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Thursday, August 29, 2024

Professor Robert McCulloch: Hipkins wants NZ to fail


The Labour Party Leader's Sad Plan for NZ is a text-book copy of the UK Prime Minister's. Except there is a difference - Hipkins wants NZ to fail.

The Leader of the Labour Party, Chris Hipkins, has proved he nicely fits the joke about the dog that chases cars - what does it do when it catches a car? 

Fresh from him declaring in Parliament the Treaty did not cede sovereignty, yet without telling us at the same time what NZ should do in such a situation because he doesn't know, we now learn how Labour is actively discussing how to introduce capital & asset taxes. The fact that capital is scarce here (so taxing savings would make it scarcer) is of little concern to Hipkins. 

His Election 2026 plan is becoming obvious: he desperately needs, and wants, the Kiwi economy to tank, not just now, but over the next couple of years. 

The fact he is the primary architect of NZ's current awful economic performance (by going to war with Auckland and locking us all up, even way into 2022, when nearly the entire city had already been vaccinated) is forgotten to him. 

If Hipkins' dreams come true, he will go into Election 2026 on the back of a stagnant economy, meaning National-ACT-NZ First will struggle to properly fund health care. Chippy can then offer his plan of salvation: introduce capital taxes to forcefully acquire the funds "needed to rebuild health-care".

It's a carbon copy of what UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer is proposing. Starmer warned yesterday that his next budget will include tax rises, almost certainly on capital, to plug the National Health Service funding gap. 

The difference between Starmer and Hipkins is that the British PM wants the UK economy to grow, whereas Hipkins needs the NZ economy to stay depressed for his platform to succeed. For talking NZ down and wanting us to fail, Hipkins should get out of politics.

Sources:
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-warns-of-painful-budget-to-repair-public-finances-03jxtptn2

Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A clear, concise summary of the man that once ran our country, and a very good reason why he should never be allowed to do so again.

Also a very necessary reason to discuss where our sovereignty truly lies and to finalise it, once and for all, with a binding referendum.

Richard said...

This is a brilliant article, written/copied from that great school of keep dividing ourselves by writting stupid claims about our opponents - the US. Because yeah sure professor, of course Mr Hipkins wants to destroy NZ - very insightful of you to spot that. Of course that will be his campaign slogan.

Or point another way, what exactly is the point of inventing stupid claims like that? You appear to be some kind of academic, so why not write like one with something a bit more like thoughtful argument and a bit less like mindless name calling?

I see that you do place yourself fair and square in the we must have business even if it costs lives, school in your Auckland COVID comments. There no statistics in your article but here's two about COVID. In early 2022 following the lockdowns and other measures, NZ had the lowest COVID death rate of 180 countries. When your wish happened and the restrictions eased in 2022, despite high vaccination levels, people started dying. Our death rate changed from 180, to 120 in the world - still lowest of all developed countries - but 4000+ deaths. So I guess you would say all good for business professor - just not so good for those 4000 people who died an awful death and the families and friends they left behind.

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