I’m angry. And reading Chris Hipkin’s post below has just made it worse. Not at Chris of course, but at the cost of economic insecurity to humanity which Walter Nash talked about.
I spent this afternoon doorknocking in South Dunedin, one of the poorest and most densely populated parts of our country. People are insecure and afraid. They either have jobs that don’t pay much and they haven’t had a pay rise for a long time, or they are unemployed and can’t find jobs. They can’t make ends meet. They don’t turn their heaters on.
One family said “we can’t afford to eat meat. We used to be able to”. A lot of families said we don’t know what to do when the GST goes up. Tax cuts mean nothing.
Everything is more expensive. And they feel they are being made to pay. One woman, a sole parent with three teenagers told me she wants to work but can’t find work. “There is no work”. And she said she was being made to feel guilty for being on a benefit when there was no work anyway.
She is afraid for her kids getting jobs and being exploited through the 90 day law that means an employer can sack someone (often young people) in the first 90 days of a job. She joined the Labour Party today. Had never even thought about it til I turned up on her doorstep.
As Chris writes below (thanks Chris) Walter Nash said: “Men and women are not free to develop their own souls, to express their own individual personalities, to contribute according to their individual capacities to the world’s cultural inheritance – they are not free to do any of these things so long as the fact and fear of economic insecurity confronts them. Only when this fear is removed do they become in the fullest sense of the term a free people.
This country is becoming more and more economically insecure. What’s this government doing? Nothing but making their lives harder and making them more afraid. I’m angry.
Update: I’m so angry, I missed out the bits about the number of elderly people I personally encountered today (and they are constantly contacting my office) who are confronting losing their hour and a half per week of home help. Doing a bit of housework, preparing some meals, helping with some of the chores aorund the house they can no longer do. God help us that these elderly citizens who have contributed to our country, have paid taxes, went through the Great Depression, brought us all up and now they get treated like this at the end of their lives. Do the math! Helping people stay in their homes and lead a live with value is actually more cost effective than taking away their independence and requiring them to be put into a home. Not taking into account the human rights and human dignity aspect. I think you can tell I’m angry.
Of course I can Loota, in the same way you save your vitriol, mate, for anyone who dares disagree with you.
I see your plan though, good thoughts. You’re going to have to work damn hard for your comrades to adopt your way of thinking because the only party that comes anywhere near it are the Greens. You’re asking for a colossal change of thinking that will take a generation, and more than likely no change in government for a very long time.
Poor you A Mother
@Hilary – agreed
Simon, just interested to know whether you know what ‘vitriol’ is because I am danged if I find any in Loota’s comments on this thread.
Vitriol- “cruel and bitter criticism.”
I see logical argument and a teensy bit of irony, but vitriol?
A mere quote in context would suffice.
Hilary, Labour in the UK created a welfare state where an entire generation now believe it is there ‘right’ for a handout and a system that meant for many, staying on welfare benefits outweighed the benefits of working. You can’t have a client state (created by Gordon Brown) that has encouraged inequality. Also remember that the cuts now in the UK are in part to tackle the fiscal recklessness of Mr Brown and Co.
I’m well aware Mac1, maybe another synonym would have been appropriate. Not a chat room, apparently.
Before you launch into another one, I found this quote whilst having a read this week. A view, contrary to what you might think, a concur with (common ground perhaps?):
“What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”
The Wealth of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII
Cheers Mac1.
Might take less than that, maybe 15-20 years? But you are right, the task is monumental.
If there is to be real change a lot of it must come from the grassroots up; part of this is out of necessity since you are also – correct it is unlikely for any single Govt to last the distance.
@Simon: from the very same book…
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.”
Clare … do more door knocking and you may end up less angry. Go down the sunny side of the street and worry less about what Chris said about what Walter said. You may meet some happy people or you may meet so many who hate the NACTS so much that a Lab-Green-NZFirst- Maori victory is a certainty. Get em galvanised.
Simon, are you aware what a ’synonym’ is because had you used a synonym for vitriol I would again have asked the same question. Where is the ’synonym for vitriol’ in Loota’s remarks on this thread because I am danged if I can find them.
What I have found out is that you use words carelessly and you are in danger of being thought of as being careless in thought as well. And quoting Adam Smith won’t change that.
On the other hand, if you like that quote of Smith’s, compare the two quotes from Walter Nash in the post “From the Archive: Walter Nash” next below this post. We’ll convert you yet.
Creating more jobs by expanding home help to an hour a day might cost but it would increase the quality of life for many people – not just the elderly but also those who could then work these new jobs. My elderly frail father-in-law gets 1 1/2 hours a week home help and it really isn’t a lot of time at all. The cleaning gets done but that is it. With extra time, beds could be changed, washing done, shopping got, meals prepared etc
Agreed.
Clare thank you for posting this because it is what we need to hear from out politicians. Showing that they actually care about people. That it had an effect is clear from all the posts you managed to bring out against it.
For those posters who came on to criticise you because of it ignore them. Believe in what you believe in and work on making Labour have policies when they win the next election that reflect that. Labour has never been perfect and it never will be, New Zealand will never have high enough growth to satisfy the likes posting until we have slavery again. They will conveniently ignore when we get to that point that our growth rates pathetic as they are under the current government. Being angry at “rich-pricks” isn’t helpful but being angry that there are people in New Zealand who cannot afford to live is important for our politicians even if they are less in number than other countries we should not tolerate there being any. There are many ways we can grow the pie disadvantaging our citizens is not a good one.
