Of course it is, Jacinda. You have declared it so and so it shall be. Except, like so many other things you and your pathetically inept colleagues have managed to do to this country of ours, you couldn’t be more wrong and you’ve been drinking too much of your own Kool-Aid.
Mind you, like all the other highly paid public servants who have remained on full salary during lockdown, you will be completely unaware of the damage you’ve foisted on a large, hard working and critically important sector of our society. You have no idea how large that sector is. You have no idea how badly you’ve hurt them. You have no idea what the impact on the rest of our society will be when they pack up their bags and close up shop. You have no idea because if you did, you wouldn’t have slipped up and said such a silly thing.
For now, many of them are putting their shoulders to the wheel and pushing against an overwhelming tide. Some will survive the onslaught, but many won’t. Those who have made it this far but are close to the edge, are being forced closer to being shunted over the edge by every Godforsaken minute that you and your fiscally illiterate fools prevent them from getting back to normal work.
Every day you wait, you prove more convincingly how little grasp you have of simple mathematics, logic and common sense. If there isn’t a hug involved, you’re way out of your depth.
To this day, you have done NOTHING to help small business through the crisis you put them in: NOTHING.
Please don’t keep spinning the wage subsidy as helpful for business. All that has done is force even more operators closer to the edge as they try to do the right thing for their staff by taking your welfare, subsidising it to whatever extent is necessary to make up the 80%, and arguably driving themselves into bankruptcy.
The government-guaranteed loans announced by Robertson on day one were subject to normal lending criteria so nothing there. Ask any businessman who tried to get one. The banks wanted the usual security over property.
Then Robertson announced government loans of up to $100,000. Except they too were a mirage in the desert. Businesses could apply for $10,000 plus $1800 for each employee. To get $100,000 you have to have 50 employees. No use whatsoever for the 5 or fewer employee businesses which most are.
Your comment to Mike Hosking was very revealing and deeply concerning. It shows you have no grasp whatsoever of the realities businesses are facing:
“for the most part the restrictions now are… are… um… impacting, you know, through fewer tables in hospitality and a particular way of working there, and mass gatherings are obviously having an impact, but by and large the economy is back.”
Would it be possible to find a more vacuous statement from a government or leader anywhere on the planet?
It’s not just hospitality that is being affected. It’s every business in this country. Level 2 has allowed some to make some progress since Level 2 started, but it’s at best a false positive. The proverbial is still filtering through to the fan and believe me, that fan is spinning fast and once the proverbial starts hitting it, the mess will be huge.
We are still in a ‘honeymoon’ phase. Some people (evidently including the prime minister) still think it’s been a holiday and things are now sliding back to normal. With businesses closing and laying off workers daily, the situation is anything but “sliding back to normal”. The economy is not even close to being back.
Just get a calculator and do some simple calculations. If a wage earner who was earning say $1,000 a week loses their job and has to go on a benefit which will be half what they were earning, how do they live and meet their commitments? How do they have anything left over to spend with local businesses be they retail, hospitality or anything else? How do they survive the depression? How do they survive?
But follow the logic. Less money going round = fewer businesses able to survive = more unemployment = less money in the economy = a never ending circle of economic depression. By the way, all of that also = less tax to pay benefits.
But don’t pay any attention to me, roll with the Prime Minister. There’s a reason why she’s prime minister and I’m not.
“by and large the economy is back“
July, August and September are shaping up to be very dark months and this will continue and will filter through 2021.
Ms Ardern should prepare herself to be hugging a lot of grieving relatives.
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