run well faded. We are down -30% from the peak in March 2022. Non-one is talking about a "commodity super-cycle" anymore. In fact, farm gate payout forecasts will undoubtedly start to be trimmed now for the upcoming season.
Meanwhile, American retail sales are still holding up. On a same-store basis, sales last week were up +9.7% from year-ago levels with is a stronger gain than the prior week.
But American factories are not expanding as fast as they once were, in fact now barely at all. Both PMIs for October out today record a minor expansion only. The widely-watched local one reports a slowing on new order intake, falling export orders, and prices that are not rising anywhere near as fast. The Internationally-benchmarked Markit one reports similar conditions. Their logistics LMI confirms a fast easing of supply-chain pressures.
Meanwhile, their September JOLTS report shows September job openings increased, hires edged down, and total separations decreased. If those conditions extended into October the upcoming non-farm payrolls report for October will be on the upside of the currently expected +200,000 employment gain.
And American construction spending unexpectedly rebounded in September, amid a surge in investment in nonresidential structures that offset a further decline in housebuilding.
In Japan, their Markit PMI fell away to only a minor expansion, reporting new orders and output growth declined further in October.
The private Caixin factory PMI in China wasn't as negative as the official one, but it was already contracting in September and stayed contracting in October.
In contrast in India, their factory expansion rolls on at a good pace with new order growth and production strong and inflationary pressures mild in October
The Australian PMI for October remains good by international standards, but demand and output growth slowed and inflation pressures eased visibly. But they report business confidence improved.
The RBA, who review their cash rate target monthly, added another +25 bps to their policy rate taking it to 2.85%. They deemed this an adequate response to their inflation pressures which they now see peaking at 8%. They seem confident it won't get away from them, although few others are. Markets expect another +25 bps in December and their policy rate topping out at 3.85% in May 2023. Perhaps they are expecting a weakening China to do much of the work for them?
These rate rises hit households with mortgages almost immediately in Australia, because most are still on floating rates.
The UST 10yr yield starts today unchanged at 4.05%. The UST 2-10 rate curve is more inverted at -48 bps. Their 1-5 curve is inverted and little-changed at -39 bps. And their 30 day-10yr curve is also little-changed at +42 bps. The Australian ten year bond is down -4 bps at 3.77%. The China Govt ten year bond is up +2 bps at 2.68%. And the New Zealand Govt ten year will start today down up +11 bps at 4.33%.
Wall Street's Tuesday session is soft with the S&P500 down -0.3%. Overnight, European markets all closed up about +1% except Frankfurt which only rose +0.5%. Yesterday, Tokyo finished with a +0.3% gain. However Hong Kong ended making strides erasing its recent big dump, gaining +5.2% on the day and Shanghai was up +2.6%. Rumours yesterday that their pandemic lockdown policies are about to change were behind the mood shift. The ASX200 rose +1.7% yesterday but the NZX50 dipped -0.2% on the day.
The price of gold will open today at US$1645/oz. This is up +US$9 from this time yesterday.
And oil prices start today +US$3.50 higher than this time yesterday at just on US$89/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is just over US$95.50/bbl.
The Kiwi dollar will open today at 58.4 USc and up +¼c since yesterday and a six week high. Against the Australian dollar we are +½c firmer at 91.5 AUc and our highest since April. Against the euro we are up almost another +½c at 59.2 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at 69.1 and +40 bps higher and our highest since mid-September.
The bitcoin price is now at US$20,443 and a mere +0.3% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has also been low at just on +/- 0.8%.
The easiest place to stay up with event risk today is by following our Economic Calendar here ».
112 Comments
There’s plenty of USA haters here but they aren’t looking so bad. Economically at least.
I think that mindset has declined in recent times. Looking at Russia and China now makes most sensible people appreciate the glorious West.
Well that's one way to summon Audaxes to the comment thread ...
The West merely sucked resources from those folk. While telling itself a more comforting story.
That paradigm had to slow, cease and reverse - just physics and logic really. Colonisation was horizontal - other people's acres and resources - but also vertical; future potential resources. Current others are fighting back - 9/11, Ukraine - but future others can't, yet.
None of which changes the point that the draw-down - the Western paradigm - was temporary, and that we have to look at a future which doesn't include it. Shooting the messenger won't change that fact, either - a point some choose to misunderstand.
