Tuesday, June 07, 2011



Who benefited from NeoLiberalism?

The way National and ACT like to tell it, their NeoLiberal economic policies (tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for everyone else, labour market "flexibility" for employers, and privatisation for foreign investors) make everyone better off. Reality tells a different story. Via the Dim-Post, here's some data showing who really benefited from the Revolution:

averageincomes1

(Source: A. B. Atkinson, Andrew Leigh, "The Distribution of Top Incomes in New Zealand", ANU Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper No. 503, November 2005 [PDF]; the spike in 1999 is due to tax changes, BTW, as the wealthy changed their arrangements to avoid Labour's new top tax bracket).

The top 0.1% made out like bandits, more than doubling their average real incomes. Everyone else, not so much (and in fact, if you look at ordinary people, we got screwed). These are policies of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. And National wants to re-impose them if it gets a second term.