Gareth Hughes preaching some heavy truth…
40 years on, it’s time to reboot the economic system that got us into this mess
Enough time has passed that we can now state that poverty, inequality and pollution aren’t bugs – they are in fact features of the system.
With our own election less than 100 days away, is anyone questioning this broken “business as usual” economy and proposing to install a new operating system?
After leading the revolution in the 1980s and early 1990s, Labour and National pivoted to become its guardians.
Successive governments saw their role as guaranteeing low government spending, low government debt and low taxes, without upsetting an economic apple cart built on high house prices, high migration and high emissions.
By and large they achieved, and have maintained the status quo at the expense of all of us.
Even with a once-in-a-generation parliamentary majority and the spark of reformist zeal, real change was constrained by the post-1984 operating system.
Experts were asked what would end child poverty and the bare minimum was done rather than tax wealth.
Reviews and reports were delivered instead of modern water infrastructure, light rail or getting Wellington moving, to keep debt below an arbitrary limit.
Reorganisations in health, water, polytechs and public broadcasting bureaucracies were pitched as drives for cost-saving efficiencies and marginal improvements rather than transformational changes that would significantly improve health, clean water, education and access to New Zealand stories. Is it any surprise they had so few enthusiastic backers?
Unfortunately, the lesson Labour took from plunging polling was that the public was tired of change full stop. I think the real message was that people were frustrated with hearing about poverty, a housing crisis and a climate emergency without seeing change.
…Gareth is 100% right.
We voted Jacinda in for transformative change, yes Covid happened and over turned the apple cart, but Labour’s innate caution and refusal to step out of the neoliberal economic straightjacket and actually reform NZs capitalism has failed.
Time and time again, from the Housing industry, the drainage industry, the Supermarket duopoly, we are not regulated capitalism in a way that creates real change, innovation and dynamism.
Labour didn’t expect to win 2017 and they didn’t expect to win an MMP majority in 2020, so they’ve had no real 100 day legislative agenda to ram through and as such have been stymied ever step by the Wellington Bureaucracy who are beholden to the Professional Managerial Class consultants who ensure the big part of town always have the upper hand in the market.
Instead of proper investment from revenue created by taxing the rich, Government has spent more money on social engineering media campaigns and a re-arranging of the Bureaucratic structures behind the Ministries to direct funding rather than actually funding the Ministries properly in the first place!
Chippy’s attempt to drag Labour out of ideological virtue signalling cul de sacs to focus on bread and butter issues is admirable, but meaningless if no one can afford the bread and butter!
If Labour refuse point blank to regulate NZ Capitalism properly, the big boys will continue to rule at the expense of small businesses.
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But you’d like us to vote them back into Government anyway?
The editor of the Dominion Post must have been on vacation the day they let that one get through!
Gareth’s criticisms are equally applicable to the Greens. I suspect that is why he is no longer a member.
However, the solutions he is proposing are still the same old Club of Rome, neo-Malthusian claptrap: opposition to economic growth, and making underpopulated areas even more underpopulated. Worse still, he specifically demands the state double down on racially-divisive black nationalism.
The (legal) corruption of the existing political parties is making a new Third Party inevitable. Both social democrats and populist conservatives have nobody to vote for, and they will never be allowed to elect a new leader of any existing party (Labour has essentially abolished their already gerrymandered leadership elections).
malthus will ultimately be proved correct. maths and physics don’t care one iota about a brown smudge on the surface of a hot rock orbiting a burning ball of gas.
The excuse Labour didn’t expect to win says Labour’s policy’s we voted on were just made up bullshit and their MP’s present at those times were morons paid to eat their lunch. And that, sadly, pretty much sums the situation up!
To have a 100 day plan expects you to have ministers who know how to build and create things. As it transpired, Labour had zip, nil, 0! Just aged uni students, people who ticked identity boxes, union hacks and a deaf amateur stock broker.
But look, credit where credits due, they emptied the jails, a roaring success it’s been and even better they’ve worked hard to keep them empty. Just don’t ask how they did it, you really wouldn’t want to know and ignore the collateral societal damage.
But on reform? Stop the bus (that may not turn up) Gareth, you’re wrong. They’ve tried to sneak through massive change however, constitutional change they never mentioned a whisper of to the electorate not once, (can’t imagine why), until busted by ACT, and toiled deep in the shadows to implement it. Willie, their only competent Minister, should win the equivalent to a CIA operative of the decade! Labour ever so casually ending one person one vote is equivalent to a regime change coup d’etat unannounced apart from a casual McAnulty drawl to say “we nailed it”. Take note Yevgeny Prigozhin, you just need weapons grade duplicity and “kindness”, not tanks!
So with that, fuck Labour. Promise what you like, no one except the terminally sensory challenged will listen, you are full of shit incompetent frauds. You will not be missed!
X-ray Yes. If Labour didn’t expect to win, then why were they in the race at all ? If they didn’t think that they’d have to do anything, they let the punters down badly, and they should sod off.
You really have a bee in your bonnet about wanting to expand the carceral state, dont you.
I would rather have more schools, hospitals and state houses.
B
We just need to get rid of the recidivist violent offenders & meth dealers that clog our prisons and channel that wasted money into things that actually benefit our society. Simple.
Unfortunately concentration of wealth in this country isn’t a myth. We also have underfunded sectors such as health and education which have led to strikes. This should really speak out at us. Strikes should be rare. Until the tax system is restructured, allowing for a Mansion Tax, an Asset Tax, Inheritance Taxation, and possibly a Financial Transactions Tax, these and other issues will crop up.
Daniel, this government has literally wasted tens of millions of dollars, hundreds in fact with nothing to show for it that could have gone into health and education. Bike bridge, light rail, RAT kits, the school lunch project to make but a few. The money is there, or was, just stop idiots like this lot treating it as a bottomless unaccountable money pit!
