There is a deep sense as we stumble into a deep recession that the entire system of late stage capitalism in NZ is failing.
That since the sacrifice of Covid, things have gone backwards.
That everything has stalled and falling backwards to the gravity of grim economics.
Forget the Winter of Discontent, this is our Season of Entropy.
Child poverty stats have frozen, public health and public education are in crisis, there is a cost of living crisis, a housing crisis, a poverty crisis and an environmental crisis.
TDB’s own Professor Wayne Hope calls it a ‘Polycrisis‘…
Everything seems to be going wrong, everywhere all at once—COVID-19, Ukraine, bank failures, inflation, extreme weather events.
Crisis afflicts the geopolitical system, global financial system, global climate system and global health system. The interconnectedness of different crises across overlapping systems has been termed a ‘polycrisis’. In these circumstances, governments confront multiple unfolding emergencies. Elaborations of the concept appear in the blogs of economic historian Adam Tooze and in research from the Cascade Institute.
Never-ending crises and emergencies disrupt the election cycle in different countries. Traditionally, popular governments, recently elected, serve two, maybe three terms before departing office. Before that point, mainstream political journalists and the commentariat declare that the incumbents are infighting/out of touch/losing credibility/tired/making mistakes/out of ideas. Public disquiet/anxiety/resentment with the government and ‘disappointing’ opinion poll results feed into each other. Meanwhile, the major opposition party, their leader (and coalition bloc under MMP) are deemed, implicitly as fit-to-govern – judgments which opinion poll trends seem to confirm.
…we are now in an age of consequences whereby the failure to act in the past has borne a harvest of spite we are all forced to bitterly pick from.
The problem is we are never allowed to ever reconsider the 35 year Neoliberal experiment of deregulation and privatisation that infects the NZ public service and State.
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 politicians and consultants and a self interested public service manipulate legislation in order to give vast sums of public money to private interests and pretend that’s due process.
Right now under regulated markets are held hostage to the vested interests of the old boys club.
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.
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.
What is the point of Bread and Butter politics if people can’t afford bread or butter?
Short term the Government has to be focused on deflationary spending, mid term economically we need radical climate change adaptation, long term they need to start navigating a post growth economy.
The best way to start those values is via the Public Service Culture and processes.
For essential state service workers like teachers, like police, like Drs, like nurses, like ambulance and Firefighter services, we can match the rising inflation in wages, but the focus needs to be on expanding capacity, expanding State responsibility and expanding quality of work experience.
It is insane that our Ambulance Service is privatised, and the State should nationalise it immediately. As first responders, their obligations and responsibilities will only climb as society continues to rock from the shockwaves of Covid.
Professional Firefighters must be expanded to acknowledge the danger we are under from climate change and fire seasons.
Rather than compete with inflationary wage rises, focus on better conditions. 11 weeks paid holiday each year, 4 day weeks plus housing projects where subsidised rentals are available for houses.
We also need to start bonding Teachers, Drs and nurses with free education in exchange for bonded work around NZ.
We shouldn’t be looking to slash public servants, we need more!
ACT want to amputate 5 Ministry’s while Luxon is promising to slash 14 000 jobs!
That is ideological vandalism, that’s not an actual plan!
Covid showed us the need for a strong State with capacity to step in and with the climate crisis here, we will continue to need a strong State with capacity!
The Right’s never ending march to amputate and slice down the State is so that the people don’t get used to a well functioning public service and so will politically agree to starve it of funds via tax cuts.
Global free market capitalism is dead, hyper regionalism is here. We need a bigger State with actual capacity rather than the threadbare barely regulated joke that it currently is.
We shouldn’t agree to cutting public services, we should fund their capacity and infrastructure rebuild while making the working conditions for those there a better quality!
Where should we get that money? Windfall taxes on the corporations and banks!
We need better conditions for those workers and the values of working 4 day weeks, extra holidays and housing solutions are aimed at making better working conditions as opposed to never ending inflationary wage pressures.
We need a sustainable bureaucracy rather than 7 figure technocrats who see their own fiefdoms and glass palaces as the measure of public policy achievements.
The enormity of the political gravity climate change adaptation and infrastructure resilience has created alongside the solidarity of a shared universal experience is materialising politically in a State that has to do things itself.
The 35 year neoliberal experiment in NZ cut the State back to the bone and the political project of the Right ever since is to tax-cut starve off revenue for the State so it can’t redistribute it in the first place.
