How should I respond to Chris Trotter’s cynical summary of why it is pointless to rail against Labour’s lack of gumption in addressing the distressing wealth and income divisions that result in damaging and entrenched poverty?
Maybe one way, is to take his critique to heart.
According to Chris the reason that “a government with a clear majority of parliamentary seats, facing the worst Opposition in a generation, with the perfect excuse of a global pandemic, will still not take the drastic actions necessary to rescue its most vulnerable citizens” is that the required increase in redistribution (aka tax hikes) is unacceptable not only to National supporters but more critically to “the well-heeled, Labour-voting professionals who inhabit the leafy suburbs of New Zealand’s largest cities”.
As much of my life I have inhabited the group he targets I think I understand the point he is making.
Two things drive the “don’t do anything about the poor” group attitude. The first is naked self-interest, the second is ignorance. Perhaps the best approach is to appeal to the first and dispel the latter. The latter may be hardest. Well-educated they may be, but do the well-heeled who favour doing nothing for the poor understand the role of the state in a mixed market economy? Were they ever taught anything at all about taxes, social security, public goods, externalities, collective action or political philosophy at school? I certainly wasn’t.
I was however fortunate to escape from the confines of a traditional science education by taking the opportunity to retrain as an economist specialising in a core discipline public economics. When I diverted into the field of social policy I was grounded in the interlinked relationships between the old and the young, and the top and the bottom of the wealth divide.
This lockdown awakens the imagination by throwing into stark relief this intersection of those interests. Essential workers, skilled tradespeople, supermarket workers, carers, cleaners, and nurses underpin the living standards of the well-off. What good is a treasure chest of money when there are no trained plumbers, cleaners, or lawnmowers to be found? Wealth does not prevent dementia or the need for 24-hour care in late old age: having the money to pay is not the issue, the actual skilled workforce is. Who are you going to call when for decades the potential of so many of the young, particularly Māori and Pasifika has been undermined by poverty, debt and the failure of housing policy?
Chris Trotter is saying that Labour, like National will respond to its voting base, which is not the young and poor. If so, and assuming the Labour government would prefer to have a more equal society, the task for the Prime Minister will be to provide the leadership she is so good at, to get that neoliberal left to re-envision the future. In a sentence: appeal to their self-interest and challenge their ignorance.
Thus the rhetoric should make it clear that the future lifestyles of the well-off require that they invest extensively in poverty prevention, decent social housing, health and education of the generation on whom they will depend. Nowhere is there a better opportunity than this lockdown to show this- the costs to everyone, including restrictions on lifestyle of those in Auckland’s “leafy suburbs“ reflect decades of serious underinvestment in social capital in South Auckland.
Instead of Labour taking credit for subsidising foodbanks, the Prime Minister could express alarm that able-bodied, desperately needed in the health sector, are diverted to service the ever-expanding charities. The food parcel recipients who are made time poor and feel diminished and stigmatised are not likely be productive cheerful workers either. This is what the European settlers left Britain in the 19th century to escape. As Anand Giridharadas brilliantly explains in this interview, using private philanthropy and charity to address inequality undermines democracy and perpetuates, not solves, inequality.
To return to Labour’s voting base. It is the men, it seems, the “aristocracy of labour” who are the hardcore anti-welfare brigade that glorifies the paid work that men do. “But just let Jacinda threaten to raise their taxes, and that nostalgia vote will disappear in an instant. National and Act are always just a polling-booth away.”
If Labour’s voting men are a dead loss what about Labour women? Chris Trotter’s claim that “the kind, well-educated women who now constitute Labour’s electoral core get a kick out of voting for a party that talks about helping the poor – just so long as it doesn’t help them too much” is patronising and dismissive.
Women tend to get the intergenerational issues and the value of unpaid work. These ‘kind Labour women’ have a unique opportunity to flex their muscles. If their deep-felt concern for the unconscionable struggles of families and women doing the undervalued social care in society remains cynically dismissed, it is at Labour’s peril. The Greens are just a polling-booth away. Go the sisterhood!
