New Immigration Minister told to review settings as annual net migration hits record-high 128,900; PM says these levels “unsustainable,” having called months ago for looser settings
Does anyone know of any more qualitative data or insights that sit below these headline numbers? For example: specifically for both NZ citizens and Migrants that are departing -- what are skill sets that are being lost? We know the mismatch between absolute numbers and infrastructure investment has and is creating problems but are there other things bubbling away under the surface? Appreciate any insights anyone can share...
Someone would need to commission a report to find this out. The only was to do this world be through using the IDI (integrated data infrastructure). We know a lot about migrants coming in because they pay to give us their data entry they apply for visas, but we don't keep records in New Zealand in a way that allows us to look at people (especially residents and citizens) when they leave New Zealand. We have no idea how many people out there in the world hold New Zealand citizenship or permanent residence either.
...it's ok, you're forgiven, so long as you were chewing gum as well! (That's the aspiration that ACT has for us - so long as we all put in the effort to "walk and chew gum" at the same time, it doesn't matter what shit we talk, evidence we ignore, and mistakes we make...🤣)
A report into this would be really interesting. I'm sure we all have lots of anecdotal evidence and I can think of a number of people having gained citizenship and having decent paying jobs have then left NZ because they can't afford to have the lifestyle we feel should be normal - being able to afford housing, transport and children.
Without the more specific data we seem to be always dealing with/ Or rather Not dealing with a damp drifting smog. How can it get fixed when we don't know what it consists of?
This is a consistent theme -- with two problems sadly:
#1 we can’t get data/evidence because access to it is obstructed; obfuscated; or on its absence expensive to generate
#2 if we happen to it would people listen? A mournful reference to polarisation in discussion and debate. People have lost / are losing the sense of open mindedness
And while I perceive a loss from this, others see this as opportunity.
I understand the expense of generating data. I guess I am unreasonable in thinking I should be able to see the data that government decisions are made on. In my own work life I had to have access to a range of data to make any decisions.
It would seem simple to me to offer people emigrating an 'exit interview' - not one that meant they couldn't come back! Just what they do, where they're going and why. Not judgmental. Just facts. Afraid I'm going down a rabbit hole here. Will just hope that government decisions are based on a few facts at least, but it seems like they may not be
No that’s not being unreasonable. It (the data/evidence) should be part of the public record. And as such readily available. It’s the same with RIS’s etc - they should be done, and they should be published.
Firmly believe we should be building towards fact-based evidence-lead decision making. And when expressed that way most people of all persuasions will agree.
However, that’s not actually what is happening. Reality is decisions are being made more and more on pure ideological splits using only rhetoric as evidence but all so carefully framed and positioned to appear differently.
if we were to be honest imho those distortions are being constructed and delivered by both left-leaning and right-leaning parties and politicians.
So evidence-led and data-driven drops out. The outcome is achieving any consensus across ideological grounds is very very difficult.
And that’s what’s particularly worrying about the parlous state of US domestic politics. It’s a direction that is troubling to head in. And I fear we have slipped over that edge...
Thanks Bernard. Excellent again. I think I've worked out yout trick which is to state what I think Helen Clark once called 'the screaming bleeding obvious'. Sadly rare in politics and generally. Please don't stop and promulgate far and wide.
Not an original observation, but this century as well as climate change, AI, and the rest is going to be the century of huge migration as places become unliveable and places like ours change but remain largely convivial.
We might not plan for that, as seems to be happening at the moment and you're right to argue for, but we could also be smug and shut our doors to only the 'cream' of those wanting to come. That seems to me morally repugnant and I wonder what others think.
I know at present we tend to go for lower skilled workers but that's mainly through incompetence.
If by 'cream' you refer to those with money, then, no thanks. These tend to be unproductive, "investing" in property and think nothing of being thankful to Tangata Whenua allowing them to come here.
I'd rather allow those who will appreciate the opportunity given to them and do all they can to give their children a better life.
I agree. What’s seen as ‘cream’ by some who bring money and little else - the Peter Thiels of the world - should be shut out. But, to take one common trope, doctors and nurses means those doctors and nurses don’t work where they come from. What are we doing if we suck them into here.
I wouldn’t want to frustrate peoples personal decisions, but I think that’s an issue.
