Comrades.
Th Identity Politics Left has lurched into ‘Social Justice’ territory which alienates more than it attracts. As a class left supporter, I believe the demarkation of power in society is between the 1% and their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us.
Economic Justice does more than banning Gay Conversation or gerrymandering the legal system to ensure anyones accused is found guilty, it redistributes wealth and make direct provision to the cost of every day living. Beneficiaries and working class people care less about pronouns and the correct pronunciation of te Reo than they do about how to pay next weeks rent and power bill.
Pure temple doctrine divides & alienates. Broadchurch universals build solidarity.
I’m not interested in social justice, it is a minefield of competing schisms throwing vitriol at one another, I am interested in economic justice and the immediate welfare of the poorest amongst us while providing immediate life condition upgrades.
When the woke have finished arguing over who is right, they can join in.
How do we use the power of the State to universally subsidise the lives of the poorest in a way that is meaningful to them? Paying higher benefits is one way but the vile MSD finds ways to claw any of this increases back the way thy did with Labour’s last pitiful rise.
Let’s push for policies that have a direct impact on the lives of the poorest so that educational and quality of life standards actually rise. Let’s take direct cost out of people’s pockets just for existing. Removing public transport costs and kids breakfasts and lunches would have a dramatic impact on the lives of the poor.
Let’s ensure taxation is targeted at the corporates and the wealthy while subsidising the costs of the poorest.
I present the 10 point Left wing Economic Justice Plan for Aotearoa New Zealand.
1: Feed every kid in NZ a free nutritious and healthy breakfast and lunch at every school using local product and school gardens with parents paid to come in and help.
2: 50 000 State Homes for life built using the best environmental and social architecture standards using the public works act to seize land and immediately start building satellite towns using upgraded public transport hubs.
3: Free public transport plus vast infrastructure upgrade for climate crisis.
4: Doubling welfare payments and student allowances minus any bullshit claw backs from MSD plus Living Wage universally adopted as minimum working wage.
5: GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health plus a sugar tax.
6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.
7: Debt cancellation – student loans, welfare overpayments, beneficiary debt, easier debt cancellation.
8: Taxation focused on corporations like financial transaction tax and first $10 000 is tax free.
9: Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements) plus universal union membership.
10: Properly funded public broadcasting with TVNZ advert free and merged with RNZ alongside properly funded journalism through NZ on Air with more money for the Arts and Science. If you can’t have good public journalism, the right wing media will destroy these other 9 advances.
Don’t tell me we can’t afford any of this, we just shovelled $60 billion into the pockets of property speculators, we can shovel a tiny fraction of that into the mouths of the poorest.
While the middle class Identity Politics clique continue to find ways to divide us with social justice, economic justice can be a populist working class antidote to the alienation of woke cancel culture.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
Can be. Won’t be.
Welcome to neokindness.
It’s an okay look for a plan. But you have to be empowered to put it in place. Labour compromises in order to stay empowered. You could be right though with a new demographic coming up for the next election. Grassroots movement.
Don’t expect the Jacinda and Grant puppet show to implement any of that, Martyn, merit-worthy as it is. They are in government to serve banks, corporations and opportunists, and have to be removed from office before progress can be made on anything of importance.
As I have been saying for 4 years, Jacinda is all mouth and little brain (well, just enough brain to work out how to con the masses, which she learned from her teacher, Tony B Liar).
Great list. Would like to see more such suggestions–and how to achieve them–on TDB. Grimly restating the obvious problems caused by 36 years of neoliberalism, and its 2021 iteration– “Neo Kindness”–takes us only so far. Lets have “solutions Friday” or something around here.
I would add free Wifi nationwide to #3, and the CTU “Fair Pay Agreements” implemented to help set a wage and work rights floor.
The intransigence and dedication of the Labour Caucus to not ending austerity and misery for many working class people and their families, shows the power of neo liberal hegemony. If they do not shift on housing/rent freeze in the next six months, people should just start to get organised for 2023 Election with such a platform.
Also the NZCTU urgently needs restoring to a class left fighting organisation.
And when they (Labour) are removed can you suggest who will replace them. In my view nobody can be worst than the lot we had in for 9 years and the fact more NZers voted or the cannabis referendum says a lot.
While it is important we have good opposition the National party should be coming up with alternative policies but somehow I cant see it.
