JL
Increased spending equates to inflation – this is basic economics taught to school children.
Our kids will also learn when our political overlords mismanage mum and dad’s money they too will feel it at the till.
Yet this current crop of political miscreants has the gall to blame all our financial woes on outside influences and other countries’ struggles rather than ’fess up to any accompanying fault.
Firstly, it does not help to print money to achieve lofty goals and delusional vanity projects. More money circulating in the system cheapens it.
Your dollar not buying as much is then exacerbated when goods and services skyrocket in price due to inane increases to production costs.
Housing:
Influencing the Reserve bank to reduce interest rates despite being told it would increase house prices, was not smart.
Gifting first home buyers the KiwiSaver home start grants only inflated prices at the auction to levels only investors, now flush with cheap and accessible loans, could afford.
After Kiwibuild’s failure Ardern exacerbated things by purchasing homes at over-the-top market prices to artificially swell social housing stocks.
Couple this with her Government’s bid to force landlords out of the market by removing legitimate tax breaks and implementing pricey regulations that led to rent hikes.
So you could not afford to buy and you now struggle to rent.
Food:
At a time when financial strife is imminent, why would you heap more legislative costs and impediments on our food producers?
Every ludicrous effort to reduce the emissions of a country with extremely low emissions will not make a jot of difference globally.
But it will make us paupers…Hungry paupers.
Business:
Despite New Zealand’s isolation, the elimination strategy was in excess of any other country bar communist China.
Businesses struggled but their burden only grew with immigration restrictions, minimum wage increases, another paid holiday and sick leave entitlements.
A beer and a night out are now well beyond many Kiwis.
A cash-strapped customer means less money which leads to job losses and many more cash-strapped Kiwis. You can see the spiral of decline, why couldn’t Ardern?
Well, she did…finally…But her response was laughable.
In a last gasp dash, the miserable cost of living payment was added to budget night.
This convoluted and expensive lolly scramble ended up in the pockets of foreigners, the wealthy and the dead.
Individually, if you received it at all, you might fill your tank twice or splash out on items you could easily afford in 2017!
Health:
The polytechnic mergers budget blowout does not bode well for the more contentious and complex mergers.
Who would so ardently ignore the concerns raised by New Zealanders when it comes to Three Waters?
The same people recklessly spending on promoting and changing healthcare governance during a pandemic…that’s who.
Delays building the Dunedin Hospital have seen costs soar and we are only just now getting ICU beds.
If we weren’t still isolating at home with a family member’s scratchy cough due to the strain on this hopelessly underfunded health service we’d be all out earning money.
Despite 10,000 more civil servants, failure of delivery has dogged Labour since coming to power.
I’m sure the esteemed BFD readership can add to this inexhaustive list of Labour pains.
Remember:
- The excess that was the provincial growth fund
- Importing dirty coal to keep the lights on
- Millions spent weekly on emergency housing for people who lived somewhere else before 2017
- Fifty-two million wasted on the Auckland harbour cycle bridge debacle
- The $8m of out-of-date measles vaccine tipped down the sink
- The $30m Ihumatao land purchased from Fletcher Building with the plan for housing. Fletcher building was going to build 450 homes. This Government has built none
- The light rail debacle continues. The numbers catching the Hamilton to Auckland train only increased when taxpayers shelled out half the fare
- Every lavish social engineering PR campaign to convince us with our own money to do what we do not want to do or what is near on impossible to achieve
- The continued propping up of compliant media with these campaigns over and above the $55m journalism fund
- Billions allocated to mental health but since lost in the ether – and growing demand.
Etc etc etc….Prim and proper costs benefit analysis – Yeah nah!
Glaring and undeniable factors in our cost of living crises – Most definitely!