I have had a small taste of it myself recently. While most people ok in my area of Wellington rates are $80 a week for some people due to GST and a rise on residential rates of almost 6% while commercial rates rise 0%. How that is a fair sharing of the pie I will never understand. There are people who are on invalids benefit, retired or coping with a large family can’t afford to live in a house they already own. It is sad that we can allow people to get that badly off.
Rob says: ” in my area of Wellington rates are $80 a week for some people due to GST and a rise on residential rates of almost 6%”
My heart bleeds for them, until I calculate their homes are worth about $750k. They must really be on struggle street. Oh wait, do they have $750k homes on struggle street?
“One of the similarities between the US and NZ as shown in Michael Moore’s movie is that there is a huge wealth transfer from the poor and low paid to the rich. The borrowing in NZ for tax cuts for the well off, while increasing GST, are two examples. It is now happening in the UK too with drastic cuts to disability and other allowances. All this helps dismantle the welfare state and increase inequality, which is not not healthy for anyone, as shown in the book the Spirit Level.”
@Hilary, that simply isn’t true from 1900 to 2000 the standard of living went up sevenfold in the US, the issue is to Dow Jones Industrial Average went from 66 to over 11,000 or a 2000% increase… This shows that people didn’t learn the lesson very well of saving and wisely investing in business in the long term is the route to greatly enhanced prosperity… I’d rather live in a society where 100% of the people save and invest and we progress together rather than live in a world where we believe wealth is something being stolen from the poor by the wealthy and nobility is taking it back – with force if needed… With that said would we rather the average standard there hadn’t risen seven times over..?
What Loota talks about is an inevitability IMO… 99% of the people (including politicians) have little or no idea how messy the energy train wreck we are entering into is about to get… Countries that shift to regulating triple bottom line returns and eliminating (not merely reducing) taxes on renewables and sustainabile companies now, have a chance of keeping their living standards at something like todays, future growth will consist solely in recycling and effciency gains…
Comparing where we are today with 1900 is interesting for historical reasons, perhaps. Also I’m not very comfortable with the idea of “standard of living” as it is predicated on owning things like any car, any fridge and any TV; these items are so cheap now they are meaningless as indicators of financial wherewithal.
It made sense if you went back to the 1960’s where only wealthy families had two television sets, for instance.
That’s what a rise in living standards is Loota, goods getting cheaper and it does so because we a society, a species, have invested in two things:
1). Greatly expanding our use of energy
2). Greatly investing in effciency (it has doubled in the Western World since 1970)…
Clearly the first cannot go on forever, the second can a lot longer but growth is going to get a lot harder when available energy not only stops growing but falls…
Growth controlled by collapse is not very clever.
A recipe for destruction.
Our leaders appeal to the public with goals of growth.
Who are they talking too.
However if thy say it enough times then it becomes repeated as axiomatic.
But what about being happier and being more satisfied with life at home and in the community? Why is that not incorporated into ‘better standards of living’? Surely they are more important metrics than having a fridge/freezer or a second/third TV?
I don;t imagine you’ll disagree with me at all JMH, its just such an unbalanced way of measuring things.
Its almost as if the ‘living standards’ measure of life improvement in Western civilisation was drawn up by capitalists at Westinghouse and General Electric who wanted people to buy, buy, buy?
Oh yeah…they probably were.
Why are we still referring to it as a valid measure of modern progress then?
@John W, I don’t really know exactly the point your trying to make there…
@Loota, We shouldn’t be I guess, government’s focus on it because it is linked to electoral success…
However, we do know that people who do not have enough food, who do not have a warm dry home, who do not have water and do not have a say in how their community and finances are run are not happy but once those basic conditions are met there is very little correlation between wealth and happiness…
Yeah mate I read you, down here in Dunedin a warm dry home is the very definition of happiness.
Why is it, when in opposition a party always talks up what the people want but when in power they do the complete opposite or find it not do-able for some reason or another?
Given what I have seen of politics over the last 20 odd years National and Labour are the same party, both have been selling assets, both have done more for business than the people.
Clare, speaking of the poor and vulnerable and how hard it is for them to survive is great when you are in opposition and I ask you to look back to the last term your party was in and the policy developed to make shelters for the disabled into businesses, they are now struggling and losing staff thanks to reductions in govt funding and now that they have to be businesses means these shelters are falling apart at the seams.
I also ask you to look back at the constant price hikes from our power companies due to lack of regulations and controls, this from assets we the citizens are meant to own, and now look we have ETS added and now with National tinkering we are looking at more price hikes, at a time when wages are frozen.
We have problems with the booze industry, what did Labour do about it? Instigate a review by the Law Commission but its now left to the right wing to come up with decisions, of which its the usual nothing.
It’s great talking it up in opposition isn’t it…
Well said Mark.
The day that I see polly’s vote to make their wages a fixed percentage of the average wage and similarly fixed for the unemployed and oldies is the day I will believe they have got their snouts out of the trough and are working in the best interests of all their constituents.