Dear Mr. Trotter,
I thought your article about the reasons people like me have turned away from Labour interesting, but ultimately unpersuasive. For my family it is not that Mr. Goff and his mates try to force some psuedo-liberal world view down my throat (we are a bi-racial family for example, like many workers, and have no issue with bi-culuralism). It is that Labour offers no left wing difference - there is not a single policy that labour has which opposes the policies of the capitalists. It seems that Goff (and you, with respect) miss the obvious; we are left wing and we want left wing policies. We do not want a hanger on from the Roger Douglas cabal who we all know agrees not so deep down) with the policies of National. Opposing the sale of assets is midly interesting; what about nationalising the failed banks and insurance companies? Opposing the increase in GST is mildly interesting; what about the promise to reduce it and to pay for that by increasing income tax? Saying you like consultation and democracy is good, but why did they vote for the Canterbury rebuild act? Why are we not being convinced by Mr. goff that doubling the minimum wage will be a direct and immediate boost to the economy? So don't concern yourself so much with your worry that gays are taking over the world; we are not voting Labour because it seeems no longer to want the workers to take over the world. Simple really.
Thank you
Monday, April 18, 2011
Saturday, December 11, 2010
User Pays
As a community, what are our politics in New Zealand, what are our public ethics (if that is a real term)? The question occurred to me as I sat through another another committee meeting with those paragons of all the virtues, the New Zealand business men. As always I left the meeting feeling spiritually and intellectually deflated. I wondered why I find these people so unstimulating; after all they were all, without exception, successful, wealthy, driven etc. All the best qualities for a human, or so we are now taught. And yet they seemed dull, envious, whiney, grasping....Are these not the characteristics of left-wingers like myself? According to the New Zealand Herald they are.
The particular event that precipitated my wondering was a "discussion" (more on this later) about billing for services. Should services, say, be a shared cost or an individual cost? Take medical care, and the use of Pharmac as a bulk purchasing instrument. A quick calculation showed that these result in a cheaper, more efficient system, which reached more people than the alternative, the American private insurance system. Cheaper and with fewer losers. I made a huge mistake; I laughed when men and women at the meeting proposed in all seriousness that we adopt the American system. I was made to understand that this was a War on Sin and that no cost was too high to ensure that each person was made to pay for what they consumed individually; that there should be no community payment. I was even lectured on green issues; only by making each person pay for their own consumption could I ensure that people didn't waste! If people have to pay for their own health costs they will take better care of themselves. I looked at the man who spoke, as he puffed on a cigar, clutching his huge belly filled with fats. I asked if an individual bill would make him focus on his health. He said that it wouldn't because he was very, very wealthy. However it would make poor people attend to limiting waste, and it is after all the poor who need that discipline...
The discussion widened. I did my usual adolescent thing of arguing by reductio ad absurdem - "So" I said "As an Aucklander I should not have to pay towards the roads or health care of the West Coaster?" Quite right, was the answer. "So presumably we should not all be paying for the rescue of the trapped miners?" Now I was being silly; it would be unreasonable to expect the mining company to pay for this, some things must be a community responsibility. Things like the bail out of the banks and finance companies. Things like the bail out of the Hobbit. Parliamentary salaries. Policing to protect property, although not to protect citizens from violence - that should be a private cost. And so on.
Anyway, it started me wondering when we adopted the Thatcherite notion that there are only individuals, no societies. When did we drop the old Kiwi attitude that we were one (small) country and united we stand, divided we crumble into the role of slaves to the powerful. Why did we swap the notion of equality to the notion that we have a monied aristocracy who "deserve" to have all the money?
When I talk to my children about free health, free education and so on they stare at me as if I were an aboriginal talking of the dream time - a mythical time that probably never existed. And yet it did; and within my short life time too. So the change must have happened in the last thirty years.
So here is the central question: are we members of a community or a disparate group of competing individuals, owing nothing to each other? If you say the latter (waving "The Fountainhead" around) then where do you say Polynesian society fits into your brave world? A primitive hang-over from tribal times which they will grow out of, or something Europeans and Americans can re-learn from? Do you say that if you are willing to have resources shared then your individuality is reduced, or enhanced? Sarah Palin-Key-Brash-Hide-Douglas would seem to say that any penny taxed reduces that tax-payer to a slave; whereas I am totally happy that my work can be used constructively to smooth out the slumps and booms which are the only (and doubtful) "gifts" of capitalism. And finally ask yourselves this; why do those clever people of the right, those that believe in the power of humans to solve every problem simply give up like faint-hearted Victorian ladies at the thought of planning a society and planning for the future? Why do those who dismiss all religion (when you look at the religious right they actually denounce most of Christ's teachings as communist) have this weird faith that so long as people are allowed, encouraged to indulge their individual greed without thought for anyone or anything else that things will inevitably come right and improve?
