{"id":7112,"date":"2015-04-05T08:26:48","date_gmt":"2015-04-05T13:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7112"},"modified":"2015-04-05T08:26:48","modified_gmt":"2015-04-05T13:26:48","slug":"theres-trouble-brewing-in-middle-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7112","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s Trouble Brewing In Middle Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s Trouble Brewing In Middle Earth<\/a><\/h3>\n

For the second time in three years, I\u2019m fortunate enough to spend some time in New Zealand (or Aotearoa). In 2012, it was all mostly a pretty crazy touring schedule, but this time is a bit quieter. Still get to meet tons of people though, in between the relentless Automatic Earth publishing schedule. And of course people want to ask, once they know what I do, how I think their country is doing.<\/p>\n

My answer is I think New Zealand is much better off than most other countries, but not because they\u2019re presently richer (disappointing for many). They\u2019re better off because of the potential here. Which isn\u2019t being used much at all right now. In fact, New Zealand does about everything wrong on a political and macro-economic scale. More about that below.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been going through some numbers today, and lots of articles, and I think I have an idea what\u2019s going on. Thank you to my new best friend Grant here in Northland (is it Kerikeri or Kaikohe?) for providing much of the reading material and the initial spark.<\/p>\n

To begin with, official government data. We love those, don\u2019t we, wherever we turn our inquisitive heads. Because no government would ever not be fully open and truthful. This is from Stuff.co.nz, March 19 2015:<\/p>\n

New Zealand GDP grew 3.3% last year<\/a><\/p>\n

New Zealand\u2019s economy grew 3.3% last year, the fastest since 2007 before the global financial crisis, Statistics NZ said. Most forecasts expect the economy to keep growing this year and next, although slightly more slowly than in the past year. For the three months ended December 31, GDP grew 0.8%, in line with Reserve Bank and other forecasts. That was led by shop sales and accommodation.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s Trouble Brewing In Middle Earth For the second time in three years, I\u2019m fortunate enough to spend some time in New Zealand (or Aotearoa). In 2012, it was all mostly a pretty crazy touring schedule, but this time is a bit quieter. Still get to meet tons of people though, in between the relentless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[312,353,3787,499,4002,2084],"class_list":["post-7112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-financial-crisis","tag-gdp","tag-macroeconomics","tag-manipulated-statistics","tag-new-zealand","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7113,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112\/revisions\/7113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}