It's not about resources it's about freedom.
Freedom is having the resources to do whatever you want.
There's a valid argument that philosophy and values of freedom are valuable in and of themselves. E.g. the imbuing of the individual with certain inalienable rights that states cannot simply ignore that came about post WW2 through the efforts of Lauterpacht and Lemkin (and at Nuremberg) seems to have value to all humans.
Philosophy is great and all, but you still gotta eat, drink, and breathe. All of which require... resources.
So it all comes down to...population and its exponential growth.
Sure, but it's better to be eating and drinking under a benevolent regime than one that kills your family members.
With the given that resources are required for humans to live, human rights are better than an absence of human rights.
And here we are in NZ bravely supporting Ukraine by following Europe's lead as we are part of Europe, not the Pacific or areas thereof. How are we helping Europe? Adding a 35% premium (levy, import duty whatever) on Russian fertiliser. So now we are screwing our farmers amongst other world leading measures such as GHG costs.
JA et al can feel smug about this.
Sad
... picturing in my minds eye Mel Gibson shouting " Freedom ! " in the Braveheart movie .... yes , you're 100 % correct ...
DOW up nearly 15% over the last month
He is great, well worth the time. Buy a bit of gold, if you have spare cash buy a lot of gold because that paper money will buy less gold next year.
A clearer change of government would be more certain if the National leadership moved to focus on finding a sustainable way forward for our Health and Education systems. Whilst Boomers get a bad wrap for being greedy most of us don’t want tax cuts and would rather see leadership on key issues to improve NZ.
Indexing tax brackets for inflation isn't a dichotomy between the collapse of the state or it suddenly being perfectly funded and functional, but it would let people keep more of their own money at a time when households are falling behind.
This is easily the most frustrating aspect of the wider tax debate - the dishonest likening of indexing tax brackets (which is fair and reasonable) with wanting to detonate an atomic bomb under public services and cast forth on some kind of uber-libertarian crusade to eliminate the poor and destitute.
You could put a bomb under Wellington civil servants and public services could well improve.
Taking 75% of those jobs out of there would really help New Zealand.
Indexing tax brackets isn’t the flaw in nationals tax policy - I’m for the bracket changes.
The problem with nationals tax policy is the obsession with cutting taxes for high earners and property speculators. Why not use that money to give tax cuts on the lowest bracket?
Because it is important to national to give tax cuts to rich mates.
If they are looking at indexing they should also look at changing the brackets and rates altogether. The big issue with bracket creep is you end up with an almost flat tax system where the poor pay almost the same percentage as the rich, and NZ is certainly getting that way. We really should have a poor bracket (say < $30k), middle bracket (say < $140k) and a top bracket (>$140k). National are getting rid of the top bracket and indexing the current problem.
$140K is bugger all. Jack the top rate up to $250K or something, but ditching it altogether is political suicide. There's simply no way the media will give National any oxygen on indexing or challenge Robertson about it if there is the slightest hint they'll scrap the top rate.
Frankly this should be a slam dunk election winner and National have found a way to make it unpalatable to the wider electorate. It's kind of an achievement in a way when you think about it.
Australia now has lower taxes than New Zealand.
✈️✅
But more Australians...
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/nearly-6b-in-tax-cuts-for-riches…
"If you take a fairly costly interpretation of National's policy, the changes would give people earning the Prime Minister's salary about $54,000 over the three years of the next Parliament, while people on the minimum wage would get a bit less than $350 over the same period."
$350 is generous. Nothing stopping minimum wage earners becoming CEOs of mega corporations or members of parliament. Poor people are just too lazy to pay all the tax like rich people do. Everyone knows rich people pay all the taxes. Come on people give those boots straps a pull for once in your life!
They may as well make the first $100k tax free and get rid of GST and alcohol/fuel/ciggy excises. If the rich pay all the tax anyway why complicate things?
Because then all those people who like to bitch about how they don't pay their 'fair share' while contributing nothing themselves would have to find something else to do with their time. Sounds like it could be inflationary.
But they'll have you know, that those earning the Prime Minister's salary carry such a burden because they're in the minority of net taxpayers in this country. Oh, what a burden indeed.
