In the gym today we will all sniffle. There is a virus going around, and the wife of the owner was complaining that she has spent the last couple of weeks sick, and that one child has got chicken pox — which took her down to the doctors to immunize her other one.

Winter is coming, but is not here yet. And while the government is looking at going into surplus in the next year or so, one of the old guard, the old reformers, still points out that we are far too controlled, and far too timid.

As I watched this year’s Budget, I kept asking: Why can socialist Scandinavian Governments of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland reform education, health, and welfare using market mechanisms but a National conservative Government refuses to do so? Why do Denmark and Norway’s Governments allow private firms to run public hospitals (because it works), yet the National Government won’t even contemplate it? Why do John Key and Bill English refuse to inject more market mechanisms into the welfare state?

Answer – you would need to tackle the vested interests, particularly the teachers’ unions, and the Education Department and they simply don’t have the guts to do so. Only if we are willing to look forward and devolve control of the money Government spends to individuals will we deliver solutions. We have become a nation rife with bureaucracy, recklessly determined to reuse the ideas that have failed to solve poverty for over 80 years.

What 80 years of political control have achieved is a larger welfare budget, more people on welfare, and barriers for those on the bottom to actually get ahead.

Some in NZ would say — what winter? The stock market is doing well, but not as well as the USA. The dollar is up. We are one of the safer countries in the world. And most of us are not hungry,,, instead we are obese. Most of us have a house, albeit a small and poorly insulated one.

But we do not pay our way in this world. We borrow overmuch, and we have a bunch in the opposition who would stymie the export industries that we do have. And the very exports we do have — meat, wine, wool, fresh flowers and vegetables…. are costly. Luxuries. Like education and tourism (both of which are export industries) they rely on a middle class that has disposable income.

But while our house is in relative order, and that of the developing world is also becoming more rational, the USA and EU are printing money assuming that the iron laws of economics will not affect them, that debasing a currency, this time, will not lead to it losing its reserve status, and that all will be well.

It will not be so.

Now, I’m shielded (a bit). I work for an institution that has been around since 1863. I have tenure, a good salary, and my superannuation account looks quite good. The next challenge is paying for the boy’s university education…

But this could change. NZ is always a little more fragile, simply because we are small.

We need to use this time to prepare, physically, morally and financially, as families, congregations and nations. It’s hard now, But it could get a lot harder.