???
Why would National oppose phony Labour when phony Labour is implementing National policies?
Yes and based on Nationals policy to pay people who are isolating with a 68$ an hour cap they seem to be Labour lite as was many of Judeaths promises made during the last election.
How much more money would you be printing to pay for your wish list?
The debt schedule is decided at election time when we can compare with what the Nationak Party is offering which is broadly speaking fuck all.
It is an excellent plan Martyn but you forgot the bit about legalising weed and making homosexuality compulsory.
School gardens were growing veges in the 1950’s and the kids were the gardeners. No need to pay parents to do it – some caregivers may simply not have the time to do so, and the girls and boys can learn a skill which will serve them a lifetime. I doubt it was Educ Dept policy which stopped this, more likely local school committees and trusts, changes of leadership etc.
Education Dept Policy could, however, ensure that all children learn how to produce food. This way be more useful than having lessons about choosing their genders and the permutations thereof. Perhaps the minister may care to explain why exploring their sex choices is more important than learning to produce their own food, and food which one day, may actually keep them alive.
And for the hungry, GST should be removed from all foodstuffs – it’s much simpler that way. And from all toiletries – much more hygienic that way. And from all children’s clothings. There’s no VAT on children’s clothes in the UK, and taxing them in this country is another disgraceful example of how lowly children are valued – except when it comes to making money out of them.
I have a dream, that some big strong man (sorry about that..) will stand in Parliament tomorrow and proclaim that from this moment on, all children’s clothes and shoes will be exempt from tax. It’s the sort of action that a government bewailing child povidy might be expected to take. It could be an optically dramatic gesture too, but the Labour Govt is more wedded to boring old dour Celt.
Time and again I have suggested planting state house properties out with fruit trees, but Govt is too mean and miserly to do that too. Many fruit trees can withstand quite a lot of neglect if not serviced, and that doesn’t really matter either – but I daresay that some wanker from somewhere would whinge about kids falling out of trees , or apples falling on passerbys’ innocent anatomies.
If, if, the abolished school dental clinics of my childhood were re-established, then there would not be the need to make rich dentists richer, and so many people experience what can be utterly excruciating dental pain.That’s the way to be doing it- and save on dosh and pain in the long term, but alas, the Parliamentary term is what governs the pea-brains in power.
No profit for banks and corporation in that sort of thing. And Jacinda is there as PM to look after the profits of banks and corporations.
Lovely, Martin.
I think that people are hungry for aspirational policies and practices. I do worry that the current government direction is towards the city of missed opportunity.
Once again the ‘state house for life’ wish….now if there were another 50,000-75,000 available then perhaps. BUT there isnt and wont be for many years (ignoring Jacindas promise). The trouble is there are too many couples or single dwellers in ‘family’ state hpuses that should be downgraded to a 2 bedroom state house as their kids have grown up and should be making way for the next family to have what they had when they moved in.
State house 3 or 4 bedroom houses should be legally signed off by new occupants as being available for a period that the youngest child reaches 18 and the house will be reallocated to another family. If they have more kids then thats their problem not the Govts as they know what they signed.
Totally agree. But which political party can we vote for for those types of changes?
Would taking out a mortgage in order to finance a home be subject to a FTT.
I can’t see would-be homeowners taking kindly to this.
When will the party faithful realize that they have a fully fledged cuckoo knat as their leader?
Bravo… #5 you need to add in something to reduce fast food… it’s a bad joke that KFC and the like are partners with Super Rugby
If it’s an economic justice plan, the words ‘left wing’ are redundant.
I’m with you on every point except:
4: Doubling welfare payments and student allowances minus any bullshit claw backs from MSD plus Living Wage universally adopted as minimum working wage.
Here, I think TOP’s advocacy of a universal basic income and a flat tax on all income and imputed wealth income is a sounder idea. Except that TOP aims too low.
We need a $450-a-week tax free income for every permanent resident over 18 (and lesser amounts for under-18s), paid for by a flat tax of 50% on all income whether actual or imputed.
Screw the 50% tax .
