The Listener asks…
Why doesn’t middle-class NZ care about child poverty?
Middle-class New Zealand has become indifferent to child poverty, say the people who are dealing with the damage.
…the reason why the NZ Middle Class don’t care about poverty any longer is because they don’t focus on the economic hegemonic structure in favour of woke identity politics virtue signalling.
The public struggle session of Joel Maxwell over at Stuff as he narrates his journey to use more te reo has to be read to be believed.
So much guilt and shame for someone with property.
This performance art is the new activism of the middle classes whose property portfolios have kept growing.
Like a Parliament of Land Owners, the self interest by the middle classes to form a blind spot to the economic system that is rewarding them pushes for more performative virtue signalling to drown out those 27 000 on emergency housing wait lists.
The reason the middle classes kept voting John Key for a decade despite mass surveillance lies, despite dirty politics and despite Kiwis living in cars was because their house values went up more each year than their wages paid them!
You can have every work of Marx in the home library but when John Key is giving you more wealth than your job pays each year, whose your daddy?
The middle classes focus on identity politics and roaming cancellations now as their activist aesthetic so that no one notices all those beneficiaries rammed into Motels.
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
Kinda agree Martyn — sadly, a lot of so called “poverty” is silly buggers with alcohol/tobacco problems…I do understand that raising families in cars is not on…however, some of their parents have been kicked out of State Housing after numerous anti social behaviour towards other people…
Yeah that’s just what he said. Middle Class don’t care about poverty
Kinda agree Martyn — sadly, a lot of so called “poverty” is silly buggers with alcohol/tobacco problems…I do understand that raising families in cars is not on…however, some of their parents have been kicked out of State Housing after numerous anti social behaviour towards other people…
I feel like that song ”let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets…..”
Not poverty? We now have generations of hopelessness, of being lost. Of people given up on before they were even born.
Choose alcohol to make reality fade away? I’m pretty sure I would be looking for something to kill the pain if it were me. Not the anguish of falling off the world, but the daily reality of never really being on it.
How can a person ”take responsibility” under such circumstances? For many of the luckier in the shoes of the unlucky, and even a tiny slither of the unlucky, pulling up and out is a possibility. But then, so is climbing Everest, and sticking a flag at the top. It’s always possible.
Without being granted a voice (or even the ability to find words that say why, in many cases) how can the luckier ever hear the dispossessed? Especially when it will always be so much easier to just pass a simplistic judgement and turn away.
What+Now? – Nicely put…but, until you live next to many of the so called poverty cases — you do not fully appreciate much of the nasty silliness from our fellow citizens…bloody sad for the kids
Grew up there, Nathan.
And it’s more than just sad for the kids.
We chose to destroy our fellow people, knowing that people can be broken, fearing being trashed ourselves, and just playing a pathetic game of giving a damn.
Part two is getting the boot into them for the problems they have the audacity to cause us as a result. Like the old cliche of getting another boot for reacting in pain to the first.
If we didn’t want this we could have chosen differently.
When you are injured and in pain do you expect help or punishment to be the response?
Thanks What Now enjoyed your posts.
The desperation suffered, the feeling of hopelessness,being lost.
We must do something different this is not New Zealand as we knew it.This is not how we want it.
“You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.”
– Thomas Sowell
Then Thomas Sewell must have said, if he was thinking things through, ‘that the subsidisation must be spent on showing and helping people to become responsible, and then to help others to reach the same goal’. That would be the responsible move to make. That would have been a wise and unobjectionable advice from that gentleman.
But we can subsidize corporates and developers and we do expect them to be responsible but this is often not the case.
We shouldn’t subsidise THEM either.
I always thought the appropriate action in 2008 was to let the financial intuitions fail.
I agree! The irresponsible Globalist billionaire class and their PMC mandarins must be stopped from subsidizing their lifestyles via working/underclass and environmental/fossil fuel exploitation.
John Key has not given anything to anyone in a long time. Jacinda Ardern is now the one giving to the upper academic class. Every one else needs to bow and be obedient. It is Jacinda Ardern and their government that is failing our poor, our kids, our sick, our homeless and our destitute. And Jacinda Ardern is as bad as John Key was. Go to Rotorua and see your government – that you helped elect – not give a flying fuck about the town, the people that live there and certainly not the people that Jacinda Arderns government employees in Winz have dropped on Rotorua condemned to a life without dignity, cooking facilities, laundry facilities, jobs, social network, to live in a rotting motel supervised by some Tiny Deans private Gang/Security. Go. Seriously leave your house, put on a few masks to feel safe and check out what is happening in NZ whilst you are not paying attention.
Watch the Rotorua elections. Watch them real close. As for the middle classes, there wont be any left by winter next year.
Do you live in Rotorua? If not ,go away with your white privilege.
My wife and I, pakeha, live in a house that backs on to the motels. We have living with us 2 granddaughters, both Maori.
The people from the motels are good people who have been screwed over by a pakeha political system over many years, but, because they are Maori we are more than happy to blame them for our failures.