I'm pretty sure there's families out there both working full time jobs on close to minimum wage would love to be net tax contributors if their incomes allowed it, but unfortunately Working for Families ensures there's food on the table after the rent is paid.
Swings and roundabouts of a progressive system; people who pay most of the tax benefit the most when rates are cut. I can't see any comment from the CTU about the extreme reliance on a small group of income tax taxpayers that creates this kind of outcome. Why is that, I wonder?
Seems like a perfect opportunity for them to push back on giving property speculators tax cuts to leave working Kiwis bearing all the load too.
Property speculators aren't getting a tax cut. They are getting a specific, extra, targetted blocking of a tax deductible business expense taken off.
It was targeted because it's immoral to have aspiring FHBs underwriting borrowing costs for landlords who produce nothing but tax free capital gains for themselves.
Yes, as noted, an effective tax cut, and unwinding of the bright line tax too.
Fair enough, though. If property speculators had wanted to pay taxes they'd work for wages like the plebs. It's the job of the working folk to pay all the taxes so property speculators don't have to.
The CTU's argument infuriates me because there is absolutely no equation where people on lower incomes could get more tax in a tax cut situation. Of course people on higher incomes get more money: 1. they get all the tax cuts the lower income people get, 2. they earn more already.
You can't cure stupid (but you can muffle the sound with duct tape).
You can make (almost) everyone get the same tax cut. If you cut the lower tax bracket only, then everyone that earns $14,000 or more gets the exact same amount.
No point saying anything now, people have short term memories, so best to show your hand closer to election day. Just look at how Jacinda come to power, labour were a mess three months out from when they come to power.
It's a real problem. At a time when many are doing it tough, we've an aging population drawing more from healthcare, and house prices and wages for important professions are completely out of whack, National is saying "oh, time to cut taxes on property speculators and the highest paid!" Giving the next generations the middle finger.
Take your point concerning healthcare. Was very surprised at a family & old friends gathering, a lot of retirees, who had given up their health insurance, and knew of many others acting similarly, as the premiums rise considerably. Now reliant on a unreliable health system. Not good for them and not good for an already highly pressured health system.
Doesn't health insurance absorb all your money as you get older? All the old people I know have been very well cared for by the public health system. Operations, pacemakers, etc, everything more than adequately looked after. If it is something relatively minor like a cataract or hernia that has a long waiting list then one can simply pay for it as well.
NZ health system is good, but I have watched Drs drop the ball with relatives twice in recent months, sure they had thousands spent on them but the Drs where over worked and either missed things or simply did not have time to do holistic health care once the big ops where done, wrong meds after and op etc, not enough wrap around from GP after huge costs in hospital... its a crisis. Cost of living, Healthcare, Public Transport, Education, Youth Suicide , Affordable housing, all these crisis being ignored while Rome burns and the leadership focus on co governance. Not a great result for hunters huts.... whats it going to look like for water? after all efficient water and waste water services are a sign of colonization... These services where not around in caves and tree trunks.
Your highly pressured health system is a direct result of a western world diet, that is loaded with refined sugar, refined flour, chuck in some trans fats, then processed to where it does not even resemble 'food'. Now our country is full of obese diabetics, with heart troubles and cancers, addicted to pharmaceuticals. The health system is not 'unreliable', its customers are. Throw in the adverse effects from the ongoing gene therapy experiment and no health insurance program should ever take on such a high risk.
Do not blame 'health care', your 'health' is your own responsibility, not a doctors.
Solid statement. When you look around you will observe most people have self inflicted health issues.
the ongoing gene therapy experiment
Wowsers. One of these.
However, there are certainly points on which you're correct. Most of the actual food in supermarkets is around the edges, not in the middle aisles. We don't exercise enough. We don't sleep enough. Folk drink too much.
We've also allowed public health cost issues in the form of respiratory illnesses caused by unhealthy rental housing for many years, although that is finally being addressed. There are also potential health costs coming from microplastics-related illnesses, which are not really the fault of today's younger generations.
One of the larger costs is the growing health burden of the older population. If that's personal responsibility not something for younger workers to fund, that'll mean a great unlocking of wealth currently in land and housing - perhaps via reverse mortgages or downsizing.