Good article, however I broadly don’t see things as a men or women issue. Yes, there are smaller demographics coming into play, – but let us always remember the Ruth Richardson’s, the Jenny Shipley’s, the Paula Bennett’s, and yes even the Helen Clarks of this world. Those women who more often than not had no qualms destroying the family’s of those women you are talking about. Extrapolating, – those women in Nazi Germany who were some of the most sadistic prison guards ever.
The difference is in our modern history( bearing in mind our destructive women were in no way shape or form as the NAZI ones I referred to! ) , is that less than charitable types and not only allowed to walk free, but are given Dame title, often preferential treatment for CEO positions , are part of the Old Boys/ Old Girls social network,…such that they NEVER , EVER have to brush with the unwashed massed and see the destructive effects their political careers and ideologies created.
They are, like the others of their ilk, never forced to see or acknowledge their wrongdoing, and wrongdoing is exactly what it is because they knew full well what negative social effects they were setting in motion. In other words it was deliberate and calculated,- for many reasons of which I haven’t the time to list here. But suffice to say a chief motive was to create a layered society of low waged workers with small minority holding all the wealth and power.
And in that, …. these evil men and women have succeeded beyond all expectations.
And yes indeed they are evil people. The fact that we now have gone back socially and politically to where we were over 150 years ago and rely on churches and maraes and other charity’s to pick up the slack left by these odious neo liberals is demonstrative of how they think and just how much they care ( did they ever?) about the majority of society other than as being serfs with very little power to change their lot and the unwanted current misery’s caused by unorthodox neo liberalism.
I do not recall being asked at the ballot box if I wanted to see a return to 19th century ‘East end of London’ style working conditions and charity complete with its slum tenements, do you? But I do recall Douglas and co all braying on about ”more competition and lower prices and more efficiency and less govt waste”…
Anyone who hadn’t got a blocked nose from a winter sniffle could easily smell the huge dead rat in the attic as it putrefied and cast its stench throughout rest of the house… even way back then we could smell it.
Basically, all they did was LIE to us.
And their still doing it.
Yes, W K.
Ruth Richardson,Jenny Shipley,Paula Bennett,Margaret Thatcher,Golda Mier,Indira Ghandhi.
Removing any hope of a CGT for as long as she is in power was the first time I realized I had voted for a person who was not the person I thought I had voted for. I voted for a happy smily empathetic person with a red outer skin who it turned out actually had a blue black heart. That was when all my hopes where dashed. Its gotten worse rapidly and all hope has now gone. There is no party worth voting for and no point even voting if a party comes along giving hope. How can I ever trust any politician ever again? Even the apparently good ones are truly awful people.
You think shes one of these?
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/lemon-with-clipping-path-gm155376515-19757287
Ditto
Yes but she is so good at hand wringing and angst and many of us thought that would then move into practical application and did it no no no
Good article SSJ, we need more focus on “the haves and the have nots”. I have for a long time thought that National Party policy is reflecting what their voters want. Look after the Business sector and wealthy at the expense of the majority that are battling week to week. Look after themselves to increase their wealth and throw a few crumbs to the battlers. National are giving their voters what their voters want. This is a large chunk of voters called “the middle” any many have seen red in the wake of Covid19. The “middle” is the problem, not the Politicians, if you want to fix the Housing Crisis and Poverty. The “middle” has gained it’s wealth in property investment and want to leave it that way. The Business sector has created poverty by low wages. Both are responsible for this mess and neither want change. The Politicians are doing what the “middle” want and that is democracy in action. Kiwi’s have become greedy and selfish and uncaring. I hope future generations will demand change from their Governments as our current “middle” is glued to BAU.
Yes, GB. I think we’re quite a sick society, possibly also partly due to being a homogenous group isolated at the bottom of the world, without the influx and influences of different nationalities, and older more developed cultures, which much of the northern hemisphere experiences on a daily basis. The arrogant smugness of many hapless New Zealand“leaders” is suffocating. We’re stuffed.
Jacinda gives $10 million to food banks to feed all the pathetic poor. Last year an investor like Gary Lin with 14 Auckland rentals would have been given approx 5 to 6 million in TAX FREE capital gains as a result of Jacinda and Adrian Orrs neoliberal acceleration…… in a single year. Its a fucking sick joke!
The assumption here is that by giving the poor more, they will become less poor. This is false – all you will get is better fed poor and more of them.
