Anybody who thinks the best way out of a recession is austerity measures needs to have their heads examined.
Literally just finished reading the RNZ take on this. Very interesting to compare vs this Newshub one - a lot less doom and gloom; a lot more ‘does it really matter’?
Time will tell if and how much it matters. The fact is that the economy is slowing down and one reason for that is that the new government is imposing austerity measures on the country in order to give tax cuts to the rich. Historically austerity measures will result in deepening of recessions because a significant portion of the population are going to lose well paying government jobs. The ones that don’t lose their jobs are afraid that they are going to lose their jobs so they cut back on spending. The rest of the country is also going to feel the pain when they try to get medical care or access any kind of government service. They are not going to be in the mood to buy a new pair of sneakers or that nice necklace in the window.
That’s the kicker - we’re in a technical recession now, before the weight of Nactional Fist’s cuts actually take effect.
Interestingly when austerity was being pushed in the early 2010’s one driver was the claim that having more than 90% debt / gdp ratio would cause a country to go into recession.
Turns out though the report this claim was based on had an Excel error in its formula which when corrected would have shown an ~2% growth. Amazing how such a small error can have a such huge implications.
Hannah Fry had an episode about it on the BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001r1s4
For once it’s not a fucking youtube link, bit god that website is awful!
Heres something humane: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/512295/economy-slips-into-recession-as-gdp-falls-0-point-1-percent
Fucking morons.
It’s almost like when you vote conservative & you get what you deserve for voting conservative.
Which is fine - the problem is that everyone else has to live with the consequences of others’ stupidity.
the conservative position is that government doesn’t work so when they get into power they try to prove that position correct.
“I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative” - John Stuart Mill
I’m planning to move to NZ if the terrible man gets reelected. It’d be a shame if everything went to hell before that happened, but it would stop me.
They are setting up for our version of the terrible man which is David Seymour.
That seems like a deflection to me. It’s the standard measure every country uses and it’s the metric we have used for decades so it’s useful nevertheless.
If you want to argue that it doesn’t measure the right things post the metric you are using and let’s compare it to other countries and past governments.
Deflection is needed in this case. Nothing good comes from focusing on goods created while ignoring all the societal costs.
Cut down the remaining bush in NZ and selling it off would juice up the GDP, for example.
Deflection is needed in this case. Nothing good comes from focusing on goods created while ignoring all the societal costs.
Something comes out of it which is comparison with other countries and the past.
Again. If you have an alternative metric that is being used elsewhere and has been used in the past you should state it and we can use it to compare.
Cut down the remaining bush in NZ and selling it off would juice up the GDP, for example.
That’s what we do in this country. We cut down trees and sell them, we plow wild lands and turn them into paddocks, we sell milk and fruit. Most of our economy is based on extractive industries.
From Simon Kuznets, who invented GDP as a concept:
Economic welfare cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known. And no income measurement undertakes to estimate the reverse side of income, that is, the intensity and unpleasantness of effort going into the earning of income. The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above.
If he can question it, then we certainly should instead of just accepting it because “we’ve always done it this way”.
If he can question it, then we certainly should instead of just accepting it because “we’ve always done it this way”.
It’s like you didn’t read anything I wrote at all.
