We are what we have always been – a nation of immigrants and immigrant descendants exporting minimally-processed commodities, creating good businesses for people offshore to buy and relocate, and focussed not on strong income growth but income redistribution and issues of egalitarianism.
We are not stuffed, just like Fiji is not stuffed, nor Albania, nor Uzbekistan. But having blown the potential economic benefits of the reforms from 1984-92 our frame of reference has to be more those types of countries and not the old ones people used to think about emulating – Singapore, Ireland, Switzerland, and Sweden.
At least the bush is beautiful, and we provide a good route of upward economic mobility for tens of thousands of people from poorer countries every year. Like we always have done. Maybe ultimately that is the purpose of New Zealand – being a stepping stone.
Tony Alexander in his this week’s economics newsletter.
For the record, most immigrants to New Zealand are from these four countries: India, China, The Philippines, and South Africa.
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