You are NEVER allowed to challenge the neoliberal experiment in NZ.
NEVER.
Our corporate led media and their Public Broadcasting quislings are there to enforce the fundamental lie of NZInc, that cut throat free market neoliberalism supersedes all else and that regulation is the filthy abortion of a stillborn egalitarianism that once held pretensions upon these far flung shores.
NZInc has become an interwoven tapestry of parochial self interest and corporate malfeasance, a warren of monopolies and duopolies endlessly molesting NZ for tino rangatiratanga rentals.
Right now the Australian Banks are exploiting billions annually from our us.
Right now the wealthy manipulate regulations to exploit our dependence upon them.
Right now the politicians and public service manipulate legislation in order to give vast sums of public money to private interests and pretend that’s due process.
Right now monopoly powers National gave Fletchers are causing enormous problems in the Gib market.
Right now the shopping Duopoly is milking a million per day in profits from hungry desperate NZers.
John Key sold 49% of our Hydro power using taxpayer sweeteners that triggered Māori water claims and created a $400million irrigation slush fund to Dairy intensify the South Island. Not only did he rob NZ of our hydro assets, his privatisation damaged our climate for private interests that left us geopolitically exposed to China.
This never ending molestation of the egalitarian pillars of our society has created the neoliberal wasteland of vulnerable people as ‘clients’ and a public service managerial class more focused on micro aggression policing contracts than doing the mahi.
We are not allowed to challenge the neoliberal dystopia that NZ has become despite its failure being everywhere all at once.
Gangs: Gang membership reached about 2,300 by 1980. It took nearly 35 years to reach just under 4,000 in 2014, but then only seven years before the numbers doubled again to 8,061 in 2021.
In electricity: Consumer electricity prices have risen 80% since 1990 (accounting for inflation), and since 2000, prices have risen faster than the OECD average. Productivity in the electricity and gas sector has fallen precipitously, in contrast to the economy as a whole.
Housing: A combination of record house prices and the limited further potential for growth makes this year the worst for first-home buyers since 1957, new research by economics consultancy Infometrics has found.
The 35 year neoliberal experiment has been a spectacular failure and we now have the data to prove it…
Human Rights Commissioner: NZ’s quality of life record ‘alarming’
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- New data shows New Zealand is failing on every social and economic human rights metric
- The country is not delivering adequate rights to education, health, housing and work, based on what it could be achieving with the money available
- When it comes to the right to food, New Zealand’s record is steadily declining
- Māori, people with disabilities, and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds are most likely to experience human rights violations
…The danger of woke middle class identity politics replacing class left analysis is that the politics devolve into a micro aggression deplatforming campaign that alienates rather than builds solidarity against free market capitalism.
The true demarcation of power in a democratic capitalist state is the 1% richest + their 9% enablers Vs the 90% rest of us.
Identity Politics simply cements into place a caste system of intersectionism alongside a terminal tribal affiliation to your skin colour, gender or identity.
There needs to be far more common ground and shared values.
The minefield of social justice and its never ending pure temple deplatforming of everything that triggers it will only drive people further from the Left in an intense economic downturn because you can’t eat virtue signalling aesthetics.
- $608 million in housing equity was made by landlords
- 9.6% increase in rent for tenants
- 18.4% of children live in households earning less than half the median income after housing costs
- $5.5 billion in profit made by ANZ, BNZ, ASB and Westpac
and the Top 1% own 25% of wealth while the Bottom 50% owns 2% of wealth
If you think the worst inflation in 30 years is bad now, wait until the impact of the Ukrainian war and broken supply chains in China hit.
We need a new taxation and regulation model to stop the neoliberal rot. We need to remove the yoke of taxation from the 90% and reset it to the 10% richest.
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
And in 2021, 20 people owned more than 50% of the entire planet.
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
This isn’t progress.
Unfortunately the Left are culturally too busy micro aggression policing everyone under the rules of the new woke dogma while the Right are silently harvesting that alienation for more neoliberal exploitation.
A Left Yin and Right Yang of petty spite and broad malice locked in a death spiral on a melting planet.
We either attack the economic settings of this madness now and fight to retain our egalitarianism or we are doomed to live in the shadow of its greed.
We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to corporations.
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The worst year ever for first home buyers is 2022! And I would argue, for renters. Slow round of applause for Labour.
Key and his National Party ghouls sold off our power assets. That’s bad enough but Jacinda and her Labour Party zombies are selling off our land. That is worse, far worse!
And they never campaigned on it.
Key and National ensured Fletcher’s had a monopoly on gib board. Labour have known for quite some time this was a problem but did nothing. Answer. Do nothing. When it becomes public, so public you can’t build houses, what do they do? Sweep it under the “taskforce” rug.
Supermarket duopoly robbing the public. What do Labour do? Send it off for some elongated review to stall any changes and once that doesn’t work any longer, release the review, look concerned and understanding. Implement the fluffy limp suggestions from their review, job done, like nothing ever happened.
React, only ever react when it’s smacks them in the face, then do a 5 star announcement then leave everything just the way it is.
Election 2023. You’ve got Jacinda’s Labour who ain’t got Jack or it’s ugly sibling National. And their freak show poodles, the Greens and ACT. For all intents and purposes, this myopic collection is one and the same.
