It'd be nice to think we've added something these past years to improve the prosperity of NZ. We were the only economic commentary source that regularly pointed out how the huge fiscal expansion, and money printing program, of the Covid years would end in high inflation and subsequently economic stagnation.
Before the Blog started, we urged National in the 2010's to sort out the nation's ailing infrastructure when it had the chance & provided a plan. We begged National & Labour many years ago to pre-empt the looming fiscal blow-outs on health-care and pensions due to the ageing population. Although offering a fully-costed solution to that challenge, with the Budgets completed by a former Finance Minister, both main parties threw it back in our faces and laughed it off. We pushed for a new Ministry of Regulation a long while ago - that would subject rules to the discipline of cost-benefit analysis - arguing hair-dressers would be a good place to start, which has been taken up.
We exposed the cosy inbred club made up of people promoted way beyond their abilities that is running NZ, both in the public and private spheres. In spite of the top classes in all of my children's schools having a majority of Asian students, there is not one Indian Member of Parliament representing the National Party and the only Asian Cabinet Minister, Melissa Lee, got shafted, demoted & replaced in the Media portfolio by Choir Boy Paul Goldsmith. She has much experience in media - he has none. Meritocracy does not exist in NZ, wherever you look. We exposed the links between the Big Banks, Supermarkets & Building Firms with our Minister of Finance and PM. It has all been too much for the establishment to bear.
National, Labour and Big Business NZ have begun to complain & threaten me at the highest levels about my writings. The game has been become clear. Continue doing so and it will mean the end of your career. DownToEarth.Kiwi has been told in no uncertain terms that for me, as principal writer, due to this commentary, I've been wiped for consideration from all top public & private appointments. So good luck to the country. Good luck to maintaining the status quo of the same old people in the same old big jobs, who together with their same old mates have driven NZ into division and economic decline.
We exposed the cosy inbred club made up of people promoted way beyond their abilities that is running NZ, both in the public and private spheres. In spite of the top classes in all of my children's schools having a majority of Asian students, there is not one Indian Member of Parliament representing the National Party and the only Asian Cabinet Minister, Melissa Lee, got shafted, demoted & replaced in the Media portfolio by Choir Boy Paul Goldsmith. She has much experience in media - he has none. Meritocracy does not exist in NZ, wherever you look. We exposed the links between the Big Banks, Supermarkets & Building Firms with our Minister of Finance and PM. It has all been too much for the establishment to bear.
National, Labour and Big Business NZ have begun to complain & threaten me at the highest levels about my writings. The game has been become clear. Continue doing so and it will mean the end of your career. DownToEarth.Kiwi has been told in no uncertain terms that for me, as principal writer, due to this commentary, I've been wiped for consideration from all top public & private appointments. So good luck to the country. Good luck to maintaining the status quo of the same old people in the same old big jobs, who together with their same old mates have driven NZ into division and economic decline.
As for me, taking a fresh perspective & offering different solutions to the tired old, failed approaches of the past - the ones our two main political parties & their buddies in corporate NZ promote to protect their territories - is something I no longer wish to do. It'd be good for them to be required to wear their gang patches announcing to Kiwis who and what they truly represent, rather than hiding in shadows. A lack of imagination threatens our future. Good luck and good night.
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.
24 comments:
A major alarm bell is being rung here.
This is very sad. I have enjoyed your views that have been very enlightening.
Very sad to see you go. Ive loved your writings. Best wishes to you
Steve
We stand with you, Professor! https://zoranrakovic.substack.com/p/from-mortgage-to-muzzle-how-the-middle
I hope u keep blogging. I've always enjoyed your view and appreciated your frustration!
Thanks Robert. Your commentary was always worthy regardless of if on the odd occasion I was not 100% on board. Being able to comment freely with intellegence is something we should encourage and sadly given the last 24 hours or so we have seen an ugly side of identity politics. Personally I think it is a clear sign of where the psychie of the country sits......in a large mound of shitty ideology (either left or right).....while the politicians and the elites squat in it nothing will be achieved except filling their bank balances and while it is not a 'big' club the proles are always going to be excluded.
That said keep up your good works elsewhere.
Robert, I have always found your columns very informative and interesting. Its disappointing what has happened. I certainly hope you continue publishing somewhere.
Professor Robert MacCullock’s refreshingly honest evaluations gave me hope that New Zealand had matured. Alas, I was mistaken. The old boy network protects mediocrity and we are the poorer for that. Unimaginative and bumbling hogwash rules. The arrogant ruling elite bury the truth and forbid public debate. I enviously gasp at Trumps refreshingly imaginative leadership qualities. I liken our mob to the woman’s guild but less creative. Nothing will change when the likes of the good Professor is silenced by fools.
