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The Worst Finance Minister Ever, Labour's Grant Robertson, and now the new one who is competing for that title, Nicola Willis, have jointly created a fiscal crisis in NZ. We currently have one of the worst primary fiscal deficits in the developed world (which is government spending minus tax revenues, excluding interest costs). In the face of an ageing population, NZ's public debt will start rapidly increasing above its high post-pandemic levels, starting in 2030, as confirmed by the IMF. Fellow Blogger Michael Reddell compiled this graph:

Our current Finance Minister has only one plan, which isn't a plan: cross her fingers & pray for economic growth to pick up. However, NZ is now one of the most stagnant economies in the world. And with high uncertainty regards tariffs, there is no bet that our economy will take off anytime soon. To solve NZ's fiscal, health-care & retirement problems, I have a plan. My sidekick, who's good with numbers and doing government budgets, since he wrote five in his time, Sir Roger Douglas, Finance Minister from 1984 to 1988, has done the math. (He won't like me describing him in those terms, since thinks of himself more as my boss). There are no holes in our budget, unlike the ones of Former Finance Minister Robertson and the current one, Willis. Whatever your views about ours, it works & makes Kiwis better off. There may be parts with which you disagree with - but its a plan - and neither Labour nor National have one of their own. It is forthcoming in our domestic journal, NZ Economic Papers:


The QS World University Rankings 2025 say, "This year’s ranking is the largest ever, featuring over 1,500 universities". Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, sits at number 244, putting it within only the top 20% of those rankings. What does Victoria say about this matter? "Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University is in the top 1% of the world’s universities for 15 subjects". What is the truth? Victoria has found a handful of subjects where it ranks in the top 150 of the QS subject ranking list. To express that number as a percentage works as follows: 150 / 1,500 = 10%. Yes, top 10%, not top 1%, for those subjects. Victoria is either not telling the truth or it can't calculate percentages. My understanding of what Victoria has done is it to divide 150 by 18,000 (not 1,500). Why? Because in 2024 it stated, "The latest QS World Rankings place the University in the top 245 of the world’s 18,000 universities". But QS did not rank 18,000 "world" universities (that number is made up and bogus). It ranked 1,500. Given the aim of Universities is a search for the truth, Victoria should top these PR, marketing & communications games that are designed to hide the truth. Looks to me like its trying to attract more students for financial gain by misleading them as to its world ranking.

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Robert MacCulloch

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