Exclude Gareth Morgan From Political Process And End His War On The Elderly

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One thing I really, really hate in this world … is the certain sort of economist or business-person who blithely assumes that just because they’ve demonstrated an alleged competency in *one* field of human endeavour, that this means we are all axiomatically beholden to listen to them in their parsimonious if not pugnacious opinions on just about everything else.

Fresh from his resounding successes at abolishing housecatsincome taxunhealthy eating habits, and the economically progressive wing of the Green Party (otherwise known as “The Green Party”), Gareth Morgan‘s at it again.

This time, apparently declaring war on some of our most vulnerable citizens (and perhaps not coincidentally, the mainstay of the stereotypical NZ First voterbase), The Elderly.

Now let’s get one thing straight. I’m biased. I *like* many of our older citizens – and not just because they’re often appreciative of the work my Chief has done for them.

When it comes to my political values, I’ve often found myself absolutely bowled over and surprised by how much there is in common between people of my generation and our illustrious forebears. I still remember the first time I addressed an NZF meeting, I went on a bit of a rant about how we were going to Unmake Neoliberalism in New Zealand and restore some sort of Social Democratic Sanity to both our economy and our society. A “fair go” kind of ethos wherein we didn’t just close our eyes and blindly trust in the market and hope that things would get better. Where The State was an active, interventionist and CARING one that stepped in both to curb the market’s excesses – and, more importantly, to protect its citizens and boost up and bolster their prospects.

Now, this met with resounding applause. Not because I’m any great orator (at least, I wasn’t, then) … but because to these people I wasn’t describing some mythical Camelot or City on a Hill.

I was describing exactly the sort of New Zealand they felt they’d grown up in – and then watched cruelly ripped asunder from them during the Rogernomics and Ruthanasia economic reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s.

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So this is why many of that generation GO OUT AND VOTE at EVERY ELECTION. Not because of some high-minded idealist rhetoric about how they were also literally the same generation who not infrequently put life and limb on the line to fight for YOUR right to vote here and now in the future. They did that too – and to the veterans who’ve fought for this country, rest assured you have my eternal and enduring gratitude for what you have done for me and my people.

But instead, because they KNOW that a better society – a fairer society … hell, one where you can even swim in the rivers like they used to do – is possible. And they’re generally hella, hella pissed at the fact that a rogue generation of economists like Gareth Morgan have seen fit to fundamentally distort this in favour of “market equilibriums” and “the state should not interfere”.

That rhetoric’s evil. And these elderly voters … they’re not afraid to call it out for what it is.

Now into this fray rides our very own Man from La Mancha on a motorbike, Gareth Morgan.

Morgan has some very, very funny ideas. One of those is his cat-astrophic campaign to eliminate the main predator of rats and mice within New Zealand (you’ll note those are devourers of Kiwi bird-life at a rate that outstrips cats), apparently heedless of the ecological consequences of same. Another is his ongoing quixotic crusade to destroy the Green Party by vainly shouting from the sidelines about how it ought to coalesce with National, and ditch most of its values in the process.

A third, is his continual effort to overhaul the pension system.

Now let’s be clear about this. Contra to Morgan’s assertions, the New Zealand state pension is not “Fat”.

It is, in fact, between $295.41 and $431.10 a week. A minimum wage job, by contrast, is $590 a week. And we already, as a society, acknowledge that the latter figure is not exactly enough to live on.

So when Morgan breathlessly claims that our senior citizens don’t “deserve” to be looked after in their old age because they’re effectively, in his view, creaming a “fat” income off all of the rest of our common backs … I find this absolutely repugnant.

Hard-working New Zealanders who’ve hit retirement in the last few years and decades have spent the best years of their lives paying taxes – in the case of income generated before Neoliberalism, often quite HIGH taxes – in order to provide the infrastructure, services and support systems which subsequent generations have been lucky enough to enjoy. They’ve also done this on the implicit – if not outright explicit in some cases – promise that we would ALSO look after THEM when the time came that they were no longer up to earning their own income in the work-force.

That’s the social compact (or contract) in action, pure plain and simple.