Thomas. When Marama suggested this a while back, she classified persons owning properties worth one million dollars as millionaires. Marama has never bought a property. Marama wouldn’t know that many of her so-called millionaires may be cash-strapped persons on fixed incomes, struggling to keep up with the repairs and routine maintenance which, unlike her, property owners have to do, and who would have had to borrow to pay the sort of taxes they were talking about then. This seemed tough on people unlike her, who’ve disciplined themselves, and worked hard over many years to provide their families with a place to call home. Too simplistic.
Home owners are also paying out for various necessary insurances, and ever increasing rates. Many, more so with higher value homes, would be mortgaged, and facing with a wealth tax on top of their mortgage payments.
To vote Labour back in would give the message that the voters are happy with the current failure to curb poverty,crime ,lack of housing ,poor health and education outcomes . I believe National learnt from their lose in 2017 and will be more aware of the voters needs if they win the election this time around. It will be close so it is important to vote whatever the choice you make .
Why dont you just admit that you want the guts ripped out of our public services?
You havent answered my question as to whether workers deserve payrises or not.
DO you own rental property? If so, did you put your rent up this year,. if yes, then you are a hypocrite.
Workers deserve pay rises if they work harder or smarter and make more money for their boss . At the moment wages are going up to stop workers leaving and they need more to get the same purchases so no one is benefiting especially the client and the employers.
I have been a landlord and charged the rate suggested by my agent.I sold both places due to my poor health and not wanting extra worries .If I had rentals now the rent would have to increase to pay increases in mortgages and rates and insurance all high due to the poor management of this government
just to watch Conservatives lose their minds is enough for me, although if you believe Luxon will deliver anything other than increases in the price of shelter, most of them have already.
An answer to your question used to be printed on every membership card of the Labour Party.
Clause IV of the Labour Party Rule Book, as drafted by Sidney & Beatrice Webb, stated:
“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof, that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”
This would be further defined in the Industrial Common Ownership Act 1976 and the Inner Urban Areas Act 1978.
Chippie takes a hit for the team.
1984 Trickle Down is introduced.
As well as imposing GST on working people, massive tax cuts given to the big end of town. And large and profitable public services are privatised so that rich people can make even more money off them.
2023 Labour leader agrees to lose the election to preserve trickle down.
Because he knows if he lets the rich keep their wealth, it will trickle down.
What a guy.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/488705/wealthiest-paying-tax-at-much-lower-rate-than-most-other-new-zealanders-ird-report
What is labour going to achieve in a fourth term that they haven’t already had nine years to do? Their leader has regressive policies and little in the way of a clear vision. My understanding of it is that he’s already ruled out a Capital Gains Tax and has no plans to tax wealth, despite the covid-19 pandemic transferring an unprecedented amount of taxpayers money to the rich in the form of business subsidies. Surely now is the time to get some of those funds back for the majority from the minority rich.
‘they haven’t already had nine years to do? ‘
Very good…as you have N.F.I…can’t take you seriously.
Sounds like Gareth is proposing a 3 child policy Abit like Cinas 1 child policy, Instead of a 6 or 8 child policy.
Because kids are really expensive and the more u have the greater the impact on the environment.
The UK has effectively had a 2 child policy for the past decade, by not paying extra welfare benefits to those with more than 2 children.
“Nobody ever posts what a new operating system should be.”
Sure they do, books and essays fill library shelves with their offerings. Current neo libertarian economics (the alternative term is intentional) is only one of several capitalist ‘operating’ systems.
Take the tried and successful system of Kenesian social democratic economics, the one that fell prey to pork barrel politicians in the 1970s allowing traction for the Chicago School:
Re-nationalise every state asset sold to private corporations since 1985. The Commons were simply looted by the private sector after Rogernomics.
Re-establish the State’s ability to finance it’s obligations to deliver universal services and infrastructure.
But it’s far from simple. Capitalism’s robber barons and corporations, local and international, will rain the fires of hell upon any government brave enough to try, and they won’t give up, look at what they did to Russia post Bolshevik revolution, and continued to do for 70 years. look at what they continue to do to Cuba.
And that is why there is no change. We are in thrall to economic overlords and too weak to even speak about it.
So intractable is the question of Child Poverty that even 300+ working groups couldn’t fix it. LOL
Could it be that the image above portrays the poor themselves? A professionally hapless underclass bred on open ended welfare whose first instinct in every circumstance is to put their hands out for more.
The only solution for that problem is to stop enabling them.
While we are evaluating pollies and looking for our stool pigeons for our dovecote; if we can fit them into our shoebox (shades of the 4 Yorkshiremen), take a look at Gareth Hughes on Jacinda Ardern.
I think we need to be so cool in our thoughts this election when we have so little to be enthusiastic about and Gareth’s opinion is balanced and positive about Jacinda. So if we can follow that approach past our feelings of frustration it would be helpful.
Not in the same pantheon as Richard Seddon or Peter Fraser for their impact on the country, but high up on the next tier. She brought in a universal child payment for parents; ushered in Fair Pay agreements for workers; healthy home standards for renters; winter energy payments for a million Kiwis; New Zealand History into the curriculum; free school lunches and period products for students, and a policy foundation for climate action.
Labour’s website documents a list of achievements much longer than this, but the last five years have felt like running from crisis to crisis struggling to take a breath. So it’s perhaps even more remarkable that she was able to deliver as much as she did.
What other Prime Minister outside of wartime has had to deal with so much and then, did it so well? We can point to thousands of New Zealanders who are alive today because of her bold, swift actions and leadership over Covid.
BB go easy on Bob he requires sympathy.
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