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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Joseph who wrote (69231)	5/10/2008 4:53:25 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Decades ago, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, China, and pretty well anywhere in the world outside USA were places which were poor and cheap, where Kiwis could go and live like kings. Singapore long ago soared past New Zealand in GDP per capita. Hong Kong and Ireland too. China is still poor, but during a visit there about 4 years ago, it was booming and still is. India remains pitifully poor, but has made some improvements. Until they stop blaming Britain for everything, and kick out the one British thing they shouldn't have kept but did, namely red tape, socialism, bureaucracy, government edict and regulatory fiat they won't get far. Even Britain has got rid of some of it. New Zealand is plunging back towards the 19th century. Our socialist, regulatory, kleptocratic, repressive government, obsessed with trains, has just renationalized the railways. I suspect they went on overseas trips to Europe and, impressed by London's Underground and some excellent rail services around Europe and in Japan have mistakenly thought they could do the same here. Apart from the fact that we don't have the population, or the income, simply throwing a bunch of money at some chimps dressed up as train drivers won't make a successful railway. Productive people are fleeing NZ in droves, as bludgers and wastrels take over. Voters now are in a clear majority who work in government jobs, work in crown owned enterprises, hospitals, schools, welfare agencies, are on welfare in various forms [old age, crippled, unemployable, unemployed, lazy, Maori, sick, etc] or are otherwise getting money straight from governments or whose businesses suck money from government sales. So it's not surprising that all those people vote for more of the same since that's where they get their money. The proportion of people who get money from competitive free market businesses are relatively few and they are increasingly burdened with the imposts of the legions of bludgers in government and said hangers on. It's hardly surprising that they go where they get more money and where productive people are respected and even admired. The main growth industry in NZ now is crime. Hmmm, that was meant as a little throwaway comment, but I can't actually think of a growth industry [other than government of course, which has boomed]. The cellphone and cyberphone industry is growing. The internet is growing [slowly]. No, I can't think of anything else. On the contrary, businesses are closing [such as Fisher and Paykel, which I used to say was the second best company I had ever seen and I have seen a lot]. There was a housing boom from Y2K until a year ago, but that was based on $100bn borrowed from Japan and those chickens are coming home to roost now, in a big way. I should mention farming revenues have boomed with food prices and commodities around the world, but actual production can't increase much as it has been at capacity for decades. Mqurice