Now to be fair, the state COULD have been a bit smarter about moving to provide for the needs of its citizens in their retirement – and Morgan is quite right when he points out the lamentable folly of Key’s government suspending contributions to the Cullen Fund while also negligently divesting itself of an income-earning state-asset base which might have helped to pay for future state services and social spending.

But his dual, forked-tongue proposed alternative solutions are abominable.

Quite apart from placing the welfare and income-streams of our elderly under threat … he wants to ensure a lack of opposition to his dastardly scheme by straight-up disenfranchising the elderly! I’m not going to stoop to the depths of rhetoric entailed by his luridly phrased metaphor about “financial genocide” – but it’s not particularly hard to think of other instances wherein entire classes of people have been robbed of their democratic rights in order to mete out a discriminatory injustice against them.

The logic for this is, apparently, that only by removing the voices and the votes of our senior citizens from our democracy can the country prosper. This is in spite of the fact that the fiercest resistors of neoliberalism – and ultimately, the generations that gave us MMP in the first place – are still some of the most active and engaged contributors to the protection of same. I fully agree that more needs to be done to encourage and engage young potential-voters by giving them a stake in our democracy (it’s one of the reasons why I’m in politics) … but getting rid of the elderly so that young people have more of a relative say seems highly sketchy if not outright spurious reasoning at best. You might like to phrase it as “excluding one of the most politically active and experienced generations in order to engage the one that often can’t be bothered voting”.

But I have more faith in the social conscience of young voters than Gareth Morgan himself seems to possess or appears to think we have. The obvious testament to this is the number of people my age I met who’ve said they were voting New Zealand First not just because of their nationalistic streak, or our kick-arse policies for youth … but because they respected and admired the job we did of looking after their grand-parents, too.

We recognize that a stable, sane and fair society is not one in which – Logan’s Run style – you wind up being excluded and marginalized just because of your age. But rather, one in which both the previous contributions and the present needs of our citizenry are acknowledged, respected, and engaged with appropriately.

Not least because, as in the case of our older New Zealanders, they’ve often lived through the mistakes of the past and come through them with the wisdom which we can learn from if we wish to repeat them.

Having said that, there’s one older New Zealander who, through their ongoing fruitcake contributions to our public sphere (and I *don’t* mean Alison Holst), has potentially demonstrated they’re no longer worthy of a say.

I think it’s high time we let Gareth Morgan take his own advice and disregard his self-appointed political role in our society.

12 COMMENTS

  1. The generation you are defending has voted in at least two decades of National governments. Some of the oldie brigade latched onto the appeal of Winston’s dog whistle populism and potentially a free public transport card. The baby boomer generation has benefitted from a unionised workforce, near free tertiary education and high real wages. It supports the governments that erode these hard-earned gains. They will not have to deal with the consequences of climate change and might even be a bit blassé on the matter.

    NZfirst has done no favours to youth. If they believe in a progressive movement and are willing to change in the future then good on them.

    • I don’t think we’re talking about the same older New Zealanders.

      “The baby boomer generation has benefitted from a unionised workforce, near free tertiary education and high real wages.”

      One of the reasons why I am New Zealand First is because I want THOSE fundaments of a healthy, functioning society and economy for MY generation.

      I am proud to stand for a party which has done so much to deliver same. Check our economic and tertiary education policy for details 😉

      As for NZ First doing favours for youth … let’s start with which party secured an abolition of youth rates when it was working with Labour from 2005-2008……….

      We’re already an economically progressive movement. Suggests you change your perceptions of us rather than demanding change to something we already are.

  2. Wow, I think you are misreading him a lot. Maybe you are more than a “tinsy bit biased”.

    Gareth Morgan’s explanation of the UBI is what got me interested in economics in a serious way. I even bought his ridiculously title “Big Kahuna” book. In it he (and Guthrie) state that the existing superannuitants should be eased into the new system by using the Cullen fund, meanwhile upcoming retires would have been paid a UBI for many years already. The point is that the existing system pays out the old, but not the young even though the old are still allowed to work. The best way is to pay everyone (although I think the old should get more) and not place any restrictions on work.

