Ian Pool and Natalie Jackson recently delivered a disturbing message to Auckland Fabians. They exposed the discrepancy between popularly held perceptions of the challenges facing NZ and the realities of demographic trends, long in the making.
Their presentations are available here.
The evidence has been available for decades of the need to take advantage of a one-time opportunity to invest from the earning capacity of 'baby boomers' while they are still in the workforce. However, a combination of boomer domination, willful ignorance and political expediency have instead led us to 'borrow' from future generations rather than invest as required.
Other key trends may represent 'the end of growth', especially outside large urban centres. Pool and Jackson posed questions about the inevitable impact and showed there may still be time to ameliorate resulting problems with help of the 'blippers'.
Their presentations may be downloaded here.