Many retirees have to choose between eating and heating in the winter and with the current level of inflation, this will be an even more serious issue.
What the answer is I do not know but what I do know is the minister needs a reality check.
Fact check
JANINE DELANEY
Castlecliff
Russell Bell's stated in his op-ed last week, "The Inflation Debate …" that "New Zealand compares poorly with its trading partners when it comes to inflation". He is clearly cherry-picking.
New Zealand's top trading partner countries for exports are China, Australia, the United States, and Japan. For imports, they are China, Australia, the United States, Japan and Germany.
In reality, according to Trading Economics New Zealand is in the middle of the pack of developed nations with 6.9 per cent.
But almost every nation is in trouble with inflation due to the circumstances of Covid induced supply chains and disruption in Russia and Ukraine.
To put this into perspective, trading partners the UK is at 7 per cent, Germany is at 7.4 per cent, the USA at 8.5 per cent and Turkey at a whopping 61 per cent.
Of course, none of this bodes well for the global economy since the therapy for inflation is often painful.
Bell then uses high inflation as an attack on "high" government spending.
Indeed, if one looks at the actual statistics in "Our World in Data", the general government spending per GDP here is lower than any of the OECD nations with the exception of South Korea.
Countries such as Norway and Denmark spend far more than we do but still have lower inflation.
Therefore, it is clear that spending does not necessarily correlate with inflation.
The bottom line: it pays to double-check the actual stats when political pundits write.
BRIT BUNKLEY
Whanganui