What we saw with Covid and this latest weather event disaster is that you desperately need a State with capacity. So many of the problems we encountered was the shear slowness of an underfunded, under capacity public service.
With the economic recession, the geopolitical shockwaves and catastrophic climate change upon us, we must have a debate about the capacity of the State!
That is how the Left have to re frame 2023 – vote for the Right and get an amputation of the State, vote for the Left and build new capacity for the challenges ahead.
We need more Drs, more nurses, more teachers, more Police, more State houses, more infrastructure NOT LESS!
We need to debate for a bigger capacity State using the example Covid just gave us.
We need more Scientists, Drs, nurses, teachers, Police, more State houses and more infrastructure alongside policy that directly subsidises the cost of living like removing gst off food, free dental, free public transport, free food in schools and we will fund that extra increase through targeted new taxes to rebuild the capacity of the State.
The obviousness of our need for a Ministry of Works that actually builds shit is painfully clear to everyone by now.
Take Police in NZ, we have a pathetic 203 police per 100 000 NZers!
Compare that with 212 in England, 264 in Australia, 318 in Scotland, 349 in Germany, 422 in France, hell even Fiji at 227 has more Police per 100 000 than we do!
We don’t have the capacity to create a functioning State that lives up to our expectations in a liberal progressive democracy because we won’t tax the rich to find that infrastructure!
We need to actually sell the 2023 election in those explicit terms – vote Right and amputate the State, vote Left and rebuild the capacity to actually face the challenges ahead.
These new taxes will be a sugar tax for free dental, a financial transaction tax to lower GST on everything, a bank windfall profit tax to build more State houses, a social media journalism tax.
Taxes aimed at speculators and the wealthy to fund services for the egalitarian country we want NZ to be.
Let’s have the courage to actually argue and win over our fellow citizens for solution based policy that actually builds the capacity to have the extra drs, nurses, firemen, police, and teachers.
Let’s champion policies that subsidise people’s cost of living by redistributing from the few to the many.
The voters of NZ are still waiting for the Transformative change we promised them in 2017.
We need a Ministry of Works that actually builds the infrastructure we desperately need.
We need the State to do this because the Free Market has failed.
There has already been amazing work on the creation of a new Ministry of Green Works…
Rising To The Challenge: A Ministry Of Green Works For Aotearoa
Two of the biggest crises of our times – housing and climate change – could be the target of a new Ministry of Green Works that would integrate important responsibilities related to safeguarding Aotearoa’s future, according to a report released today by FIRST Union.
A Ministry of Green Works for Aotearoa New Zealand: An Ambitious Approach to Housing, Infrastructure, and Climate Change is a policy report commissioned by FIRST Union from co-authors Max Harris and Jacqueline Paul that considers Aotearoa’s systemic infrastructural problems and how they could be addressed by a new governmental entity that builds on the former Ministry of Works and integrates several key departmental responsibilities to future-proof the country for significant challenges to come.
“From our experience in workplaces, we know that contracting is a broken model that has driven down wages and led to massive inefficiencies in construction and infrastructure,” said Jared Abbott, FIRST Union Secretary for Transport, Logistics and Manufacturing.
“As the report describes, the private sector doesn’t have the capacity to deliver on large-scale housing projects and inevitably there are now worker shortages due to poor conditions in the sector.”
“Finally there is insufficient coordination to tackle climate change under the current model – the public sector has limited powers to ensure green building standards in housing and infrastructure, and it’s not equipped to respond to other unexpected challenges, like quickly building managed isolation facilities, for example.”
The report argues that the right response to these problems will be consistent with seven values: honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi; manaaki whenua, manaaki tangata; Indigenous innovation; collaboration and coordination; creativity; safety and accessibility; and transformation of our economic model. The authors note that any new Ministry of Green Works must learn from its historic namesake and considers twelve risks related to its establishment.
The report contains feedback and interviews with experts including Ganesh Nana, John Tookey, Rosslyn Noonan, Len Cook, Andre Brett, Matthew Scobie, Syd Keepa, Judith Aitken, Susan Krumdieck, Alexis Harris, Murray Parrish, Jen McArthur, Troy Brockbank, Brendon Harre, Joe Gallagher, Ben Schrader, James Muir, Patrick Cummuskey, Andre de Groot, Ben Ross, Huhana Hickey and Nick Collins.
The report is being launched as the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) begins in the United Kingdom over the upcoming weekend.
