Unemployment is higher and there is much less scope to cut interest rates or for the Government to take the sharp edges off the recession - it has just posted an $18 billion deficit and had its credit rating downgraded.
A toxic buildup of debt has left both major parties committed to returning the Government's books to the black within three years. For National this would largely be an exercise in austerity, shrinking state spending as a share of the total economy.
For Labour it is more of a stretch, especially given that it has made some expensive promises such as income tax cuts for all but the top 2 per cent.
Other big-ticket items on Labour's list are making KiwiSaver compulsory while maintaining its tax credits, and extending Working for Families tax credits to beneficiary families. But both of those are delayed for the sake of the short-term fiscal position.
On lifting household savings rates, National is relying on the effects of last year's tax switch, which it says will take years to be fully felt. The idea is that higher GST discourages consumption, while lower income tax gives people at least the option of saving more.
Labour prefers compulsion, by making employees join KiwiSaver and by immediately resuming contributions to the Cullen Fund.
But both approaches face the inescapable fact that you can't have your cake and eat it. More saving means less discretionary spending.
Technically the economy has been in a recovery phase since the June 2009 quarter but the recovery has barely kept pace with population growth.
The unemployment rate has wobbled around 6.5 per cent for two and a half years, while per capita output is still nearly 4 per cent below its pre-crisis peak in December 2007.
The Treasury forecasts moderate economic growth of about 3.3 per cent a year over the next two years.
But nearly half of that comes from construction - rebuilding Christchurch, leaky homes and a normal cyclical recovery in residential building.
It is better than nothing but it just repairs damage already done.
And those forecasts are predicated on a resolution to Europe's sovereign debt issues and an assumption that growth among New Zealand's trading partners will be stronger next year.
Financial markets do not share that sanguine view. Some economists argue that much of the economic weakness in the Western world is structural rather than cyclical.
Globalisation, technology and demographics have combined to deliver a lower growth rate and higher-than-normal structural unemployment, with the debt-fuelled growth of the past decade masking that deterioration.
If they are right the economic policies we need to be hearing about are structural ones - how to tackle the mismatch between the skills that job seekers, especially the young, offer and those employers need.
That goes beyond issues around apprenticeships and vocational training to the quality of the education system, and more fundamentally child poverty - the level of which does not augur well for labour productivity down the track.
Highlights
National
Would sell up to 49 per cent of the State-owned energy companies.
Labour
Opposes state asset sales.
Greens
Opposes State asset sales.
Act
Would sell State-owned power companies altogether.
Maori Party
Sees state assets sales as an opportunity for investment by iwi.
Mana
Opposes state asset sales.
United Future
Income splitting for married couples for income tax and Working for Families purposes.