    And he doesn’t mention abolishing income tax anywhere in the book, in fact he favours having it. Also I would think being a trained and successful economist would entitle you to comment on superannuation. Have you noticed he always co-authors books (with who I presume are the actual experts)?

    And you fell for the clickbait title of his blog about voting ages didn’t you and didn’t actually see that what he really wants is something like a drivers licence for voting (I would suggest something on order of the same difficulty as the learners written test, eg not very difficult). This would ensure only those that have at least a shadow of a clue about what the different parties stand for could vote. It also would have meant I could have voted when I was 17 which I sorely wanted to do.

    I imagine many more old people vote either because they have picked up knowledge of what parties match their beliefs by osmosis over the decades or they were basically told who to vote for by their family, friends or community when they were younger.

    Now I am an ardent cat-lover and their are many things you could take Gareth Morgan to task over, but in your major points here I’m not seeing them.

    I for one am happy to see at least one of the rich willing to say things that politicians can’t and to have intelligent ideas (much more often than not) on important issues which is more than can be said for people like Bob Jones.

    TL;DR: The current system was designed for when superannuitants didn’t work, this is increasingly not the case.

  3. You have to admit Morgan has a point – old and ineffectual economists who can no longer contribute to NZ society should probably be recycled – there’s always a demand for cat food.

  4. You know when your young and politics often seems far away …in my case at least in my teens..you didn’t really sit up and take notice until something came along that shook you out of that.

    For me…it was 1984.

    Until then…We lived , quite happily in this country…and many of us didn’t mind not having tertiary education and doing hard manual work ,…we knew if we wanted to we could achieve it. We could do anything in this fair country of ours. And we weren’t pressured into desperately needing to compete and strive as the young are today.

    We had a good system. It worked…and we were the envy of the world .We took it for granted.

    We often also as young people , (and I was the same ) – took the achievements of previous generations and what they did for granted. And the things they went through .

    My Grandmother was a young woman during the first world war. Her memory’s were that of the war – and – the Spanish influenza. Which took the lives of young people her age.

    And by 1929….the Great Depression. Food riots in Queen St. Labor gangs digging ditches.

    Fast forwards to Hitlers war.

    Food rations. Parents grieving the loss of their sons fighting overseas….along with other family’s in the neighborhood.

    As a mother of 5 children – and solo as well , along with the stigma of being solo in those days – often had to take the kids to the railroad station to avoid the landlord in case they were going to evict them.

    They grew their own food , had a massive garden…and lived….off pumpkins…their clothes all had bulls-eyes in them. They made makeshift rooms on outside verandas out of tarps used for walls.

    That was in Hamilton. Freezing cold, minus 0 in winter Hamilton.

    When you hear what it was like for so many during that time….

    And about the men and woman fighting Fascism . And the privations they and other people went under globally…

    And that after the Second World War…in New Zealand…what those generations built up to ensure their children wouldn’t have to live like dogs , cold and starving , in fear of eviction because they were so damn poor…

    And then you turn your heads to see…..the year 1984 .

    And you see the TREASONOUS , TREACHEROUS , neo liberal shit headed bastards who threw ALL that back in the faces of those generations who underwent and sacrificed SO MUCH before them ( but not before those SAME neo liberals had themselves lived off the fruits of those previous generations labors ) …….

    My blood boils.

    It makes me seethe with rage.

    Everyday when we pick up the newspaper and read of the latest lie , the latest preventable death , the latest price hike for basic commodities like food , power …and the false smiles of deception and mealy mouthed bald faced half truths emanating from these neo liberal proponents…

    I know that I ….and thousands of others are thinking and feeling the same.

    Get rid of the neo liberal viral disease….and this country will heal.

    Continue on with it…and you will be looking down the dark chasm of a country fast approaching the third world .

    This isn’t what our forefathers fought , campaigned , and worked so hard for…whats happening now is precisely what those people wished to prevent.

    Fascism through stealth.

  5. hmmm ok so young people often dont vote not ‘cos they cant be bothered but overwelmingly because they feel they dont even belong to Aotearoa Curwen Ares Rolinson. Politicians rarely bother to engage with the millennial generation in meaningful ways.

