The next time you hear a politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, understand and conceptualise the amount. Consider a billion is 1,000 million and whether you want the politicians spending YOUR tax money, especially while they are having the time of their lives doing so.
“Budgeting is boring – right? Not when you’re talking Billions,” Stuff’s heading ecstatically proclaimed. “When compared to last year’s budget the books look in incredible shape.”
The budget of Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance, on the 20th of May 2021 reported that the economy was recovering strongly from the COVID-19 pandemic. This budget, called the “Wellbeing Budget 2021 – Securing Our Recovery,” was proudly announced as a wonderful fiscal result. Labour MPs smiled, clapped and congratulated Robertson’s fiscal manaement. Ardern and the press were impressed.
What didn’t appear to concern him, or Stuff or any other government minister, was the exorbitant debt figures. The party continues to spend like there is no tomorrow, while the debt levels continue to rise by billions.
In 2021:
- January – Government debt was under $100 billion
- April – Government debt exceeded $100 billion
- July – Treasury warned of trillions of dollars in an unsustainable debt cycle.
By 2040:
- NZ’s debt could exceed $2 trillion.
The spreadsheet didn’t make good reading. Robertson was spending far more than he had. Billions seemingly disappeared into thin air, with nothing much to see for it. The kitty was empty.
New Zealanders were shocked how much was being spent and even more shocked where it was going. Borrowing and quantitative easing, a form of unconventional monetary policy, to balance the books was the order of the day.
Billions have been given to cool the climate, to the MSM, KiwiBuild, trees, Maori, the Provincial Growth Fund, 3 Waters planning, the Te Huia diesel slow train, cameras on fishing boats, light rail and bike bridge design, Indonesian coal, growing governmental bureaucracy especially spin doctors, the communication team, Afghanistan, gangs and so on.
Stuff says there are also big new spending spurges on benefit increases, health, social services and a continued increase in infrastructure spending.
To get some idea how much a billion is, here is a Canadian advertising agency’s perspective.
- If I gave you $1 billion and you stood on a street corner handing out $1 per second, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you would still not have handed out $1 billion after 31 years. It’s a lot of dollars.
- A billion seconds ago, it was 1959.
- A billion minutes ago, Jesus was walking this earth.
- A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
- A billion days ago, no one walked on the earth on two feet.
Robertson’s debt on balance is out of control, yet he says the country’s economy is doing well.
The word billion can slip over the tongue so easily. Canada’s advertising agency says:
“60 years ago their country was one of the most prosperous in the world and had absolutely no national debt… Now, a billion dollars ago was only 13 hours and 12 minutes, at the rate our present government is spending it.”
The only answer the NZ Labour Party has is to tax the people more and lower the standard of living for decades to come.
Dr Muriel Newman says of the late Michael Cullen’s fiscal policies:
His side’s (Labour’s) economic thinking leads to bad economic policies based on tax, borrow and spend. Those three words comprise their entire economic vocabulary.
Here’s hoping Robertson and Ardern don’t ever get to talk about trillions, the way they currently talk about billions – if they have any concern for the future of New Zealand.
