Dumb and Dumber
There is nothing more ludicrous than the re-emergence in New Zealand of what economic historians call Muldoonism. For our overseas readers, Robert Muldoon was a dominant Prime Minister in New Zealand in the late sixties and seventies. Muldoon commenced with a self-stated belief in free markets, only to end up with an economy more controlled and regulated than Poland and Hungary, which at that time were Communist states.
Ironically, it was an incoming Labour government which stripped away Muldoonism's awful costly failures and re-committed the country to free markets. Now, however, the present government is acting more and more like Muldoon and actively returning the country to centralist control. If allowed to continue, this will wreak a terrible price.
Here is the latest example of economic distortion, waste, and inefficiency championed by our political masters. As is always the case, it "picks winner" which means that the government now queers the pitch in favour of its specially favoured flavours-of-the-month. Here is where the high cost of government meddling stamps inefficiency and rising prices upon society.
