Possibly drunk on dandelion wine after celebrating new-car sales plummeting 90% during COVID lock-up and imagining a brave new world of bicycles, tangerine trees and marmalade skies, did Julie Anne Genter accidentally leak the 2020 budget priorities in a curious re-tweet almost immediately deleted?
We won’t know till later this week, but with Robertson openly hinting at changes of direction, Peters infamously declaring that ‘neo-liberalism’ hasn’t worked, and academia in thrall of the opportunity to re-route New Zealand society and economy distinctly leftward, all supposedly steered to a ‘better’ future in the wake of our totally unnecessary economic stumble, Genter’s retweet-delete has, for me, piqued interest.
Her re-tweet leads to a European academic angst-fest blaming neo-liberal economic policy, better described as capitalism-lite, as, among other things, responsible for the COVID epidemic and promising better outcomes based on ‘de-growth’, a favourite of the ivory-tower gaggle and greenies, the very twin-set at the heart of our coalition government’s ideological thinking.
The dopey manifesto linked to, published in Dutch newspaper ‘Trouw’, proposes a better life in; well – in serfdom actually, where (can you believe it, what a surprise) ‘the so-called critical public sectors’ including education and health, those already beset with, or impaired by, heavy leftist bias, are elevated in investment and status (paid for by way of ‘strong progressive taxation of income, profits and wealth’) while those below, mere mortals producing such things as are the want of other human beings are predictably derided as ‘wasteful’ and unnecessarily ‘luxurious’ to be replaced by “necessary, sustainable and satisfying consumption and travel.” Sound familiar? It did to this bloke:
Promising debt cancellation, universal basic incomes and a “universal social policy system” one commentor noted “Basically, it’s paradise for lazy people” but forgot to mention the stupid, who would also be in bliss. The really concerning thing for New Zealand is that the lazy and stupid are in charge here, and promising to deliver “change”, for the “better”.
Deliverance of “better” is to be set upon us later this very week. Lord, hear our prayers.
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