Prophets of economic gloom slated

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 19

Prophets of economic gloom slated

PA Wellington Economists who preach gloom have received a broadside from Mr Wayne Coffey, of the Manufacturers’ Federation. “I am sure New Zealanders have become heartily sick of the rubbish being dished up to them by economists,” he told the Hutt Rotary Club. Most economists were reactionary scaremongers who talked a “deluge of worn-out cliches.”

Mr Coffey, the federation’s assistant director of the services division, said the economists’ speeches took a familiar format.

“They start, by comparing New Zealand’s abysmal growth performance with that of other developed countries. They squeal about diminished rewards to the deserving sections of the public (usually their own) and they then proceed to draw tenuous links between the growth performance, or lack of it. and one of their pet hates such as import licensing.” The solutions put forward had ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, from putting dole-bludg-ers, trade unionists, schoolteachers and public servants up against a wall of discontent and verbally shooting them, to more sophisticated but no-less-naive clamours for dramatic restructuring based on the punishment of the economic villains. Mr Coffey said much of the poor 'diagnosis and even worse prescription missed the mark because

it related to a world of textbook unreality. As an example, he said New Zealand’s growth performance alongside that of other O.E.C.D. countries was often held up for public ridicule. “Yet more and more thinking economists throughout the world are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the concepts we employ to measure economic performance.” Recently he had become convinced that New Zealand was poised on the brink of economic recovery. “The economic structure of this country has been undergoing quite radical changes in the last few years. Many of those shrieking about the need for radical restructuring seem to have ignored this fact. “Not only has substantial change taken place, but I believe there is considerable potential for furtheir beneficial restructuring with a minimum of social and economic injury and government intervention,” Mr Coffey said.