“Even with our best intentions to fix our housing, infrastructure and climate problems individually, we will miss the boat if we don’t consider their interrelatedness and set firm goals that integrate core functions of all agencies – this is where a Ministry of Green Works comes in,” said Mr Abbott.
“When the last Ministry of Works was cut up and sold off during the extreme ‘reforms’ of the 80s, we ended up a decade later with the leaky homes scandal and a lot of pressing questions – we can’t afford to wait for the consequences of climate change to set in before we act.”
…we have better solutions and we need a bigger State.
It is time to go beyond the neoliberal 30% GDP debt straitjacket and build a new State to build the infrastructure that a allows adaptation and resilience.
Bernard Hickey argues that even if we agree to the neoliberal Wellington Consensus of 30% GDP debt, we could still borrow $60Billion and remain within that absurd ideological economic straight jacket so where should that $60billion be spent on resilience and adaptation?
We need future proofing ideas, we need a Ministry of Works to do it, we need big ideas and we need big new taxes to fund those big ideas, we need to build in self sufficiency, we need mitigation and adaptation.
Unlike Covid, whose worst was avoided, this Cyclone damage is real world and physical. The magnitude of what is required from the State politically resets National and ACT’s small Government agenda.
No one wants to hear about amputating the State when they are running to the State for protection.
This was the exact same mistake the Right made last time with Covid.
The Rights usual slash and burn of the State simply isn’t sustainable in face of how invested the State is going to have to be in the rebuild.
Universal Left
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 plus implementation of all WEAG recommendations.
5: GST off food and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health.
6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.
7: Debt cancellation – student loans, welfare overpayments, beneficiary debt, easier debt cancellation.
8: Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements)
9: Buy out houses that can’t be saved, look at universal insurance for climate change events to cover those with no insurance, survival packs in every home, solar panels on every roof, vast increase in Civil Defence equipment, social licence of essential service resilience.
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 because we can if the wealthy are taxed!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ, and 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.
There’s no point making workers pay more to rebuild our resilience, tax the rich!
-Sugar Tax
-Inheritance Tax
-Wealth Tax
-Financial Transactions Tax
-New top tax rate on people earning over $250 000 per year.
-Capital Gains Tax
-Windfall profit taxes
-First $10 000 tax free
The Reserve Bank Governor is clearly telling us to raise taxes to pay for the rebuild, if Chippy’s Bread and Butter politics is to mean anything, he has to tax the rich to pay for the rebuild.
The reality is that climate change will force us to adapt whether we want it our not.
You understand that each year that passes now will get worse or remain as starkly bad as they are now right?
You get that it doesn’t go back to normal after this right?
The extreme weather will get worse and worse.
More extreme than these extremes now.
Consider this baseline extreme normal now.
Sure the war run Ukraine is hurting food prices, but that’s damage on the baseline reality of a mega drought that has interrupted the agricultural calendar of major food producers.
The radical adaptation required to get us ready for what’s coming will splinter the political spectrum whether we like it or not.
Why shouldn’t we have our own basic pharmaceutical industry?
Engineering industry?
Industrial industry?
The supply side shocks caused by Covid and war are not going away, and they are being compounded by catastrophic climate change.
Free Market Globalisation is dead, hyper regionalism is here. Supply chains in China are no longer safe and must be brought back to friendly supply chains which imports more inflation.
Radical adaptation and communal community resourcing alongside a Big State approach to lynchpin infrastructure for basic self-reliance as an Island country facing enormous economic shockwaves is the only means to build the muscle mass to respond to the ever intensifying external disruption of late stage capitalism.
The need to increase military spending to 3% alongside the new costs for this infrastructure must be funded via new taxes aimed at corporations and banks.
A financial transaction tax and windfall profit tax would take the yoke of taxation off working people and place it upon the shoulders of the wealthy.
National and ACT see mass immigration as a means to create fake growth at a time when we should be focused on de-growth.
Climate Crisis is here and adaptation is now.
We need to start rethinking Isolationism as a strength and Think Big as Economic Sovereignty.
The geopolitical shock waves are only getting more intense.
If you think being carbon neutral by 2050 is the solution, you are the problem.
Post growth capitalism with true sustainability calls for Autarky on a burning planet that can’t take anymore globalism.
The tyranny of distance has always been our malaise but on a burning planet of constant external shocks the Shire of NZ is looking very good right now.
