Tom, that was 6 years ago. For the 21st century, we had Helengrad running NZ with Big Brother writ large = but more like Big Mother in NZ's instance because NZ was run by a socialist lesbian coven [with the odd transgenderized bloke thrown in, along with regular leftie poofters].
By the time they finished, NZ was going down the gurgler at NZ$1 billion per month which is like US$100 billion a month in the USA [population and GDP per capita being 100 times as big = near enough for government work].
There is a peculiar moaning in New Zealand about how terrible the Rogernomics years were in the 1980s, and how they destroyed NZ. Yet, strangely, nobody seems to be in favour of repealing the changes and going back to how things were. It is a quite mindless incantation reminiscent of Pavlov's dogs. You can induce the drool by the mere mention of the words Roger Douglas.
I doubt that many [if any] of the moaners about the deregulations and privatizations can even list the changes [or many of them if not all].
We don't have free markets. It's true that we do in things like selling sugared water in different flavours, provided such companies get the long list of government agencies to approve the business. But where it matters, there is no free market.
Health, education, welfare - huge blights on the landscape. Then here is the no fault Accident Insurance Corporation which costs a vast fortune. Plus government departments for everything. Women having affairs even have their own Ministry of Women's Affairs. mwa.govt.nz
Medical treatment is heavily regulated and is predominantly a state run enterprise. People can pay taxes and then go ahead and also pay for their own treatment, but that's not what I call "free market".
Education is also a huge government gulag system with umpty$billion thrown at students with all sorts of daft 'education' processes wasting vast fortunes. Credentialism is pandemic.
Welfare is out of control and if we include government employees in that, then the total of people living on the taxpayer is about 2 in 3.
Then there are wall to wall regulations for everything. If things aren't compulsory, they are illegal. There are fees for everything too.
That was a nice story told by Maurice McTigue, but it's not true.
Vector for example, is told how much profit it's allowed to make and it's less than they can get in the bank. So unsurprisingly, they put capital investment on hold. That caused the government to whine. Now, the government wants fibre all over the place - Vector has a substantial fibre business already.
The government is now having to spend $1bn or $2 billion on fibre because private businesses sensibly won't invest when it's obvious that if they try to charge enough to make a good profit, they'll be banned from doing so. Of course government fibre will be expensive, faulty and go to places such as politicians' friends' places and to places where it's not used [other than for high speed porn].
Nearly quarter of NZ's population has left for more prosperous shores. They didn't do that because it's so great here. It could be, but it isn't. Our murder rate is up by a factor of 30 since the good old days when I was a child and they were rare. Police don't even bother attending crime. They are "too busy", even if the criminal is identifiable.
Mqurice |
