Elections time. And lo, a blog.

It has been a long absence, but looking at my last two blog posts they have as much relevance now as they did then: the key difference between National and Labour laid out bare, months ago and still holding true. Say what you like about my profligacy, my blog posts age well.

People have to decide whether they are really benefiting from John Key's NZ (many people are - certainly those earning 100s of 1000s). If you have a family income of 100,000 or less, you really need to take a good look at how important a "pretty nice" prime minister is versus real policies that will have a specific and direct impact on your lives. No vague promises about "better for the economy, so better for you..." That always equates to more dosh for the rich. We've been sold that line by various parties for 27 years.

BTW, I don't buy the "oh, this poor government, they've done well with so many disasters this term." Christchurch sums this up.
There's no disaster in Christchurch. It's not that bad. The government doesn't think its too bad. That ruined, joyless city will climb back to its own feet without any help.
How do I know that? Because our government sees no need to put a levy on our country's super rich. That's what you would do if a city, a country, was in dire straits. That is why we have a state. To organise key resources to meet the needs of all in a crisis. But no, more important the rich - again, I mean 100s of 1000s - have their tax cuts.

So yeah, life is pretty bouncy in Aotearoa these last few years, at least for a few - just look at the PM's photo album. He's gonna look back on this time and laugh and smile...
But at election time, the real question is: how are you all feeling?

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My browser happened to open to the nzherald.co.nz this morning and unfortunately clicked its way on to a Brian Gaynor column. I know, I should have known better, but I began writing a reply and thought, nah, damn - bloggit. It got me, here, so some good came of it.

The gist was that some individuals cheat welfare off the state so there should be no welfare provided by the state. Such sparkling insight. Such genius. The fact that democracies-are expensive, inefficient and allow room for individual immorality - that's what makes them the opposite of authoritarian - doesn't appear to twinkle in the recesses of complacent, well paid commentators of this ilk.
And how about this gem:

"...one of the features of a welfare state is that it creates powerful interests that will fight to the bitter end for their benefits. This includes voting for political parties that protect their interests."

Face-palm. How out of touch are these oldies? Where's Metlifecare when you need them?
Change "welfare state" to "corporatist state" and you have a far closer model for the current NZ system: since 1984. That there are noisy proponents of "welfarism" is just resistance to the prevailing dogma and ideology: typified by the blithe bankerism of the current government - that if govt expenditure is kept small and private wealth massive and consolidated in the hands of the few, all will be as best as possible for all. Monetary feudalism.

This is not empty rhetoric. The same applies everywhere. The Rugby World Cup was budgeted on a shoestring until the opening day disaster - then the National Government threw fat wads of money at it to save face. I have it from sources that 80 paid and drivered buses were on standby doing nothing for each weekend after. Where's the economic efficiency there?
Same with Christchurch. While Japan's government did its job and spent whatever was necessary to house its people after Fukushima, CERA and EQC had months and months of demolitions and inspections on their books because the government would not fund more hours and work. It was horrendous seeing the heads of these two organisations on TV taking the bullet for National, saying they were doing all they could - and they were - because National didn't want to spend money.
Which, shock horror, is exactly what government is there to do.

National, and ACT even more so, are unable to cope with this basic fact. This is why NZ has been drifting for 3 years. This is why the richer are richer, the poorer are poorer. This is why government policies are ineffective and why issues such as superannuation remain unclear. Key and his cohorts don't like the idea of government governing - except to protect and grow their own personal wealth.

That's why commentators such as Gaynor are relics of a time that no longer exists. They still see things as if welfarism rules our society, when anyone with a decent education, or has tried to kick off their adult lives in the last 27 years, knows we are in a corporatist society: because corporatists like Key back to Lange and Douglas have been in government for the last 27 years.
Clark and Cullen put on a few bandaids but did not change the corporatists agenda, but betrayed those hoping for real change - the misperceived middle class who are in far worse straits than statistics would show. They voted for Key, and the rest is history: tax cuts for the rich, GST for the rest, and a slow bleeding of funds from government services like ACC and Education and inaction on basic cost-of-living so the only solution is to "sell them all off."
Who benefits? Banks. Corporate share-trading institutions.

Yeah. Sounds like Welfarism to me.

State of the Nation 2 - Why privatising public assets will hurt most NZers

So we've heard John Key's "vision" for New Zealand. Unsurprisingly it is one where the state is further stripped of the vital resources it needs to support a just and healthy society, and selling off public good assets we will need forever is seen somehow as a good business decision. It is, inevitably, a transfer of shared public wealth into a few private pockets.
Tumeke pretty much nails this point.

It's true. The idea of New Zealanders investing in their own infrastructure is not a bad idea; the problem is, in the current laissez faire deregulated environment, the inevitable result is a disaster for the vast majority of New Zealanders - ie, anyone who has to keep an eye on their bank account and actively save for a house retirement, etc...

An example. You know how you have your favourite brand of biscuits? And they're good and they're cheap, and not too unhealthy either. But then the company that makes those biscuits lists on the stockmarket. The biscuits are quite popular, so it's a good buy for investors. They buy shares which earn them more money.
However, these investors can afford MUCH better biscuits, so they don't care about the product. So they get demanding of their biscuit company. The new CEO of BiscuitCo. promises to the market even greater growth in profits next year. To do that, he shrinks the size of the packet.
The next CEO makes the same promise. To achieve it, he raises the price up a bit.
The next CEO has huge boots to fill, but he's up to the challenge. He decides to change the recipe, using cheaper ingredients, and is so popular with the shareholders of the now mammoth BiscuitCorporation that he even sends production offshore to save more.

The real problem with shareholders in a deregulated - that is, there are very few laws limiting what corporations can and can not do - is that companies quickly lose sight of who their customer is. They can get huge injections of wealth on the stock market, by cutting the quality of their actual services they're supposed to be providing to the community.

