To understand all that is wrong in NZ Politics, just look at this one simple devastating chart…
Who benefit most from the Government?
It’s not the solo Mums and Dads, it’s not the beneficiaries, it’s not the veterans, it’s not childcare, or the disabled or the unemployed or the homeless who are the largest recipients of welfare from the state, despite the mainstream corporate media constantly bashing those beneficiaries and pretending they are the problem, oh no.
It’s our dear Boomer and older NZers who most reap the rewards of civil society. Their grave to the cradle subsidisation of their entire lives while pulling up the ladder behind them so that younger generations didn’t receive the same support is as crass as Paula Bennett’s.
Boomers will rush to claim that their Super has been paid for so can’t be compared to dirty filthy bennies who are just leaches on their hard work.
Nonsense, boomers and above gained their nest egg while economic conditions flourished. Now the nest can no longer look after the egg, boomers fly off and tsk tsk Gen Xers, Ys and Millenials for wanting organic coffee and central city living as the reasons for their inability to prosper.
Never mind the free education, low property prices and incredibly high pay from a fully unionised workforce.
And never mind this free market speculative property bubble 30 years of neoliberalism now valued at a trillion dollars has built…
Property investors ‘flip’ neighbouring Auckland homes for big profits
A modest Auckland bungalow sold three times in four days after an investor made a young family an offer they couldn’t refuse then ‘flipped’ the property within 24 hours.
It borders another larger property in Mangere Bridge that was sold twice by speculators in the same timeframe.
Its price surged by $400,000 in under a week and another investor made nearly $1m capital gain in just six months.
...when 2 NZers have more than the poorest 30% of the entire nation, the time for debate is over and the time to riot is upon us.
If you are not any yet, you are probably between the ages of 18-39 and don’t vote. Those benefitting most from this free market intergenerational theft are banking on your apathy.
Need to separate the Welfare/Bene from the Super & Acc-Supp, Student Loans & Subsidies.
Benefit(s) is less than $7b including the Offices & 3000 staff of WINZ.
Student loans should be on the Min. of Ed’s book & so should $873m for employment subsidies.
Accommodation Supplement for State Housing only, not the private sector.
How? They’re all the same stuff. If you take one out the whole budget shrinks. This is drip feeding money in to few pockets, and a very inefficient way to get money to where you want it.
Welfare shouldn’t be looked at as a life style, in my opinion you should be able to cash out after a period of time, let’s say to years. So we could take some money away from the spy budget that deals with monitoring solo mothers and other investigations into beneficiaries that are conducted by spy’s and put it to good use.
Therefore as u say ‘welfare should should not be used as a lifestyle’ then what about the gold plated beneficiaries the superannuatants. They got a got great lifestyle with there boomer property portfolios debt free of course.
No u are focused on the wrong bene’s it the superannuatants u need to be concerned about mate they are raking it in as u can see…
Well English has the power to quietly take the $25 boost to benefits, outside and kill it. Just in time for tax cuts, or some other gross arrangement. That clashes with the idea of saving for dignity in retirement.
Boomers think nothing changed during the 80’s and 90’s because the price of admission to public schools and hospitals didn’t change, they are still free. There was never any for sale signs out the front, even though enough of the fat has been privitised, I do think 30% increases in admin cost is a telling wast of resources, time and space in a medical facility limited by space. So it’s easy to argue for or against.
my only concern is we play with in the rulz, there’s plenty of levers a PM can pull currently that could turn New Zealand’s economic outlook in a heart beat. But for that PM to emerge. He needs political capital that understands on a general shareholders meeting type of level. That will take time grow. In the mean time I think it plausible if not impossible to do a smash and grab and start paying out beneficiaries. I’d start with kids exiting CYFs care.
The only thing that kills recessionary hoarding is cash.
( I might have doubled up here? )
I completely and totally agree. And, like, about fucking time!
IRD ! The Foreign Banks ! But perhaps, first and foremost, our politicians. They’re the ones facilitating the burglary of our $-assets. They’re the ones picked up at the air port in our Jaguar and BMW motorcars to drive past the homeless. Those two billionaire fuckers? How could they do that without political help?
Therefore, who helped them, where do they live, how do we get invited to their next garden party?
And if you feel a bit iffy about that? Remember. They brought this upon themselves. Their greed, vanity, ego and narcissism did this to all of us. For example. They gave me an image of the homeless including an old Maori woman bedding down on a cardboard box under the sky tower. I have that image tattooed onto my brainstem and I didn’t fucking want it there. I regard that as being abusive to me.