You have no idea of the reality of our world.
Agree with performance art is the new activism…..
but the leftie hatred of middle class is misguided,
To engage in a social democracy we need more middle class and less poor and rich.
Most of the policies of the Labeen woke and right wingers, create the opposite, remove wealth from the middle class via lost wages and reassign to the growing poor ‘managers’ with the rich getting a margin on top.
AKA woke and right winger dreams of NZ ghettos of rented housing estates owned by global companies for the super rich, with guaranteed rents of a growing poverty class. Thus importing in more poverty via NZ’s mass 2022 induction of 200,000+ low/no wage, low/no skill immigration, this is a growth industry in NZ – someone needs to fill up the houses and get this PE/NZ initiative off the ground!!!!! What better way than another 200,000 people who need essential government paid but privately led services on a daily basis!
The more the woke colonise Te Reo the more of a caricature it is going to become. Woke have already started cancelling Maori for being the wrong look. https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/09/21/mediawatch-wait-wait-wait-the-woke-cancelled-a-maori-event-organised-by-maori-students-because-it-was-offensive-to-maori-language-week/
Don’t worry about the poor having a house, Te Reo red guards are banging down the doors of social housing at 8am to induct them into the Amway of Te Reo will set you free. Marketers and diversity bean counters are rubbing their hands at another lucrative government sales pitch – for more ‘essential services’ of Te Reo and spiritual wellbeing which are FAR MORE important than food, housing, power, water, freedom of speech, family and coincidentally don’t cost as much so the profit margins are HUGE.
except snz the money from the middle class is then assigned to big business NOT the poor…we don’t subsidise the ‘irresponsible’ but the wealthy
The poor get an amount each week via benefits so there is endless supply of money to be redirected out to big business interests in the name of the poor. Used to be called social bonds before being remarketed as social housing etc.
what’s the point your trying to make snz are you contesting that most tax income is redistributed upwards? rather than to the poor..
how much goes into ‘homelessness’ and how much of that disappears into ‘administration’ and how much goes to the poor?….living off projects that ‘help the poor and homeless’ is a career option for the administrative class.
My point is that neoliberalism loves the poor not middle class because they can redistribute the poor’s benefits to themselves which is guaranteed because they receive a benefit, which is mostly paid for by taxes from the middle class.
If we had more middle class and less rich and poor, society would function better as there would be more taxes to put into having higher public services like better health care, higher wages, higher standards of living for all.
The left discourse is to have less poverty, but they also seem to hate the middle class and the rich so not sure what category the poor and government should be aspiring to.
Ok so why has the number of poor people increased under the Labour Government!
To answer my own question “ they don’t care.”
Clearly Bob, as a National cheerleader you don’t care either. As the polls show. The biggest portion of the vote is going to the two biggest parties. One says they care but apparently doesn’t , the other don’t even really pretend to care if you listen to their ideas.
Then both the parties agree to f*ck people over by changing intensification regulations in areas where it has nothing to do with housing the homeless or poor it’s just about another opportunity for developers. We apparently have loads of people leaving for greener pastures which would make you question if there is actually a shortage of houses for people who can afford them in those areas. They could introduce a capital gains regime that includes a requirement that if your own a primary dwelling, leave it empty, and bugger off you have to rent it or be subject to CGT upon sale.
How the hell can it have increased under Labour when it was never ever measured under National Bob?
You once again are missing facts.
They are not my figures Bert they are the statistics broadcast daily in every form of media including the team of $55 million.
Take it up with them.
oh they’ll care alright when the credit card bills come in and the loans come due….and that’s when they’ll turn to ‘fascism with a human face’
gagarin Socialist think everything is free they don’t understand debt.
but the NZ middle class are not socialist bob the last…they’re good little capitalists who have dutifully borrowed to live beyond their means and keep the neo-lib fantasy economy staggering on….so your comment is irrelevant isn’t it, but wait it’s got the word ‘socialist’ in it to dog whistle rightards…
also plurals are a thing
gagarin,
Agree the middle class are not socialists but our Prime Minister proudly is,so my comment has relevance.It’s not a dog whistle.
Thanks for the editing agree should have read”Socialists.”
Wheel,
I accept your comments and largely agree but must say I do care.
is she though? as she ever used the ‘s’ word as pm (student politics don’t count–literally) she’d be more likely to use the ‘n’ word frankly
A book could be written on this…that’s right, many have been…including Jane Kelsey’s “FIRE Economy”.