Dec 12, 2023·edited Dec 12, 2023Liked by Bernard Hickey
Perhaps they should be looking at retaining skilled kiwis - today my daughter graduates with a PhD in Clinical Psychology =- a skill that is an apparently considerable shortage - after nine years study and running up a student loan in excess of $100k she will start her new career on an hourly rate that she could get driving a heavy goods vehicle. She could head to Australia tomorrow and get 50% more and probably be working in a better funded environment. Underpaying our most necessary skill sets then expecting to replace them when they depart for greener pastures by poaching skilled people from even less fortunate nations - who probably leave for Australia as soon as they have citizenship here - is just running NZ into the ground while also depriving other nations of their own scarce skilled talent.
I think we need to start by writing off student loans over a period if they continue to work in NZ - but also maybe take a more punitive view of those who get an education then leave. The student loan and the miserable starting salary also means that her chances of buying a home and/or starting a family are severely limited as well. It seems to be the height of idiocy to invest hugely in raising children and training them as professionals or skilled trades only to export them in their prime working year to Australia or the UK???
I agree - there seems to be a lack of imagination when it comes to post-secondary training incentives and managing student loans. The current system of dumping a large loan (which, for many graduates, includes a large component of living costs) on a person right at the start of their working life and sapping their wages during prime saving years is sub-optimal. Simply offering people interest-free to stay in NZ obviously isn't appealing when opportunities and salaries and living costs are much more appealing elsewhere. I'm not a fan of fees-free, since fees aren't an upfront barrier for local students - it's living costs - but also graduates benefit from higher average wages for their publicly subsidised education. I don't see it as unfair individually to pay for part of the course fees as we currently do. Otherwise, when graduates leave NZ, we've all paid for it but get nothing in return for our investment.
I imagine a fairly affordable alternative to encourage graduates to stay in NZ would be:
- Allow people with SLs to defer their payments for up to 5 years total, and redirect their SL re-payments into their KiwiSaver instead. This allows them to get their investments savings up to healthy amount faster, setting them up for a better retirement in the long-term, or a bigger house deposit in the short term. Also prevents it from being inflationary as deferred payments aren't accessible as spending money.
- SL payments pay down loans course costs principally. Once these are paid off, SL payments stop, and the remaining living costs portion is written off at a rate of 12% of your gross income until they are cleared. Means we can effectively give students a universal income to study, on the requisite that they remain in NZ after. If they take their skills (and taxable income) elsewhere they have to pay it back.
I think there also needs to be a "holiday" where people can push pause on repayments to allow them to travel and work overseas short term. The experience people bring home is so valuable. But make it 2 years or something. I was awarded a scholarship to do a Masters overseas and didn't pay interest during that time. Remaining overseas for a few years to use what I learned - huge penalty! We want people to be encouraged to come back. Not terrified of what awaits them loan-wise.
some good points there Brad but the student loan wouldn't be such an issue if the post-graduation professional salaries reflected the investment the student has made in their education - however building a write down of the loan into a salary package for public service roles is worth considering as that incentivizes the retention within the NZ economy.
One of our girls is a clinical psychologist who migrated to Australia. Yes, better pay but mainly precarious contract work there too. Neither patient need nor community need are the priority either side of the ditch. Profit rules. Until we decide differently.
Yes this was so painful that the messenger Dr Ganesh Nana and the Productivity were dismissed. Infrastructure deficit of 200 billion, screams as cognitive dissonance is hit! No doubt that immigration report from the previous Government will also disappear.
I would rather they back-flipped when they see clearly that they need to - unlike the last government that charged on and damn the feedback. Far better to admit you are wrong when you see you are wrong - I think that shows we may have some hope.
They don't back flip even when reality hits them in the face. Look at the numbers supporting the smoke free legislation Labour introduced. From all walks of life and across party lines. Yet they keep on going.
Loom at the support for prescription free yet they still march on, trying to sell us a lie that it's required so we can fund 13 new cancer drugs, 12 of which i understand are already in the funding plan. I can go on just about everything they are ripping and repealing right now, telling us we can't afford it yet insist we can afford tax cuts for the already wealthy.
The counterweight to the migration forecast leading to 20 million by end of century is the lack of land free of significant hazard. The first problem yet to be tackled is internal migration due to sea level rise and extreme weather events. Eastern BOP is still taking regular serious weather hits, removing replacement bridges and other infrastructure. We have those various swords of Damocles hanging over our heads, be it volcano in Auckland Region or the South Island fault. Agreed that infrastructure is the key however you slice these issues, but regular destruction of said infrastructure is a serious ongoing impediment to population increase. Nga mihi
Land free if significant hazard is such a good point. I look at the expansion of subdivisions in Tamatea, Napier in land raised through the 1931 earthquake and the increasing building on unstable hills around Gisborne.