When did we stop being New Zealanders and become Yankee clones? Roger Douglas; it cannot be said too often, this is the locus of the infection. We are to blame for believing him, but he brought the infection into our house. So why did we give him a knight-hood instead of a prison term?
The particular event that precipitated my wondering was a "discussion" (more on this later) about billing for services. Should services, say, be a shared cost or an individual cost? Take medical care, and the use of Pharmac as a bulk purchasing instrument. A quick calculation showed that these result in a cheaper, more efficient system, which reached more people than the alternative, the American private insurance system. Cheaper and with fewer losers. I made a huge mistake; I laughed when men and women at the meeting proposed in all seriousness that we adopt the American system. I was made to understand that this was a War on Sin and that no cost was too high to ensure that each person was made to pay for what they consumed individually; that there should be no community payment. I was even lectured on green issues; only by making each person pay for their own consumption could I ensure that people didn't waste! If people have to pay for their own health costs they will take better care of themselves. I looked at the man who spoke, as he puffed on a cigar, clutching his huge belly filled with fats. I asked if an individual bill would make him focus on his health. He said that it wouldn't because he was very, very wealthy. However it would make poor people attend to limiting waste, and it is after all the poor who need that discipline...
The discussion widened. I did my usual adolescent thing of arguing by reductio ad absurdem - "So" I said "As an Aucklander I should not have to pay towards the roads or health care of the West Coaster?" Quite right, was the answer. "So presumably we should not all be paying for the rescue of the trapped miners?" Now I was being silly; it would be unreasonable to expect the mining company to pay for this, some things must be a community responsibility. Things like the bail out of the banks and finance companies. Things like the bail out of the Hobbit. Parliamentary salaries. Policing to protect property, although not to protect citizens from violence - that should be a private cost. And so on.
Anyway, it started me wondering when we adopted the Thatcherite notion that there are only individuals, no societies. When did we drop the old Kiwi attitude that we were one (small) country and united we stand, divided we crumble into the role of slaves to the powerful. Why did we swap the notion of equality to the notion that we have a monied aristocracy who "deserve" to have all the money?
When I talk to my children about free health, free education and so on they stare at me as if I were an aboriginal talking of the dream time - a mythical time that probably never existed. And yet it did; and within my short life time too. So the change must have happened in the last thirty years.
So here is the central question: are we members of a community or a disparate group of competing individuals, owing nothing to each other? If you say the latter (waving "The Fountainhead" around) then where do you say Polynesian society fits into your brave world? A primitive hang-over from tribal times which they will grow out of, or something Europeans and Americans can re-learn from? Do you say that if you are willing to have resources shared then your individuality is reduced, or enhanced? Sarah Palin-Key-Brash-Hide-Douglas would seem to say that any penny taxed reduces that tax-payer to a slave; whereas I am totally happy that my work can be used constructively to smooth out the slumps and booms which are the only (and doubtful) "gifts" of capitalism. And finally ask yourselves this; why do those clever people of the right, those that believe in the power of humans to solve every problem simply give up like faint-hearted Victorian ladies at the thought of planning a society and planning for the future? Why do those who dismiss all religion (when you look at the religious right they actually denounce most of Christ's teachings as communist) have this weird faith that so long as people are allowed, encouraged to indulge their individual greed without thought for anyone or anything else that things will inevitably come right and improve?
When did we stop being New Zealanders and become Yankee clones? Roger Douglas; it cannot be said too often, this is the locus of the infection. We are to blame for believing him, but he brought the infection into our house. So why did we give him a knight-hood instead of a prison term?
Friday, December 10, 2010
New Zealand Politicians: Who do they work for?
Recently an old friend (and I mean old, he's over 83) went into one of his usual rants about the CIA controlling all our politicians and businessmen. A man of his years and experience is not to be dismissed lightly of course, but I confess to listening with only half an ear; all this CIA stuff was so reminiscent of the Famous Five type meetings we had when we organised anti-Viet Nam war demonstrations; we would huddle in our cold-water flats assuring each other that the SIS and the CIA were tapping out telephones, opening our mail and even follwoing us in the street.
