The changes happen slowly enough that we fail to perceive them, but alternating generations suffer the consequences of National’s destructive austerity or enjoy the fruits of Labour’s rebuilding of social supports.
Children raised during Labour’s policies become teenagers in time for a National government. Those raised under National’s austerity will become teenaged problems for Labour’s social systems. When they have no respect for the property of that wealthy owning class, larger prisons, and more Police become a demand to change back to National. I’m going to call that a working hypothesis. The people of New Zealand are alternating between two parties that are both incapable of addressing the inequality that generates the other problems.
A more equal society has smaller prisons, less crime, and less need to worry about violent gangs.
What we know about crime is that it is inextricably linked to poverty and inequality. We incarcerate about 170 people per 100000 population, co-equal with Australia and second only to the USA (an astonishing 655 per 100000).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80897-8
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009411902200016X
Every policy concocted or endorsed by ACT, National, and NZ First will make NZ less safe in the long run, and barring a much longer period of recovery in which those neoliberal parties are prevented from breaking things again, we will see this cycle repeated over, and over. What happens when the climate wrecks what remains of the economy is undoubtedly going to be interesting, in the worst possible sense of the word.
An excellent cartoon by Polyp with some modified text, illustrates the problem NZ finds itself in with its current choices. Private money that the lower taxes manages to free up does not go into productive enterprises. In NZ the passive income available in the property market is preferred. This makes landlords and especially their bankers the wealthy owning class, and everyone else runs in the insane circles defined by neoliberal economics.
Labour, for its part, seldom comes into power with a plan, or a proper understanding of how money works. Almost as clueless as the neoliberals, it balks at taxing wealth, shies away from taxing Capital Gains, and is utterly lost when it has to consider where the money comes from. As a sovereign issuer of currency, NZ cannot run out of money, but because long habit and the propaganda of the owning class have made the self-funding of government unthinkable, it is never thought to be possible.
Surely it is time for someone with a more complete understanding of both the Environment AND Economics to have a turn?
Just a reminder. Russel Norman pointed out that we did not have to borrow.
Those notable communists Henry Ford and Thomas Edison pointed out a century ago, that a sovereign currency issuer does not have to borrow.
Professor Kelton pointed out in her book The Deficit Myth, that we do not have to borrow. MMT is actually pretty old stuff, but we think it’s new because of owning class propaganda — that we have to borrow from them.
John “the pimp” Key, who now works for one of the banks we are borrowing from, laughed it off. The media duly reported the laughter. The Greens were ignored.
As is usually the case when this happens, the Greens were correct.
After all, the owning class already owns the media.
Making Money Real 
Leave a comment