Tax the corporates the money changers and the share traders the ftt tax would be more than enough to fund a UBI. Stop taxing the low income people to fund the rich buggers and property speculator class who hoard their wealth and manipulate their tax returns. 42% of the rich pay less tax than the whole of the working class earners earning less than $14,000 let alone the rest of the working class so stuff any idea of a flat tax . Let alone the rich who create multiple trust funds under $70,000 to avoid the 33% high tax rate . The rich will just roll over laughing while the working class get stung to fund their $450. So no thanks top can go take a hike. Give me the greens Guaranteed minimum income and hit the rich with a 1% ftt on all money that is removed from a bank account or a cash transaction.
Only a hard line capitalist like Donald Trump would have forever ruled out a CGT. Who is this person we have in power? Why are the Labour faithful not questioning her ideology?
Does she have an ideology? Some of us voted on the understanding there was one but it seems all we got was a continuation of the old habit of throwing money at the wealthy and to hell with the strugglers.
Far too much “other people’s money” in that list. How about “productive justice” so that every NZer of working age can contribute useful activity to the extent of their skills, be trained to develop new skills, be paid fairly for their time and the skills they contribute and work flexible hours to allow them to enjoy the resulting job satisfaction and have time to attend to the other responsibilities in their lives. That’s where I see the vacuum currently exists in our society and think that NZ would be better off if everyone who had skills was contributing according to their level of ability and not looking to the state to fund their needs.
The landlord class are the champions at siphoning off other people’s money
BTW ever heard or MMT, or “Positive Money”. The NZ govt is a monetary sovereign and can direct the reserve bank to issue as much as it wants. The myth of fiscal responsibility (aka austerity) is a right wing snow job that keeps the workers poor and the gentry laughing all the way to the bank.
Good Plan. Where is the design office? When do we start implementation?
There are more us on the class/economic left than what is portrayed. However, in recent years the left have been hijacked by identity politics, who claim the mantle of the left. This is detrimental not only to the left, but to society as a whole. Identity politics underpinned by dubious theories such as Critical Social Justice and intersectionality has nothing positive or substantial on offer to tackle our everyday issues. It’s an ideology which is religious in nature which began in this form among the ivory towers of US academia and promoted by middle class, economically privileged, university educated individuals who feel they can speak for whole identity groups. We need to fight back and claim the mantle of the left before it destroys society.
There are more us on the class/economic left than what is portrayed. However, in recent years the left have been hijacked by identity politics, who claim the mantle of the left. This is detrimental not only to the left, but to society as a whole. Identity politics underpinned by dubious theories such as Critical Social Justice and intersectionality has nothing positive or substantial on offer to tackle our everyday issues. It’s an ideology which is religious in nature which began in this form among the ivory towers of US academia and promoted by middle class, economically privileged, university educated individuals who feel they can speak for whole identity groups. We need to fight back and claim the mantle of the left before it destroys society.
I generally agree with 90 percent of what you advocate but this time you’ve got it completely right 100 percent! I look forward to voting for you in 2023!
There are more us on the class/economic left than what is portrayed. However, in recent years the left have been hijacked by identity politics, who claim the mantle of the left. This is detrimental not only to the left, but to society as a whole. Identity politics underpinned by dubious theories such as Critical Social Justice and intersectionality has nothing positive or substantial on offer to tackle our everyday issues. It’s an ideology which is religious in nature which began in this form among the ivory towers of US academia and promoted by middle class, economically privileged, university educated individuals who feel they can speak for whole identity groups. We need to fight back and claim the mantle of the left before it destroys society.
Seems relevant:
DESPISED: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class
“The typical contemporary Labour MP is almost certain to be a university-educated Europhile who is more comfortable in the leafy enclaves of north London than the party’s historic heartlands. As a result, Labour has become radically out of step with the culture and values of working-class Britain.
Drawing on his background as a firefighter and trade unionist from Dagenham, Paul Embery argues that this disconnect has been inevitable since the Left political establishment swallowed a poisonous brew of economic and social liberalism. They have come to despise traditional working-class values of patriotism, family and faith and instead embraced globalisation, rapid demographic change and a toxic, divisive brand of identity politics. Embery contends that the Left can only revive if it speaks once again to the priorities of working-class people by combining socialist economics with the cultural politics of belonging, place and community.
No one who wants to really understand why our politics has become so dysfunctional and what the Left can do to fix it can afford to miss this authentic, insightful and passionate book.
(h/t @exkiwiforces on twitter)
Comments are closed.