Eyes Above The Waves: The Gloomocracy Eyes Above The Waves Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Repatriate Kiwi. Hacker. Wednesday, 5 January 2005 The Gloomocracy One thing that always rankles me about New Zealand is the way New Zealanders emphasise the negative side of everything. Sometimes it's because complaining will push someone's selfish agenda. Most of the time I think it's just a national habit of whining, and reporting on whining. It's intensely annoying. It's also actually harmful to the country and its people. I just saw a particularly good example. The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal did their 11th annual ranking of countries' "economic freedom". Roughly they're measuring how much government intervention there is in the economy. (It's a conservative think tank, so more is necessarily bad.) New Zealand was ranked fifth most economically free in the world, behind only Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg and Estonia, and hence ahead of countries such as the United States, Australia, Japan, etc etc. So what was the TV headline for this impressive performance? NZ SLIPS IN ECONOMIC FREEDOM Because last year we were third in the world. Sigh. Posted by Robert at 12:36 Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Labels: New Zealand 4 comments: Adam Demeter 6 January 2005 at 01:21 I don't think you should let the media get you down Roca. No matter where you are they'll put a negative spin on things just to make it sound more 'tragic' or 'devastating'. Bad news sells more papers! ReplyDelete Replies Reply Simon 6 January 2005 at 01:28 Roc, I urge you to come to Germany for some time. Then you'll see that Germany probably far outranks New Zealand in terms of your so-called "Gloomocracy". ReplyDelete Replies Reply Martijn 6 January 2005 at 08:25 Did you know that pessimistic people are actually the more realistic ones? Apparently the New Zealanders are extremely realistic. ;-) ReplyDelete Replies Reply Paddy 8 January 2005 at 04:45 I remember hearing a Swede complain that life is really tough over there because their estate tax is so high... ReplyDelete Replies Reply Add comment Load more... 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