National Bank has joined NZIER in estimating the economy shrank 0.2% in the September Quarter and all the projections say it’ll go backwards this quarter too. Bill English now admits John Key’s ‘rapid recovery’ isn’t happening. But he insists it’s coming – tomorrow, no, the day after for sure. We’ve just got to keep waiting…
English has failed to grasp the fact, is ideologically incapable of grasping the fact, that this isn’t your ordinary recession. The economy isn’t growing because the growth potential isn’t there.
For an economy to grow it needs more raw resources and more energy to convert those raw resources into more useful items. There aren’t more raw resources to get hold of (apart from all that spare labour, and the minerals in our national parks, and the water they’re giving to their dairying mates). That’s why internationally we’re seeing the prices of food, minerals, metals, and oil skyrocket. These are the building blocks of economic growth and what those rising prices say is that there isn’t enough to go around.
The return to rapid GDP growth we’ve been promised isn’t going to happen and National’s neoliberal ideology has no Plan B. Neoliberalism is such a childish doctrine, so simplified and divorced from reality, that it doesn’t even have the theoretical framework to understand that Plan A might fail.
So, while this government and any successive neoliberal government rules us, and until we get a government that has an economic vision that is more than praying for ever higher GDP, we’ll just keep waiting for the day that never comes. Here’s a song while we wait:
The day that never comes – Metallica
Born to push you around,
Better just stay down.
You pull away,
He hits the flesh,
You hit the ground.
Mouth so full of lies,
Tend to black your eyes.
Just keep them closed,
Keep praying,
Just keep waiting.
(Chorus:)
Waiting for the one!
The day that never comes!
When you stand up and feel the warmth!
But the sunshine never comes!
No the sun shine never comes.
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