Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand, Robert worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ, before he travelled to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
Although the propaganda exercise that former Covid Minister Chris Hipkins and Former PM Ardern waged for years and still do, in cahoots with our mainstream media, to convince many Kiwis we beat the world on Covid, for a simple-minded guy like me, when you look up “Our World in Data”, it tells a different story. Cumulative confirmed Covid deaths in NZ are a month away from exceeding the global average – and we’re already tracking higher than Oceania, which consists of countries in our region of the world, many of them islands like us and so which had a geographical advantage during the outbreak:
Is Our World in Data reputable? One of the folks responsible for its development was Sir Tony Atkinson, the world’s leading expert on income inequality, who was brought out to NZ to advise former Labour PM Helen Clark’s government on such matters. He was a former colleague of mine at Oxford University and thesis examiner. The founder of Our World In Data says, “None of it would’ve been possible without him.” Of course, the usual suspects in NZ’s Covid propaganda exercise will deny the validity of the above graph, mumble on about “better measures”, like “excess mortality” (which they prefer because if you lock everyone up then people are less likely to drown and have accidents during the time they’re unable to properly ‘live’ – a good thing for the likes of Hipkins and Ardern).
What’s subject to more disinformation is the former Finance Minister (and Otago epidemiologists) claims that NZ's world-beating Covid outcomes have gone hand-in-hand with world-beating economic outcomes. Given our economy is one of the worst performing on the planet in terms of GDP growth, a fact NZ’s mainstream Media can’t bear to report, that idea is most amusing of all. Our stagnant economy, growing at zero when rest of the world is achieving an average rate of two to three per cent, is costing us over $8 billion per annum in lost output (two per cent of NZ's GDP, which is around $400 billion). That $8 billion could’ve solved our public health crisis, infrastructure problems and saved lives. Labour deserves to be out of power for a long while for the destruction it wrought – at least until its MPs get a grasp of the difference between what economists call “the short run” effect of policies, versus “the long run” effect.
This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
