The social carnage our brutal monopolies can wage against the poor thanks to our under regulated capitalism is far larger than we have previously suspected…
Opponents of wealth taxes and housing and energy market reforms often complain those reforms would be too expensive for taxpayers, but not reducing our worst-in-the-world housing and energy costs is already costing taxpayers over $6.6 billion a year.
Solving the failures in our housing and electricity markets would reduce the taxpayer burden by that much, let alone unleashing massive improvements in public health, productivity and real wages.
A new official report quietly buried by the Labour Government in its final months in power identifies over 300,000 people are now living in housing and energy poverty so severe that they are unable to afford the power needed to stay warm in winter, have warm showers or cook their own food. Figures on the number of families who turn off their own power because they can’t afford to pre-pay aren’t even collected.
The report documented people who lived in homes without power because of bad credit records or their pre-pay plans had run out of money, forcing them and their children to sleep in cold, mouldy homes and cook food on fires outside.
This housing and energy poverty leads to thousands of unnecessary hospitalisations and hundreds of deaths from chest and skin infections, costing $1.14 billion each year in extra public health costs. That’s on top of income-related rent subsidies, accommodation supplements, First Home Buyers grants, progressive home ownership grants, emergency housing costs and winter energy payments totalling $5.5 billion per year.
The report recommends any new Government reform the electricity market to focus on improving affordability, rather than gentailer profits and dividends, along with monitoring disconnections from pre-pay power and forcing retailers to abide by a consumer care code, which is currently voluntary, along with increasing funding for insulating and retrofitting homes and appliances.
…the sheer scale of misery our system generates for the poorest amongst us should be a nationwide shame, but then again, so should the 600000 who need food banks each month, the 24 717 on the social housing wait list, the million spent per day spent kettling beneficiaries into unsafe Motels, the hundreds of thousands living in poverty, our suicide rte, the hundreds of thousands of domestic violence incidents that are eclipsed by ram raids.
Each should be a national shame, yet the idea of over 300000 unable to use electricity and being forced to cook on open fires is shocking in a supposed first world country.
The cost of refusing to fix the under regulated capitalism that underpins property speculation is $6.6Billion per year, this is a rigged casino economy ruled by Real Estate Pimps who are mercilessly abusing their political power to generate legislation that empowers them while robbing renters.
There is a naked class war erupting in NZ and we don’t have the political vocabulary to express that dimension because the woke middle class activists have stolen all the oxygen in the room with their identity politics virtue signalling.
Meanwhile the assault on the poorest and the most vulnerable begins at pace.
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Martyn – Sobering reading…shame on the Labour Government
Yet another legacy of our worst Government ever,Labour.
[our worst Government ever,Labour.]
Except of course for its predecessor, The John Key government. That was the regime who had people living cars -Labour, at least, housed the homeless in motels. And which regime was it that flogged off a large part of our electricity assets, probably bringing about price rises in that sector; yes, you guessed it, it was John Key and his lot.
If every Tom, Dick or Harry, who fancies himself as a landlord, can borrow a large sum of money from from the bank and purchase an investment property, the extra demand for properties that this creates is probably one of the factors pushing up property prices in the first place. Labour has put put in place measures to try and discourage this activity – making the mortgage interest non deductible and increasing the brightline period. Which regime is that wishes to reverse the measures? Of course, it’s the incoming bunch of cretins who call themselves the National Party.l
Hmm all of that under a Labour govt most lead by the kind and caring Saint Jacinda.
Why do people keep voting for them? Expecting a different result next time?
They had a majority, knew how bad things were, and did nothing except mouth empty platitudes and spend millions on vanity projects like that cycle crossing over the bridge.
But the NZ muddle classes love poverty for others! It makes them feel superior!!
Its not just the rich that loves the poor.
Den. I don’t think so. I think the “ haves “ don’t really care at all. They see others as a separate breed who don’t really impinge particularly upon their consciousness. The twain rarely meets.
The wealthy people employ the rich people to shit on the poor people.
This can’t be correct Martyn, Labour has been in power for 6yrs!
Must be some mistake eh?
The near-total collapse of the labour movement means that there isn’t anyone left to even widely report such things to the public, let alone organise and fight actual campaigns.
This is probably compounded by the best leadership talent in working class areas being forced to flee the country.
The lack of public anger is a bit puzzling. Even the upper tier of the working class, the so-called white-collar middle strata (or ‘brain workers’), are doing rather poorly.
Don’t forget: Labour got rid of low user energy rates and the left said nothing!
Go bloody you @ Martyn Bradbury.
I scare myself sometimes with the suspicion that there are deeper, darker forces at work here. That it’s no longer simply a matter of sociopathic narcissists exploiting our good nature so as to be seen being awful wankers just because they can be. Do we belong to someone else but we don’t yet know it?
Our last two Prime Ministers gave less fucks than a Las Vegas hooker would to a homeless vagrant.
Adern went hyper-smooch on the back of a new disease in an act of shameless self promotion then when it got rough she ‘did it’ and quit. Then, we get the pink, stooped hand wringer in the form of The Chipkins. He was about as dynamic and charismatic as a freshly road-squashed hedgehog after being run down by a car load of weight watcher Born Again Christians speeding to Mac Donalds. He couldn’t even lose with flair. He quietly puffed about like those weird breezes in a cinema then he faded like a polaroid to God only knows where.
And now? What, is it? I mean, fuck! What is it that we have now? What is that!!?? Luxon is the name of a ’60s vacuum cleaner, not for a Prime Minister of Aotearoa / New Zealand! He’s a short vacuous husk with a verandah toothed smile. He sold deodorant! He was the boss at Air NZ. A goat with a typewriter could CEO up our only airline. What were people thinking when they ticked that box? Were they trying to remember how to tick? Couldn’t they get the cap off the fucking marker? Did they think that sucking the ends off the ballot paper was enough?