Oh dear; this sounds like the re-education school approach used by Mao and the nasty cancelling in Orwell's 1984, together with its re-writing of history. These so-called conservative groups are showing more communistic features than the communists. It is obvious they don't like the truth and you showed it to them. More power to your pen if you could come back from the wilderness. I do hope so.
if someone as articulate and expert as Robert can be threatened and harassed enough to be silenced, we normals have no chance against the bastards.
Robert, don't go. Trump them. I don't know your situation, but give them the middle finger. If you have enough wealth, who cares what those incompetent morons think of you. Do you really want to work for them anyway?
First Garrick , now Robert . Thanks for the memories .
“The National and Labour Parties, in a combined effort, have together driven NZ into division and economic stagnation”.
The Uni-party crime syndicate, foreign agent and domestic terrorist masquerading as a ‘democratic government’ laid bare for those with eyes to see.
Please keep going somehow ! Expertise is so badly needed and must not be sidelined . Give them hell!
If any detractors to our legal right to opine disagreed with Prof Robert MacCulloch they could have "agreed to disagree" and stated their position. If the Professor was so wrong it was unquestionable then inform us, the very interested public with their facts . They didn't.
Please consider using your skills with The Platform or discuss with David Seymour the upcoming election.
Our world is now poorer especially when we are subjected to Andrea Vance and Te Pati Maori degrading vitriol.
Robert, we desperately need 500 more of you not one less. The non-entities morons and malevolents of the uni-party, and their grasping business mates will not be allowed to continue their dominating run, once the rest of the country eventually awakens from its stupor. Which may be much sooner than we all think.
LOL of course they laughed. You were only trying to convince them, they have to do the hard work and convince the NZ voters, who (let's be honest) are fickle, partisan and not very bright. if you want your policies implemented, either align with a political party that matches these values or start your own.
First rate intimidation - Goebbels would be so proud !
Robert, please don't let " them" do this to you we as ordinary Kiwis have had our voices canceled in recent times - we need voices like yours to be heard loudly.
Thank you for your significant contribution to NZ.
Gonna miss you, Sir. The most reasoned commentary on our NZ situation from a gentleman with credentials to burn. Go well.
Come to Australia.
Or write under a pseudonym.
Or both.
I have long been incredulous that someone in public employment should nowadays express such frank views, even if counterbalanced. I have an indirect connection with a very senior technical staff at the university. To very close associates he comments that extreme caution is necessary to conceal personal views and so not criticise the current fashionable PC and pro maori attitude of the institution. I will miss Robert. One of the few writers nowadays who uses plain English and not modern academia speak laced with te reo.
Dear Rob, Zoran, Robert, Anna, Allen, Clem, Basil, Colin and the Anonymous Ones, Thank you so much for your comments. I greatly appreciate them. You all got exactly where my Blog was coming from - namely to give fresh perspectives mainly on Kiwi politico-economic matters delivered in a no-nonsense, direct way - basing them on how many folks in the economics profession think about such matters these days. Like you, I didn't always agree with my own Blogs - they represented more the thinking in my subject than my views. Here is the problem I discovered - there was not one dollar in it for me since I represented no-one: no party, no industry, no hidden agenda. What that meant was no monetary upside, only some satisfaction of maybe building some influence. However, the downside became real big. It came from complaints from politicians, including leaders of our major parties calling me direct & yelling at me, complaints from large firms made to my bosses, including a threat of defamation from the Supermarket Duopoly, and being told by Cabinet Ministers that I had become persona-non grata in Wellington (and NZ more generally). The Blog gave me a bad-boy reputation; a trouble-maker; a stirrer. Once one has been given that label on our Pacific island, you may as well swim out to sea & never be heard from again, since the Club of Big Boys and Girls will be delighted to see you gone. Best wishes to you all, my loyal supporters, Robert MacCulloch
The Great New Zealand Clobbering Machine lives!!!
We have lost one of our most insightful and honest political and economic commentators, because it appears that even the NZ powers that be, have a Trumpian inclination when they feel their interests are under threat. Professor MacCulloch is in good company though: Shakespeare abandoned Henry V because he too became disillusioned with the lack of integrity in government and felt pressured. There is no substitute for free speech in political discourse: it’s the one time when silence (or being silenced) is not golden.
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