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I think this is an excerpt from an ironic novel about the tribulations of life under quixotic Ayn Rand’s modern living beliefs.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/540342/former-business-owner-says-house-on-line-over-34k-tax-debt
Keaton Pronk, an insolvency practitioner at McDonald Vague, said there had been a “huge jump” in Inland Revenue activity recently, as it chased down tax debt.
He said the department had doubled its applications to wind up businesses compared to the same time last year.
Last January, IRD was responsible of 31 of just under 60 winding up applications and the year before 22 of 56. So far this month, it has initiated 65 of 85.
Pronk said that was not surprising when it was trying to recover tax debt from individuals that stood at about $6 billion in June.
He said it was likely that the change was IR returning to a more normal pattern of activity after a few years of disruption due to its own systems being upgraded and then Covid.
“I suspect businesses got used to a lighter approach from the IRD over Covid when the directive from above was to ‘be kind’ and businesses were receiving a lot of government support – wage subsidy, small business loans … the current approach is probably more in line with how they approached matters historically.
And Pronk doesn’t sound like an ordinary Kiwi name. Could we be receiving the ministrations of last rites from overseas denizens? Down on your knees they demand, you simpletons.
This, from Chris Trotter at Bowalley Road, seems to me to be pretty well correct according to the reading and thinking I have been doing, including reading some of two of Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s books.
https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2025/01/which-sort-of-people-liberal-versus.html
Liberal democracy, while hostile to popular political pressures bubbling-up from below, will countenance all kinds of fundamental changes without demur – providing they are initiated from above, and can count on the active support of the business community and the mainstream news media. Palmer’s hostility towards Trump, and his obvious fear of Trumpism, stems from his conviction that the fundamental changes Trump is promoting are the wrong sort of changes, and that they are being pursued on behalf of the wrong sort of people.
This is the crux of the matter: that liberal democracy, far from enacting the will of the people, is dedicated instead to enacting the will of the right sort of people. The populist impulse, which Trump embodies, arises when the wrong sort of people are finally convinced that their urgent concerns and fundamental interests form no part of the liberal-democratic agenda – and never will…
,,,Populism, especially right-wing populism, invests all the power of an electoral/parliamentary majority in a single political leader because it no longer trusts the bona fides of the sprawling political class among whom power is traditionally dispersed. Populism eschews traditional politics, because, among populists, traditional politics is perceived as the problem – not the solution.