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Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand and worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ before travelling to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
The Worst Finance Minister Ever, Labour’s Grant Robertson, and now the new one who is competing for that title, Nicola Willis, have jointly created a fiscal crisis in NZ. We currently have one of the worst primary fiscal deficits in the developed world (which is government spending minus tax revenues, excluding interest costs).
In the face of an ageing population, NZ’s public debt will start rapidly increasing above its high post-pandemic levels, starting in 2030, as confirmed by the IMF. Fellow blogger Michael Reddell compiled this graph:
Our current finance minister has only one plan, which isn’t a plan: cross her fingers and pray for economic growth to pick up. However, NZ is now one of the most stagnant economies in the world. And with high uncertainty regards tariffs, there is no bet that our economy will take off anytime soon.
To solve NZ’s fiscal, healthcare and retirement problems, I have a plan. My sidekick, who’s good with numbers and doing government budgets, since he wrote five in his time, Sir Roger Douglas, finance minister from 1984 to 1988, has done the math. (He won’t like me describing him in those terms, since thinks of himself more as my boss.)
There are no holes in our budget, unlike the ones of former Finance Minister Robertson and the current one, Willis. Whatever your views about ours, it works and makes Kiwis better off. There may be parts with which you disagree with – but its a plan – and neither Labour nor National have one of their own. It is forthcoming in our domestic journal, NZ Economic Papers:
This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
