Mike's Minute: Quality is recession proof

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

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2d ago 2:06

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I am hoping events this week, at least in some small way, teach us all a simple economic lesson or two.

Lesson 1: the red meat numbers.

We export a fortune in meat to the world. The critical part of it is it is the best of quality – quality will always beat quantity.

Why? Because the world will always contain large numbers of people unaffected by economic tides, and people with money like good stuff.

There are some things in life beyond the prevailing tide – Château Lafite, Bugatti cars, Rolex watches, and New Zealand meat and indeed wine. Not literally, but you get the point.

Onions will sell better in Europe because of our free trade agreement with the EU. We need fewer tariffs in that case because onions are onions, but meat is about quality. Like kiwifruit is. Like great Boudreaux wine is.

That’s not to say tariffs are good business, because they are not. And lord only knows how rich we could be if the world really was truly tariff free, but for the here and now our red meat numbers into America are unaffected because people will pay for quality.

Lesson 2: the job numbers. More people, young people, have stayed in or gone back to school because if they didn’t, they would be jobless. The 15 to 24 age group have an unemployment rate of over 15%. It’s shocking.

Why? Because a constrained market doesn’t provide work for people with limited or no skills.

Young people start out with the disadvantage of no experience, add no skills to that and you are toast.

This is not new, but it is new to the current lot, who clearly never got the previous lot’s memo that it’s hard enough as it is to get into the job market without turning up ill-prepared.

But here is what I know about life and economies: it doesn’t matter what the economic circumstances are, good people with good skills and good attitude and good determination are always, always, in demand and will do well.

And good stuff, well made, with a story, high in quality, will always, always, do well.

Quality, whether in person or product, is recession proof.

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