In a piece with headline Price of progress hurts Kiwis Fairfax
media notes…
The rampant
cost of living means two-income families are increasingly worse off than
single-income families were a generation ago – and it is threatening to put
them under.
While median
incomes and the number of women in the workforce has risen substantially, the
money that families are putting into servicing the long-term commitments of a
standard middle class lifestyle – comprehensive health insurance, a house in
the right suburb and investment in education – has soared. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/7200255/Price-of-progress-hurts-Kiwis
Being old enough to remember that far back
they are dead right, but to call it progress?
This is not the result of progress this is obvious
consequences of thirty years of decline.
The consequences of Roger Douglas’s failed reforms are now at the point
where the decline becomes terminal. The
sale of our energy companies and the Crafar farms are the signs of terminal
decline as is the widespread increase in poverty – we are selling the last of
the family silver to eat and we are chopping up the furniture to burn to keep
warm. Meanwhile we live in the most well
endowed country on the planet on a per capita basis. Given that one has to ask why we are in such
a state. Are we lazy? I would suggest
not.
We are suffering this fate for no other reason than
that we have had archly stupid, short sighted and unmoral
leadership across both business and politics since Roger unleashed the dark
side of private enterprise upon the functions of the State. We have since then had leaders of both business and politics
acting in disregard for the law and with impunity as the norm. Worst of all we have an economic ideology
dominating our society that is destroying us.
It is time for a change at the most
profound level. We need to take back
control of our society and our economy, but most of all we need to take back
control of our supposedly democratically elected leadership.
Is Labour up to it?
Labour certainly doesn't look up to it. However are they the only alternative? What about the Greens?
ReplyDeleteLike your comments by the way.
Thanks AR
Deleteit will need to be a combination of the two - if the best of both were to come to the surface i think we would have a good chance of getting the show back on balance. There is a need for more courage and vision, labour is still timid but improving - Russell Norman us definitely on the right track.
I too doubt that Labour, in its current guise, is up to the challenge of the fundamental changes that will be required. To be fair, the Greens are only slightly better prepared, in that they have less history to overcome.
ReplyDeleteThe underlying question is to what extent we will, as a species, attempt to address the challenges through diplomacy and cooperation, rather than through violence and warfare. Then there is the question of the timing.
Yes labour's history and its tired old dogmatic rant/vested interests that are as bad as any of the tory equivalents do hold it back but there does seem to be an inkling of hope. There are times when I think it is time for a Southland Island Party with a broad centrist agenda - like NZ first without winston. One day the capitalists will realise they need socialism in the same way that socialism needs capitalists - each however needs to respect the rights and roles of the other- an imbalanced greed is ultimately self defeating = the more they steal the less everything is worth.
ReplyDeleteIf the whole society can't participate equitably in society then the society and its associated wealth disintegrates. We are closing in on such a time now.
Violence and warfare only tend to benefit the elites who were the perpetrators of institutional violence in the first place. It authorises them to assert more control and to take more away.
The biggest challenges for any process of change are apathy and discouragement on the one hand and the human inability to see beyond its dogma's on the other. That is why it tends to take a crisis to allow change to happen. We haven't got tot eh crisis yet ad unfortunately we haven't got much in the way of leaders like churchill waiting frustrated but ready to sieze the hour.
There's a call to appoint you to the presidency, over at the Standard.
DeleteIt seems unlikely that we will lose much of the mass-communication technology we have today, and in doing so we retain some hope of progress through cooperation. The control of energy resources, which are essential to support mass production of food (with us being four missed meals away from anarchy and all) and to support the use of the tools of institutional violence, is where efforts must be focussed in the next five to ten years.
Really good article
ReplyDelete