The new media focus on under 30s who have managed to buy houses is life style envy porn

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
37
2

I can buy a house and so can you!

The new media focus on under 30s who have managed to buy houses is life style envy porn – sold to the masses as evidence of hard work über alles.

The myths of neoliberalism are vital for it to continue as the dominant ideology, and the most important myth of neoliberalism is that with just some hard work from the individual you can be rich.

In neoliberalism there is no hegemonic structures of class, gender or sexual orientation, if you succeed the ‘win’ is totally yours, likewise if you ‘lose’ then that’s your fault as well.

If you are successful, you have chosen to be successful. If you are poor, you have chosen to be poor.

There’s no need for the State to step in and redistribute anything because everyones position in society has been determined by their own efforts hence there is no need for the State to get involved in challenging the hegemonic structures of society in the first place.

That’s why we are seeing an explosion of ‘I bought my house at 30’ stories in the corporate news media. As Millennial’s and Gen Xers slowly start waking up to the fact that the 30 year experiment of neoliberalism has relegated them from citizens into user pays consumers, they are increasingly becoming angry at the free market trap that has been set for them.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

As Phil Twyford points out, the reality of the housing crisis is far more serious than glib “I’m 30 and own a house’ stories…

” let’s be clear: Auckland housing is now three times more unaffordable than it was a generation ago. No amount of smashed avocados or lattes can make up for that,” 

The corporate media need to sell the exceptions to the rule because they are in danger of losing the hearts and minds of Millennials and Gen Xers as the reality of life for those generations grind agains the lies of individual success.

Luckily for neoliberalism, there is no political opposition offering anything different from the user pays mythology currently failing us.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

37 COMMENTS

  1. So true Martyn. Its all about propaganda. It was used for military in campaigns. Now it has been refined by the media to such a level it is very effective and works. These people that generate these stories are well trained in this art and know very well how propaganda works probably better than the military ever knew. So it will very interesting to see how much longer the propaganda works before people can see through this art as this is all it is… it is a battle of the mind now.

    • There are many of the “silent majority” who back in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s – budgeted carefully, spent judiciously and saved to buy our homes. Younger people need to discover that this will work for them too! All their whinging and whining now is not going to gain any sympathy. It has always needed sacrifice and effort and still does!!

      • Or as one hard earning home recipient was reported in the Herald “I saved hard”

        “I stayed at home, rent free, and inherited $100,000 from my grandfather”

        So that, my friend, is all that is required.

        And I think you meant “silent minority”, otherwise your only fooling yourself.

      • Have you ever tried to save $80,00? I’m frugal but know the reality of that would be too moumental to be likely to succeed. Baby Boomers NEVER had to save such a huge sum, if they needed 80 grand they borrowed it.

      • Oh “Namron”, what a silly person you are, parroting those cliches and not devoting any part of your brain to consider the facts. Housing unaffordibility has worsened and home ownership has fallen since the 70s and 80s.

        What, you think that by parroting those neo-lib memes that you can present an irrefutable case for the Holy Free Market and convert us all to Act acolytes? Piss off, mate!! You just make yourself look silly and demonstrate how bankrupt your ideology really is.

        My old man bought his family houses in the 50s and 60s andf it was way easier then, than it is now. And that was with mum staying home to look after a brood of six kids!!

        • “not devoting any part of your brain to consider the facts.”

          Not necessarily true, SH – They may have devoted the scrambled part to the process.

  2. Thanks for picking up on this Martyn, appalling propoganda! Interesting also that reading a little deeper into the stories that the headlines are actually totally deceptive about their “stories”. Nearly all have been gifted large chuncks of money or leveraged from a property bought in an entirely different market.

  3. Recall one John Key in 2007 using a 12 year old girl from McGhehan Close Owairaka to drive home the point that it was his party that was the party of opportunities, “The Brighter Future”? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10624658

    To quote the Herald, “Key was fronting up to residents after labeling the street a dead-end where “the rungs of the ladder of opportunity had been broken”. What a lying cheating piss take it was!

    Fast forward to 2017 and not only for those people are the opportunity ladder rungs broken, the ladder itself is for a huge amount of people has been stolen by his shitty government and it’s supporters. What plans do the Nats for that street after 2017, sell them off to investors to further rub their noses in it? A Tamaki Redevelopment scam?

    It’s the Herald mostly burning up their dwindling energy to help National find someone, somewhere who somehow bought a first home so National can claim its just a matter of hard work to buy a house just like it was back in our day.

    But with those debt laden people they use, are they going to run articles on their plight once interest rates go up, even by a small amount? I doubt it rather they will become Aroha Ireland, forgotten, used and abused by National and it’s helpers!

    • +1 xray. They should do a follow up “what happened to 12 year old girl from McGhehan Close Owairaka”. Last I heard she have left NZ for Australia.

      It’s shocking how Key discarded the kid after he won the election.

      And what his policies did to those kids who are now reaching adulthood.

      • Ironic the girl from Mc Ghehan close ended up in Aussie after all the hand wringing he did on the huge numbers leaving under the Labour government of Helen Clark and how they were going to fix it.

        I saw through that ridiculous charade with the family of Mc Ghehan close and Key hated every minute of it.

        • Aroha Ireland. She also had a few choice words for our weasel-faced former PM when the media caught up with her some years later. Bascially, the gist of it was, “He never really cared about me, or my family. I was just a means to an end.”

          Given she was only 12 at the time, does that qualify as child exploitation?

  4. Great article about the under 30’s house porn of late. I also think it’s to keep the Typhoid off the news as well as admitting that NZ defence forces may be killing people in Afghanistan rather than delivering that humanitarian aid that we were told about.

