Cost of living crisis won’t be solved by subsidising prices - Bryce Wilkinson

Opinion byBryce WilkinsonNZ Herald·21 Oct, 2026 08:00 PM4 mins to readBryce Wilkinson is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative and the Director of the Wellington-based economic consultancy firm Capital Economics.For many New Zealand households, the cost-of-living squeeze is not an abstract economic statistic but a daily exercise in deciding which essentials the family budget can stretch to cover.Voters are rightly worried about the cost of living. How can they balance the household budget? Should they move to Australia? It is a nationwide issue. After allowing for inflation, population growth and seasonal effects, real national disposable income per person fell 4.3% from the September quarter 2022 to the