Had a chat with a good friend the other day, when I say chat it was a series of tweets, but the issue was one thing that holds us both back from blogging is not knowing enough sometimes to be authoritative. That is commenting on stuff we really don't know enough about. So with that in mind and noting I do realise I am not an expert on very much here is my postulations about the NZ economy.
I love New Zealand. I love Christchurch where I live. What I have noted, during my lifetime, is the gradual but consistent lowering of the standard of living of New Zealanders. New Zealand has not had a real balance of payments surplus since 1973 - here are some tables on our economy http://www.reservebank.govt.nz/statistics/econind/
I'm not going to argue this - while there have been some years where exports have exceeded imports any surplus has been wiped out by repatriation of profit to foreign owned businesses.
So what I have seen is the removal of businesses and production overseas, increases in foreign ownership, a decline in both the standard of living, wage rates, jobs and NZ slipping in the OECD rankings. Our regions are getting less prosperous and the number of corporates and head offices shrinks in all our regions (except maybe Auckland but they are moving overseas). Also we're producing more theatre, communications and media graduates than we are biotechnology graduates.
Meanwhile no NZ Govt has really had the analysis, the guts or the will to develop an economic and regional development strategy since 1973.
I freely admit I am overstating this -but not by too much.
So more another time, but it does bother me.
No comments:
Post a Comment