Yardley & Hosking: The 2 mikes on poor people & wealth creation
Mike Hosking and Mike Yardley, the two Mikes if you will, both put out columns last week with views on wealth creation and welfare that belong in a Dickens tale rather than modern commentary.
Hosking launches one of the oddest defences of our super exploitative foreign education sector, so odd you kinda end up suspecting he’s getting paid by them. His ‘argument’, and I’m using the word ‘argument’ as broadly as humanly possible, is that ‘hand-wringing elites’ now run NZ and they want to end Dairy farming, tourism and the foreign education industry because those same ‘hand-wringing elites’ secretly hate success.
Here’s his conclusion…
Just how is it we want to make a living? Just which industry is it we want to support and nurture and grow? Or is our default position one where everything eventually becomes a hassle and a problem and needs taxing or closing?
The fundamental equation is not that complex.
As a small, isolated nation at the bottom of the world, we sell stuff. A holiday, some milk, education. We give the world what they want. That’s how the bills get paid. Why are we going out of our way to find reasons to make that equation so problematic?
…but it’s not just ‘being a hassle’ though is it?
Our diary industry produces huge climate changing pollution at a time when the planet is dangerously warming, they steal fresh water and they pollute fresh water all to create a product that is incredibly expensive for the domestic market to buy and which has synthetic milk and meat industries getting ever closer to making them redundant altogether.
We have a tourism industry that is over whelming our airport infrastructure and creating gridlock, it is creating freedom camper literal shit fests, and it is also being used by tourists as an opportunity to purchase land here.
As for the international education sector, check the headlines Mike..
Student visa fraud: ‘It’s not about education’
Warning over ‘corrupt’ Indian visa agents
Immigration scam: ‘Corruption, organised crime’ with student visas
15 corrupt bank managers identified in student fraud
…looks like it is going swimmingly there Mike.
But what about all the money these industry generate?
The ‘wealth’ going to Dairy right now is being used to pay the enormous debt Dairy Farmers have been conned into taking on board for what is now becoming a sunset industry. Tourism doesn’t provide anywhere near the kind of money we think it does, and how much of the money generated by international students also exacerbates the struggle of the poor who have to compete with them for low paid jobs and rentals?
Mike Hosking is defending outmoded economics just so he can have a rant about ‘hand-wringing elites’.
In short, it’s basic thinking with all the sophistication of grilled pork chops and boiled spuds.
Which makes it a damn sight more intelligent than Mike Yardley’s offering last week.
Yardley is unhappy the Greens are going to stop punishing women who have kids but don’t name the father.
What Yardley fails to comprehend is that the entire draconian fuckwittery of child support requires far more attention than just letting women off the hook for not naming the father and that Yardley’s preferred public floggings mentality is utterly counter productive and part of the problem.
The sexist penalty regime used against Fathers to calculate child support is eyewaterinw in its sexism.
In 2017, Fathers owed $616,716,864 in child support, but the penalties applied to that child support are a staggering $2,200,191,735! This is a punitive approach that is not working, but for Yardley all that matters is more punishment.
We have one Mike who wants to keep propping up failed economic models and another Mike who wants to keep propping up failed welfare policy.
How do these guys keep their media positions???
ICYMI, here’s the footage aired on the first of this month where Mike Hosking, on live TV, gives a not particularly subtle middle finger (I’ve watched his shit show enough times to know he NEVER points like that) to the new government after a piece on how it wants to scrap the “Three Strikes Rule” (with regards to prisons). IMO it approaches a breach of broadcasting standards (especially since TVNZ is the state broadcaster). To call this guy a “professional” would be a massive insult to actual professionals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0XF0MSN7ig
https://postimg.org/image/6wstp0ugp/
‘How do these guys keep their media positions???’
They keep their positions because NZ’s corporate media is owned by the finance industry.
The 2 puppet Mike’s are repeating what their owners want them to say.
Simple.
“Yes men” is all they are.
The new face of “The hollow men”
Seems like even the Nats considered getting rid of the sanctions on women who are on benefits, and who refuse to name the father of their child:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11709028
Stupid title this:
‘Law penalising one-night stands may be wiped’
” The governing National Party, with 59 seats, is also reviewing the law. Acting Social Development Minister Hekia Parata said the minister Anne Tolley, who is overseas, “has asked for more information from the Ministry of Social Development on the effectiveness of this policy”.”
But when Labour does it, then they change their tune again:
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/national-criticises-scrap-penalties-solo-mums-refuse-name-childs-dad
‘ National criticises scrap of penalties for solo mums who refuse to name child’s dad’
Who by the way cares what those Mikes think and say?
Problem is, they are the typical media types who kept the Nats in power for nine years.
“As for the international education sector, check the headlines Mike..
Student visa fraud: ‘It’s not about education’
Warning over ‘corrupt’ Indian visa agents
Immigration scam: ‘Corruption, organised crime’ with student visas
15 corrupt bank managers identified in student fraud
…looks like it is going swimmingly there Mike.@
Let’s face it: When Steven Choice created his monster MoBIE, he turned Immigration into a business through various vertically integrated entities (many of them shady operators) all clipping the ticket. As was his intention.
Many of those entities are reliant on ‘churn’, or throughput of people. And of course Steven Choice believes in ‘growth’ at any cost.
He didn’t consider the downsides or consequences – unsurprising though in a man with no ethics.
– Most of all treating people as economic units subject to exploitation.
– Diminishing tertiary standards in the tertiary sector (we’re now to believe its all been fixed)
– Transferring skills, experience and expertise in various sectors to (in many cases, near slave labour) immigrants THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN. Thankfully the new coalition intends doing something about it. HOWEVER!!!! let’s not now simply tip out the exploited immigrants who now have the expertise to train and mentor our own unemployed.
Mr Steven Choice managed to achieve all that by way of cronyism in his monster organisation, and under-resourcing various agencies such as NZQA, INZ, the Labour Inspectorate/Worksafe, Immigration consultantcy oversight, etc.
– And when you get the new government recognising the need to increase the number of Labour Inspectors whilst MoBIE’s National Manager of the LI assuring us we had enough (not a few weeks beforehand), the problem is clear.
– When you get NZQA overwhelmed, ditto
– When you get the Labour Inspectorate telling us they only had the capability to investigate ‘systemic’ exploitation rather than individual cases of perpetrators exploiting workers, the problem is clear.
– When you get the operators of the shoddy PTEs (one or two convicted) also having links to Immigration Consultancies and tight links to offshore entities pulling rorts, the problem SHOULD HAVE been clear.
High time to target the exploiters and charlatans, NOT the exploited.
Both little men, with small brains, but with very big mouths.
They even need to sit in high chairs, pretending to be big.
People keep referencing Hosking and his clickbait output – how many people actually watch? What age group/s? Which socio-economic stratum? And – how influential are those people? (World-famous in two streets?)
And will Hosking ever be the man to lead the charge on promoting safe sex to men? Or gunning up the blokes to pay for their results instead of sitting back smirking and fingerpointing?
We might as well make use of his ‘appeal’, surely?