Duncan Garner: Will $14b tax cuts save us from the brink of collapse?

You see it whenever you go shopping: Shops that have closed; shops that are about to; and shops that are staying open, but sales have dried to a trickle.

It’s almost like you can smell the stench of retail death.

Retail NZ told me this week that 32% of all retailers don’t think they will last the year. Taken from percentages into cold, hard figures that equals about 12,800 retail outlets that might shut up shop in the next year.

For them it’ll be over, they can’t do it any more. We’re talking everyone from the “mum and dad” owners and operators to the likes of Auckland’s Smith & Caughey’s department store.

It’s not just money – or lack of – that is the problem, but it is, as the saying goes, the root of all evil. Or desperation. Poverty and crime, things like ram raids and shoplifting, go hand-in-hand.

But now that the amount that tax cuts will bring us has been revealed, can those cuts save us from this collapse? Perhaps around the margins, but I doubt they’re a silver bullet.

The government needs voters to smile again, be happy and feel confident that they are getting ahead. But, despite Finance Minister Nicola Willis dumping $14b into the economy over four years – the first tax cuts in 14 years – all the evidence is that the pain is still coming.

Let’s be honest, if the confirmed $20 a week really excites most of us then maybe we are deeper and more stuck in this mud than any of us really knew.

The brutal reality about getting inflation down is that someone has to lose and right now the losers are starting to pile up. Shop owners, public servants, the cleaners, the person who buys the office stationery or the florist who just lost six contracts across six government departments.