Already the structure of welfare provides a nice little sweet spot for the professionally feckless to exist in.
Do you also sell this Victorian horseshit for $1 a bag outside your front gate, Andrew?
Well said SS. Andrew is wed to Rand. Maybe he will grow up one day and show a bit of compassion, but I doubt it.
No, I think he eats it for breakfast.
I know this is hard to digest if you’re driven by emotions rather than a rational examination of the evidence, but it’s a fact.
It is a fact based on research that in order for a poor kid to access the middle classes all he/she has to due is stay in school until 16, not commit crime and not get pregnant. The economy is crying out for young people to start work in the trades and do apprenticeships. Within 5 years they’ll be earning more than their teachers.
So one has to wonder why this isn’t happening when it’s so obvious a move. The reason is that these poor kids are born to shit parents who neglect them and sometimes beat them. Many don’t even have a dad – and essential ingredient for balanced child development. They don’t encourage study and as we know, in many cases can’t even be arsed to to provide breakfast before shoving them out the door in the morning. Most of these kids don’t even bother to attend school regularly, preferring to wag and make mischief.
All of which is fueled by the welfare system.
“I know this is hard to digest if you’re driven by emotions rather than a rational examination of the evidence, but it’s a fact.”
Do you reckon, when you get a moment and are not too busy creaming yourself over your ideology, that you could explain the concept of ‘business confidence’?
I’d be eternally grateful because it has a lot to do with the state of the meerkats
Nice, OnceWasTim
Andrew: promoting a system that allows only a tiny minority to succeed, then making the silly claim that all can succeed if they do what that tiny minority did is downright dumb.
“It is a fact based on research that in order for a poor kid to access the middle classes all he/she has to due is stay in school until 16, not commit crime and not get pregnant. ”
It is a fact based on research that a poor kid doesn’t get the same opportunity at a younger age as a child born with a silver spoon in their mouth once they get older, that is called psycho-social trauma.
The rest is just your ideology.
Bert, life just isn’t fair and never will be.
But in our society there are still plenty of opportunities for people to elevate themselves if they have the wit and desire to grasp the opportunities presented to them. I am the son of an invalid solo mum and was brought up on welfare. But I paid attention at school, passed exams and slowly worked my way up from zero. This is why I know what I’m talking about.
If that is your belief, then so be it but do you have an answer because at present no one seems to have one other than generating more revenue by way of a CGT to redistribute wealth.
Bert,
The CGT will not be liable till the properties are sold. If never sold, no taxes to be paid.
If you want to raise $1B in CGT yearly for redistribution, it would mean a sales assets of $10B each and every year (based on 10% taxation rate). Not sure NZ inc has that sort of capital turnover year in year out. Any redistribution plans you had would collapse if the bottom fell out the housing or share markets.
Are you instead meaning the tax on wealth? A tax on an asset value owned but not sold?
The two are quite different. A CGT will never raise a steady income stream for distribution for it is totally dependent upon what is sold, at a capital gain, over the year. This amount will fluctuate wildly.
Now a tax an wealth will generate a steady income stream but is 100% dependent upon who sets the year valuations on each item of wealth. Would need an army of public servants to keep track of the wealth of individuals plus every sale of any wealth taxable item needs to be registered to the new owner.
I think the Cullen’s tax group looked at this but ruled it out is to cumbersome.
Excellent response Susan St John. I can only hope that the apparent lack of the required seismic shift in restoring some equality is the overwhelming distraction caused by the covid crisis. IE ‘it’s hard to remember you came to drain the swamp when you are up to your backside in alligators’.
The covid crisis has clearly demonstrated who are the essential workers and also that if the country doesn’t progress as a team ultimately everyone suffers.
There are some other factors too Susan in the decision by the Labour Caucus not to radically and promptly assist the 50% of New Zealanders that own just 2% of the wealth.
• 37 years of neo liberal hegemony, where via the State Sector Act and Reserve Bank Act etc. monetarism is embedded in the NZ State. Govt. is basically run like a business rather than a social project and service. Widespread penetration of public infrastructure by private capital is encouraged and required.