It seems likely this government will try and push Auckland to expand into vulnerable areas and it all just seems so daft. We're going to ignore 200 billion of required infrastructure spending and just add to it through short sighted development in hazardous areas!
Dec 12, 2023·edited Dec 12, 2023Liked by Bernard Hickey
This is such horsesh*t from National. They can virtue-signal all they like about their "sensible immigration" ideals (and pander to the racist NZF voters) but their entire modern platform is "more immigration". The absolute last thing they want is to reduce the flow of cheap labour coming in to serve their voting base; propping up house prices and rents, and keeping us well-stocked with Uber drivers, fruit-pickers, and tourist-attraction staff - all paying our regressive taxes. If they cared the slightest skerrick about our immigration levels, they wouldn't be reversing the Reserve Bank mandate, or the Fair Pay agreements, which both would continuously draw undue attention to our garbage labour environment.
Yes, as I read these claims by Luxon about wanting to attract the best and so on I was thinking of the way his government's actions - deleting fair pay agreements provisions for example - are working in the opposite direction to his words.
As a business owner, I really struggle with the disdain for low-wage labour. The reality is, every single "developed country" is bolstered by migrants working in low waged jobs. Why is that? I think a couple of reasons are 1) we do not socialise our children to be satisfied with labour-intensive low-waged careers. We encourage them to do tertiary study or obtain high skills in trades. So in this instance, who exactly are we expecting to do the labour-intensive jobs? 2) We are not prepared for the consequences of paying higher wages. I feel there is a faulty presumption that all employers have really high profit margins and can afford to pay higher wages and keep prices low. For many of us, this is not the case. In fact, most of us seriously under-value certain industries (cleaning, caregivers etc), but expect wages to magically stay high. Are we prepared to pay more for our goods & services to sustain high wages?
Other countries, countries we often aspire to seem to manage though. If there was more incentive for investment in productive assets we could see a rise in productivity. But instead our economy is a housing market with bits tacked on and to make it all work we have to be a low wage economy. If we value teachers, nurses, doctors, bus drivers, cleaners etc. more they have more money to spend in the economy. If we get our housing economy under control less of it goes into that and more of it into the productive economy.
We've become very stuck in this cycle of low wages even for jobs out of tertiary education with unaffordable housing and a tax base that is too low to deliver what we need all the while continuously importing people and and further deferring the required infrastructure improvements.
I agree with you about being stuck in a cycle of low wages for tertiary-qualified jobs. That is a problem. I do wonder if economies of scale is a contributor to it in addition to the points you have raised. I don't know of many countries with small populations that pay really high wages. But I'm happy to be proven wrong.
Regarding other countries we aspire towards "managing" - I do think the people doing the labour-intensive low-waged jobs tend to be mainly migrants from so-called "developing" countries. The reality is, is that the citizens don't want the cleaning, aged-care, truck driving, rubbish collection, supermarket worker etc jobs. Productivity increases will not erase the need for these goods & services. I know how hard it has been to find staff for our cleaning business over the last couple of years. All these upper & middle class folks who lost their jobs at the height of COVID - not one of them came knocking on our door looking for a job.
Yeah I think there is merit in the economies of scale issue. It's just hard to see the epic profit extraction that occurs at big business level and not be perplexed.
We are unique in our small and isolated nature far from big markets but in some areas that should be our strength and our brand. Denmark, Finland, Singapore all spring to mind but have major differences to our situation.
I think there is a need to for migration to help but we never seem to have a plan. I get people not wanting to go "backwards" into a lower paying job but the reality is we maintained and still have a very low unemployment rate. People even through COVID were finding jobs. I know through seeing the various things that temporarily redundant and furloughed colleagues went into.
The problem of being a low wage economy that a large section of the population can't afford to live in is it will continue to drive more and more people through and/or out of our borders or perhaps lead to even more apathy.
Yep, I don't think there is a simple answer, but there was a time when we had both far less money (and debt) circulating, and wages that allowed a single 'low-skill' job to comfortably support an entire family.
