What did Chris Hipkins do to the economy? What did Jacinda Ardern do to it? What did the new Vice Chancellor of Otago, Grant Robertson, do to wreck NZ Incorporated? Although these past six years technology has moved forward rapidly & there's every reason for productivity to have risen, the output of each individual in this country has, on average, fallen - at least that is what the latest NZ Treasury productivity figures are suggesting (below):
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The blue line comes from the Treasury's Productivity Slowdown publication released this past week, which uses updates from the latest Budget Policy Statement 2024. Treasury has been sharply revising down its productivity estimates & forecasts. It looks like between 2017, when the last Labour government came to power, and now, productivity has, if anything, dropped. Even the upward spike in 2022 may just be an artificial boost to do with the country opening up after Covid, which rapidly evaporated.
How did Hipkins, Ardern and Robertson manage to make Kiwis less productive over the six years they were in office? My suspicion is that they changed our culture. They divided the nation. They turned rich against poor, farmers against environmentalists, pro-vaccinators against anti-vaccinators. Neither of these sides ever deserved to be demonized. Yet that is what the past Labour government did. It took away the largely harmonious nature our society, which was one of NZ's great achievements & which had previously lifted us above the troubles of nearly every other nation. We lost our comparative advantage. Ironically, though "kindness" was the mantra of the last government, it turned Kiwis mean. It rewarded people who had not put in the effort and did not have the achievements required to make them deserving of high office and top jobs. In doing so, it took away the reward for truly high-achieving NZ children, which made them feel they had to go overseas to be recognized for their talents, or drop-out.
My explanation for our currently plummeting productivity lies in a culture shift which has undermined out national unity and taken away the incentives to perform. Ardern, Robertson and Hipkins took away our pride.
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
7 comments:
Thand goodness most of the people in our universities, judiciaries, parliament, etc, still have intelligence. My wife and I had our 60th wedding anniversary in Kaipara during the pandemic. Her sister from Kaitaia was able to attend but our son from Pukekohe was forbidden. Isn't it written in some book: "Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do"?
Kevan
They certainly did. I think nz was once one of the best countries in the world. There was no racism, very little crime and everyone who worked could afford to buy a house. I remember going on my O.E to London and my manager confessing that he would rather employ a kiwi than an english person, because of our work ethic. While staying with cousins in Scotland, they took me to to a local pub and the barman upon hearing my kiwi accent said that this round was on the house. Everyone loved kiwis. Fast forward to 2024 and everyone just wants to know why nz has turned woke and what kiwis think of all that.
Actually - "the wokest of the woke".
A really big problem.
So here's our chance to turn our (and the woke western) world around that is fundamentally broken. We could again be the envy of the world, but PM Luxon needs to grasp the nettle and make the changes that are so desperately needed to really get us "back on track".
But will he have the intestinal fortitude to do so? Nothing he's said to date suggests so - so we will flounder and, rather than be a world leader with our women's suffrage, wool, dairy, food production and 'can do' attitude etc, we will collapse into an underperforming, corrupt, banana republic.
When it comes to our legacy we will, indeed, no whom to blame. But what satisfaction is that?
In typical Ardern and Iwi /Labour style, the issue starts as one thing - and the morphs into another.
"Be kind" meant that the 83% must be locked into paying for the 17% forever.....
How could productivity ever thrive in such an environment where servility and redress are the goals?
Robert, perfectly written as usual. I've said for a few years that nz is pretty much 'down and out' because of labour. It's very hard to qualify but you have done a good job. It's also the vibe I get. The only ones thriving are the unemployed criminals who the left promote as model nz citizens. 'Arderns finest' as I call them. Shame on labour, how could they get it so wrong, unless it is deliberate.
Thousands and thousands of public service parasites sitting on their arses in Wellington totally unproductive, thousands more inventing new te reo words to bastardise English in government departments, education and the mainstream media. We could make a very long list of the unproductive woke racist " jobs " left to us by the ex transparent government. Kiwialan.
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