• State sponsored demonisation of beneficiaries for 3 decades, in the Shipley years this included TV ads exhorting people to “dob in a bludger”–especially a neighbour that could be spied upon. Beneficiaries made poor choices you see, rather than being subject to macro economic decisions well beyond their control, such as industries moving offshore! Helen Clark bought in the “Jobs Jolt” that banned beneficiaries from moving to provincial towns among other sanctions.
• “Last place aversion” among the working class itself–a phenomenon that according to academic research saw lower paid US workers oppose hiking the minimum wage. They saw their position of not quite being on the bottom of pile as under attack.
• Neo liberal individualism and commodity fetishism (consumerism) have a strong psychological grip on much of the population, public participation in civic and community affairs is low, collectivism is not the default model for many particularly since the 1991 Employment Contracts Act which substantially reduced the power and standing of organised labour.
Put that steaming pile together and it is easy enough to see why people are too hateful, spiteful, fearful or disengaged to bother too much with less well off citizens. How to get out of this bind though?
Well, my hope is for the boomer replacement generations to get widely politicised in the face of Climate Disaster, Student loans, renting for life and alienation. With the participation of NGOs, older leftists, Unions and public intellectuals the younger ones have their turn–it will take direct action though and community organisation once more.
The rhetoric should “make it clear that the future lifestyles of the well-off require that they invest extensively in poverty prevention, decent social housing, health and education of the generation on whom they will depend”?
Absolutely. The difficulty though is convincing them that the way to do that is not by way of the simple notion their brains can handle, their quick fix, build more prisons.
The universality of the reluctance to help those at ‘the bottom.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg-cxVWQPLA
When companies can get millions of dollars of aide from our government during lockdown and then go on to make profits and then distribute those profits to their shareholder that is plan wrong and extremely unfair. We seem to have double standards in our country and our government is implicit in this. And to make matters worse those greedy self serving bludging companies have a bloody cheek to say open the borders, bring in more cheap labour and we have to learn to live with it.
“Is an appeal to self-interest the only solution?”… As long as NZers are going to blindly follow the path of self satisfaction and short sighted exploitation that is at the heart of traditional kiwi economics, as gifted us by our British “superiors” then yes, there is only self interest that works…
Never mind that exploitation, and unbalanced privilege is the major impediment to any society being able to actually evolve in the way it should, and how NZ did for short periods, which is the only reason we have any standard of living at all, and haven’t been absorbed by Australia for our own survival.. Since arriving back in the country of my birth, I have been confronted with a wall of short sighted self obsession, and bigotry that is probably going to have me leaving again if the covid stupidity ever gets dealt with properly… Indeed, even though this country was forced to react the way it has to the pandemic is because of the utterly degraded state of NZs health infrastructure, as gifted us by successive tory govts, and only partiallty rebuilt by the last labour govt, to be completely sold out by the last gang of carpetbaggers (Key), we have succeeded better than just about everywhere else… In spite of the fact that the population have responded as planned by those who have largely succeeded in degrading our ability to think outside of our personal feelings by degrading our ability to educate ourselves in ways that foster independent thought, and encourage innovation at a useful level.. In short, we have now got at least two generations of selfish whiners getting near to the age where they will be responsible for our administration…
What else is there but self interest at the heart of the “reforms” the successive waves of Neo liberal economic assaults on our economy, and society have imprinted upon us?
People cannot drive without passing a test but they can be given the greatest oppetunity in the World with no checks or balancing and that is being a parent. Poor parents have poor children for some it will be the catalyst to get their shit together and make a future for this special person but in too many cases it leads to going further down the rabbit hole of dispair and taking the child with them. The problem for too long now has been that for many it is hard to see the goal even if they work hard.
. In my younger days to get this oppetunity I migrated from the Uk to here as I saw the results hard work could bring . I doubt if that dream would be there now unless you came from a 3rd world country like India or much of Asia.
Sadly Trevor I work with many of those poor whom have grown into adulthood that have gone further down the rabbit hole of despair. When you are the result of Fetal alcohol syndrome or Neonatal abstinence syndrome you will most likely have a life constantly in need. Thus why I am irritated by people whom make generalised statements like they just need to stay in school longer or not get pregnant or we need business minds to run the country so that monies will trickle down(false) when in fact none of that will make any difference, if it did the cycle would well and truly been broken by now. Happy for someone to prove me wrong?
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