TL;DR: When all else fails and Aotearoa Inc can’t or won’t invest in its people or technology to boost real output and real hourly wages, there’s always importing more cheap labour to grow nominal GDP, suppress wage inflation and shunt the Budget back into surplus.
It’s a formula designed to pump up land values and keep wage inflation and mortgage rates as low as possible. It’s worked a treat for the last 20 years for residential land owners and small-to-medium business owners preferring to invest surpluses in leveraged and un-taxed land gains, rather than in their own businesses.
National did it from 2008 to 2017, and despite Labour’s often-stated but now-abandoned aspirations to shift the underlying tax incentives for investment, this Government has now completely given up as well. That’s clear in its wholesale loosening of migration rules in the year since it announced a ‘reset’ to squeeze down on businesses relying on low-skilled temporary workers to grow.
See details below the paywall of which workers were given visas and how just one person (1) has been approved for a new ‘Active Investor’ visa designed to attract high-net-worth individuals in nearly a year. Over the same period, 56,273 mostly low-skilled visas were given out under the new Accredited Employer Work Visa; including 1,218 beauty and massage therapists, 581 cleaners, 34 aromatherapists, 10 acupuncturists and one Herbalist (Western)1. Paying subscribers get full access to all our articles first and support the public interest journalism work we do covering housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa. Paying subscribers can comment below and ask for articles to be released fully and publicly.2 Join our community by subscribing.
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