Level 3 phase 2: Winners & Losers
No one knows what the fuck Level 3 step 2 means, but it was the first hint that Labour’s strategy is working.
There is only 1 winner and many losers.
WINNERS:
Jacinda & Labour – The political challenge for Labour over Covid was always going to be transitioning from eradication to containment.
It was always going to be very hard for the virtuous and the holy amongst the Left who had draped themselves in the medals of their self sacrifice to accept any fatality.
Indeed the most enlightened amongst the Left, the woke, deemed any death of a Maori as a ‘modern genocide’.
When Jacinda broke from the Holy Church of virus modelers and included compliance, mental health and the economy in her considerations, Wellington Twitterati General Neale Jones bellowed it amounted to a rambling surrender note…
…unfortunately for the woke and Jacinda’s many detractors on the Right at the ZB Troll farm, the low hospitalization rate and mortality rate we are seeing because of our high vaccination rates suggests that once we pass the peak in December, NZ could be through our Delta outbreak and return to some semblance of normalcy without massive loss of life or illness.
If this is what happens, if Jacinda has charted her own course and gotten us through this, the voting public will gratefully re-elect her.
LOSERS:
National & ACT – All they have had for 18months is the hope Covid breaks out or Jacinda gets stuck in an impossible stagnation of lockdown. If she steers us through this, National & ACT have nothing to use as political leverage any longer. By having no credible rebuild plan, they are left politically irrelevant.
Maori Party – The Maori Party described Labour’s policy as ‘modern genocide’ and that it was designed to be a ‘Squid Game’ murder Disneyland. Those screaming Jacinda’s plan amounts to a modern genocide of Maori best be hoping there is a vast tsunami of death coming – I mean, Labour’s ‘genocide’ hasn’t reached triple figures yet, that seems a very, very, very small genocide
AntiVaxxers – About to get very very very sick. The wider community will not give a fuck about their feelings and they will feel persecuted.
Death Cult Capitalists – They demanded Jacinda reopen and allow Covid to kill for the free market, Labour have shown them that public health trumps private wealth and that new re-evaluation of the State’s obligations will overshadow every public policy position from now on.
Aucklanders – We have no idea what the fuck Level 3 step 2 means. All we want to know is when the fuck we can get out of house arrest!
Small Business – It’s clear many in Auckland won’t survive Christmas.
ZB Troll farm – Where will their spite and vitriol have gotten them if Jacinda manages to get us through this? They will sound even more out of touch.
Conclusion:
I think Jacinda has done an incredible job navigating us through this nightmare and the lack of gratitude and hate and crazy conspiracy madness vomited on her is an indictment on us as a fractured social media crazed culture of resentment, not on her.
Covid deaths per population:
US 1 in 451
Italy 1 in 457
UK 1 in 479
Spain 1 in 540
France 1 in 566
Austria 1 in 789
Germany 1 in 874
Turkey 1 in 1, 211
Canada 1 in 1, 305
India 1 in 3, 008
Australia 1 in 15, 494
New Zealand 1 in 175, 607
But sure let’s shit on Jacinda’s response!
If Jacinda liberates NZ from our economic straightjacket while avoiding a mass public health emergency, voters will gleefully and gratefully vote her back in.
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Jacinda saved the old and made them richer. The young would have been fine and she made them poorer. What a hero.
It would have been good to put the billions spent on wage subsidies and resurgence support directly in health system instead, or housing. How many houses would that have built, I wonder
Interesting scenario. Be mindful that a large? percentage off those billions would have to be channeled to the populace to enable them to live. The state decided to channel through employers. The other option would be to instigate distribution through a UBI scheme and bypass employers directly.
The quick and easy option was through employers. Setting up a UBI for all, through WINZ, would take time, with time being in short supply.
As Robertson said, it was not a perfect scheme (distribution of capital to the populace through employers) but swiftness of action made it inevitable.
The other consideration was how to keep business (as the countries largest employer) viable. If not supported you would end up, long term, with everyone on a UBI but no taxation to pay for it.
Sort of a circular argument.
Now a marxist would say it would be an opportune time to nationalise every business. However Ardern is not a true socialist (despite the “comrade” speech) so an even more unlikely scenario. For the the problem with nationalising every business is that it is easy to do, except that you cannot nationalise intellectual property. Good luck trying to convince a previous owner of a nationalised business to remain at the tiller to provide steerage.
It would be VERY easy to have given the money to the people, IF that was the genuine aim.
Everyone with an IRD number would get the money directly from the IRD, via their bank account, on file with the IRD. That would take about 24/48 hrs.
All others can explain why they should get the money and are NZ citizens/residents/work permit, but have no IRD #.
Yes it would be easy but time and resource consuming. Not everyone has an MyIR registration so would need to create that and enter their bank details. Some 2.5M wage earners all trying to establish their MyIR login and enter their bank details could be an interesting experience.
As a self employed contractor naturally have an MyIR login. Do wage and salary earners need a MyIR login?
All fully plausible and it would certainly catch out the tax dodgers. 80% of your last tax filed return when having done nothing but cash sales would see many with very little in the hand.
Many have them, many do not. Younger tech savvy type employees only tend too, though I don’t know nationwide numbers, just anecdotally via my job in the industry. It has definitely been pushed by IRD over the transformation years. Many may also have myIRs from the days of Woohoo tax refund outfits as well
I admit to some Jacinda bashing when the Elimination strategy was dumped and I’m still skeptical about “Living with Covid”. There may be no going back of course, but even that is not a given, in these days of confusion and adjustments from Govt. For now, the response looks better than I had hoped, with Level 3
still keeping Auckland locked up and the the other parts as well. This has kept the lid on the main outbreak, so far. Yes well done Jacinda and Co the plan is working, too bad Auckland is losing it’s shit. All the eggs in one basket – Vaccination, as long as Jacinda doesn’t “open up” before those targets are achieved it may work.
There is a high level of restraint being exercised at the moment and I just hope the Natz/Act and their media floosies don’t sabotage that as well to force an early opening. Martyn is right, as usual, but it’s early days and I hope this covid response holds well. Jacinda has taken a lot of shit lately, a lot from Auckland
and TDB commenters lost the plot. Happy days.
“There is a high level of restraint being exercised at the moment and I just hope the Natz/Act and their media floosies don’t sabotage that”
They are keeping their tinder dry for the next co-ordinated sabotage attempt, on 01 December.
And yes we are losing the plot in Auckland. 11 weeks and counting under house arrest. Compliance is slipping, fatigue is high. I have had some really low moods lately. Most of us a double vaxxed. The traffic light system is a cruel joke that punishes those of us who follow sane health advice, for the inaction/ hesitancy of an antisocial minority. What a waste of 3 months of 1.5 million people’s lives.
Perhaps stop looking at it as the 2nd coming of jesus and simply look at it as just another health issue we deal with, like all the fucking others, every year. The spanish flu is still with us but we don’t get all rhubarb over that. Variants of the H1N1 (spanish flu) virus and its cousins killed between 350,000 in a good year and a few million in bad years prior to vanishing with the arrival of COVID. Woodstock was held in a pandemic FFS and it was called the summer of love. Now you talk to your neighbour or don’t get vaccinated and you are the scum of the earth.