We are making people

Well, we made through the pandemic alive, and now we’re going broke. Happy bloody Christmas, Adrian Orr. If you were dreaming of a lavish summer holiday, or bulging festive stockings after the grind of Covid lockdowns, the Reserve Bank’s own Scrooge has news for you. Winter’s coming and Christmas is cancelled.

Stop spending, he told us on the eve of Black Friday, the national holiday of consumerism. Don’t ask for wage rises, he said as we absorbed the one-two punch of high borrowing rates and galloping prices, especially when it comes to necessities like food and fuel.

Yet again the team of 5 million is being asked to make sacrifices for the greater good. No-one can say we weren’t warned. As coronavirus began its march around the world, governments implemented public health restrictions to slow the contagion. Those, economists cautioned would disrupt the flow of goods and people, stall national economies, and likely drive a global recession.

When governments opted for stimulus packages to soften the blow, the financial experts telegraphed the risks of an economic sugar hit.

How will we pay for it?, the Cassandras cried. And then later, that the consequences of bailing out business and making the wealthy wealthier would last for generations, at the expense of the poorest. That locking out migrants would cripple an already stretched labour market.

And so here we are, the reckoning is overdue. And who pays? Well, us of course. The looming recession is going to cause real hardship to many New Zealanders.

If ever there was an example of how monetary and fiscal policy is stacked against the ordinary man this is it. We are making people poorer so