Boomer King raises rates – hasn’t fixed Auckland yet
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has signalled more rates rises in the coming years, along with a raft of cost-cutting measures including likely council job losses, scrapped cycle lanes and defunding earthquake strengthening and road renewals as part of his proposed 10-year budget.
A preview of the mayoral proposal for Auckland’s 10-year budget – which will go to an Auckland Council budget workshop this week – has been provided to the Herald. It endeavours to implement “significant financial restraint” on the city.
Most alarming to Aucklanders will be the mayor’s assurance that rates will have to increase in the short term.
Wow, the Boomer King Mr Fixit is already out of ideas past selling the Airport and stopping orange road cones?
No one wants to talk about the true reason we have crippling roading gridlock and explosive rents because in New Zealand we only focus on the symptoms and never the underlying problem.
The problem of course is mass immigration and no taxing of the rich to pay for the infrastructure required to cope with that mass immigration.
The Woke Left view any discussion of migrants that isn’t positive as xenophobia so the Left can’t talk about the underlying problem of mass immigration or risk getting cancelled and the Right benefit from exploiting migrant labour because our country is addicted to a low wage economy, so they have no interest in mentioning it.
On a burning planet, we need degrowth Capitalism using Think Big Economic Sovereignty to make NZ sustainable.
What we get offered up is globalist free market mantra. Both National and ACT (and to a lesser degree the Greens) see throwing open the immigration flood gates as the solution to tepid GDP growth.
It’s what Key did for 3 terms and it inflated GDP while causing infrastructure gridlock and skyrocketing rents.
The reason we have a vast under investment in water infrastructure is because Local Government won’t upgrade a system put under immense stress by Central Government’s open door immigration policy and low wage economy addiction.
Suburban home owners are fine with this mass immigration policy and infrastructure gridlock because it pushes up the untaxed house valuations they have gotten used to gaining year in and year out.
Neither Central Government nor Local Government want to have an honest discussion with voters about higher water rates and higher taxes.
Someone has to come up with the $150billion over the next 30 years to keep up with the expected population growth from the mass immigration policies of both Labour and National.
ACT and National point to the labour shortage pain crippling our economy and pretend importing cheaper labour is the solution when that was the problem in the first place!
We are addicted to hyper tourism, property speculation and a low wage economy by using international labour flows.
We have become so blinded by free market mythology we refuse to acknowledge short sighted lazy immigration and a user pays view of essential services has caused the issues we have now!
We are addicted to a low cost labour force and force our domestically trained teachers, nurses and Drs offshore to repay the student loans we saddle them with!
The bitter harvest of user pays is biting us now and all the right have to offer as a solution is more cheap labour, crippling public transport and an extension of user pays!
Congestion charges and Tolls are a means to privatise the roads so that only the wealthy can afford to drive on them.
Without massive investment in free public transport, putting in privatisation models that create a gated community user pays culture over roads the taxpayer has paid many times over for is a political crime against the poor!
Watching the Boomer King drown in problems he can’t solve is glorious.
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It would need a Mike Treen length post to cover this one…but I’ll have a go anyway in the form of bullet points.
• Capital and Finance Capital roam the globe at will 24/7, while labour mobility is heavily restricted, with the tap being turned on and off at the boss class’ whims and requirements.
• Migrant labour is needed in NZ because at 1.6% non Māori/Pasifika birth rates are below replacement level, and there is still a generational underclass residue from Roger’n’Ruth that was never retrained, just discarded.
• Labour stopped migration and mass tourism during peak COVID, so it can be done.
• Taxing the wealthy is the only way out to fund the necessary infrastructure and services for today.
• A basic income is needed because of the volatility of the capitalist system, if there is less purchasing power as people are sacked, or in precarious work then who gunna buy dere stuff? Low wages equals lowered consumerism–but higher debt of course for some.
• Eco Socialism in a form of a border controlled Green AO/NZ is the likely future as the rest of the world bakes.
New Gens will definitely have the numbers in 2026 to swat the boomer remnants aside–if the community and political organisation is in place.
Migrant labour as I understand it is there to fill the gaps – particularly skill gaps that we can’t fill ourselves. I haven’t noticed there was a huge shortage of shop assistants for instance. And of course there’s always the ubiquitous farm workers “great little workers” – of course because with one phone call they can be sent home. The problem is that migrants increase the GDP. And I suspect that’s one of the reasons they let so many in.
“Define woke. Depends who’s using it.
a) Culturally aware.
b) Insufficiently bigoted.
It’s not that hard.”
“Nobody wants to work” – incorrect – nobody wants to work at the wages you’re paying.
Maybe we need to start 501ing dropkick Aussies (or any nationality that seriously breaks our laws) to counter the ridiculous immigration flood that started with National in the 1990s, and has continued unabated through various Labour/National regimes.
Improving wages (and improved conditions) might help the unskilled labour shortage – rather than importing this labour.
We also need to start taxing farmers for the damage they do to the environment – and reward the few that appear to be trying to improve the environment – e.g. subsidies for leaving land fallow to allow for nutrient regeneration rather than flooding the land with fertilizer.
Another option might be to implement a UBI that starts from birth (partially paid out to the person at age 20) and get rid of all benefits – keep NZS.
Just some ideas that unlikely to ever take off in the current neoliberal hegemony.
At least the New market car park s are easy to get in and out of. A 3 hour wait is quite good by Auckland standards.
A demographic Ponzi scheme.
I thought woke meant anything babyboomers didn’t like
Giant surprise, our boomer king’s answer is more privatisation…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/503510/mayor-wayne-brown-proposes-auckland-future-fund-to-help-stem-rates-hikes
We have been in denial since Sir Dove Myer’s time. Gridlock can only be solved by huge investment in public transport. Massive investment is required and cheap fares. The rewards, fewer cars on the road reducing the cost for new roads, and less foreign fund expenditure on imported fuel, and less expenditure on carbon credits.
We continue to believe in selling the family silver to pay for projects and debt. Once sold it will end up in overseas ownership and cause ever increasing amounts of our wealth flowing offshore. We have become a modern-day serfdom owned increasingly by foreign financiers.
Wilsons car parks are a great example of privatisation, and money flowing off shore.