As I look around now, I see consumer goods are relatively far cheaper than they were back then (TVs, washing machines, clothes, cars), and I see many things I can just have for "free" (mail, overseas phone calls, socialising, entertainment). Appliances use way less energy, the agriculture sector produces far more food, computers make everything more efficient.... And yet, many people are really struggling, even with multiple jobs and a life of squalor.
We have chosen to take away the dignity of both our low-skill labour and our genuine small business owners, in order to put a tiny minority on a pedestal. However, I'm not sure the only way out of it is for consumers to accept they therefore need to 'pay more' because, it seems to me, there's probably a bit of offset available in the pockets of CEOs earning 300x workers' wages, share prices that are still rising from their 80x earnings, and house prices that are 12x an average household income.
Absolutely! The countries that we aspire to be like have CEOs who earn 8x what the average worker in their company earns. It's about having less inequality, not higher wages for everyone.
And maybe we pay a bit more for fewer things - but maybe we need fewer things if they last longer because we have people paid a decent wage who can fix and service and tend.
I've got as far as "infrastructure capaacity" and thought, well, that's zero migration then, since they plan on reducing infrastructure investment and not even considering building more capacity.
Q. Please can you explain how stats nz keep using an assumed population growth rate of 0.5% for 20 + years compared to an evidence based approach of 1.5-2%. I just don't get it. When do the facts get used? Or more importantly why?
A lot of interesting kōrero here, as always. I’ve not been reading or engaging so much of late, my energies have been devoted to the amazing fightback rallies around the genocide in Palestine 🇵🇸. Despite the bullshit propaganda from politicians and media thousands of people, especially the young, have been out in our streets across the motu for weeks now. If you want to feel stronger, feel like you are contributing, get out this Saturday to your local rally. Meet others who care enough to get together and take action. You’ll be fighting on the right side of history and you’ll feel a lot more positive. Kia kaha.
I too am alarmed that we seem to have slipped over that edge. It makes us subject to serious misuse of words - it makes us stupid. I hate having my thinking deliberately blurred.
It has occurred to me that its is probably the real estate industry that has the finest data/evidence on population movements - do you think so?
Does anyone know of any more qualitative data or insights that sit below these headline numbers? For example: specifically for both NZ citizens and Migrants that are departing -- what are skill sets that are being lost? We know the mismatch between absolute numbers and infrastructure investment has and is creating problems but are there other things bubbling away under the surface? Appreciate any insights anyone can share...
Someone would need to commission a report to find this out. The only was to do this world be through using the IDI (integrated data infrastructure). We know a lot about migrants coming in because they pay to give us their data entry they apply for visas, but we don't keep records in New Zealand in a way that allows us to look at people (especially residents and citizens) when they leave New Zealand. We have no idea how many people out there in the world hold New Zealand citizenship or permanent residence either.
*way
*WAY to do this WOULD be
Sorry, writing while walking.
...it's ok, you're forgiven, so long as you were chewing gum as well! (That's the aspiration that ACT has for us - so long as we all put in the effort to "walk and chew gum" at the same time, it doesn't matter what shit we talk, evidence we ignore, and mistakes we make...🤣)
A report into this would be really interesting. I'm sure we all have lots of anecdotal evidence and I can think of a number of people having gained citizenship and having decent paying jobs have then left NZ because they can't afford to have the lifestyle we feel should be normal - being able to afford housing, transport and children.
I think Prod Comm was looking in to this! 😫
Haha! It's all so childish isn't it
Without the more specific data we seem to be always dealing with/ Or rather Not dealing with a damp drifting smog. How can it get fixed when we don't know what it consists of?
This is a consistent theme -- with two problems sadly:
#1 we can’t get data/evidence because access to it is obstructed; obfuscated; or on its absence expensive to generate
#2 if we happen to it would people listen? A mournful reference to polarisation in discussion and debate. People have lost / are losing the sense of open mindedness
And while I perceive a loss from this, others see this as opportunity.
I understand the expense of generating data. I guess I am unreasonable in thinking I should be able to see the data that government decisions are made on. In my own work life I had to have access to a range of data to make any decisions.
It would seem simple to me to offer people emigrating an 'exit interview' - not one that meant they couldn't come back! Just what they do, where they're going and why. Not judgmental. Just facts. Afraid I'm going down a rabbit hole here. Will just hope that government decisions are based on a few facts at least, but it seems like they may not be
No that’s not being unreasonable. It (the data/evidence) should be part of the public record. And as such readily available. It’s the same with RIS’s etc - they should be done, and they should be published.