Right on! It is abusive to humanity as well.
Remember humanity? It’s that thing we had more than 30 years ago when we actually cared about people as people and not as commodities.
Fuck the system, it’s broken.
have you lost your marbles, boomers paid for what they get, and you moan ffs its time you learnt a little political history, 2 people stuffing up the system do make up the boomers in fact i doubt if paula would even qualify as one and she is the one along with richardson that has done the most damage. fact is we have been robbed by successive gvts not the boomers.. get your act together
, you, don’t, lift, do, you, bro, ?
Plus one to that>
Most of us boomers as you call us have been ripped off just as much as gen x and the rest.
So don’t lay all the blame on us.
The fault lies with richardson shipley and douglas who ripped all of us off
and allowed the greedy money hungry national and act party supporters to rip us all off.
Over the last 30 years you could have bundled all retirement funds in a bank account and outperformed those fund managers. So they multiply the fund times 10 and policy holders get 4 out of ten dollars back when you cash in your retirement policy or how ever it’s arranged. That’s a lot of free money no one is talking about.
Every one is standing around pointing fingers at each other when charlatans are the ones holding the money bags, not us boomers/Genx/millennials.
There is only one group holding all the cash in that graph and it ain’t us
The fault lies with Muldoons bribery ( and scaremongering with Cossack TV ads ). He demolished Labours superior and sustainable super with his overly generous ‘cash from the current account’ scheme ,commencing at 60 yrs and equivalent to about 70 % of the av. wage. Obviously it has been radically trimmed since, but is still unsustainable.
Of course buying the highs and selling the lows is unsustainable. That’s why only 10% of traders actually make money. Those that don’t understand investing blow there accounts up in 90 days. If fund managers did due diligence, he’d end up putting his clients in the same room who would then figure out real fucking fast that there actually losing money.
It’s a simple equation. Commision multiplied by clients = profit.
I’m hoping it’s satire. Can’t think of any other explanation for willfully missing the point that many older people are surviving on the breadline.
Now divide the superannuation payout by the number of recipients and calculate the average income received.
Then make allowance for teeth that have come to the end of their useful lives and require very expensive repair or replacement, skin that has seen better days and needs constant attention, homes that older people can no longer maintain on their own and are forced to pay others to maintain, roofs that need to be replaced at $20,000 to $30,000 etc.
Of course a vast portion the money paid out in super goes straight to corporations (mostly overseas-owned) which leech the last of the money out of old people’s bank accounts via fees that exceed their weekly allowances.
If you are looking for fairness and justice in this system you are shit out of luck Martyn, because there won’t be superannuation or even a welfare state as we know them a decade or so from now: the entire Ponzi financial system that has been operated for the past 300 plus years is very close to hitting the resources wall.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/brace-for-the-financial-crash-of-2018-b2f81f85686b#.csyefh6gy
And once the global economic system does hit the resources wall (which everyone has been warned about for well over a decade), it’s game over for the ‘Age of Entitlement’.
And two decades from now there probably won’t even be a nation, just a collection of feudal tribal states run by war-lords on the parts of NZ than have not been inundated by rapid sea level rise.
Watch this space:
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent
Because what is holding the ice sheets of Antarctica in place won’t be holding them in place for much longer.
Reality really sucks. Which is probably the main reason ‘nobody’ wants to talk about it.
Any Boomer claiming to be hard done by should pay the full 2017 cost of any tertiary studies to the government and sell all and any properties they own and try paying market rentals… the time of sticks and stones is fast approaching…. words…. meaningless. The two greatest traitors to the nation to date are Douglas and Richardson, followed by Clark and Key…
I’m a baby boomer and a few years back I retrained and took a student loan to pay my fees. At the time student loans attracted 6% interest. I paid it back as quickly as I could. Many people my age go back to uni to retrain.
Martyn – you’ve lost all credibility with that post.
Rioting, blaming it all on the olds – how pathetic. Time to move on and find a new calling because this sort of bile does no one any good.
A bit harsh there, Wanderer. Martin maybe referring to rioting in a metaphorical sense. One has to wonder how much further things will get worse before nzers react.
National Super was introduced by Muldoon at a time when it was easily affordable.
It has to be remembered also that it was during the Douglas era that the ‘super surcharge’ was introduced, a measure which would have clawed buck super payouts from those who didn’t need them.
Really, mikesh ? I thought Muldoon bankrupted the country?
