National's Nicola Willis and Labour's Barbara Edmonds have sparred over their approaches to help struggling New Zealanders get ahead.The finance spokespeople were speaking at the Politik election summit on Wednesday.Politik editor Richard Harman had asked Willis and Edmonds to lay out their economic vision, and what they saw as the context for the election campaign.The pair agreed the economy was not where they wanted it to be, and their challenge was to create the economic conditions to help "mum and dad" get ahead.Edmonds spoke about her own electorate of Mana, where she said people could no longer afford the "slap up meal" of mince on toast, with prices rising excessively.Willis said it was irresponsible of Edmonds to say she was focused on the price of mince, "unless you have a policy to address the price of mince, and I haven't heard that from the Labour Party".National's approach to help people get ahead was to control inflation, she said.Edmonds said that did not cut it."When you know what it's like to only have $8 in your hand and you are sweating when you take your car to get a warrant of fitness ... It is really difficult to speak to people and say, 'well, we're going to work on the economy here, and eventually that'll help trickle down'."Edmonds said Labour was focused on making other things cheaper for people, pointing to its policies to cap public transport fares and offer three free GP visits.She also referenced the former Labour government's pay equity scheme, "which was to help our lowest paid women who look after our babies, look after our grandparents in the retirement homes, who are the plunket nurses, who are the midwives."The National-led government tightened the scheme considerably, making it harder for people in female-dominated workforces to apply to be paid on par with men doing similar jobs.The debate descended over that, with Willis and Edmonds speaking over each other to get their points across."The fact now that they cannot apply for a pay equity claim to help lift their wages, that's terrible," said Edmonds.Willis said that was not true, and women could still apply."Good luck finding the $11 billion (to pay for the scheme)," she said."We don't think it's the government's job to fund pay settlement for private sector businesses ... your position is that the taxpayer in Porirua who can't afford mince on toast should be paying more tax so that Ryman Healthcare can get a pay equity subsidy."Edmonds responded: "Those Ryman Healthcare workers, if the market was working, why are they on the minimum wage?"They also had a tit-for-tat over Labour's campaign policy to slim down the government's Investment Boost, which allows businesses to deduct 20 percent of the cost of a new asset, over depreciation.Labour would target it to small businesses only.Willis said Edmonds had supported Investment Boost, and suggested the Labour finance spokesperson had lost an argument with leader Chris Hipkins over the policy.Edmonds said there was no debate between her and Hipkins about repurposing Investment Boost."Yes, it's a good policy, but my policy is better, so that's where we've left it," she said.But Willis said it had been a "frustrating debate" and a "phony war" with Labour which she said had continued attacking the government but not offered up its own fixes.However Willis said that war ended on Sunday when Labour "finally" announced its fiscal strategy to increase spending to 33 percent, which she calculated would see every New Zealander pay $100 more in taxes each week."It is a radical prescription. It is the wrong prescription."