Government and Free Market Cheerleaders claim highest unemployment rate ’tis but a scratch’
The disconnect from reality that the National Party and Free Market Cheerleaders live in vs the economic vandalism we are all experiencing in real time can not be highlighted better than the explosion of justifications we are hearing that are reframing the terrible unemployment numbers as a wonderful moment to be alive.
Like Trump and ICE, they are telling you to your faces that the economic malaise you are experiencing is false.
We all saw ICE agents execute two innocent people while they told us they were domestic terrorists.
We all are experiencing the true damage of a Cost of Living crisis exacerbated by the economic vandalism of this Government but the Government is trying to claim that the Unemployment rate being 5.4% is actually fantastic!
That the 6.4% unemployment rate in Auckland and 5.8% in Wellington is wonderful.
That the 11.2% unemployment rate for Māori and 12.3% for Pacific peoples is somehow an economic miracle.
The margin of error from our Free Market Cheerleaders sounds so delusional in the wake of the result…
“data out this week should show the unemployment rate dropping for the first time in four years on the back of the strongest quarterly growth we’ve seen in about two years of reporting.”
…the free market cheerleaders all have to be wide eyed optimists to help awaken the animal spirits of capitalism and any doubting Thomas or nervous Nelly pessimism is viewed akin to being a Marxist cancer PermaBear amongst the Business journalists and Economic pundit class.
Here’s the fucking reality.
This hard right Government with their anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-Beneficiary, anti-disabled, anti-renter, anti-worker and anti- environment agenda that strangles the common good for their donors interests is so wide eyed when it comes to free market mythology that they believe the state cutting back allows the market to step in and do it cheaper and that’s why they destroyed Labour’s Infrastructure pipeline in 2024!
They are such ideological storm troopers and acolytes that they don’t care about the social carnage their free market experiments cause because that decision alone has generated a cascade failure throughout the economy! It saw 140 000 Kiwis flee NZ in 2 years, you can’t lose that many skilled workers and not self mutilate your economy horrifically!
The extreme social policies that have driven homelessness and poverty has a real world impact and all the free market cheerleaders and National Party politicians are trying to convince you that the burning village has an upside – lower energy costs.
I’m not sure being told be Economists and rich politicians that the good news is you won’t be paying any power bills now your village is in embers is the positive hot take they think it is.
It is that mentality that highlights how out of touch these rich pricks are.
These are the same people who told us to ‘survive until 25’ until we got to 25 and it was worse!
Bernard Hickey makes the point that the previous state cutbacks to deal with the 1990, 1997, 2007 and 2020 recessions only worked because the level of private debt and business debt was so low, however it is far higher now meaning households and businesses can’t step in to pick up the cost of the cut backs.
There is a fundamental problem with the strategic thinking of this Government when it comes to the economy – User Pays doesn’t work if the users can’t pay!
You have unemployment lifting as the IRD crackdown lifts liquidations to a 16-year high, and yet we are being told that the piss we are feeling is actually a refreshing shower.
You can’t borrow more than Labour and then blame Labour’s borrowing as the economic problem!
National have borrowed $14billion for tax cuts we can’t afford while hollowing out Public Service budgets.
It’s Austerity for us, Socialism for their rich mates.
