Boggled

Stuff this morning had more results from their poll, reporting that National's lead is built on trust in its handling of the economy:

National's yawning lead in the polls is built on an even larger gap in confidence on handling the economy, new polling shows.

The Fairfax Media-Research International poll shows 49 per cent of voters think National has the best plan to fix the economy, well ahead of Labour on 17 per cent.

I'm absolutely boggled by this. To point out the obvious, we have a stagnant economy, 155,000 unemployed, and record high inflation. And the reason we have these things is because National's "response" to the recession was initially to do nothing, in the belief that the market would sort itself out, and then to try and cut our way out of trouble (with the expected result - an austerity-driven recession, just like 1992). By any empirical measure, they are failures at managing the economy - because they are ideologically opposed to the very idea.

And yet, somehow the fact of National's dismal non-performance can't penetrate the dogma that they're businessmen, so therefore they know what they're doing. Quite apart from the fact that most NZ businessmen don't know what they're doing - you have only to look at the dismal performance of NZ businesses to see that - this is simply false. The economy is not a company. Anyone trying to manage it as if it was (e.g. by "tightening our belts" in a recession) is going to drive it into the ground. Which is exactly what is happening now.

These are not people I want running the New Zealand economy. They have no plan to boost growth, no plan to create jobs, no plan even to ease the effects of the disaster they're overseeing, except to hang on and hope - while of course using it as an excuse to flog state assets, our common property, to their rich mates. They are economic incompetents, and they do not deserve our faith or our support.