They all do bad, just with different ways of getting to the same point.
+100
Except:
“We either attack the economic settings of this madness now and fight to retain our egalitarianism or we are doomed to live in the shadow of its greed”
should read:
“We either attack the economic settings of this madness now and fight to GET BACK our egalitarianism or we are doomed to live in the shadow of its greed”.
The slow moving train wreck dumpster fire has reached the park end of the line. No point blaming Key – he had long since passed as has 1980s Neo liberalism. This is all on social democratic policy and the welfarication of New Zimbabwe. Over 50% of the population are dependent on government funding – how is that progress.
Money that needs to go into infrastructure investment now goes towards propping up most in society because they can’t generate sufficient resources on their own. This leads to a deficit.
And Bomber – if you think it is only National that allows monopolies think again. Take a long at the collision repair industry right now. We are allowing a large multinational to vertically integrate with no oversight at all knocking out private repairers. This is all on an asleep at the wheel, David Clark.
All our Glorious Leader has done has supercharge our decent and add woke into the mix. History will not he kind on her. Think on this – why would she visit Blackrock Investments the most corporate of corporates. This is beyond anything Key ever did.
What’s the story with the collision repair industry?
cosy little arrangements between insurance companies and ‘preferred supplier’ panel beaters basically. (to cut a long story short)
No – quite the opposite. The insurer becomes also the repairer. What happens when all the independent panel repair shops are gone because they can’t compete and don’t get the jobs regardless….
IAG is opening their own shops and repairing the vehicles themselves. It won’t end well for NZ consumers.
I see a post I haven’t read about the bad effects if National wins the next election. I agree it will be harsh but I don’t care. My focus is making Labour and Greens worth voting for.
It is bad to have become rigid in this now with the threatened crises now blowing on our necks. The neoliberal consensus of very bad versus worse has gone on for too long and has now, for me, reached critical mass.
I intend to get really drunk and vote national in the next election, and further, will do what I can to get them in power in the run-up, knowing full well they will be worse. Because this no choice just can’t continue. If all I can do is punish Labour and the Greens as much as I can, I will do that.
We have to stop this any way we can. Desperate action is required IMHO.
A Left Yin and Right Yang of petty spite and broad malice locked in a death spiral on a melting planet.
Well at least we got Matariki…
They media are describing Megan Woods as a “can do minister”. Dear oh dear, if that’s a can do minister, I’d hate to see their can’t do’s!
“Dog eat Dog” has obviously been disastrous for working class people in the 38 years since Roger and Bassett and Caygill and the rest of their scabby mates ran the TINA blitzkrieg 1984–90 that saw thousands sacked and discarded, and the natzos continued it with the union busting 1991 ECA, Bennie bashing war on the poor, market rents for state houses etc. etc.
We know the problem–a NZ neo liberal state based on monetarist legislation and methods, with heavy penetration of public infrastructure by private capital–all enforced by fifth columnists in the senior public service AND all the main political parties, and compliant consumer citizens. There are pockets of great wealth in the provinces and a sector of very dark kiwis indeed as COVID illustrated–but the odds are in the favour of the successor generations to the sheep shaggers.
So what is to be done? Boomers are a lost cause in the majority (I fit in that age group but still involved in political action, as are a staunch minority) so it is up to newer gens in reality. In the time frame available all that can be done for 2023 is turn Greens and Māori as left as possible to influence Labour as best as possible. After that, community organising & direct action, occupy empty residential and commercial property, Climate Strikes, and run a major campaign to retire the NZ Neo Liberal State once and for all.
Unite all who can be united including migrant workers. It will take a new movement.
For TM A song to sing as we are getting the uniting spirit going.
http://www.azlyricdb.com/lyrics/Steeleye-Span-Padstow-327137
Steeleye Span – Padstow Lyrics
Unite and unite and let us all unite
For summer is a-comin’ today
And whither we are going, we all will unite
In the merry morning of May
The young men of Padstow, they might if they would
For summer is a-comin’ today
They might have built a ship and gilded it with gold
In the merry morning of May
The young women of Padstow, they might if they would
For summer is a-comin’ today
They might have built a garland with the white rose and the red
In the merry morning of May…
With the merry ring and with the joyful spring
For summer is a-comin’ today
How happy are the little birds and the merrier we shall sing
In the merry morning of May
Oh where are the young men that now do advance
For summer is a-comin’ today
Some they are in England and some they are in France
In the merry morning of May
It is a great life if you don’t weaken Warbler…
Random comment for a cultured commenter…bought a birdsong clock for my partners birthday from Viking Seven Seas on Kapiti Coast, different birds on the hour, Morepork, Kiwi, Tui, etc. light activated, and Grey Warbler is at 6 o’clock position!
Glad to be in your company TM. What an interesting clock I want one. Thanks for the seller info. Brrrr = commenter coming in at 6 o[clock!
I disagree. What I read was interesting but I feel as if though there were more than a few generalisations. For example, there has been direct government involvement on at least two occasions in the last 35 years to keep electricity affordable for all New Zealanders as well as separate government backed initiatives to assist the vulnerable in paying their electric bills. There are similar scenarios in New Zealand for petrol, housing, and food.
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