Now, that's okay (kind of) with biscuits. Sad as it is, you can stop buying them, change brand. Phew. But food in general - well you need that. Another safe investment on the sharemarket. Who doesn't feel like a victim when you go to the supermarket and see bread/cheese/meat has gone up again?

And so Mr John Key's brilliant idea is to hand our power companies - again, something we all need - over to shareholders. The shining model is supposed to be Air New Zealand and how prices have fallen for their flights. But excuse me? It may have gotten cheaper Wellington-Christchurch-Auckland, but regional we get repeated engine failures, cancelled flights, less flights. Hamilton to Wellington costs 3-4 times the price from Auckland! We're treated like cattle.
And don't mention the new credit card charges they've introduced just because they are a monopoly and they can. They are not legally bound, not regulated, to treat the consumer with anything like a sense of justice and conscience.

That's why public goods - things everyone needs, like power, food, housing, clothing, communications, transport - need to be regulated, if not in government hands. The law is supposed to codify those morals, for all of us, that's what it's there for: including corporations.

So. We have power companies, who are farcically supposed to be in competition with each other even now. Be warned. At the moment they send people door to door, hoping to sign us up, promise a $50 credit or something. That's their main pitch, trying to get more customers - more "market share".
Well. If the power companies are privatised, even to only 49% as promised, the real issue is not foreign ownership; the companies will forget about you, the customer, and primarily be interested in wooing shareholders. And the best way of doing that is raising prices in every tricky way they can. Just like BiscuitCorp.

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It's like I was saying yesterday about the tax system. The government takes far too much tax from the VAST majority of us, and nowhere near enough from a very wealthy few. Because off this, we scrape and gripe and struggle, and learn to distrust, even hate government. But in a democracy, the state is the one institution that is supposed to be there standing up for all of us. We need it well-funded - yes, slow and clunky sometimes, that's what democracy is - but it needs money to make sure we all have a fair go. If you are struggling to save, or get out of debt, or buy a house, or dream of keeping a parent at home with the kids like your parents had, shrinking the wealth and health of our state is actually against your interests:

Think about where most of your money goes. Is it to the government? Or is it to a few food giants? A bank maybe? An oil company. A telco. A power company. Privatisation takes power from the state - from all of us - and gives it to companies who already control where most our daily dollar goes.

Overall, I think the difference between the two party's was well-represented by images we saw of their audiences for Goff and Key's speeches. Goff spoke in a community hall to an audience of all ages, ethnicity, classes. Key spoke to a conference room of black suits; and no, they do not represent the entire business community. Just that very elite end of businesses, that like to pretend that what is good for corporations is good for businesses of all sizes in our country, and everyone.

That is not democracy.

As far as the state of the nation goes, we don't need politicians to tell us. We each need to look at hard at our own lives, and think about where our money goes, how much we've saved, how many hours we're working, how many hours we see our children, whether we can afford children, whether we can afford a house - whether we can ever really see ourselves getting a decent job. And start to question. What is fair? What is just? Things have been like this for more than 25 years. Why hasn't some government done something?

Then, it's fair to start getting mad.

State of the Nation 1 - $5000 tax free a start, but not enough

I'll defer a "Fantail" state of a nation for another day to clear some of the must with a comment on the latest over at Tumeke on Phil Goff's State of the Nation. Bomber's report was interesting and personal, and strategically on the button. Specifically:

Goff's real trump card is his first $5000 tax free for all NZers. This impacts most on those who are earning the least and will be funded by a new top tax bracket that will be in the high 6 figure area so that professions not considered top tax bracket fodder don't fall foul of it.

The $5,000 tax free may be a trump card, but the difficulty Labour face this year was demonstrated in TV1's coverage of the speech. Their report didn't cover how Labour would pay for it: instead they cut to John Key saying that costly, overseas creditor "pixies (3x)" would pay for the cut - breaking up any the Labour narrative with what amounts to a bald opposition lie.

This is of course unsurprising coming from the national broadcaster, who have spent the last two years treating Key like a neutral political commentator and the vast majority of their stories focussed on taking pokes at the out-of-power opposition party instead of questioning the very in-power government. I remembered my jaw dropping when this soft-soaping started, the very first government policy release coming from the ACT party (appropriately). It was about on "cutting red tape" and passing legislation to allow people to opt out of the building code. (I reckon most of the good people of Christchurch are probably quite happy with about all that annoying bureaucratic tapes and codes stuff bout now). Mark Sainsbury interviewed on this Rodney Hide with all the rigour of a Swedish massage, and very little has changed.

Besides the media living in its own self-reflective balloon of public perception, The Youth Idol element of Key is definitely there - first time voters tend to "rage" against the incumbent government, and many young people know no government other than Clark's. Of course the real rebellion is to vote as Left as possible to try and get our society somewhere back to a reasonable centre again. Largely, that demographic is there for the taking, if they can be motivated. Most are at worst ignorant, if not poor, angry and scared.

Finally, the over 50K cadre should not be ignored. They're not homogeneous, and from my experience, household incomes have to reach 50K just for 2 people to be healthy and debt free - and that's renting, no retirement, no savings. That the tax brackets are marked at 14K, 48K and 70K gives a false impression of what is rich and what it costs to live in our society.
Markedly, it punishes and causes gripes for those struggling under 70K; and it groups all those people earning 70K with those earning millions, as if they have anything in common, in lifestyle or obligation to the community that has supported their success.

Phil Goff was right to point to those 700 multi-millionaires who grabbed another $1000 a week from John Key's tax cuts. That's 36 million from the wealth and health of our public services - gone.

So what's the state of our nation?

Let's see what the PM has to say later today.