Firmly believe we should be building towards fact-based evidence-lead decision making. And when expressed that way most people of all persuasions will agree.
However, that’s not actually what is happening. Reality is decisions are being made more and more on pure ideological splits using only rhetoric as evidence but all so carefully framed and positioned to appear differently.
if we were to be honest imho those distortions are being constructed and delivered by both left-leaning and right-leaning parties and politicians.
So evidence-led and data-driven drops out. The outcome is achieving any consensus across ideological grounds is very very difficult.
And that’s what’s particularly worrying about the parlous state of US domestic politics. It’s a direction that is troubling to head in. And I fear we have slipped over that edge...
Maybe Chris Luxon reads The Kaka!
Good to see at least a modicum of commonsense (and ability to reconsider previous positions) being demonstrated in our new political leadership!
Yeah right he’s not interested in reading official advice so ...
Ah another bait and switch, we are getting the full buffet of corporate tactics aren't we
Thanks Bernard. Excellent again. I think I've worked out yout trick which is to state what I think Helen Clark once called 'the screaming bleeding obvious'. Sadly rare in politics and generally. Please don't stop and promulgate far and wide.
Not an original observation, but this century as well as climate change, AI, and the rest is going to be the century of huge migration as places become unliveable and places like ours change but remain largely convivial.
We might not plan for that, as seems to be happening at the moment and you're right to argue for, but we could also be smug and shut our doors to only the 'cream' of those wanting to come. That seems to me morally repugnant and I wonder what others think.
I know at present we tend to go for lower skilled workers but that's mainly through incompetence.
If by 'cream' you refer to those with money, then, no thanks. These tend to be unproductive, "investing" in property and think nothing of being thankful to Tangata Whenua allowing them to come here.
I'd rather allow those who will appreciate the opportunity given to them and do all they can to give their children a better life.
I agree. What’s seen as ‘cream’ by some who bring money and little else - the Peter Thiels of the world - should be shut out. But, to take one common trope, doctors and nurses means those doctors and nurses don’t work where they come from. What are we doing if we suck them into here.
I wouldn’t want to frustrate peoples personal decisions, but I think that’s an issue.
Perhaps they should be looking at retaining skilled kiwis - today my daughter graduates with a PhD in Clinical Psychology =- a skill that is an apparently considerable shortage - after nine years study and running up a student loan in excess of $100k she will start her new career on an hourly rate that she could get driving a heavy goods vehicle. She could head to Australia tomorrow and get 50% more and probably be working in a better funded environment. Underpaying our most necessary skill sets then expecting to replace them when they depart for greener pastures by poaching skilled people from even less fortunate nations - who probably leave for Australia as soon as they have citizenship here - is just running NZ into the ground while also depriving other nations of their own scarce skilled talent.
I think we need to start by writing off student loans over a period if they continue to work in NZ - but also maybe take a more punitive view of those who get an education then leave. The student loan and the miserable starting salary also means that her chances of buying a home and/or starting a family are severely limited as well. It seems to be the height of idiocy to invest hugely in raising children and training them as professionals or skilled trades only to export them in their prime working year to Australia or the UK???
I agree - there seems to be a lack of imagination when it comes to post-secondary training incentives and managing student loans. The current system of dumping a large loan (which, for many graduates, includes a large component of living costs) on a person right at the start of their working life and sapping their wages during prime saving years is sub-optimal. Simply offering people interest-free to stay in NZ obviously isn't appealing when opportunities and salaries and living costs are much more appealing elsewhere. I'm not a fan of fees-free, since fees aren't an upfront barrier for local students - it's living costs - but also graduates benefit from higher average wages for their publicly subsidised education. I don't see it as unfair individually to pay for part of the course fees as we currently do. Otherwise, when graduates leave NZ, we've all paid for it but get nothing in return for our investment.
I imagine a fairly affordable alternative to encourage graduates to stay in NZ would be:
- Allow people with SLs to defer their payments for up to 5 years total, and redirect their SL re-payments into their KiwiSaver instead. This allows them to get their investments savings up to healthy amount faster, setting them up for a better retirement in the long-term, or a bigger house deposit in the short term. Also prevents it from being inflationary as deferred payments aren't accessible as spending money.
- SL payments pay down loans course costs principally. Once these are paid off, SL payments stop, and the remaining living costs portion is written off at a rate of 12% of your gross income until they are cleared. Means we can effectively give students a universal income to study, on the requisite that they remain in NZ after. If they take their skills (and taxable income) elsewhere they have to pay it back.
