The Lesson from the 40 Year Neoliberal Experiment for the NZ Political Left and can they win back the male vote?
As the NZ Political Left come to terms with the Labour Party’s 40 year neoliberal experiment, one lesson emerges.
The Left walked way from economics.
We became so convinced that there was no alternative, we allowed neoliberalism to over run and destroy everything egalitarian in this country.
We gave up on class and economic justice for the low hanging fruit of identity politics and social justice.
That meant the Left were great at Free-the-nipple rallies for Vegan cycling Mommy bloggers but not so great at challenging the neo-liberal hegemonic structure.
The most dangerous aspect of Identity Politics is the millisecond poor white people see themselves as the victim and that is what Trump/Vance represents, white working poor America turning on the promise of reform from the Democrats that never arrived.
Thanks to woke social media activists, the white working poor have been enlightened by how much that middle class elite hate them and social media hate algorithms and loneliness does the rest.
Neoliberalism – leave it in the 80s. from Wellbeing Economy Alliance NZ on Vimeo.
This new attempt to wake Kiwis up to how manufactured their poverty really is thanks to the 40 year neoliberal experiment follows on from work from Bruce Jesson and Professor Jane Kelsey…
Professor Kelsey warns New Zealanders about the dangers of a “cocooned”, neo-liberal mind set in the free public lecture entitled “Transcending Neoliberalism: Moving From A State Of Denial To Progressive Transformation.”
Neo-liberalism is associated with free-market capitalism and the widening gap between rich and poor.
“The world is changing rapidly in very uncertain ways,” Professor Kelsey says. “A neoliberal mind-set of living for ourselves today and hoping tomorrow will look after itself permeates government, business, and many Kiwis’ psyches.”
Professor Kelsey suggests that New Zealand risks an economic, social and political catastrophe unless we are prepared to confront unhealthy symptoms that include a shallow productive base, dangerous levels of household and rural debt, chronic failure to invest in infrastructure, environmental unsustainability, and over-dependence on China.
She also addresses changes New Zealand needs to make to move beyond neoliberal, free market capitalism by applying values of truth, integrity and social justice to the potentially harsh realities of the 21st century.
…25 000 on the social housing wait list, 600000 needing food banks monthly and a suicide rate that we always ignore.
The 40 year neoliberal experiment has been a spectacular failure and we now have the data to prove it…
Human Rights Commissioner: NZ’s quality of life record ‘alarming’
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- New data shows New Zealand is failing on every social and economic human rights metric
- The country is not delivering adequate rights to education, health, housing and work, based on what it could be achieving with the money available
- When it comes to the right to food, New Zealand’s record is steadily declining
- Māori, people with disabilities, and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds are most likely to experience human rights violations
…The danger of woke middle class identity politics replacing class left analysis is that the politics devolve into a micro aggression deplatforming campaign that alienates rather than builds solidarity against free market capitalism.
The true demarcation of power in a democratic capitalist state is the 1% richest + their 9% enablers Vs the 90% rest of us.
Identity Politics simply cements into place a caste system of intersectionism alongside a terminal tribal affiliation to your skin colour, gender or identity.
There needs to be far more common ground and shared values.
The minefield of social justice and its never ending pure temple deplatforming of everything that triggers it will only drive people further from the Left in an intense economic downturn because you can’t eat virtue signalling aesthetics.
We need a new taxation and regulation model to stop the neoliberal rot. We need to remove the yoke of taxation from the 90% and reset it to the 10% richest.
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
And in 2021, 20 people owned more than 50% of the entire planet.
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
This isn’t progress.
Unfortunately the Left are culturally too busy micro aggression policing everyone under the rules of the new woke dogma while the Right are silently harvesting that alienation for more neoliberal exploitation.
A Left Yin and Right Yang of petty spite and broad malice locked in a death spiral on a melting planet.
We either attack the economic settings of this madness now and fight to retain our egalitarianism or we are doomed to live in the shadow of its greed.
We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to corporations.
The Holy Trinity of woke middle class dogma is:
All white people are irredeemable cross burning racists
B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL women that ALL men are realists
Anyone who supports Free Speech is a Uniform weaving Nazi who hates the Trans Community
REMEMBER – there is no wriggle room there.
How the Left wins the next election will be dependent on their ability to win back malers who have been ostracised and alienated by Woke Dogma, it’s possible but only by moving away from Pure Temple Politics to Broadchurch solidarity and you do that by focusing on the Economic Justice.
To date Labour, Greens and the Māori Party seem incapable of that leap.
The 40 year neoliberal agenda rolls on.
The problem is, what does a left wing economics look like in a world of scarcity and resource and energy shortages. Unless the left drops the hopium, it’ll get seriously bitten if it doesn’t engage in that reality.
There are answers from economics. I think they start with a now relatively forgotten figure, Prof Wassily Leontieff, and they roll from there
It’s unbelievable to have to say this, but men don’t want to be dependent on the state for their regular income. It really is as simple as that.
Make it possible for people to have decent livelihoods and get rid of employer subsidies like working for families and you’ll revive the spirit and interest of men.
It’s unbelievable to read this Alex. I wonder if you write from a female or male perspective ? It seems popular to have names messed up at present with Alex, Sam having changed.