The sudden surprised chatter amongst the aesthetically left at the shocking rise and rise and rise of prices in Auckland would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
If the apathetic Gen Y and millennials are frightened, they should be. Growing up in a political vacuum where ideology was a forbidden word, most youth generations in NZ have no concept of neoliberalism because the consumer culture they’ve been conned by and the political wasteland that is commercial youth media has shown them nothing other than a user pays culture.
The Edge Radio station and their ilk are like a never ending library fire where banality and wilful ignorance are worshiped and cherished.
Millennials and Gen Y are twisting in the wind and they’re not sure who put the noose around their necks.
To quote my favourite Gen X band the Smashing Pumpkins, “despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage”.
The fallout of neoliberalism is a world of endless choice where the only value is more choice, not the choices chosen. Gone is solidarity, gone is class, gone is an understanding and recognition of the hegemonic structures within a society that aid the wealthy while crucifying the poor.
All we have left is a finders keepers vs losers weepers style of social justice while DJ Max Key spins another tune.
The simple truth is that politics never left NZ, NZ left politics. As much as we enjoy a carefree ignorance, sky rocketing debt, unaffordable house prices and yawning inequality mean the care free ‘yeah-nah’ mentality isn’t enough to keep the sleepy hobbits tucked up warm in bed any longer.
There is a terrible anger building.
Those million voters who didn’t bother last election are getting angry and hurt by a system that despises them and the politically active on the Left are driven insane with rage at the manner in which smug National voters allow Key to get away with any corruption and abuse of power.
Property speculating cradle to the grave boomers have become so addicted to Key’s property bubble that they’ll turn a blind eye to any of the damage he is causing within society.
The current situation can’t and won’t stand.
The reason this will all change is because millennials, Gen Y and X are waking up to the scam they’ve been served up and the intergenerational theft that has allowed it to happen. Politics stops being some disconnected thing when you bear the brunt of it.
In 2014, there were 864, 100 NZers aged 60 and over. 87% of them voted in the election. On the other side of the equation, there are 743 200 NZers aged between 18-29 but a mere 49% of them bothered voting.
That will change as life gets progressively more difficult and by 2023 Gen X and Y and those boomers still with a political conscience will finally outnumber the Speculator Boomers, and that’s when a political revolution has the opportunity of finally ridding us of self interested speculator boomer politics and we begin building a new nation.
Time is on our side comrades.
Bomber read Generation Rent by Shamubeel and Selena Eaqub.
The group which includes the homeless, those living in garages, sheds, caravan parks and the renters of shacks which kiwis calls houses who are being turfed out every year or so by capital gains focused landlords, this group are in fact the majority of adults in NZ. Add in parents and grandparents who are worried their kids will be stuck in the ‘generation rent’ lifestyle forever and you have a clear majority.
Once this group unite politically then the self entitled rich p…ks who have rigged the system will be history.
I am hoping for earlier than 2023.
Beautiful piece of swordsmanship there Martyn.
Very well put.
Yes the penny will drop maybe earlier than that as the global economy is now tettering on a knife edge.
All this as our Crown Debt balloons and the balance of payments worsens.
Time of another blowout looms large.
Does anyone really believe the current system will keep going till 2023?
Everything I have seen and read over the past decade -that is financial analysis, economic analysis, energy analysis and environmental analysis- indicates ‘the system’ will implode by 2020.
For example, ZIRP, NIRP and QE have run their course, and have generated the expected result: failure. BoJ can’t even prop up the Nikkei
https://in.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?=%5EN225&t=my&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=
Then there is the ‘small’ matter of energy depletion:
http://crudeoilpeak.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/US-crude_production_7regions_rest_2007-Mar2016.jpg
Environmental collapse accelerates:
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html
And how can you run an industrial system if you are running out of water?
http://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp
2023 is two to three elections away, I fear.
Key will surely be gone by then, but National may still be playing a role in politics, perhaps even in government then.
The battle is one between haves and have-nots, between those that have money, wealth and influence, and those that have none of that.
A look at the USA shows us how neoliberalism and vested interest players manage to manipulate and control the MSM and with that the rest of society.
I fear New Zealand is in a similar situation, where Nats and ACT have willing donors, those that are the elite, and they will do all to keep their parties funded, to also influence the media and to brain wash people, so that the right will have just enough support to keep control of society and of politics and the economy.
