According to Grant Robertson today:
"New Zealand’s growth per person is significantly lower than countries like the UK and America, showing our economy is driven by population growth rather than productivity, says Labour’s Finance spokesperson Grant Robertson.
“Along with flat per person growth, we have seen a fall in per capita real incomes. This means on average Kiwis are getting poorer. That’s because the key driver is population growth, not new businesses, industries and exports which is what’s needed to boost growth per person."
I queried the OECD database for GDP per capita between 2008 and 2015:
(Left-click to enlarge)
This shows that the growth in the UK was 2.4%; in the US, 4.4% and in NZ, 7.5 %
Here's the data graphed.
No NZ isn't flash overall but it's comparatively better now than it was when Labour left office.
Robertson even included Japan in his headline yet their growth was lower than the UK or US between 2008 and 2014.
3 comments:
Lindsay, there can be no question Grant is right: NZ's growth is far short of where it should be, and even where it needs to be.
The current anti-grown, anti-competition, anti-capitalist government and their policies are directly responsible for this.
What is unforgivable is that Labour's policies will only make things so much worse.
We must treat communists with the same distain we treat flat-earthers or anti-vaxxers.
Not withstanding the numbers my gut feeling is that we are getting poorer because we are becoming a low(er) wage economy and openly importing cheap labour. With the supposed resistance to actually paying for anything and increasing competition that may just be the way things are heading in the wealthy west but it would be nice to see someone actually admit it rather than pretend we are doing swimmingly.
Big govt and socialism are not going to be the answer but it seems we are hell bent on proving it.
3:16
GDP in socialist countries is totally unreliable as a measure of growth.
The NZ govt spends $100 billion annually & this adds considerable to GDP measures.
How much of this is spent effectively? Very little I would guess, however GDP does not actually measure effectiveness of such spending, merely its value.
A somewhat better value is GDP per capita based on Purchasing power parity (PPP). What you can actually do with the dollars.
This gives a better measure of the value of the GDP when expressed relative to other countries. At present NZ sits at 29 on a list of 30.
You can see a chart here.
Or if the HTML doesn't work, here. http://knoema.com/sijweyg/gdp-per-capita-ranking-2015-data-and-charts
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