‘Build that wall’ will soon become ‘defend that moat’.
In 1980, the time between billion dollar climate destruction events was 3 months.
It’s now 18 days.
There is a point where the next destructive weather event strikes before you can rebuild from the last one.
Change is coming whether we want it or not.
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Explaining is losing Martyn!
We are seeing late stage Labour: The final days of an inept government that got into power almost by accident and whose ‘policies’ were a childish wish list.
oh yea cos national were sooooo much better….
What National are proposing to do in the agriculture sector is f’ing embarrassing. Republican dickhead stuff. One can only hope that farmers that actually care about environmental impact do the right thing. There seems to be some out there who are not so sure about this ridiculous appeal to the idiot groinswell mob.
No Republicans in the New Zealand political system that I’m aware of?
New Zealand farmers care more for the environment than their city cousins.
The city critics are armchair specialists who do absolutely nothing to help the environment.They do enjoy the financial benefits agriculture brings though.
Simple people should refrain from commenting on issues of which they know nothing.(Wheel.)
The entropy cometh; calculate the number of metrics on which NZ is the nuumber 1 or number 2 outlier; it is sobering.
Before the second law of thermodynamics comes the first law of thermodynamics.
Change in internal energy = heat added minus work done.
This equation informs climate change and tell us how the world works. For deeper understanding of how the world works we need to then look at the second law of thermodynamics.
To really understand climate change you need to understand the third law of thermodynamic.
One plus one plus one = 3……. Sounds so simple. Why is it so damn hard?
But NZ is in a better place, aspirationally isnt it Bradbury?
That’s what your best mate Ardern reckons. No where in your rant which I agree with, do I see any criticism of that low life, divisive, transformative fake.
The Team of 5 Million.
The team of 5 million plus 700,000 who are living in Australia !
The use over and over of a few words takes in a majority of New Zealanders.
Team of 5million.
Kindness
Open and transparent.
George Orwell warned us of these types yet a majority of gullible New Zealanders were taken in.Trampled by a propaganda machine.
She could have sold any bread and butter poverty alleviating program during a time of crisis. Bank profit taxes, rent ceilings, landlord divestment etc. But the advisors and people behind the throne were bereft of bread and butter ideas. Instead fighting over making water suppy more expensive and less democratic. Sad.
Gosh, Paul Hunt says we have appalling human rights in NZ.
How long would a Givealittle webpage take to raise Paul’s airfare back to the UK? I pledge $50. Who else is in?
By extension then the right is 20 individuals?
Surely we can defeat them in a democratic election.
Up to the day before covid struck the average well-being of people on this planet improved out of sight since the beginning of time. So argues Pinker and others who have looked at the data.
Then we implement the most human friendly (kindness) policy in history of this planet and now we are all in the shit…..
We better change something.
I love your bullet point plan Martyn but it’ll never be implemented in NZ by either the Nactz or Labour, both Parties are captured by Neoliberal Capitalism that’s in collapse Worldwide!
What tells us that “Neoliberal Capitalism” is collapsing?
The problem is simple – government works for them (the 1%) – not for us. Neoliberal economic policy – a global phenomenon – is the best example of this. No point in voting, no point in wishing this, that and the other – our political system, like all Western political systems, are captured – corrupt.!
As such, the only solution is people power. Non-compliance, striking, protesting against the governments that no longer serve the interests of the people.
Step One, we have got to know what the core problem is – captured government.
You explain neoliberal capitalism well.
However, most of us support the initiatives such a the action plan against climate change…. maybe it will be more rational to have an action plan to deal with the risks associated with climate change.
Just asking.
I am not a believer. I believe that the same people that foisted neoliberal policy upon the world are the same people pushing climate change, ditto recent events of the past few years. I believe in pollution and environmental issues, and yet we (government) are not in the least bit of a hurry to do much about this. We are in a hurry to push out this global climate policy, but we are blind to our own rampant pollution issues. Why is this? In short, once you understand the money behind the IPCC and the absolutely flawed nature of climate models…the penny starts to drop. And once you understand that the powerful are forever planning and that they don’t hide the plans they have for us, well, the road becomes clear.
Neoliberal economic policy was just the start…..
The answer lies in the 3 Laws of thermodynamics.
In a pirani gauge the refraction is 5%, not the 95% used in the IPCC models.
Climate change is real. Anthropogenic climate contributes to climate change.
For some climate change is a religion, for many it is a conspiracy theory. But climate change is really about physics.