However when I read more and more about the plans of this Tory government (assisted by Poodle Goff and his Right Wing Chums in the Maori Party, ACT and that curiously coiffed fellow, Dunne) to introduce the new laws allowing the SIS and other government departments to eaves drop on all of our communications and the "free trade" agreements they are all so keen on, I have had to reassess Tom's Theorem.
In solving crime the rule is "follow the money"; if someone benefits from a situation financially it is reasonable to see if that person could have planned and then brought that particular situation into being. It seems a good and efficient tool; why not apply it to politicians?
So look at "free trade";
1. We are required to allow unlimited access to our market of any of "their" products, but they are not rquired to take ours, especially agricultural products;
2. We must not subsidise or protect any industry, as subsidies equal sin; they are allowed to subsidise, apply quotas and so on, again especially around agricultural products;
3. We must not "bulk buy" through organs like Pharmac to save us all money and to be big enough to deal on an equal-ish footing with Big Pharma Companies; the result is predicted to be a trebling of drug and medicine costs;
4. We must abandon all arrangements like Accident Compensation and allow large insurance companies to take over - resulting in a trebling of costs and halving of pay-outs - lawyers will again be allowed to make money out of the misery of the sick and injured;
5. We cannot apply our own copyright laws, but must accept theirs. So we have to pay for "brand" items and can't parallel import.
"They" and "theirs" when used above always means a power bloc we seem determined to please and appease - US, Europe, China etc.
So the result is that we get nothing out of these deals at all, but we pay three or four times as much for services and products than we do at present. Also, by any analysis all these arrangements are (despite the naming "free" trade) anti-competitive,restrictive and tend to promote monopolies. They also assure that foreign companies can buy anything in New Zealand and take all the profits overseas.
Add to this the reluctance of the Tories (again, to be clear, Goff and his Labour mates are far more Tory than National) to limit the sale of our agricultural base (land) to foreigners.
So, follow the money. Who benefits? Not a single New Zealand worker. Not a single New Zealand business enterprise with fewer than 1000 employees. In fact the benefits flow overseas, always in that one direction. Also we abandon all sovreign control over laws and law-making.
So if a politician, voted in by New Zealanders, cooperates with arrangements which cost New Zealanders jobs and money, who should we say they work for?
Perhaps Tom is right.
However when I read more and more about the plans of this Tory government (assisted by Poodle Goff and his Right Wing Chums in the Maori Party, ACT and that curiously coiffed fellow, Dunne) to introduce the new laws allowing the SIS and other government departments to eaves drop on all of our communications and the "free trade" agreements they are all so keen on, I have had to reassess Tom's Theorem.
In solving crime the rule is "follow the money"; if someone benefits from a situation financially it is reasonable to see if that person could have planned and then brought that particular situation into being. It seems a good and efficient tool; why not apply it to politicians?
So look at "free trade";
1. We are required to allow unlimited access to our market of any of "their" products, but they are not rquired to take ours, especially agricultural products;
2. We must not subsidise or protect any industry, as subsidies equal sin; they are allowed to subsidise, apply quotas and so on, again especially around agricultural products;
3. We must not "bulk buy" through organs like Pharmac to save us all money and to be big enough to deal on an equal-ish footing with Big Pharma Companies; the result is predicted to be a trebling of drug and medicine costs;
4. We must abandon all arrangements like Accident Compensation and allow large insurance companies to take over - resulting in a trebling of costs and halving of pay-outs - lawyers will again be allowed to make money out of the misery of the sick and injured;
5. We cannot apply our own copyright laws, but must accept theirs. So we have to pay for "brand" items and can't parallel import.
"They" and "theirs" when used above always means a power bloc we seem determined to please and appease - US, Europe, China etc.
So the result is that we get nothing out of these deals at all, but we pay three or four times as much for services and products than we do at present. Also, by any analysis all these arrangements are (despite the naming "free" trade) anti-competitive,restrictive and tend to promote monopolies. They also assure that foreign companies can buy anything in New Zealand and take all the profits overseas.
Add to this the reluctance of the Tories (again, to be clear, Goff and his Labour mates are far more Tory than National) to limit the sale of our agricultural base (land) to foreigners.
So, follow the money. Who benefits? Not a single New Zealand worker. Not a single New Zealand business enterprise with fewer than 1000 employees. In fact the benefits flow overseas, always in that one direction. Also we abandon all sovreign control over laws and law-making.
So if a politician, voted in by New Zealanders, cooperates with arrangements which cost New Zealanders jobs and money, who should we say they work for?
Perhaps Tom is right.
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