When was there last a revolution in the US, I ask? When was there a revolution in New Zealand, a real one, I ask?
See the challenge, see the problem?
Things actually weren’t so great when the boomers were young – Muldoon was running the country, people were emigrating at the rate of 50,000 per year, inflation was rampant, cars and petrol were probably 3 x the cost relative to wages that they are now.
Houses may have been relatively cheaper, but try paying off a mortgage at 22% interest!
So once they get old enough and outnumber the boomers, Gen X and Y will suddenly become more socialist, despite a lifetime of user-pays rhetoric? Don’t think so somehow.
It’s too late already for me. I have given up on NZ and will leave shortly. I’m “unemployable” because I am not young, pretty, inexperienced, and have no influential friends to help me land a job. And that’s with two university degrees and shitloads of “life experience” (read that as the experience that matters most in the world).
WINZ have not only refused to help but they’ve actually taken every opportunity that can to reduce entitlements, all with the spectre of “fraud” threats looming in the background.
I accept that there is no future for me in NZ but I wish with all my heart that John Key and his fellow phonies end up in prison because they are the real criminals. They are corrupt sociopaths who don’t care about anyone other than themselves and their mates. The only thing I am unsure of is whether they know what they are doing or they are completely blind (that determines whether they are sociopaths or psychopaths).
So Fuck John Key, fuck the Natzi Party, and fuck WINZ. Oh and while I am venting FUCK all the apathetic sheep in this country who allowed this to happen and then had the nerve to blame the people at the bottom.
I recently heard that in Aussie it is an offence if you dont vote. If you dont vote you are fined. Perhaps it needs to be the same here in NZ
Yeah right, make people vote who don’t want to. What kind of result would that give you? Probably not the one you want. Non-voters may well think there is no one worth voting for. I vote, but I’m inclined to agree with them.
You could always stick that as an option on the voting paper – and tick the “none-of-them” box.
I must say once again, this cannot simply be a generation conflict issue. There are enough millennials and Gen Y people who have parents who belong to those doing well, and they will like most have done in the past rely on their parents to give them some help to get their first car, home and so forth.
And not all boomers are well off, I can assure you this.
Many boomers did well though, but they will also leave inheritance to their offspring, the privileged kids raised with a bit of a silver spoon.
They admire one Max Key, as they also fall for the gloss and glitter that may come with “success”, a high salary, successful entrepreneurship and privilege.
We have networks, and those that are connected tend to get ahead in the law of the jungle system we have now, those without good connections are left to battle for the casual or part time, term contract and precarious, low paid jobs.
“Social services” are no longer that but in name only, as they are now designed to swiftly show you the way out of the door again, to point out where to try and look for work, rather than seek “support”.
Even the MSM is so damned stupid and biased, they do not even see that the new WINZ and MSD programs promoted as “wrap around services” do not actually offer extra services, that is besides of “intensive case management” (see my reference for being pointed out the door above).
Next will come the “social bonds”, of which the Waipareira Trust seems to have fond ideas now, and which it wants to adopt widely, to “support” the profiled risk persons so they save the government money. I saw an interview on The Nation, it was astonishing how the media (Lisa Owen) simply seems to accept their words for all this salesman talk by Waipareira’s spokesperson.
Laila Harre (on the panel) was right in questioning their figures and historic “success” or “performance” rates.
So we get more neoliberal outsourcing, contracting out, sales of state houses to NGOs and even overseas “community housing” operators, few new homes, virtually NO affordable homes for those needing such, and actually no solutions for the future.
Indeed, this house of cards will inevitably collapse, the sooner the better, I cannot wait until 2023.
Laila Harre did a good there and had clearly done her homework. She needs to, because the journalists don’t bother.
A property capital gains tax, on other than a primary residence, would have had a powerful ameliorative effect.
well if they wont vote what hell do they expect key could be gone by launch time in 2017 if apathetic complainers would vote they handed power to the greedies by not voting democracy require participation
Some of those property investors are getting there fingers burnt with those marvellous properties they have bought as that magical capital gain .
Time and time,again they are being burnt as people who cant afford the rents do a runner and leave the landlord holding the basket with a flat full of crap to dump at the local dump.
I see this happen multiple times everyday here in Christchurch at my place of work which happens to be one of the local dumps.
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