Take two.
If climate change – of the human life ending kind – were real, the following would have at least been considered at the very start:
– what do about the capitalist economic system that demands constant growth
– what do we do about consumerism, do we call for cut backs – have you even heard of such a strategy
– do we outlaw planned obsolescence
– do we prioritize long-lasting quality products
They are just a few obvious starters for ten. The proof, or the answer to climate change lies in what we are doing to try and combat it.
Meanwhile, pollution, which easily touches every one of us – who gives a rats – as far as the very same officialdom pushing climate policy are concerned.
The answer to climate change lies in what we are doing about it, and to refine that point even further – who is benefiting from these changes the most!
” I present the 10 point Left wing Economic Justice Plan for Aotearoa New Zealand. ”
Great Bomber.
When this movement / party is registered with the electoral commission , has candidates standing and appears on the ballot paper for October 14th you will have my two votes and a commitment to support this in any way I can.
Good plan.
Who will be writing the cheques?
Peeps pay lots of taxes and get poor outcomes, that builds frustrated electroate.
People could live with lots of regulation & paying lots of tax if we got great societal outcomes. But neither Labour or National have got this right. Hence the rise of TOP & ACT
marco, NZ has low taxes compared to other developed countries….can the right please stop peddling their tax lies, it’s tedious correcting them.
Don’t worry, there is an alternative…
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/131805928/the-great-exodus-as-kiwis-leave-for-a-better-life-australia-looks-luckier-than-ever
@No Comment,
You beat me to it. It was noted years ago that a million NZ passport holders lived overseas. Thousands upon thousands have left since. Smart new comers stay here long enough to get residency and a passport then off they go to OZ, or Canada or elsewhere or even back home where the NZ degree in whatever gives them a chance of a job with travel possibilities like organizing groups of youngsters on travel trips to seek out educational possibilities in English speaking countries or assisting those who want to invest or buy out businesses, real estate etc. in same.
The Labour Govt. of Lange and co. set us on the slippery slope to annihilation years ago. Duped as so many were by words such as globalization, privatization, deregulation, open borders etc. All in together boys but actually, as some are able to perceive now, a cover for progression towards totalitarian world government where ‘You will own nothing and you will be happy.” Together with endless wars where Eurasia is fighting East Asia but tomorrow your two minutes of hate can project itself somewhere else while a very few control all the wealth and resources.
We need to extricate from our little local parochial echo chamber and consider the approaching reality and who exactly will be the controllers.
Sad but true. Unfortunately unless New Zealand can work out how to train & retain it’s own citizens, we’ll always be losing our best & brightest. Then we have to try to replace the lost skills with whoever we can attract in a very competitive global market, and as saveNZ can attest, we are not necessarily getting the cream of the crop.
New Zealand is getting less attractive as a destination to raise a family & start a new life, unless you already live in a shit hole, and then you’ll probably struggle with the cost of living here anyway.
Kiwis have moved offshore for DECADES. Some before they forge a career, others later in life and many return. Jet travel enabled it us to see what was ‘over the other side of the hill’. To find the ‘elephant’.
From the ‘horse’s mouth’ in 1988 Lange was most unhappy with Douglas flawed philosophy and wanted to stop it. Those who wanted to see the end of Roger Douglas formed another party at that time.
True, but in the past New Zealand could more afford the loss. Now, our health system is severely depleted and we have a hard time filling a lot of skilled roles. New Zealand has got a lot less attractive, except for those escaping worse conditions.
The Team of 5 Million.
We do have the Clean Green Image.
Mirage?
100% pure, mate, 100% pure…
bullshit!
https://environment.govt.nz/publications/our-freshwater-2023/
The winter of our TLDR. 🙂
Needs some criticism of the mob in charge this last 5 years driving us over the cliff.
New Zealand = Maori, Climate, Pride, Ram-raids and Covid.
When the citizenry are only feed those 5 things through the arts, news and work-culture.. their brains atrophy.
New Zealand is a cultural wasteland hiding behind a plastic tiki.
Totes Boring!
Why falling to pieces? Not enough brilliant ideas.
I challenge all commenters here to come up with good practical, doable and good for us all without having to paint our selves blue or something.
Here are some:
1 Stop doing big expensive things. Take a break and view the plans again to do what is actually useful for the people and fixing the problem then do it the cheapest.
