Mike's Minute: We should understand the economic basics

The Anthony Albanese gaff over employment and the cash rate, in some respects, is why we end up the way we do. 
Adrian Orr today increases our cash rate yet again. He started doing that before just about anyone else in the world. He was in that position because he and his mate Grant Robertson went nuts with the printer. 
We are today, yet again, paying the price for an astonishing amount of fiscal largesse. 
And yet, like Albanese, many of us, I suspect, couldn't name the cash rate. Many couldn’t explain what the cash rate is about, what drives it, why we are talking about 50 points or 25, whether there is more to come, and what our cash rate looks like compared to our trading partners. 
I suppose you could argue given we aren't looking to be a Prime Minister, Albanese's gaff is the crime here, not our lack of knowledge. But the sad truth is, whether we are cognisant of the finer aspects of economic policy, we are the poor saps on the receiving end of it. 
There is the political aspect of it as well. The Government here will tell you this is all Vladimir Putin's and the war's fault. Oil is the war but most of the rest of isn't. It's understanding that part that is so critical because when you understand that part, the non-tradable part, the part we engineered ourselves, it's at that point you realise we are being run by, if not buffoons, certainly ideologically dangerous people. 
We have the second highest non-tradable inflation in the world. America beats us and their inflation number is cripplingly bad, and in part it's been brought about by debt. 
Per head of population, they have borrowed more during Covid than anyone and New Zealand is second. Countries that fire hosed their economies with printed money more than they needed are now paying the bill. 
Whether it's 25 or 50 points today it doesn’t matter, it's all going only one way. And as the March spending figures yesterday show, it's not like the Reserve Bank are trying to quell excessive growth. 
There is barely any growth, there might be no growth at all. So, with the backdrop of no growth, they are making life more expensive and upping your living costs. They are quelling inflation that’s come not from growth, but from excessive borrowing. 
It's the worst of economic scenarios and we are a particularly bad example of it compared to say, Australia, who have inflation at what might well be about half ours. 
When everything you touch is getting more expensive because you got let down economically, I think that equation is probably worth spending a bit of time understanding, isn't it?

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