“The FIRE economy – built on finance, insurance and real estate – is now the world’s principal source of wealth creation. Its rise has transformed our political, economic and social landscapes, supported by a neoliberal regime that celebrates markets, profit and risk. From rising inequality and ballooning household debt to a global financial crisis and fiscal austerity, the neoliberal ‘orthodoxy’ has brought instability and empowered the few. Yet it remains remarkably resilient, even resurgent, in New Zealand and abroad.”
https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/the-fire-economy
So yes, while there are definitely hordes of selfish bastards involved–the middle class even got their own more generous second tier MSD benefit during COVID. Neo liberal hegemony and post modernist philosophy have most to answer for. Labour, National, Green etc. listen to the middle class because they have reliably voted mainly for the status quo for almost 40 years. The numbers will be different from 2023 and 2026 on, new gens will outnumber boomers and this is the chance for the dump renters and precariat to intervene and roll back Rogernomics and Ruthanasia.
You’re not wrong Martyn. As an aside, part of the problem in my view is that we use the phrase ‘child poverty’ at all. It’s meaningless to a lot of people because there aren’t many children who are wealthy in their own right, it’s families that are wealthy or impoverished. We should absolutely direct some support straight to kids in need, like school breakfasts, but also recognise that doing this is just addressing the symptoms of broader poverty issues like NZ’s low wage economy.
indeed how do you end child poverty without ending the parents poverty…it’s just another ‘think of the children’ oh dearism, saccharine dinner party topic…poverty porn
At the end of the day, If you are white male the only way you can climb the woke world career ladder in NZ is to throw your creed under the bus with endless virtue signalling articles like “The public struggle session of Joel Maxwell over at Stuff as he narrates his journey to use more te reo”. It was that, or self identifying as a woman.
That’s why Martyn can’t get creative NZ funding.
He’s just too fucking invested in real issues!
Stop being fucking straight for fucks sake, stop being male, stop being white, grab the $$$$ from labels Woke INC private stash to self identify as something better.
2.6 million for Bevan Chung’s, from the ‘other woman’s perspective creative funding TV series https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/entertainment/26-million-in-nz-on-air-funding-for-bevan-chuang-and-len-brown-film/.
Now that’s what were talkin about! Woke fodder, made and created by woke for the 5% but growing woke entertainment agenda.
Males at spinoff crying into their soy latte’s at the hopelessness of being so right in a world of 99.99% racists and homophobes got 6.1 million. https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2021/07/61_million_to_the_spinoff_from_taxpayers.html
To make money in NZ stop worrying about real issues, the government funders generally only relate to and fund trivia and virtue signalling and division thinking, not real things anymore.
Just one of the reasons this country is finished.
You may be onto something there gagarin.
Well, given that this piece is under the MEDIAWATCH heading, then it is apt to say that a key reason why people care, or not, about any given matter, is the attention (and the bent) that media pays towards a given issue. Further more, I believe that media, now days, primarily serves rather than questions the corridors of power. Government doesn’t want the masses questioning ‘structure’, or policy that was created by the moneyed class specifically for the benefit of said upper class, aka neoliberal economic policy. No, the focus of the people needs to be directed on issues that do not threaten the structures of the moneyed class.
In short, this focus is not by accident and even better if a given focus can get the masses squabbling among themselves, well then, that’s just icing on the cake.
As for the popularity of the Key government, given the events of the last two years, its clear to me that he benefited from a relatively calm political/economic world, thus as long as he didn’t trip over himself or face an opposition leader with similar ‘personality’ power to his own, then he was good to go, bearing in mind that both main parties are more alike than different to each other.
Bottom line being, the media drives focus and for whom does the media primarily serve…..
The 27,000 Labour Government promised to house not at one election but two?
I mean seriously this is ridiculous.
Why would anyone vote for this mob?
” Just one of the reasons this country is finished ”
Only if you rent , are being exploited by earning the minimum wage , are dependent on welfare for your life of destitution and that includes many on the pension. Have children and are prepared to sacrifice their childhood with no financial security.
Many middle class people fear the poverty that they read about in the media should they loose their financial privileges.
There is no hope of salvation for the many economic refugees and the sooner poverty and stories about motels and hungry children living in cars is no longer talked about the better as a feelgood discussion in the media about how awful it all is that only distracts the wealthy and property millionaires for a short time but the root causes that keep them well off and everyone else poor and marginalised never gets talked about or scrutinised.
Good stuff Mosa.
Your headline was unpleasant to me. So here I am just commenting on the headline. Had to force myself. An unpleasant –earwaxedly –truth that I despise. Don’t want to address this fissure between my/our idea and reality.
They ‘Hate’ the poor!
The muddle neo fascist class just can not be fucked with the poor unless the can make a buck out of them! Like rent a house or room to them or gain a work subsidy from them or milk them for some bs training course and load them up with massive debt that they’ll never be able to pay off.
Other than screwing money from the poor. Fuck them is what many muddle class bigots think, but many are too gutless to say thus in public because they’re scared someone might reply.
big tick tane
[voted John Key]… because their house values went up more each year than their wages paid them!
Don’t knock it. It got Phil Goff elected Auckland mayor twice and will probably see Effeso home. It’s also the reason people still support Ardern despite all her failings. Hell, even I should vote for her given that my place has gone up by $2million plus since 2017. Pity that everything else around me has also.
Could always shift to Southland I guess. 🙂
Comments are closed.