It's interesting that people are free to consume foods that have catastrophic and fatal health consequences yet are not free to make a decision about personal vaccination. People should be able to decide for themselves on the former and latter.
Yes, I have friends who chose not to have the vaccine. Funnily enough, they were free to choose that.
Not sure re other vaccines when they were younger or to travel to certain locations. Probably also got to choose whether to have those and go to those destinations etc.
Actually its probably more the reliance on your favourite fossils to drive us door to door everywhere. Travel to a public transport or cycling city such as London or Amsterdam and check out the difference in waist size.
If people are doing it tough then increasing taxation by stealth year-on-year to spend more and more on services that are going backwards and then shying away from measuring outcomes when you can't improve them isn't exactly great moral high ground either.
There's a long way to go on healthcare, yeah. Might just be that investment (and wages within cooey of housing costs) are what's needed, more than counterproductive metrics on doctors.
Not opposed to changing how much and what we tax either, just not a fan of making working folk pay the bulk of taxes so property speculation can go largely untaxed. That's gross.
The people doing it tough will get bugger all out of bracket indexation. But they will get reduced government spending, worse healthcare, etc.
Now this is just plain misinformation.
Adjusting the tax bands back to those of October 2010 would have substantial effects. $48,000 in October 2010 is equivalent to about $63,000 today.
If the government can't adjust tax brackets once a decade then it's lost the moral authority to collect taxation. That's a huge equivalent increase in purchasing power that the government has clipped the ticket on every step of the way.
As for government services, increasing taxes by stealth isn't getting us better ED wait times, infrastructure or housing either. But then again that only matters if you value actual outcomes, and don't mistake the mere act of spending more and more as somehow the only step in providing core civil services.
"increasing taxes by stealth isn't getting us better ED wait times, infrastructure or housing either" - Housing in NZ has improved a lot since 2010, most were completely uninsulated then. ED wait times might not be better, but without the extra money they would be a lot worse due to the ageing population.
So in other words, fire-housing money into things can be justified even if it produces no tangible improvement because it could in theory be worse?
Oh well might as well take 100% of people's money then, after all what they're left over with to cover the basics of living isn't even something worth taking into consideration. The fact governmental inflation is out of control is down to the government, not the individuals left with less and less as time goes by because the government doesn't want to make hard calls about how maybe some of its pet projects are a giant waste of time and money.
There's never going to be enough money to go around and if the government won't do a core part of their job then giving them a blank-cheque to continue dipping into people's wallets during a cost of living crisis is morally indefensible.
Surely you agree that if more people are using the health system because more people are old, then the health system needs more money? And it ain't cheap.
"Oh well might as well take 100% of people's money then" - we could get there if people continue to live longer and the super age is kept at 65.
It's like Luxon looked across at Truss' policies and said yes, that's what New Zealand needs now
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/nearly-6b-in-tax-cuts-for-riches…
National:
“National's finance spokeswoman Nicola Willis said she completely rejected the figures.”
Also National:
”National has not produced costings of its full tax plan, saying it will do so after the last set of Treasury forecasts, known as PREFU, are released in the weeks leading up to the election.”
National avoids talking about who will benefit to what degree from their tax plan by refusing to produce analysis. They’ve promised to do these things but when asked for the numbers they do the dance of the seven veils to hide the implications. Shouldn’t you do the analysis before you make the promises? The only reason not to is you don’t want people to know the truth.
Delaying the truth until the election doesn't seem like a great idea though. Almost better to get it out the way now, people and media tend to forget.
Nah delaying it is the optimal strategy. There will be a rush of news in the electoral campaign and the media and public will be struggling to process it. All people will hear is tax cuts, tax cuts. They won’t catch the detail that national is giving a small group a massive gain and most people jack. It’s very cynical.
Tell that to our Finance Minister. Robertson is refusing to discuss changes to personal tax rates at a time of a cost of living crisis he is presiding over because he's holding it over until the election. Pretty crappy of the Finance Minister to politicise the basic administration of our tax system to his own benefit, if you ask me.
The challenge of tax cuts is to give everyone a big cut costs a massive amount of money.
To give a few people a big cut costs very little.
So if your goal is to give rich people a big cut you need to tell everyone they are getting a tax cut but keep their attention away from the difference in what different people are getting - ie don’t let the average person know they are getting stuff all while big earners get a huge gain.