I think there also needs to be a "holiday" where people can push pause on repayments to allow them to travel and work overseas short term. The experience people bring home is so valuable. But make it 2 years or something. I was awarded a scholarship to do a Masters overseas and didn't pay interest during that time. Remaining overseas for a few years to use what I learned - huge penalty! We want people to be encouraged to come back. Not terrified of what awaits them loan-wise.
some good points there Brad but the student loan wouldn't be such an issue if the post-graduation professional salaries reflected the investment the student has made in their education - however building a write down of the loan into a salary package for public service roles is worth considering as that incentivizes the retention within the NZ economy.
One of our girls is a clinical psychologist who migrated to Australia. Yes, better pay but mainly precarious contract work there too. Neither patient need nor community need are the priority either side of the ditch. Profit rules. Until we decide differently.
Yes this was so painful that the messenger Dr Ganesh Nana and the Productivity were dismissed. Infrastructure deficit of 200 billion, screams as cognitive dissonance is hit! No doubt that immigration report from the previous Government will also disappear.
Luxon & Stanford's back flips on immigration represent the latest shit show from this miserable, confused government. It's only going to get worse.
I would rather they back-flipped when they see clearly that they need to - unlike the last government that charged on and damn the feedback. Far better to admit you are wrong when you see you are wrong - I think that shows we may have some hope.
They don't back flip even when reality hits them in the face. Look at the numbers supporting the smoke free legislation Labour introduced. From all walks of life and across party lines. Yet they keep on going.
Loom at the support for prescription free yet they still march on, trying to sell us a lie that it's required so we can fund 13 new cancer drugs, 12 of which i understand are already in the funding plan. I can go on just about everything they are ripping and repealing right now, telling us we can't afford it yet insist we can afford tax cuts for the already wealthy.
And we are getting organised
The counterweight to the migration forecast leading to 20 million by end of century is the lack of land free of significant hazard. The first problem yet to be tackled is internal migration due to sea level rise and extreme weather events. Eastern BOP is still taking regular serious weather hits, removing replacement bridges and other infrastructure. We have those various swords of Damocles hanging over our heads, be it volcano in Auckland Region or the South Island fault. Agreed that infrastructure is the key however you slice these issues, but regular destruction of said infrastructure is a serious ongoing impediment to population increase. Nga mihi
Land free if significant hazard is such a good point. I look at the expansion of subdivisions in Tamatea, Napier in land raised through the 1931 earthquake and the increasing building on unstable hills around Gisborne.
It seems likely this government will try and push Auckland to expand into vulnerable areas and it all just seems so daft. We're going to ignore 200 billion of required infrastructure spending and just add to it through short sighted development in hazardous areas!
This is such horsesh*t from National. They can virtue-signal all they like about their "sensible immigration" ideals (and pander to the racist NZF voters) but their entire modern platform is "more immigration". The absolute last thing they want is to reduce the flow of cheap labour coming in to serve their voting base; propping up house prices and rents, and keeping us well-stocked with Uber drivers, fruit-pickers, and tourist-attraction staff - all paying our regressive taxes. If they cared the slightest skerrick about our immigration levels, they wouldn't be reversing the Reserve Bank mandate, or the Fair Pay agreements, which both would continuously draw undue attention to our garbage labour environment.
Yes, as I read these claims by Luxon about wanting to attract the best and so on I was thinking of the way his government's actions - deleting fair pay agreements provisions for example - are working in the opposite direction to his words.
As a business owner, I really struggle with the disdain for low-wage labour. The reality is, every single "developed country" is bolstered by migrants working in low waged jobs. Why is that? I think a couple of reasons are 1) we do not socialise our children to be satisfied with labour-intensive low-waged careers. We encourage them to do tertiary study or obtain high skills in trades. So in this instance, who exactly are we expecting to do the labour-intensive jobs? 2) We are not prepared for the consequences of paying higher wages. I feel there is a faulty presumption that all employers have really high profit margins and can afford to pay higher wages and keep prices low. For many of us, this is not the case. In fact, most of us seriously under-value certain industries (cleaning, caregivers etc), but expect wages to magically stay high. Are we prepared to pay more for our goods & services to sustain high wages?