    I dont agree with Garaths article that we should CUT the pension (super) but it is the ONLY welfare we havent reformed or pinched. I think his argument was problematic in that he said we should do away with Super. I TOTALLY am against this, but I am TIRED of boomers telling my generation how lasy we are and how we don’t have it that bad. When, overwelmingly it is young people who are suffering the serious brunt of austerity measures and being forced into low-waged, insecure work. Im not sure if you have ever had to work these jobs Curwen?

    I have for ten years now, and LOL at you thinking us min-wage earners get that amount of money (have you talked to any of us?). We don’t get the number you suggested because under-employment is a massive issue in this country esp when it comes to low-waged work. We never get offered full-time hours. We are kept on casual contracts which afford us no rights and plunge us further into poverty, while, at the same time the National government continues to gut welfare so we are forced into situations where we get so desperate we will take anything (great way to keep those wages low).

    Also, let’s face it what Super amounts to it a universal basic income for older people. Yet most boomers are completely against the idea of a Universal basic income for anyone else. Share the wealth yo’.

    • Have to agree ….but I think – as do thousands of others – that the initial carrot dangled was the neo liberal idea of ‘opening up the markets’….which , with privatization , the Employment Contracts Act , removal of trade tariffs , and a raft of other measures created the conditions some time ago that made the boomer generation seek for greater security.

      Remember when Jenny Shipley sanctimoniously exhorted everyone to be self employed- implying that if you weren’t – you would suffer the consequences.

      I well remember her saying that. The evil cow.

      Poverty wages. Minimum wage incomes. Casualised working hours – for ‘ Greater choices’….the only ‘ greater Choice ; we got was one that advantaged employers to say ” take it or leave it- we can outsource the work overseas if you don’t like it”.

      And all those other despicable Roger Douglas era crony’s and backers.

      Back in the 1990’s they had means tests for the elderly on pensions – and it was pretty invasive and pretty punitive.

      That was also around the time that Ruth Richardson cut back welfare to abject poverty levels .

      ‘ The Mother of all Budgets ‘.

      Another evil cow.

      And so NZer’s became conditioned through fear to have to look at ways of providing for themselves …because the Employment Contracts Act gutted wages ,…and politicians of that era were saying point blank that there will no longer be enough workers to support people in retirement on pensions.

      So people did the natural thing to avoid pauperisation in thier old age and because credit was loosened up ( to the banks advantage of course in earning huge sums in interest )….

      They used their largest assets – their homes – to develop housing portfolio’s to provide that passive income for retirement. Which now fuels the appalling situation we have now.

      A lot of things happened in the mid 1980’s and 1990’s …education was made into a business…health still struggles to keep from being totally privatized….so many , many destructive things…

      And the predictable end result is the situation that we have now.

      The destruction of neo liberalism and its effects are now coming home to roost to create division and despair throughout our society.

      If anything the boomers are guilty off…it was being finally exhausted fighting govt after govt that :

      a) didn’t give a damn what the people wanted …and

      b ) rammed through these things despite massive on-going public demonstrations against those measures.

      Those demonstrations went on year after year and the arrogance of those neo liberals was truly astounding.

      My suggestion is if we – all of us – want to be freed from this virus of neo liberalism ….we must choose and support party’s who have policy’s that support social democracy and policys geared towards the health of ALL sectors.

      Not just simply favoring the rich , but ALL sectors.

      This way we deny the ability to be able to use the weapon of division which is the lifeblood of neo liberalism.

      • I would also like to suggest Ian Fraser’s ‘ FORTRESS NEW ZEALAND ‘ which is a series of documentary’s ( there is about 6 one hour long episodes ) that was filmed several years afterwards which documents this neo liberal takeover during the 1980’s and 1990’s.

        Simply type in that heading on you tube to view it.

        It is very accurate and gives a true insight to just what was going on in NZ at that time. There we see the origins of why we suffer the conditions we do today.

        I would recommend it to all NZer’s who wondered just how it got so bad.

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