Ryan Bridge: New Zealand needs a grow spurt

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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4d ago 2:11

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I’ve had it with people whinging about state of this county and people fleeing to Australia who then refuse to stop and ask why we got here and how we get out of it.

Chucking up a post up on TikTok or waving a banner at a protest won't cut it.

Productivity (that’s how much we get out for what we put in) is crap. It's been getting worse or flat-lining for decades.

Australia’s is better. Wages are 30% higher.

We’re smaller, we have to be smarter.

And that means doing what the banner wavers of the world hate most - getting roadblocks and innovation-killers like government out of the way.

Doing business needs to be as cheap and easy as possible. Let smart people be smart people and do what they do best: invent, optimise, invest, grow, thrive.

We did this post-Muldoon with agriculture - subsidies and deregulation.

We’re now the most productive in world. It's proof.

There of course are those who reckon the solution is to have a politician sign a piece of paper and artificially increase the minimum wage, or write a blank cheque to teachers, the question is: who's going to pay for it when our best and brightest are leaving NZ and businesses are closing?

Who can afford that?

Show me a democracy that got rich by increasing the size and influence of the government and I’ll give you a million bucks.

And not one of those Scandinavian ones that did it off the back of massive mineral deposits - which we're not allowed to touch, remember?

We’ve fallen so far behind we can’t be 'managing' a 2% GDP economy. This country needs 7% for at least three years.

New Zealand needs a growth spurt. We’ve fallen too far behind.

Please don’t be fooled by the false prophets, waving their banners and posting their nonsense, they have no idea what they’re talking about.

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