New Zealand faces the same situation, but we have replaced the second ingredient with a more dangerous one: mass migration.
This only delays the inevitable and we will have to deal with both the damages of a failed multicultural policy and declining population in coming decades.
The government ran a headline deficit of $12,900,000,000 in the past year. Core Crown debt went up by over $20 billion and now sits at $175.5 billion. Most of that has been accumulated in the last 16 years. The Global Financial Crisis, the Christchurch Earthquakes, and the COVID-19 Response.
What do we have to show for it?
Nothing. No grand public works, no imaginative infrastructure, and no world class services. Nearly two hundred billion dollars for nothing.
Having debt at 44% of GDP is not unprecedented—it was that high in 1990 and paid down to nearly nothing in 2008. Solid economic growth and budget surpluses made that possible, but are either of those on the horizon for New Zealand today?
Unlike the previous round of debt that was racked up for public works and other grand projects of "Think Big" fame, the current round of debt has gone only into bandaging up the effects of disaster after disaster. The latest $20b has simply been burned up to mask the depths of the economic recession over the past 12 months.
Demographically we are in sharp decline. Many of the more productive New Zealanders are leaving in droves for opportunities elsewhere and hundreds of thousands of low income Asians have been brought in to replace them. Birth rates are trending to zero and GDP per capita has been shrinking for over two years. We suffered a net loss of 56,082 NZ citizens in the year to August and a net gain of 109,928 citizens of other countries. The vast majority of the new arrivals were from India, China, and the Philippines. Any attempt at assimilating these immigrants has been completely abandoned. In fact the official government policy is to encourage these economic migrants to keep their culture, language, and ethnic solidarity.
This sounds dire, and you may mistake me for a prophet of doom. I am optimistic about the future and I fully believe we will get through this. The problem is that as these issues remain suppressed from public debate and policy the pain to fix them will be so much worse. It's better we deal with this head on rather than wait for the consequences to fully manifest.
Another round of natural or economic disasters could easily push our debt up to 100% of GDP in the next two decades. Fixing our multicultural problem may see our population decline by hundreds of thousands over a short period of time. This can be mitigated by creating the conditions in which New Zealanders return home: drastically lower house prices, rising wages due to worker shortages, and so on. Changes in society to bring birth rates back up to self-sustaining levels will be needed. All this will be painful, but necessary if New Zealand is to avoid becoming another basket case.
These are the fiery political discussions we will be having in the coming years, that much is inevitable. The only way out is through.
Dieuwe is the editor of Right Minds NZ. - where this article was sourced. In addition to conservative politics and reactionary thought, he likes books, gardening, biking, tech, reformed theology, beauty, and tradition.
The government ran a headline deficit of $12,900,000,000 in the past year. Core Crown debt went up by over $20 billion and now sits at $175.5 billion. Most of that has been accumulated in the last 16 years. The Global Financial Crisis, the Christchurch Earthquakes, and the COVID-19 Response.
What do we have to show for it?
Nothing. No grand public works, no imaginative infrastructure, and no world class services. Nearly two hundred billion dollars for nothing.
Having debt at 44% of GDP is not unprecedented—it was that high in 1990 and paid down to nearly nothing in 2008. Solid economic growth and budget surpluses made that possible, but are either of those on the horizon for New Zealand today?
Unlike the previous round of debt that was racked up for public works and other grand projects of "Think Big" fame, the current round of debt has gone only into bandaging up the effects of disaster after disaster. The latest $20b has simply been burned up to mask the depths of the economic recession over the past 12 months.
Demographically we are in sharp decline. Many of the more productive New Zealanders are leaving in droves for opportunities elsewhere and hundreds of thousands of low income Asians have been brought in to replace them. Birth rates are trending to zero and GDP per capita has been shrinking for over two years. We suffered a net loss of 56,082 NZ citizens in the year to August and a net gain of 109,928 citizens of other countries. The vast majority of the new arrivals were from India, China, and the Philippines. Any attempt at assimilating these immigrants has been completely abandoned. In fact the official government policy is to encourage these economic migrants to keep their culture, language, and ethnic solidarity.
This sounds dire, and you may mistake me for a prophet of doom. I am optimistic about the future and I fully believe we will get through this. The problem is that as these issues remain suppressed from public debate and policy the pain to fix them will be so much worse. It's better we deal with this head on rather than wait for the consequences to fully manifest.
Another round of natural or economic disasters could easily push our debt up to 100% of GDP in the next two decades. Fixing our multicultural problem may see our population decline by hundreds of thousands over a short period of time. This can be mitigated by creating the conditions in which New Zealanders return home: drastically lower house prices, rising wages due to worker shortages, and so on. Changes in society to bring birth rates back up to self-sustaining levels will be needed. All this will be painful, but necessary if New Zealand is to avoid becoming another basket case.
These are the fiery political discussions we will be having in the coming years, that much is inevitable. The only way out is through.
Dieuwe is the editor of Right Minds NZ. - where this article was sourced. In addition to conservative politics and reactionary thought, he likes books, gardening, biking, tech, reformed theology, beauty, and tradition.
1 comment:
This is a big topic involving both quantity and quality issues. Readers may be interested in my article "Ode to the Methuselah generation: of 2 January 2017 which remains highly relevant.
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