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Originally Posted by Lightspeed
Scarcity is one such story, despite living in an age of abundance. If scarcity appears real, it's because we've been pouring our greatest resource down the drain the last nine years: people.
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Yep scarcity is pretty much bullshit, it's actually priorities.
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Originally Posted by Ab
My sorta kinda gut feeling on the election: English and Key have, for nine years, generally had a "no surprises" policy of telling people what they're going to do, then doing it effectively. Their priorities and decisions have been generally centrist with nods to the outer reaches of each side of the (admittedly silly) 2-dimensional spectrum we're used to thinking about. Their management has put NZ in a very very healthy position economically relative to other OECD countries. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, government debt relative to GDP is declining, and we've had govt surpluses for three years in a row and was on track for something like 2.8% of GDP by 2022. Fucking caning it economically.
But it seems like this has come at a high social cost. I'm in another country so don't have on-the-ground visibility of this stuff, but it sounds to me* as if things like homelessness, mental health, youth suicide stats are in a horrible state for a country that has been doing so well economically. If there is 1.8billion left over after government spending this year, and depressed kids killing themselves left and right, well hey maybe we shoulda spent some of that money amirite.
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Yep, centrist doesn't necessarily mean what's reasonable or correct, it just means appealing to a segment of voters who have significant sway in election outcomes. It's a conundrum where political parties are restricted from making hard political decisions because they depend on centrist voters to survive. Any nods to the outer by National were only politically pragmatic tinkering around the edges rather that a commitment to change which goes against their underlying ideology. Perhaps this Govt. will have more flexibility here due to the most popular party not being in Govt. ie, they've managed to sneak in without a good chunk of the centrist vote.
Also imo it has come at a high social cost because it was shitty management. Growth comes from unfettered immigration and a runaway housing market. Unemployment stats hide measurement adjustments and thousands pushed out of the system. There's only a surplus because public sectors like education are underfunded to the brink of collapsing.
I don't see growth or surpluses as something to be valued if as a society if it's only really benefiting those at the top.