"Rebalancing the economy"

Back in the 90's, the then-National government ran a deliberate high-unemployment policy in order to keep wages down. Over the weekend, they admitted they're doing it again, with Finance Minister Bill English calling 159,000 people out of work part of the rebalancing of the economy.

GUYON But if you look at the real impact of that and that is jobs, I mean that is the key thing in any economy. You’ve got 159,000 people who are unemployed, I mean is that just part of the rebalancing story?

BILL Well to some extent it is, because a lot of those jobs were dependent on this credit-fuelled economy that we had, particularly from 2005 onwards, and we are going to see a shift of jobs into the export sector. Now the government is cushioning that effect quite considerably. This year we're going to run a 13 billion dollar deficit. We're pumping 13 billion dollars into the economy which is supporting jobs both by putting cash into people’s pockets through the income support system, Working for Families etc, and by direct investment in infrastructure. So we're getting an orderly and steady adjustment underpinned by that big government expenditure.

GUYON It's pretty brutal though isn’t it? You're effectively saying that 159,000 people out of work, they're the collateral damage in the rebalancing of the economy?

BILL I don’t think it is brutal at all. I think we're getting a pretty measured and considered adjustment, particularly when you compare it to other economies that have had similar levels of debt, such as the UK and the US.

Fuck him. Those 159,000 people aren't just an abstract statistic; they're real people, being driven into poverty and misery by a deliberate government policy. But it doesn't just affect them - this policy will also affect their children, who will face poorer health outcomes and narrowed life choices as a result (which means that we get an underclass again - thanks, National). This is utterly callous stuff, but hey, I guess in English's worldview that's just what's "necessary". The poor have to be thrown overboard so that rich people like him can make more money.

(And then, to top it all off, the government is planning welfare "reform". So they deliberately throw people out of work, then kick them for being unemployed. Its the policy of a pack of sadistic arseholes - but its so very, very National, isn't it?)

As I've been saying so often recently, this is not good enough. Kiwis expect the government to protect people from the excesses of capitalism, and National has played to this with its talk of "taking the rough edges off the recession". Now we find out that they've lied to us, and they're deliberately abandoning people to the market in order to cleave to some demented free market ideology. Again. In the C18th, they would have been dragged screaming from their palaces and lynched for this sort of sadism. And hopefully we will see the democratic equivalent next election.