National is working this process hard. Their trick is to promise to remove labours taxes. Because labour targeted their taxes at the rich, national can make a simple promise to remove those taxes and tada their cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthy. It’s an amazing sleight of hand and while I’ve seen some in the media try and interrogate it, more light needs to be shone on what they are doing.
I’m not against tax cuts. The govt is taking in too much right now. But the national policy is rubbish. They could use the same spend and share it more broadly by targeting the lowest bracket.
Everyone gets $1000 cuts instead of most getting $350 and some getting $45000?
Exactly.
$1000 is $20 a week. Give me better healthcare instead please.
You're being given the choice between having $20 or it disappearing into a bottomless pit and then losing another $20 next year, and the next year, and the next year. In a decade's time, your $20 is now $200 a week. That's what you're defending here.
Without that bottomless pit I could die next year, so yes throw it in please.
I would prefer a cut-off age for free healthcare and resthome at say 85, but that ain't going to happen.
Maybe ask someone who is walking close to the breadline whether they'd want no actual improvement in anything, or $200 a week. You might get a different answer.
If your living costs are the same as they were in 2010 then I guess you could be forgiven for thinking that's not particularly relevant but $200 a week is probably quite a bit to many people. Especially given that the equivalent increase in benefits is usually lauded as some hugely visionary benevolent act.
... there is a sustainable way forward for our health & education systems ... competition ! .... allowing private enterprise to provide services & innovation ... like , when the Gnats set up some charter schools ... outstanding results ... until Ms Ardern arrived & shut them down ...
We need to shake off the shackles of our socialist mindset ...
Charter schools wasn’t competition. They got way more money than state schools. The public sector is actually very efficient, just under funded.
Did they? I seem to recall teachers unions pushing this argument but it was reasonably like-for-like once the set-up costs of the new charter schools were excluded. And even so, in a lot of cases they were dealing with kids that the state school system didn't particularly seem to care about whether they could read, write or even show up.
This is not true.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2111/S00256/result…
Reminds me of Gerry Brownlee
A dinosaur
You have to wonder if National are deliberately trying to lose the next election! If they just targeted their tax policy at "middle NZ" instead of "rich NZ" they would almost definitely win the next election. Instead they have given Labour some ammunition to at least criticise their tax cuts or to offer much better tax cuts for the majority.
Perfect time for them to come out and commit to generous wage rises for nurses too, instead of the $11B being spent on restructuring. Make it a firm commitment and walk in.
Hard to increase wages while also criticising Labour for causing inflation.
There is a clear reason why NZ National is silent on the issue. Aged care nurses make 10k less than their counterpart in the public health sector with similar experience and qualification.
By raising public health wages even further, the Nats face a backlash from old, wealthy voters.
Already over half of these nurses in these sectors are overseas trained; and National has already expressed interest in reopening migration channels wider than paying nurses more.
Aged care nurses do not work under the same relentless pressure & stress that nurses in public hospitals do ... hence the difference in pay scales ...
Funny you should say that when there have been reports from around the country for years suggesting the aged care sector is frustrated with the loss of its nursing talent to public hospitals. Care worker shortage: Here comes the tipping point | Grant Thornton
The current 1k+ unfilled nursing roles in aged care did not happen overnight. Poor pay has led many of these nurses to join private and public healthcare facilities.
I guess people don't mind some additional pressure & stress at work as long as it helps alleviate the financial pressures of being unable to pay their bills at home.
The for-profit aged care industry is facing a dire wage shortage. The taxpayer must do something about it!
Aged care - like early childhood education - is a great property investment scheme too, and of course keeping taxpayer subsidies coming in and personnel costs low is an important part of it.
Land banking - same as farming.
You really have to think how much pull speculators and low-value business owners have on NZ National leadership for them to be at the party's focal point in such difficult times.
ACT sounds like a better alternative and could potentially come in with enough seat to land meaty portfolios and make some reforms. As seen with Maori in 2017 and NZF in 2020, the smaller parties under MMP are under greater pressure to deliver on their promises or face complete wipeout in the following election.
