I thought further and now believe the ending to be wrong. Help – needed now! The foothold of Thatcher has gone over the roof (hah) and we are falling to her stronghold (even now she is dead, the mammary lingers on), and has become a stranglehold!!!!!!!

Now I don’t know where to stop the exclamation marks – no sense of stability
and restraint! Also practicality of purpose and implementation, plus finesse; ways and means Virginia. I might vote for anyone who would promise these, and have a background that showed adequate skill and understanding, to achieve it. However we must never forget President of Chile Allende who didn’t last long. Only the good die young they say. Norman Kirk RIP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_of_Chile 1973-1990.
Isabel Allende the author was related to Chilean President Salvador Allende RIP.
…Salvador Allende was her father’s first cousin. She believed in his vision—of transforming Chile into a freer, more equitable society, through la vía chilena, or the Chilean path to socialism—but worried about whether his project would prosper, in a world riven by competing ideologies. The disdain for President Allende among conservatives was no secret; neither was the White House’s opposition to him…

…The number of victims imprisoned, disappeared, or killed by the state would eventually surpass forty thousand. But a sense of denial prevailed among those who could not bear the truth and those who had no sympathy for la vía chilena. “Chileans learned not to speak out, not to hear, and not to see,” Allende wrote. “When I felt repression tightening like a noose around my neck, I left.”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/isabel-allendes-vision-of-history
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/03/fifty-years-on-the-lasting-tragedy-of-chiles-coup

Such a great analogy Wendy.

The thing about rent control is that its opponents have nothing to say about what happens if landlords can just put their rents up willy nilly.

And no, ‘building more houses’ is not the answer.

There was nothing really wrong with SOE’s, as these organisations needed some form of autonomy, but the issues were them being flogged off to the highest bidder, mainly to oligarchs and and multinationals. A lot of workers laid off as a result of that formed their own businesses (that contracted back to the new companies) with their generous redundancy pay, effectively forming a new layer of middle class business owners.

A very good book.

Perhaps we would get better results from economics if planned rollouts of methods were halted at the time of discussion, every hour. And the question then asked – What effect will this have on ordinary people? Is this effect, useful to us and the economy, and not deep and depressing of opportunities for improvement and return of basic wellbeing. Then alternatives be looked out such as are known by the clever ones such as talking something down, expressing concern in the media, etc.

When a whole economy can be ruled by an idea posited centuries ago, it can lead to mixed results, some being improvement and some being negative. The blanket effect may result in one canceling out the other, so inertia, or the fresh rise being stopped in its tracks while the negative outcomes increase. So one system cannot be regarded a panacea. We should think back into the centuries by all means including about Sisyphus; that heavy stone seems to roll over us all regularly, until we are all equal, only some are more equal than others!

Centuries ago Sir Thomas Browne wrote that ‘Death is the cure for all diseases’.
He did a lot of thinking in the 1600s and this about such in Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Browne
In 1646 Browne published his encyclopaedia, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or, Enquiries into Very many Received Tenents, and commonly Presumed Truths, the title of which refers to the prevalence of false beliefs and “vulgar errors”. A sceptical work that debunks in a methodical and witty manner several legends circulating at the time, it displays the Baconian side of Browne—the side that was unafraid of what at the time was still called the “New Learning”. The book is significant in the history of science because it promoted an awareness of scientific journalism.

We aren’t dead yet, but not in a healthy state! So what an active mind was thinking in the 1600s, like questioning and checking long-held practices, should well be noted and followed in the 2000s – in the important discipline of Economics and reviewed FTTT; examining those previously dismissed as unsuitable such as Keynesian approaches – instead using that with some mix of differing approaches suited for present dominating forces; not carrying on stolidly with failing methods still regarded as absolute truth and TINA.

Which ‘case’ were you thinking of Daniel. Your point made was covered in the earlier comment as – Lange will always be remembered as a great Man, a great New Zealander & a Patriot but his legacy also includes being the Socialist Party Leader that enabled rightwing, conservative style Thatcherite Neoliberalism to get a foothold in NZ via Roger Douglas & that foothold is now permanently engrained in NZ, it’s gone from a foothold to become a stronghold,