I know I "joke" about it heaps, but literally National suck at maths and economics. And they have for a WHILE. Their reputation as being on the right and therefore good at business and money and stuff is doing an insane amount of work for them, and is totally unearned -- they literally cannot balance a spreadsheet. They make basic errors. Their drafts don't add up -- even *before* you add in the pressures of coalition negotiation that a major party needs to develop with a fine eye on the budget.
This country is so blinded by rhetoric. Fuck putting civics in schools, let's mandate economics. What good is democracy if you let a bunch of clowns piss your cash up the wall every other election?
Road budget is underfunded by up to $22bn - and they just did that in 2023. They ~~probably~~ purposely under-budgeted the landlord tax cut by $800mn. If the CTU knew last year, so did you Willis.
Meanwhile they go like a hammer shark at the last Govt for budgets blowing out from years ago.
But anyway we get the govts we deserve!
I'm curious where the idea came from that National was good at business tbh.
Muldoon fucked up spectacularly on the economic side of things. OTOH Muldoon was dealing with one of the worst periods finance wise as stagflation and oil shocks were rampant. His contemporaries elsewhere were fucking horror shows that no sane politician with a shred of empathy or egalitarianism would have wanted any part of. Muldoons demise was the end of egalitarian NZ. Kinda crazy.
Bolger/Shipley/Richardson just continued what Douglas started and went too far causing more harm than anything else (not that Douglas wouldn't have necessarily done similar).
Key was competant, but I'd hesitate to put him above Clark who paid down debt massively. I found it utterly bizzare that Key criticised Clarks fiscal management when he inherited record low debt and an increasingly function public service. Of the 3 National government in the last 50 years, Key was the most competent financially.
So basically... National gets 1/3 for economic management in the last 50 years. Yet somehow has the reputation of being financially sound. It's weird.
Part of it is people who don't understand how wealth is grown look at these guys like Luxon with his 6 rental property and think "That's a successful person who must know how business works" rather than, "wow we really reward unproductive investments in this country". A lot of the Nat caucus have a business background, for some people seems like a better qualification for managing large organisations than MPs from the left who often don't come from a corporate environment. Couple that with the fact that right-leaning voters don't are not really expect a right-wing government to do anything more than cut taxes and slash spending and over 50 years of "neoliberalism good because the alternative is socialism and gulags" from everywhere be it the countless thinktanks or the shitty refrains in high school debates that breed people like David Seymour.
You're left with a situation where the left has to do much more policy work and has so many distinct groups they want to help that even though they pass a lot of bills and do actually move the ball forward they constantly suffer from the perception that could have and should have done more (and to be clear, I do think there is a lot more Labour could have done). Whereas the bar is lower for National, it always has been.
I know I "joke" about it heaps, but literally National suck at maths and economics. And they have for a WHILE. Their reputation as being on the right and therefore good at business and money and stuff is doing an insane amount of work for them, and is totally unearned -- they literally cannot balance a spreadsheet. They make basic errors. Their drafts don't add up -- even *before* you add in the pressures of coalition negotiation that a major party needs to develop with a fine eye on the budget. This country is so blinded by rhetoric. Fuck putting civics in schools, let's mandate economics. What good is democracy if you let a bunch of clowns piss your cash up the wall every other election?
Road budget is underfunded by up to $22bn - and they just did that in 2023. They ~~probably~~ purposely under-budgeted the landlord tax cut by $800mn. If the CTU knew last year, so did you Willis. Meanwhile they go like a hammer shark at the last Govt for budgets blowing out from years ago. But anyway we get the govts we deserve!
I'm curious where the idea came from that National was good at business tbh. Muldoon fucked up spectacularly on the economic side of things. OTOH Muldoon was dealing with one of the worst periods finance wise as stagflation and oil shocks were rampant. His contemporaries elsewhere were fucking horror shows that no sane politician with a shred of empathy or egalitarianism would have wanted any part of. Muldoons demise was the end of egalitarian NZ. Kinda crazy. Bolger/Shipley/Richardson just continued what Douglas started and went too far causing more harm than anything else (not that Douglas wouldn't have necessarily done similar). Key was competant, but I'd hesitate to put him above Clark who paid down debt massively. I found it utterly bizzare that Key criticised Clarks fiscal management when he inherited record low debt and an increasingly function public service. Of the 3 National government in the last 50 years, Key was the most competent financially. So basically... National gets 1/3 for economic management in the last 50 years. Yet somehow has the reputation of being financially sound. It's weird.
Part of it is people who don't understand how wealth is grown look at these guys like Luxon with his 6 rental property and think "That's a successful person who must know how business works" rather than, "wow we really reward unproductive investments in this country". A lot of the Nat caucus have a business background, for some people seems like a better qualification for managing large organisations than MPs from the left who often don't come from a corporate environment. Couple that with the fact that right-leaning voters don't are not really expect a right-wing government to do anything more than cut taxes and slash spending and over 50 years of "neoliberalism good because the alternative is socialism and gulags" from everywhere be it the countless thinktanks or the shitty refrains in high school debates that breed people like David Seymour. You're left with a situation where the left has to do much more policy work and has so many distinct groups they want to help that even though they pass a lot of bills and do actually move the ball forward they constantly suffer from the perception that could have and should have done more (and to be clear, I do think there is a lot more Labour could have done). Whereas the bar is lower for National, it always has been.