2 Stop our expensive secondary education system in its tracks. We are not learning what we need to know. As a simple change, spend half the time in educating the kids with boys reading fiction, and girls learning how to read science books and how to do machinery things. That would lead to a more balanced thoughtful society.
Vote ACT, Labour gone, sorted.
She asked for brilliant ideas, not increased stupidity.
Problem is that you, me, Martyn et al, can have all the great ideas to make New Zealand better. Martyn regularly posts huge lists of ideas that will never be picked by any of the political parties. Why? Because Martyn doesn’t donate $50k to them. Because they conflict with standard Neo-liberal values, etc. Take your pick. Personally I pick up litter and Snap, Send, Solve issues around our neighborhood, report crimes, suspicious or anti-social activities. I donate to charities that protect human rights & the environment. They are little things, they change almost nothing, the big issues are well beyond my control.
We still all die at the end. Happy Sunday Funday everyone 🙂
Born to die.
Actual death is natural. The death of the soul and of the soul of humanity means death in life. The crushing of the human spirit is the ultimate violation. When you see a TV ad full of capering, jigging lunatics, know that two million years of human evolution have been flushed down into a everlasting sewer.
There is a famous quote from Virgil: ‘It’s easy to descend Avernus. The gates of hell stand open night and day; but to retrace one’s steps and return to the upper air – that is the work, that is the difficulty. ‘
Though if pragmatism is more your thing don’t just vote Act, join the Party and take it over just as the Act moles took over the old Labour Party.
😉 Nah I’m good Archy. “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” Midnight Oil
Di manes.
Life after death.
Born to die in order to live after death?
Martyn – if Paul Hunt says something, I, like many people switch off…
Geeezuss! Things look bad ay!?
How about we rewind the clock to 1840ish and start again?
All the settlers head off to their home country of origin(s) of their choice and let us Mowrees figure this thing out.
It could take a while.
Hehehehehe!
Here is part of a think piece on our political system from Scoop and Alison McCulloch.
https://thedig.nz/transitional-democracy/this-is-not-a-democracy/
The Westminster-based system we live under serves us very badly. Not only is it undemocratic, it is unresponsive to ordinary people, it is cruel and divisive, and yet virtually from the cradle we are taught that it is sacrosanct, an article of religious faith, untouchable, and that while we might tinker around its edges, there is and can be no better, more democratic system of government.
But this system is a cultural product like any other, something Māori know only too well, having had it imposed on them as if prior to the arrival of British colonists, this land were a kind of political terra nullius. It simply wasn’t so. It’s a point the report of Matike Mai Aotearoa (the independent Māori working group on constitutional transformation) makes in setting out both a Māori critique of the current system, and proposals for a way forward.
https://foundation.scoop.co.nz/?source=SPW
$10 will buy a glass of wine in an establishment. For the same amount monthly you can support thoughtful knowledgeable long-form journalism and Scoop is a good source.
What about it. It doesn’t grow on trees. A good combo would be the musketeers on The Daily Blog and Scoop, as useful.
Most people (including on the right) are down with ending child poverty because it’s emotive and sounds like it’s a little problem to help little kids. When can we stop saying child poverty and start saying parental poverty, adult poverty, widespread poverty. The only real solution to child poverty is to fix adult poverty with a high wage economy. In the mean time, food in schools, mum’s at home wage, capitalisable child benefit for house deposits, low interest govt lending to first home owners, heaps more state houses (with a lawn big enough for a kids cricket pitch instead of the current ghetto shit materials townhouses and apartments).
indeed joseph how can you fix child poverty if their parents/carers are in poverty….?
fuckin clickbait nonsense from the political class
I agree with much of what MB says. Covid not only changed our thinking, but it ruined our economy and destroyed any chance of meaningful change this labour govt had. Thats where my sympathy ends. What is missing from Martyn’s wish list is a buoyant economy. His wish for better wages for state workers, that is Nurses doctors police fire fighters, complete funding of ambulances, are things we all want. You can’t have that stuff in a pissy small country like ours without a fizzing economy. The left don’t worry about a good economy because to them the wrong people are benefiting from it. I have to agree with that to a point. However for there to be enough money to subsidise those less fortunate, you need a pumped economy to do it. Labour was anti business until they figured this out, but they are now being tarred with the same brush as National. Labour also ignored the productivity dirty word and just increased the minimum wage anyway and of course everyone now expects more wages but without productivity, thats inflationary and thats what we’ve got. We have to stop worrying about the wealthy being wealthy. If they are not, nobody will be. My fix is
1/ have a buoyant economy ( that means stop hating greedy business people and exporters)
2/ Use that wealth to keep wages in balance from the top down not the bottom up. ( or you end up with nurses on the minimum wage)
3/ Use the extra wealth to properly fund the less fortunate.