Other countries, countries we often aspire to seem to manage though. If there was more incentive for investment in productive assets we could see a rise in productivity. But instead our economy is a housing market with bits tacked on and to make it all work we have to be a low wage economy. If we value teachers, nurses, doctors, bus drivers, cleaners etc. more they have more money to spend in the economy. If we get our housing economy under control less of it goes into that and more of it into the productive economy.
We've become very stuck in this cycle of low wages even for jobs out of tertiary education with unaffordable housing and a tax base that is too low to deliver what we need all the while continuously importing people and and further deferring the required infrastructure improvements.
I agree with you about being stuck in a cycle of low wages for tertiary-qualified jobs. That is a problem. I do wonder if economies of scale is a contributor to it in addition to the points you have raised. I don't know of many countries with small populations that pay really high wages. But I'm happy to be proven wrong.
Regarding other countries we aspire towards "managing" - I do think the people doing the labour-intensive low-waged jobs tend to be mainly migrants from so-called "developing" countries. The reality is, is that the citizens don't want the cleaning, aged-care, truck driving, rubbish collection, supermarket worker etc jobs. Productivity increases will not erase the need for these goods & services. I know how hard it has been to find staff for our cleaning business over the last couple of years. All these upper & middle class folks who lost their jobs at the height of COVID - not one of them came knocking on our door looking for a job.
Yeah I think there is merit in the economies of scale issue. It's just hard to see the epic profit extraction that occurs at big business level and not be perplexed.
We are unique in our small and isolated nature far from big markets but in some areas that should be our strength and our brand. Denmark, Finland, Singapore all spring to mind but have major differences to our situation.
I think there is a need to for migration to help but we never seem to have a plan. I get people not wanting to go "backwards" into a lower paying job but the reality is we maintained and still have a very low unemployment rate. People even through COVID were finding jobs. I know through seeing the various things that temporarily redundant and furloughed colleagues went into.
The problem of being a low wage economy that a large section of the population can't afford to live in is it will continue to drive more and more people through and/or out of our borders or perhaps lead to even more apathy.
Yep, I don't think there is a simple answer, but there was a time when we had both far less money (and debt) circulating, and wages that allowed a single 'low-skill' job to comfortably support an entire family.
As I look around now, I see consumer goods are relatively far cheaper than they were back then (TVs, washing machines, clothes, cars), and I see many things I can just have for "free" (mail, overseas phone calls, socialising, entertainment). Appliances use way less energy, the agriculture sector produces far more food, computers make everything more efficient.... And yet, many people are really struggling, even with multiple jobs and a life of squalor.
We have chosen to take away the dignity of both our low-skill labour and our genuine small business owners, in order to put a tiny minority on a pedestal. However, I'm not sure the only way out of it is for consumers to accept they therefore need to 'pay more' because, it seems to me, there's probably a bit of offset available in the pockets of CEOs earning 300x workers' wages, share prices that are still rising from their 80x earnings, and house prices that are 12x an average household income.
Absolutely! The countries that we aspire to be like have CEOs who earn 8x what the average worker in their company earns. It's about having less inequality, not higher wages for everyone.
And maybe we pay a bit more for fewer things - but maybe we need fewer things if they last longer because we have people paid a decent wage who can fix and service and tend.
I've got as far as "infrastructure capaacity" and thought, well, that's zero migration then, since they plan on reducing infrastructure investment and not even considering building more capacity.
Question to Bernard:
Q. Please can you explain how stats nz keep using an assumed population growth rate of 0.5% for 20 + years compared to an evidence based approach of 1.5-2%. I just don't get it. When do the facts get used? Or more importantly why?
Off topic, but how great to see the smoke free protestors out in the streets today. This is what we need for the next 3 years.
A lot of interesting kōrero here, as always. I’ve not been reading or engaging so much of late, my energies have been devoted to the amazing fightback rallies around the genocide in Palestine 🇵🇸. Despite the bullshit propaganda from politicians and media thousands of people, especially the young, have been out in our streets across the motu for weeks now. If you want to feel stronger, feel like you are contributing, get out this Saturday to your local rally. Meet others who care enough to get together and take action. You’ll be fighting on the right side of history and you’ll feel a lot more positive. Kia kaha.
" in an about-face by the new Government."
Wouldn't "reverse ferret" be more appropriate...?!
I too am alarmed that we seem to have slipped over that edge. It makes us subject to serious misuse of words - it makes us stupid. I hate having my thinking deliberately blurred.
It has occurred to me that its is probably the real estate industry that has the finest data/evidence on population movements - do you think so?