That’s what Labour and Roger Douglas told us, hence the IMF instructed us to sell off the State Assets?
A country can’t really be bankrupted, providing it can print its own currency.
What tertiary fees. I’m a typical pensioner who worked from leaving school at 16 until he retired and paid full taxes.
I take offence at your assertion that that I am a bludger.
You are spouting bosses’ talk with your ‘divide and rule” inter generational talk.
I have friends approaching retirement who worked in physical jobs and are physically stuffed. There big fear is that super will be pulled beyond their reach.
When I took out my mortgage I was paying 16% interest and paying a marginal tax rate of 48%. Whoever was ripping off society it surely wasn’t me or my workmates.
Me too. I went straight to work after leaving school and paid for my degree when I did it later in life. Didn’t need a student loan either, although I probably wouldn’t have got one if I asked.
What millennials and gen x need to do is stop believing in neo-liberal economics. They are like turkeys voting for Christmas. They spout neo-liberal garbage while moaning that they don’t get the socialist goodies their mums and dads did. Of course, if they actually got the point it would be a threat to the establishment, so young people are directed to blame their parents and grandparents for their harsh life. Perhaps they need to learn a bit of history.
Yes history has been wiped out very cleverly by the powers that be from the school corriculum. Its been done under the radar the guys that designed neo liberalism did such a good job. They have defended the system from any threats. Its crazy but surely the guys that designed it and keep it going are getting on a bit??? I think any challenge to the system from gen x or y now would achieve a change.
I’m a superannuitant and started work at 10 (paperboy, go-for at a department store and @ 16 fulltime. I have paid my way. The CULLEN scheme initiated by Labour was and would be keeping super afloat (+ some). This current government reduced payments
As at 30 June 2016 Fund Size (net of NZ tax) Excess return since inception (return relative to Treasury Bills) Excess return since inception (Return relative to Treasury Bills + 2.5%)
A – With capital contributions since July 2009 as per s43*
Estimated $50.6 billion
Estimated $19.6 billion
Estimated $12.6 billion
B – Actual Fund Performance (i.e., without capital contributions since July 2009)
Actual $30.1 billion Actual $13.3 billion Actual $7.6 billion
Difference (A – B) $20.5 billion $6.3 billion $5.0 billion
Cherry picking.
So much of the bigger picture left out that the details mean little.
Neo liberal argument for privatising superannuation runs on similar lines.
Bullshit like this just clouds the picture. A smoke screen.
Sorry you can’t see it Martyn.
Lets start with the whole structure of money and how it is apportioned, what taxes are paid and the last generations building of the infrastructures that form the framework of our national nest egg.
The ownership of land and functioning of Govt in regulating the way we live including the omission of Govt in providing education, healthcare, a fairer society for all ages including adequate security in old age.
It seems that accepting the MSM hounding of boomers has become
embedded in many heads.
Accepting the neo liberal slide as a starting point is a shameful position.
Interesting comments to your article Martyn, and I for one am in favour of action like yourself. The dire times for many families and singles has been getting worse for years under Key, the Nats, Act and Dunne, and with Maori Party siding with them when it suits. I do believe in Superannuation that is means tested, like in many other countries, and wonder why this is not done here? There is a difference in need by multi millionaires and ordinary folk, is perhaps something you and others have overlooked. I agree it is a problem that the beneficiary bashing and other nastiness of the Nats spin has totally distorted with their lies. I and many other families and singles who are actually caught in the Winz system, wot 300,000 people approx., are actually the ones that are truely suffering now under this ongoing vexing situation. We are all becoming poorer, sicker, and living in quiet despair for too long. Why not riot, we could perhaps bring about a well needed political revolution here, and get MMP working for our diverse community, instead of working again for the Rich, as it now is!
Ass hat headline. How about time to get of your ass, organise and vote. Use social media as a tool instead of a selfie album. Hassle your MP. Make them scared, not to vote your way or run yourself. But they must KNOW you WILL vote.
What will help is to:
Raise the super age, means test it.
Bring in a capital gains tax on property. It will even the playing field stop capital flight to dead head investments, restrain price and fuel the real engine of growth, our capital markets. We could fund businesses that, add value to commodities we currently ship offshore.
Oh and if you think, ANY solo mum had an easy ride in the past, you are dreamin pal. That was disingenuous and in poor taste.
Both sides of the house have proved to be full of shite and lacking in the intestinal fortitude required to do the hard things.
It is political suicide but once done would not be undone. Just as GST was, it would be
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