4/ Use that wealth for a better state house supply.
5/ have the guts to make sure food and fuel aren’t overpriced.
Tax the very wealthy more, and introduce a CGT if it will make you feel better although I don’t believe that will make the poor any better off.
Greywarbler makes the most sense here. keep it simple don’t try and change the world but what you decide to do, do it properly.
Forget the Winter of Discontent – this is our Season of Entropy – why NZ is falling to pieces……..And shit is going to get way worse, Along with the cost of producing crisis, Fuel tax coming back on in June. More than likely another increase in interest rates, but wait there’s more, NZ/AO AA+ credit rating is likely to be down graded. Only a matter of time before the banks start calling in there loans both in the public and private sectors and then exit the land of the long white skid mark with most of our young motivated, skilled/professional workforce.
Guess those of us who remain in these shaky isles should all up-skill to basket or flax weaving to sell to the tourists who will still flock to our shores to see for themselves how us Noo Zilinders live.
What I don’t get is us calling for more tax from the wealthy who already have the top 10% of earners paying 50% of the countries Individual Income Tax. The bottom 50% of income earners (~$31k) pay 10% of total individual income tax.
So why do we want more taken from the people who usually take the bigger financial investments employing people?
I am not wealthy but I feel this is an envious way of thinking which does little for the fundamental issues in NZ.
Personally I believe there are three issues in NZ.
1. A lack of funding for various departments to keep staff.
2. A lack of management wasting money on too many consultants.
3. Housing & Food Security.
These all can easily be sorted – but governments are always tinkering and pissing around with other issues that are side agendas. If government stuck to core services which tax payers want then these issues could be turned into success stories in NZ. Envious jealousy of successful people which ironically we want all people to be is a waste of whining emotions to me.
except most NZ investment from unearned income goes overseas we do not invest in NZ so we slip further behind rogue
I know of 1 NZ business that has a good track record of investment in itself rather than profit taking for shareholders..just one.
Labour has had long enough, had an unprecedented mandate, and squandered it on grievance politics. There is no chance they’re going to do better with having to placate unruly coalition partners. Why wouldn’t people be considering NAT/ACT and TOP to reign in worst excesses.
The whole world is in a State of Flux –
The problem with the next Labour lot is that essentially they are the current lot, and that wasted many years on getting shit fuck all done. So you can be scared of N making it worse, of of A nixing the womens / ethnic / human rights / ministries, cutting benefits and the likes, but first you must lay blame at the feet of labour of having done nothing at all of substance other then increase base benefits by pennies to see these pennies being clawed back by government via the fringe benefits leaving many poorer and of increasing min wage but not enough to actually keep up with rising costs and housing.
From where i am standing nz is lost mainly because for the last 40+ odd years no one really cared about the poor – L and N alike, the few people that did care get send to siberia for re-education never to be seen again – Metiria Turei anyone?, and now many are figuring out that they are literally just a few missed payments away from homelessness themselves and its too late.
A poem comes to mind
when poor people slept in the streets i did not care cause i was not poor
when hungry people waited for a food parcel i did not care because i was not hungry
when homeless children come unwashed/hungry/tired/angry to school i did not care because they are not my children
now that i am homeless and hungry, now that my children are unwashed, unhoused, hungry, tired and angry no one is left to care.
That reminds me of Marin Niemoller’s sad verse:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists
Don’t forget that the bottom earners pay 15% of their net income – mostly – on GST. Add to that 15%, regular tax which they pay from their supposed basic or disposable income .While the better off have to cut down on their wine, fillet steak, new cars and clothes, shoes and are paying tax out of their discretionary income.
But they shouldn’t worry, they won’t be left out – the claw-fingered, calculators are working out how to bore into the middle class and are already well in by forcing up house prices even just accommodation, so increasing their disposable costs and cutting discretionary. They think it is temporary. But economics is a moveable feast, or you could say a mad children’s playground, with roundabouts that disappear and reappear, see-saw supply and demand with queues forming to play but the playground equipment is made of cardboard and collapses. And we think this is reasonable reality. Oh dear.
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