Yes Jacinda, universal services & tax obscene bank profits – here are other policy ideas to save you from losing 2023 election
Yas Queen!
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has called on banks making record profits in the billions of dollars amid a cost-of-living crisis to assess their “social licence to operate”.
National say they support the rhetoric but not the lack of action, saying commercial banks should be investigated as part of a broader inquiry into monetary policy through the pandemic. The Green Party meanwhile say it is further evidence a tax on excess profits – “windfall tax” – is needed.
Ardern spoke as today Westpac posted after-tax profits of over $1 billion, and last week ANZ $2.4b.
As TDB has been pointing out for sometime, universal provision of services that takes cost directly out of peoples lives is better than tax cuts and better than welfare increases.
MSD and WINZ maliciously claw back money from any welfare increases so beneficiaries barely receive half of what they’ve been promised and tax cuts benefit the wealthy.
If we are to be returned to power, we have to dump the neoliberal caution and actually do something to materially better the lives of people rather than alienate them with middle class virtue signals.
If you think the worst inflation in 30 years is bad now, wait until the impact of the Ukrainian war and broken supply chains in China hit.
The economic recession is coming, and all the Left has to offer are pronoun cancellations the militantly correct pronunciation of Te Reo and having anyone who doesn’t love cyclists sacked from their jobs.
Poor people aren’t sitting around the table arguing over pronouns or cancelling each other for incorrectly pronouncing Te Reo.
The woke middle class outrage olympics on social media have had a terrible impact on how voters view the wider Left. The woke are endlessly tying themselves in knots over esoteric issues that have little to do with the lived struggles of the majority of Kiwis.
Land Rights for Gay Whales is somehow issues the Left end up championing while the cost of living crushes us.
Rather than this woke nonsense, we urgently need material upgrades for people.
Let’s ensure taxation is targeted at the corporates and the wealthy while subsidising the costs of the poorest.
I present the 10 point Left wing Economic Justice Plan for Aotearoa New Zealand.
1: Feed every kid in NZ a free nutritious and healthy breakfast and lunch at every school using local product and school gardens with parents paid to come in and help.
2: 50 000 State Homes for life built using the best environmental and social architecture standards using the public works act to seize land and immediately start building satellite towns using upgraded public transport hubs.
3: Free public transport plus vast infrastructure upgrade for climate crisis.
4: Doubling welfare payments and student allowances minus any bullshit claw backs from MSD plus Living Wage universally adopted as minimum working wage.
5: GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health plus a sugar tax.
6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.
7: Debt cancellation – student loans, welfare overpayments, beneficiary debt, easier debt cancellation.
8: Taxation focused on corporations like financial transaction tax, windfall tax and first $10 000 is tax free.
9: Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements) plus universal union membership.
10: Properly funded public broadcasting with TVNZ advert free and merged with RNZ alongside properly funded journalism through NZ on Air with more money for the Arts and Science. If you can’t have good public journalism, the right wing media will destroy these other 9 advances.
Don’t tell me we can’t afford any of this, we just shovelled $60 billion into the pockets of property speculators and we blow a billion each year on consultants, we can shovel a tiny fraction of that into the mouths of the poorest.
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In fact, bank profits are up 8-10% depending on the bank and in one case that was due to the one-off sale of a business asset. Much of the windfall comes from the transient nature of interest rates at the moment and the treasury’s printing of money during lockdowns.
I find the Aussie banks provide an excellent service and their charges are most reasonable. But then, I avoid credit card debt at all costs, AS SHOULD WE ALL.
The NZ Treasury doesn’t issue money.
The following produce should be free of GST
Fruit and vegetables both fresh and frozen/canned
Bread milk dairy products eggs
Protein such as meat sea food
Baking/cooking essentials such as flour, sugar also cereals which must be offered in bulk non brand as in the old Bin Inns
Personal health and cleaning essentials again unbranded.
All supermarkets should be required to have separate GST and no GST areas with the latter being the area you enter first.
The 6 aisles of alcohol, soft drinks, confectionery and processed food should be at the back.
Just some practical thoughts that obviously would never fly past the vested interests and lacking pronouns or a te tiriti perspective wouldn’t attract any political support either.
Now we just have big business shrills in our universities and polytechs.
Expert defends banks after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern questions large profits
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/11/expert-defends-banks-after-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-questions-large-profits.html
Woke tard meets big business at Massey.
Massey University bans Don Brash from speaking
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/106068816/massey-university-bans-don-brash-from-speaking
Don’t forget you no longer need to know anything to pass a NZ tertiary degree anymore – it’s about paying for a degree now.
Cheating scandal exposed: NZ university students paying Chinese company’s ghostwriters to write papers
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/cheating-scandal-exposed-nz-university-students-paying-chinese-companys-ghostwriters-to-write-papers/B6BUP44KGBCUTTJPG2VSGYXAKI/
Over the past few decades they got rid of most of the true academics from NZ universities and have mostly replaced them with neoliberal woke shrills as the chancellor, removing academic freedom and living the high life in parnell mansions.
There are no longer any real standards in secondary and university education for a number of reasons. Most of the intelligent gene lines have left the country since Muldoon was elected, and it became a landside of departures once Judith Collins became Minister of Policy and Billy Boy PM in 2016 and Jacinda in 2017. Jacinda and Judith Collins represent the same party the proles, peasants and police. As in East Germany in 1948 -1989, NZ has different parties, but they all have the same policy, we are all supposedly inherently equal. Doubtlessly there are some MPs Peck, Stargate, Van Velden and Swarbuck who think differently, but they do not know what planet or party they are on and coming from extreme privilege and admired by all and sundry in their own world have no idea of the inherent nasty stupid, one dimensional nature of the average Hutt or North Otago resident
The quality of education has also deteriorated because teachers, lecturers, tutors and professors pay rates and IQ have declined massively. In 1972 the average secondary teacher had an IQ of about 12O-125 it is now 105-109. IQ is not linear so teachers in the top global European 5-10 percent with 90-95 percent capability have replaced by people hardly in the top quarter of the local population and usually with only 10-20 percent thinking ability and are not even intelligent ( bottom rank intelligent, marginal intelligence would be 110-115 IQ the minimum needed to get the prev1986 UE). So we now have teachers who can’t even think. Not to mention community leaders like Len Brown and John Tamihere who failed SC Maths and Science in 1982.
It would be difficult to assess whether the quality of MPs has deteriorated as the age range of MPs, Sex, Ethnic nature and percentage of alcoholics has changed radically. In Mulddons day, half the MPs were alcoholics. Some of them still are of course which is observable if you walk thru the James Cook or Courtenay Place.
Charge each of the windfall banks, supermarkets, petrol and power companies a 10% one-off donation to get NZ through an undoubtably bad year to come. Together or individually, they can be associated with one of your above suggestions: “New World GST Free Food”, “ANZ School meals”, “BP Student debt relief” etc.
Now that is real community spirit.