Mike Hosking: Govt's anti-immigration stance will cost us dearly

Part two of Laurel and Hardy of the New Zealand economy. This time it's Grant Robertson and the Government's immigration policy.

The wage numbers were the worst thing that could possibly have happened. They increased at a rate not seen since records began.

It's not the sort of record you want to break. Wages are going up at the rate they are because there are no people left to hire.

Bob Jones: The grim year ahead

Late last century it became evident world-wide that whenever economists agreed on a future economic forecast, invariably the opposite occurred.

To the best of my knowledge I was the first to point this out in my newspaper columns at the time. In my comic novel OGG, published in 2002, I had a scenario whereby an outfit at the centre of my story employing people searching the world’s newspapers seeking out such situations, then making a fortune backing the opposite outcome.

Mike Hosking: Economics of idiots causing labour shortage

The statistic that should send a chill through every one of us was the one you might have seen over the weekend from a construction company.

They hired 52 people, but lost 54 to poaching.

It's that fundamentally destructive aspect of the economy that has seen us almost certainly in a recession in the first half of this year, and quite possibly another one in the latter part of this year and into next.

The economy is broken, it can't function without enough people and we don’t have enough people.