Whoever they may be, they still only have one vote. The last National government, under the concerted direction of Stephen Joyce I believe, set about creating Corporate New Zealand and in so doing ignored the needs and expectations of the let’s say, man on the street, and didn’t help their cause much by becoming complacent, conceited and careless whilst going about it. At the end of the day there are more people on the street than there are corporate offices and the arrival of Jacinda Adern saw many turn to Labour in the short time once she had become leader. I do wonder if National ever learn from their mistakes.
Those corporates/large donors choose the people that you can vote for though.
Exactly - time for exposure prior to any election.
You're a bit of a contradiction Audaxes.
On the one hand you frequently link to a whole bunch of nonsense propaganda from Russia and China, completely undemocratic regimes headed by megalomaniacs with tenure for life, on the other hand you call for strengthening democracy by improving transparency in NZ.
I struggle to get a handle on what you actually believe
As opposed to Western propaganda? I usually read some of the links and although it is Russian and Chinese propaganda elements of Western duplicity come through even if you don't believe the other claptrap in these articles so I don't see it as Audaxes support for Russia and China, merely the other sides propaganda.
Good point and therein, in it’s entirety, lies both fault and weakness. Once upon time we had life experienced politicians come to parliament offering to provide those abilities to the electorate. Now it’s tailored more to academic career politicians, and consequently the success of that career is their first priority. And on top of that, as you point out, the tailoring now alters the body to suit the suit that the lobby brigade expect to be worn. When you get to the point, that at one stage, neither National nor Labour saw it as necessary to have the justice portfolio covered by an identity with a law degree, then the basic principles of government are surely being comprised.
I know a lot of dyed-in-the-wool, two ticks blue types (via some associations I am a member of, and also my professional endeavours)
By and large they are all nice, hard-working people and I get on well with them at a personal/social level, but typically all have the same mindset that any profit/success comes solely from their efforts, but any loss/risk to profit needs to be mitigated by the government at the expense of the public.
If one's business is doing well, it's because of hard graft and society shouldn't benefit from any of the spoils. If one's business is struggling, it's because the government has hindered its success (the current whinge du jour being with respect to insufficient immigration to provide less expensive labour) and so there should be some kind of compensation and/or adjustment to legislation to remove that hindrance.
My anecdotal observation is this attitude is so prevalent among the membership (not just those who tick blue once every three years, but who are actually involved in the party structure) that it must surely filter to the leadership. This is before you even consider the pull of larger corporations, whom I have no exposure to but I imagine would have huge influence, and who are probably the biggest welfare recipients in the country when you consider we basically underwrite cheap labour via WFF.
Compounding this is the fact that many have genuinely had little exposure to the actual hardships that many Kiwis face. They were raised in wealthy families, went to premium schools, got jobs easily due to connections, can afford fancy lawyers if they make a mistake ... it is Benjamin Disraeli's 'Two Nations' writ large.
I have much more respect for those with a more genuinely free market attitude - if a business does well it does well (and the business owner should be able to reap the rewards handsomely) but if it fails its due to a poor strategy, a failure to respond to changing conditions - including those imposed by regulations e.g. rental law changes - and you either adapt or die.
For disclosure, I am not a particularly big fan of National and have never voted for them. And in a previous professional life I knew many dyed-in-the-wool Labourites, and have plenty of choice words to say about them too.
Thoroughly inappropriate username, given the post.
For disclosure, I am not a particularly big fan of National and have never voted for them. And in a previous professional life I knew many dyed-in-the-wool Labourites, and have plenty of choice words to say about them too.
So do others: How the Left Became Cheerleaders for US Imperialism
The difference between national and labour, right wing and left wing, isn’t more/less redistribution so much as investment/disinvestment in public services.
Most right wing voters don’t recognise their reliance and the reliance of the people close to them on those services. They also think the cuts will magically hit people in Wellington working in an office whereas underinvestment goes straight to hospitals, police, schools etc. Over nine years of national you realise it isn’t just the poor and the bureaucrats getting hit, it’s the middle class suffering.
The cycle of our politics is national deflating public services and labour trying to build them back up again. Now, labour doesn’t always do that well and there are some serious execution issues at the moment. But part of the issue is that national creates these legacy issues through underinvestment - like the hospital buildings, like the health workforce, like the school buildings, like the police numbers - that labour is always playing catch-up. The homeless motel situation didn’t happen overnight, national sowed those seeds. Labour at least tries to fix these problems.
