Mike's Minute: The cost of living "crisis" no longer exists

It turns out a lot is in a name.

Stats NZ gave us the latest household living-costs price indexes.

This is what we pay for stuff. This is the cost of our living or, as is more often than not referred to by the media and the miserable, the "cost of living crisis".

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: What do the latest inflation numbers really mean for the 'squeezed middle'?

Nicola Willis will like the inflation number that's come out. More importantly, she'll like the story that number is telling.

Remember, her target audience is the squeezed middle. This is the battleground. This is the fight for the soft centre at the election: Labour versus National. These are the voters both parties are targeting.

Perspective with Andrew Dickens: "This cost of living crisis is not going away anytime soon

So, this cost of living crisis is not going away anytime soon, despite what any number of New Zealand political parties promise they can do about it.

The inflation figures are out. It's gone up by one percentage point and there's now a four in front of it. A large part of that cost is petrol, which we can do nothing about. Diesel is up 7.1%.

Ryan Bridge: Things are about to get a whole lot more expensive

I have good news and bad news for you this morning.

The good news, I was out shopping on the weekend, which means I didn't actually buy anything but drove halfway across town looking for a bed-head, couldn't find one that fit, and went home empty-handed.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The National Party needs to rethink its plan for this election

We need to talk about inflation, because inflation is making me pretty sure now that the National Party needs to rethink its plan for this election.

We’ve just had the food inflation data out today. No surprise - food has gone up in price again in the year to February, up 4.5 percent.

Ryan Bridge: What can Nicola do about inflation contributors?

Electricity and groceries are your two big ticket inflation targets. Punters want to pay less for both.

There are nuclear options available:

Cut the gentailers in half by force. Those pro-wrecking ball argue if you force them to separate out the generation side of the business from the retail, you’d create more competition and lower prices.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Here's why the surcharge ban will fix nothing

The news of the day, politically, is that surcharges are gone, as the Government's just banned them.

You know what I'm talking about here, right? They're the little extra amount that you get pinged when you turn up at the dairy and you use your credit card, or you use your paywave - it's gone from May next year.

Chris Lynch: Inflation Drops to 3.3% in July, but what does that mean for cost of living crisis?

Today’s Consumer Price Index data has inflation at 3.3 per cent for the year to July 2024.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis said it showed “we are turning our economy around and winning the fight against rampant inflation.”

Kate Hawkesby: Groceries aren't getting cheaper anytime soon

I’ve been obsessed with grocery prices this year – I mean, haven’t we all? Anyone who does the shopping knows what a shock it can be when you see the prices of some things literally quadruple right in front of you.  

I have an ongoing debate with the person in our household who does not do the groceries about this. His solution is: if you don’t want to pay $20 for blueberries, shop around. Now, that’s all well and good if you have lots of time on your hands and all day to trawl through supermarkets and greengrocers all over the city, but most of us don’t.  

Mike Hosking: The weather is a scapegoat for our ineptitude

In a display of brass neck that even for Labour was quite something, Carmel Sepuloni tried to explain in an interview on TV that the current cost of living crisis wasn’t necessarily the Government's fault.

As regards an explanation as to who's fault it might be, she seemed to settle on the weather. There is a theme here as the weather has taken a lot of heat this year.

What a spectacularly convenient scapegoat it is because, in part, it's true, but only in part. The weather is no ones fault so it’s the perfect alibi.

Oliver Hartwich: Economic expert says homeowners are disproportionately feeling cost of living crisis pain

An economic expert says homeowners are disproportionately feeling the pain of the cost of living crisis.

Latest figures from Stats NZ show the average household's cost of living increased 7.2%in the year to June.

The official inflation rate for the period was six percent, but interest payments went up 28%.

Kate Hawkesby: Be prepared for a bunch of cost increases over the next few weeks

We are in for a bunch of cost increases over the next few weeks. I know, more.

It’s not like we haven’t been facing a steady stream of rising costs for a while already, but a couple of things are coming up to bite us.

One, the Government’s petrol subsidy is coming to an end this Saturday, which’ll see petrol prices jump by 29 cents a litre. That’s a lot, and it’ll hit hard in a cost of living crisis.

Mike Hosking: The Government don't understand basic economics

If you want a good example of simple economics, we are living through a doozy.

It's only Wednesday but already this week we have millions promised by people who have less than no money to solve the problems they created.

Kate Hawkesby: Four years on from the Wellbeing Budget, how are our wellbeing stats still so woeful?

As if a cost of living crisis and a crime crisis were not enough, we also have a mental health crisis in this country, and it’s heart-breaking.

It was reported the other day that, on average, 54 tradies take their own life each year, as well as 23 farm workers. They're predominantly men. So what services are available here?

Well as we know, time and time again, because it’s constantly reported on, very few.

Kate Hawkesby: The powers that be tell us food prices will come down soon, I hope that's true

So I’m not sure the Mother’s Day brunch this weekend will be including avocado on toast given the shortage of them – and therefore the cost of them.

Although despite avocado being $9 and $10 each in some parts of the country at the moment, other places tell me they can still get them and get them cheap. So it might be a case of the old postcode lottery at the moment when it comes to fruit and veges.

But yesterday we heard that we’ve had our largest food price increase since 1987.

Point of Order: Bitter medicine for NZ economy.....

......is it a poison pill for Ardern administration?

The cost-of-living crisis in NZ has become ugly. And it could get worse.

The Reserve Bank is telling us the country will dive into recession from the middle of next year and stay there for a year. Plus there will be 8% mortgage rates and 6% unemployment.

For Finance Minister Grant Robertson, it’s all turning to custard. He appeared to lose his cool in Parliament as the Reserve Bank in effect might have been writing a poison pill for the Ardern government to swallow.

Kate Hawkesby: Price of food's getting so high, I might bake my own bread

 

With the price of food the way it is, lest we forget we are in a ‘cost of living crisis’, I have become hyper-alert at the supermarket these days in terms of what I’m paying. And it seems I’m not the only one.

Headlines these days say shoppers are fed up and looking to go elsewhere than a supermarket. It used to be, back in the good old days, that the supermarket was the best deal for food.

You’d be mad to buy cereal or butter at the local dairy because it was smaller scale so sold at a premium, you could guarantee back then it would always be the more expensive option. 

Point of Order: While our Finance Minister enjoys the Games, our living costs are high jumping and too many Kiwis are tripping on the hurdles

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson had some fun last week at the expense of National leader Christopher Luxon for holidaying in Hawaii while a Facebook entry indicated he was in Te Puke.

This week Robertson is relishing the spectacle of the Commonwealth Games, and the achievements of New Zealand’s sports stars.

He may even succeed in forgetting, at least for a short while, the economic mess that is mounting in NZ – not that he will concede he has had anything to do with inflation breaking into a gold-medal-winning gallop on his watch.

Moreover, he keeps insisting it has already past its prime.

Bryce Edwards: How much of our cost-of-living crisis is due to incompetence?

It’s ordinary people who are suffering the most from the current cost of living crisis. In other words, working people and the poor are paying the price of higher prices.

Rising living costs have greater consequences for those in the bottom half of the wealth hierarchy, who are pushed into the type of financial difficulties that politicians and the wealthy just don’t have to deal with. Hence, we are likely to see significant human damage arising from the growing crisis, such as families losing their homes, people paying a higher proportion of their incomes in rent, and having to make difficult choices about which of life’s necessities they can do without when cash is scarce.

The reverberations of this crisis will be felt for a long time – in the form of declining quality of life, worsening health statistics, housing affordability, and so forth.