It won’t be because we were dynamic and war-like but got our arses kicked anyway that’ll be our demise, we’ll slowly fizzle to nothing like a spit in a hot griddle. We’ll flake so much that a light gust of Nor Wester will blow us into the ocean where even ocean creatures who’ll eat anything won’t eat us because we have anti-flavour. That’s a flavour that sucks the life out of all other flavours until only Levin and its clock tower remain standing.
We pasty pavlova people will get what we crave. We’ll get fuck all, then we’ll wake up to discover that we’re now someone else’s. The poor bastards.
The 600,000 waiting for foods monthly? 300,000 waiting for a roof over their heads? That’s almost a million people whinging and whining while self abusing and savaging each other as they allow themselves to take the boot from 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires with personal wealth in excess of $50 mil each and four foreign owned banks who’ve literally invaded us and now steal $180.00 a second in nett profits 24/7/365.
There should be less time thinking about our pointless politics and more time spent on trying to figure out what the fuck’s wrong with us.
The line that it’s too much cost for taxpayers to fund social justice is all to do with framing the debate. There is just as much money in the world as their used to be but it’s gone to the top2 or 3 percent. Everytime we say “taxpayer” middle class people think they’re going to be funding it and they freak out because their wealth has gone down in real terms as well.
We should be looking at a financial transactions tax and we should not do an inheritance tax unless it comes with a complete overhaul of the economic system. A lot of middle class families are trying to preserve what money they do have so their kids can own a house.
We have to get the middle class on the right side of the debate.
The middle class _know_ they’ll be paying for it because we don’t tax the rich, but they hope to become rich so don’t want the rich taxed. Meanwhile they’re doing ok, so why can’t the poor?
I think the middle class is quite confused.
technically GST is a financial transaction tax.
No ity isnt.
GST IS A CONSUMPTION TAX ON GOODS AND SERVICES.
A Financial tax taxes finance movement.
There is the difference.
A financial only needs to be 0.01 or 0.001% to bring in mega millions daily .
While a GST tax on a smaller range of Goods and Services has to be over 10% and still not bring in the same amount.
The banks and Financial services fought against it tooth and nail when Jim Anderton’s Alliance party suggested it when GST was being mooted.
” A new official report quietly buried by the Labour Government in its final months in power identifies over 300,000 people are now living in housing and energy poverty so severe that they are unable to afford the power needed to stay warm in winter, have warm showers or cook their own food. Figures on the number of families who turn off their own power because they can’t afford to pre-pay aren’t even collected ”
The fact that LINO hid this report shows how far they have deviated away from truly representing the under six figure salary classes and quietly continue to support the privatization backed by upregulated capitalism they are still so addicted to.
This from no right turn one year ago.
There’s a major report out today from 350 Aotearoa, First Union and the CTU about how National’s privatisation of the electricity sector has led to entirely predictable outcomes of price gouging and underinvestment:
Meridian, Mercury, Genesis and Contact Energy paid out $8.7b in dividends to shareholders between 2014 and 2021, which was more than the $5.35b they earned in profits over the period, their report said.
The former three companies had achieved that by increasing the book value of their assets by more than $10b to reflect “high and rising electricity prices” while taking on extra debt, they said.
“What we are seeing here is asset-stripping that delivers disproportionate benefits to a privileged few at the cost of residential consumers and global warming.
“It’s doubly ironic that this is possible because of the investments made over decades by the taxpayer, yet it’s the poorest New Zealanders who are paying the price in higher energy prices.
” Essentially, the big gentailers borrow to pay dividends, while deliberately under-investing in new generation, ensuring both ongoing scarcity and that fossil generation remains part of the mix, keeping prices high. Because the thing we want from our electricity system – cheap, reliable, renewable electricity – just isn’t as profitable as expensive, unreliable, and dirty generation. Its a perfect example of how markets don’t care about social outcomes, and why the electricity system needs to be fully in government hands.
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2022/11/privatisation-screws-future.html
An article elsewhere on the internet informs me the cost of living in Spain is 1/3 of NZ.
Well past time we enforce rules to promote competition in just about everything in NZ.
Jacindas Labour were a complete and utter failure.
Shame she overseas living in fake glory. She should be here helping to fix the issues she helped create.
” Are the Irish twice as rich as us?
The incoming government wants to grow the economy and attract more foreign investment.
from The NZ Initiative (NZI) think-tank
” A leading business lobby group is urging us to emulate Ireland, which had a GDP the same size as ours 30 years ago, but now has a GDP twice as big. The statistics are sobering, but is that the full picture? ”
” Former Fonterra executive Fraser Whineray – the head of the delegation to Ireland – highlighted Ireland’s GDP-per-capita surge from 1990 in the foreword of the report – but added this:
“From the outset, it is important to note that Ireland’s GDP figures should be treated cautiously. The presence of multinationals, tax strategies, contract manufacturing, asset depreciation and other statistical nuances can skew these numbers,” he wrote.
That skewing impact on GDP is not highlighted in NZI’s media articles about Irish Secrets, which are also published in the report.
” The British publication said Ireland’s corporate tax regime made it a hub for about 1500 multinational tech and pharmaceutical companies.
Their income inflated Ireland’s GDP, but most of it was funnelled abroad and should not be fully counted when measuring the size of Ireland’s economy, The Economist said.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018914892/are-the-irish-twice-as-rich-as-us
Jacinda was way too soft on the power companies. She should have gone in hard, and split the generators off from the retailers. Clark broke up Telecom and internet prices fell.
I Agree.
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