House prices and rents are through the roof and lots of people are sleeping rough. We have beggars on the streets of our towns and cities. Our hospitals, indeed our entire health system, is being kept running only through the hard overwork and selfless dedication of a truly remarkable health workforce. Literacy and numeracy levels have plunged from dizzy heights to abysmal depths in less than a decade. Inflation is running at levels not seen for thirty years, and is tipped to get worse.
On the bright side, unemployment is a mere three or four percent, so if you’re sleeping in your car but you haven’t got enough income to put our fabulously expensive petrol into the tank, you can get yourself a job and try to get yourself back on your feet thanks to the minimum wage, right?
Wrong. The powers that be have decided that the low level of unemployment is feeding the voracious beast of inflation by creating demand for increased wages. It’s not the war on Ukraine pushing up petrol and food prices, it’s not the effects of the pandemic which we are still going through. Hard-working New Zealanders and immigrants greedily demanding a decent wage in response to rapidly rising prices for everything are the cause of our monetary problems.
The solution according to the Reserve Bank? Throw more people out of work and create a recession. Let’s have more people sleeping on the streets. It’s hard on those poor folk who lose their jobs and housing, but it will cool the financial jets and bring inflation back to the fiscal nirvana of under three per cent, and isn’t that worth all the suffering that someone other than the Reserve Bank Governor will go through? I’m quite sure that the next person to freeze to death under a bridge will be happy to know that he or she is contributing to the financial goals of the Reserve Bank.
What is wrong with a system in which such a solution can seem like a reasonable option? A system that punishes those with the least and pampers those with the most.
Honestly, how stupid was the question if this is the answer? It’s time we took a long hard look at our economic priorities and asked whose interests they are serving. The economy is not some divinely ordained machine that we all must bow to. Quite the reverse. It’s a human construct and therefore subject to human control. If the economy is not serving us – and by ‘us’, I mean the vast majority of us – then we need to restructure it so that it does.
Why do we need to have people sleeping on the streets and begging there when they wake up? How does that sit alongside a tiny privileged class of CEOs who earn millions of dollars in salaries – far more than most of us could even manage to spend. How come they keep getting tax cuts, bonuses and pay rises while our health system is desperately short of funds to keep people alive, and those of us lucky enough to have jobs keep seeing our wages dwindling in the face of higher prices?
Perhaps we should take a lesson from ancient history, the most apposite example appearing in the fall of the Roman empire:
As I see it, the Roman political system facilitated a most intense and ultimately destructive economic exploitation of the great mass of the people, whether slave or free, and it made radical reform impossible. The result was that the propertied class, the men of real wealth, who had deliberately created the system for their own benefit, drained the life-blood from their world and thus destroyed Greco-Roman civilization over a large part of the empire … If I were in search of a metaphor to describe the great and growing concentration of wealth in the hands of the upper classes, I would not incline to anything so innocent and so automatic as drainage: I should want to think in terms of something much more purposive and deliberate – perhaps the vampire bat.
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- G. E. M. De Sainte Croix – The Class Struggle in the Ancient World.
David Jones is a retired orchard hand living in the Tasman district.
Since the government(of all shades) took over the role of Mummy in the 1970s (ie start of welfareism)
and consistently increased the kids pocket money and not expecting them to do the chores. The kids have become very lazy in looking after themselves.
The role of the traditional family has been diminish significantly.
No corrective smacks, locked in bedroom time (not locking up crims)
No shouting at children, letting them abuse/disrespect their elders. (Liberalism gone mad)
Jamming beliefs into kids that dont align with traditional family values. (you poor thing sentencing BS)
Combine that with the screaming hordes blaming the government.
The government should do something!!!!
Ever seen a real skinny beggar in NZ. Yep, thought not.
You do follow the agencies that go around and night and offer those sleeping on the streets a place to stay(offers most time rejected)
So rather than just throw money around apropos current and previous Governments.
How about the Government steps back from being a Mummy, they are doing a pathetic job.
PS. I am saddened about what has happened in my country.
Yes, I shout and abuse beggars, especially the fat ones.
I have offerd a bedroom to kids sleeping on the street, generally get abused (fk off grandad)
Where’s the leadership. Cant see any leaders in our political circles. Just pathetic wokests trying to appease minorities in some vague hope they will get elected.
Rant over
Thanks Bomber
Did you mean the start of solo parent welfare? The old age pensions act started in 1898 & various additions happened since then.
You’re on to it Ra!
Well said
So Ra you think we should still hit kids to teach them things. Appalling attitude.
Jeepers you shout and abuse beggars.
Welfarism started with the Mummy State in the 70’s? On the contrary, that’s when the welfare state – which had made New Zealand so prosperous from the late 1800s (under the Liberal Government) and the 1930s (the 1st Labour Government) – began to be dismantled and the neo liberal agenda began to be introduced. What that whole period (up to the 1970s) of increasing prosperity, coupled with increasing welfarism demonstrates clearly is that if a government looks after the ordinary people, the whole country – including the business community – prospers. If the rich end up in charge and they start taking money away from the poor, we all end up much worse off.
I do not agree that Reserve bank should penalize general public by increasing interest rates. The global supply chains and war in Ukraine are partly to blame for inflation. However, ineffective govt spending and loose fiscal policy created the biggest increase in house prices, which will now lead to increased rental and mortgagee sale if the interest rates keep going up.
Reform of the private bankers debt servitude banking system is what is required.
Real productivity,real goods and a currency based on that,rather than the farcical papershuffling of modern,monetary theory that manipulates economies to benefit a tiny sector of…society.
Shift the responsibility of inflation from the planned recession, which would mean lost jobs and less tax revenue for the government, and then more debt down the track, to the wealthy and to the sharemarket.
Introduce a wealth tax on all shares. Yes. Every share in every publicly listed company in this country would be obligated to pay the government, in cash, a one-off flat rate of fifteen percent. Shares held in trust on behalf of individuals enrolled in the KiwiSaver scheme would be the only exemption. Serves everyone right as we don’t have capital gains tax applicable to the sale of shares in this country.
This avoids the recession. It avoids redundancies. It keeps the government happy with having revenue that it would otherwise not have, and the government in turn could increase the health budget, or the education budget, or to fund tax cuts, whatever really.
The alternative to this, is this planned recession spurred on by Adrian Orr. And then we will all lose out AGAIN
Bring back the gold standard? I hope depositor insurance comes in soon. I forget the name used in NZ for it. Where govt guarantees savings deposits up to $XX (was it $50K or $200K?). It was slated to become law in a year or two. Otherwise watch our kiwisaver accounts and savings get wiped out when the worlds entire financial system breaks down early to mid next year. Worse case scenario. It’s tipped another major USA Bank will fail next year (untraditional sources so take with a grain of salt). Yay capitalism (sarc). Another black swan event is no doubt on the horizon. JMO
I think in years to come you will see civil unrest in response to how our economy operates and who it serves. I know the powers that be and those doing very well out if this system will feel very uncomfortable with this. But it’s historic and how change has occurred over the centuries. ‘ When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose’.
Most people do not care to realize that the economy, therefore the stewards of the economy, the political class, no longer works for them. And one reason for their lack of awareness is another key component of society that is no longer working for them – mainstream media. Henceforth, you can’t restructure when most people don’t see a problem, or in this case, two problems (the economy and its stewards and the lack of awareness purposely brought about by owners of media that greatly benefit from problem number one).
Thus, if we wish to restructure or revolutionize or challenge the corridors of power in any way, we need to be aware…..
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