    I’d like to see a few ideas about different things we could do to end neoliberalism and change to a new ideology??

    Neoliberalism is in it’s death shadow, but now everyone’s so dumbed down with 30 years of Cop chases 3, there’s not a lot of new ideas out there on what else we could do.

  5. Exactly @ X-ray.
    Just once I wish the Nats would get theirs, but hey the MSM protects them well. Just sweep it under the carpet, nothing to see here except the ‘rock star’ economy… ( gag)

  6. I agree that the Nats are protected by the MSM – today on the AM Show on TV3 the new green party member who is an organic farmer was rubbished by people who had texted in, Nicky Hager was insulted with hate speech from texters which Duncan Garner was happy to read out to the listeners and Andrew Little was also rubbished about his saying he would make sure an inquiry was held into the Hager/Stephenson book. We haven’t a show in hell of having a fair media in this country. Its a disgrace.

      • I rarely watch news or much else on MSM but sometimes if the TV is on this stuff filters through while one is doing other things. Turning off the TV isn’t going to help to clean up our MSM’s abuse of their content. There will still be many other viewers who are being brainwashed on a daily basis.

        I have no answer for what we can do to ensure that our viewing gets a fair and balanced content. Go back to underground presses like days of old. Baby Boomers must be suffering in silence because our early TV viewing years were filled with top notch current affairs and our intelligence was not insulted on a daily basis by the crap that is dished up now.

        Most of the stuff we watch is taped or from light box etc and the library gets frequent visits.

    • That arrogant guy who reads the sports news every morning, on ‘the am show’ with Garner, he called Hager a ‘SHIT STIRRER’, and nobody confronted him re that. That is what I can attest to, it is appalling “standard” for broadcasting, often just ‘bored casting’.

      • I read somewhere where they say “the arrogant guy” will be the next Paul Henry – what a nightmare. As if things could get any worse.

  7. I listened to what Bernard Hickey, from ‘Newsroom’ now, had to say when he talked with Kathryn Ryan on RNZ and Nine to Noon this morning:

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201839067/nz's-homeowners-now-worth-$1-point-2-trillion

    https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/04/02/17747/housing

    It proves it all, the shift of wealth from the bottom and now also so many in the younger generation, to the ones up on the housing ladder already, as investors of whatever types.

    NZ will become a country of disowned renters, begging the property managers from Ray White and other agencies, to please, please let them rent a home, which will in many cases cost them more than half their income, just in rent.

    http://raywhite.co.nz/Rental_Property/

    http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/CategoryAttributeSearchResults.aspx?search=1&mcat=0350-5748-&sidebar=1&132=FLAT&134=1&135=7&136=&153=&29=Unit&122=1&122=2&59=0&59=0&178=0&178=0&sidebarSearch_keypresses=0&sidebarSearch_suggested=0

    Another example, just a 2-brm unit:

    http://www.trademe.co.nz/property/residential-property-to-rent/auction-1291884785.htm

    “The total cost to move in is $3,075
    (4 weeks rent as bond, 1 weeks rent + GST letting fee and 1 weeks rent in advance)”

    Oh, so “affordable”, is it not???

    Perhaps it is time for a real revolution, squatting all over the place, and to seize what you need from those that more or less steal it off you, by exploiting the need of poor and weak, including even middle class first home buyers?

    The least we can and must do is VOTE THESE CRIMINALS OUT, who presently sit on the government benches.

  8. Oh yes, nearly every day Stuff features a couple who have “made it”. The stories are nearly identical. They all claim they have worked 24 hours a day, given up everything, received no benefits and they all sing from the rooftop “I did it MY way”.
    You wonder just what details are not mentioned.
    Stuff loves this kind of trash make believe fantasia where you can give the selective facts and edit out the bits that don’t look so good.
    The rest of us have to live in the real world.

    • But they tend to have inherited money or have parent support.

      In my parents day, banks hated lending to anyone so the government built homes and Kiwis could buy them with some sort of government loan system.

  9. The story I liked today was the one which had “started out with a $200,000 wedding gift from his father.”

    I think every parent should give all of their kids a $200,000 wedding gift to start to with. Can’t think why they don’t.

    The man in the story is focussed, is/has been a hard worker, is motivated and very successful.

    All that doesn’t preclude him coming across as an arrogant arsehole.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11830730

  10. It’s almost like there is a class war taking place and the wealthy are using all the tools at their disposal to continue exploiting the poor and selling their propaganda to defeat the enemy (grass roots democracy)

  12. Have been confused by how blatant the ‘I bought a house so you can too’ propaganda in the Herald has been and pretty clear there is an agenda here, would completely understand if the Herald was the Nat’s own party newspaper but does anyone actually know what their reasoning for all of this is?
    I can understand political bias on behalf of a newspaper / individual columnists etc but this looks to be well beyond that / a concerted attempt to disguise something that is in plain sight . .

  13. I personally wouldn’t have been able to buy a house (a pretty modest one at that) without private finance from my wife’s parents. The banks would have never lent to me on our incomes. We were in fact lucky as we both eventually got better jobs and were able to pay the family back quite quickly.
    We were lucky, and we know we were lucky.
    But there are lot out there who don’t have that kind of luck.

  15. At the end of the day, the situation cannot be so bad if 47% of voters want to reelect the Government. That suggests that there are many people in NZ that support what the Government are doing and are in fact pretty happy with their lot.

    If John Key and Paula Bennett can reach the positions in life that they have despite coming from humble backgrounds, I refuse to believe that others cannot pull finger, take responsibility and put in the hard work required to own a house and get ahead.

    I applaud the media for their inspirational stories of young people buying their first home. We need more stories like this to serve as an example for others.

Comments are closed.