In the culture wars about Labours management of COVID (which I think has blemishes but was in the top 10% of efforts around the world), we miss the positives:
• Record house building and a surplus over two years compared to population growth.
• Rapidly growing EV numbers.
• Falling house prices.
• Massive investment in health
• A more balanced tax system.
• And you’ll laugh, fiscal discipline via continued contributions to the superfund (don’t forget what the last government cost us there).
It is time for tax cuts. I’d love to see Grant Robinson pass tax cuts in his next budget. Use all the money up that National is eyeing to programme tax cuts for the everyone who pays on the lowest bracket. Then dare Luxon to cancel them and redirect it to his rich mates.
This is like copium bingo. The Covid response which isn't over, and we're now letting rip after years of panicking about how National would let it rip (but we just don't talk about it anymore), the 'nine years of neglect meme' which ignores that almost everything Labour campaigned on in 2017 has gotten worse under their watch, the classic mistake of thinking spending more on stuff counts as improving it, even when you're abandoning targets that show otherwise and even arguing that house building is up against population increases after two years of pandemic border restrictions.
Almost no part of this stands up to basic scrutiny and if this is the kind of crap that Labour supporters expects the rest of the country to get in behind then they're in for a rude awakening in 2023.
Don't underestimate the stupidity of the average voter.
Investing more hasn't fixed all the problems so we should invest less.
Not sure that'll work.
"Investing" suggests some sort of rational or targeted approach to spending.
I would suggest our approach is closer akin to urinating into a gale force wind and pretending like that gives us some moral high ground, or justification for taking more from families and households struggling with living costs blowing out for basics like food or transport.
The solution is clearly more comms staffers.
That's a lot of yelling but no better alternative to investing to provide adequate healthcare resources. Tax cuts and less accessibility to healthcare isn't going to mean much because private health insurance costs will follow demand upwards.
"Most right wing voters don’t recognise their reliance and the reliance of the people close to them on those services." - it is so weird how oldies vote for small tax cuts that mean big cuts to health spending. And they seem to hate public transport investments too even though they probably can't drive.
Good post
There are a number of studies about that mindset "a subgenre of economic, sociological, and psychological research on cognitive dissonance that can be summarised fairly simply: “If I succeed, it is because of my talent; if I fail, it is due to circumstances.” "- https://thecorrespondent.com/651/successful-people-rarely-admit-how-luc…. Quite interesting and makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
We vote out governments. We don't vote in governments.
Indeed - because we only observe the party manifesto after an election, not before - hence we get the government we deserve and then discard.
Voting is the adult version of writing to Santa....
(Stolen from a hilarious comment thread on Smoothiex12's blogspot....)
Inflation? What Inflation!
Went to the same dentist; same office, same everything, for the perpetually scheduled annual checkup yesterday.
Last year - 85 bucks.
Yesterday? $150.
10 minutes at most.
Yeah. I notice dentist price's have surged as well. Dental in NZ is like our little taster of the American healthcare system.
Add dental clinics to the long list of sectors to slap a windfall tax on. Perhaps a closer look at the internal workings of their "council" might help understand this market behaviour.
A co-worker's wife had to go through the 5-years of dental schooling plus on-the-job training in her 30s to regain a qualification she already held in South Africa for more than a decade.
She mentioned that a panel within the council, made up of clinic-owning dentists, calls the shots on who can migrate to NZ as a qualified dentist to NZ. Making applicants jump through hoops and rejecting requests are a norm in the process, which keeps competition low, prices high and provides a flow of overqualified trainees to be exploited by clinics.
The Dental Council has a long history of corrupt unaccountability going back to Freiberg's early days.
Wouldn't be surprised if MPs and shadow politicians get reduced price dental care to keep the crony dental system going.
Look and see if your formerly-independent dentist has been bought out by one of the big chains - there's lots of this going on in dentistry and also vet care.
A modern KPI for wealth. Did their kids have their teeth straightened?
An annual trip the dentist? Christ I'm in my 30s and can't imagine such an extravagance. I can't effectively insure against dental either. Just resigned to taking the hit at some point.
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