October 2008
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Day 7 October, 2008

NZ election now about trust

No Right Turn:

Espiner agrees that the elec­tion is now all about trust, but he char­ac­ter­ises it as trust in eco­nomic man­age­ment. I’d char­ac­ter­ise it dif­fer­ently. Reces­sions aren’t about poor mac­roe­co­nomic stat­ist­ics, but about people - people who are going to lose their jobs, and need to fall back on the state in their time of need. The ques­tion then is who do we trust to care for the vic­tims (remem­ber­ing that any of us could end up as one of them), min­im­ise the dam­age, and ensure they can get on with their lives when the eco­nomy picks up again? The people who slashed wel­fare bene­fits? Or the people who have main­tained them? The people who slashed health spend­ing? Or the people who have expan­ded it? The people who don’t care about the poor? Or the people who do?