Bribing voters with their kids' money (and undermining your own policy objectives)

As a libertarian when a government cuts taxes I am pleased, even ones that are purportedly a user fee, because in fact so much of what is collected from those user fees is not directed to services consumed by the users - in this case fuel tax and road user charges.  It would, after all, be much better if the amount collected was what is needed to pay to maintain and upgrade the roads, rather than be directed to pet projects designed to "change behaviour" (subsidise transport modes you aren't willing to pay to use),.

However, it reeks of hypocrisy, as the Ardern/Hipkins Government proceeds to undermine a land transport funding system that once was seen as a shining example in a world where political pork barrelling is so often the order of the day (see Australia and the United States).  It's much more than that though.

Remember the "most transparent government ever"? Remember the commitment to (reducing) child poverty? Remember the belief that New Zealand taking action on climate change is meant to be a demonstrable commitment to values of environmental protection?

It's all bullshit of course.

Remember when Jacinda Ardern said tax cuts would STOP not cut, but stop investment (!) in health and education? This was when National proposed just to raise income tax thresholds, so inflation and wage rises wouldn't result in fiscal creep (when your increases in pay, to offset inflation) putting you into higher tax brackets.  

Remember when National proposed a cut in fuel excise, but Jacinda Ardern said it would mean the roads would fall apart?

"It maintains our roads and it builds our transport projects so if you were to remove excise, which every government has used, you basically remove your ability to maintain roads and build new roading projects," she told AM. 

It's all bullshit of course, because Labour did just that, it cut fuel excise and road user charges, and is paying for it by using "funds set aside for Covid" which are actually borrowings that are unspent.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is maintaining these cuts in tax through till the end of June 2023, not because fuel prices are high (they have been dropping for months), but because, he says, it relieves pressure on households.

Well it does, particularly higher income households. Infometrics research indicates that the highest income households save three times as much as lower income households.  That makes sense, as they pay the most fuel tax, because they drive the most and are likely to have the largest vehicles with the highest fuel consumption, but remember this is the Government that decried tax cuts "for the rich". 

Apparently it's ok to cut taxes for those that earn the most.... if Labour does it.

Transport Minister Michael Wood even said on Newstalk ZB that the tax cut was an "investment". Here's a clue, almost every single time a politician says something, that involves your money, is an "investment", it's a lie, because you'll never get anything back from it. In this case, Wood, known as a leftie in the Labour caucus, has helped us all out...

I agree with him, tax cuts are an investment - an investment in believing people know best how to spend their own money.  It was theirs in the first place. 

What's particularly hilarious is the contortion of the tax cut.  Ignore James Shaw bloviating that it is subsidising fossil fuels. 

It's bullshit.

For a start, it is cutting a tax, not subsidising the market price of fuel, secondly it is just one "fuel". Diesel doesn't carry excise tax, as diesel vehicles pay per kilometre to use the roads.  New Zealanders are still pay the market price for fuel, plus (for petrol) some fuel tax and GST.  However, you can rely on the Greens to exaggerate for hysterical effect.

After all fuel tax and road user charges do not raise money for general spending, but for the National Land Transport Fund, so that Waka Kotahi can spend money on roads, subsidising public transport and now Kiwirail and coastal shipping.  They are effectively user charges so there is some user pays, although it's worth noting what this government spends the money on, and how far it has undermined the system that was once deemed best practice by the World Bank.

(From the 2021-2024 National Land Transport Programme)

69% of spending is on roads, the remainder is mostly spent on subsidising public transport and Kiwirail (26%), 4% on upgrading footpaths and cycleways and the remainder on administration and subsidies for coastal shipping.

Setting aside the 20% which actually isn't spent by the government, but comes from local government rates (on average half of spending on local roads and a bit less of public transport is from local government), 56% comes from road use fees in the form of tax on petrol, and road user charges on diesel powered vehicles, plus motor vehicle registration/licensing fees. 24% already comes from general taxes (either current or future).

By cutting fuel tax and RUC, Labour is substantially raising the proportion of money derived from borrowing from future general taxpayers, to around the same as fuel tax and RUC.  

Labour is now subsidising roads more than any government for decades.  Of course it is subsidising public transport like no government ever before, to the point that public transport users are now paying, on average, only around a quarter of the cost of paying for the bus driver and the diesel and maintaining the bus (or train). 

This is the same government that has an explicit target of cutting on average, 30% fewer km every year (50% if you live in a city) because it isn't just about climate change, it wants to mould you into a green citizen, that walks and bikes for most short journeys, rides public transport whenever it is available and just drive less. It's a centrally planned and controlled vision that doesn't respect people making the "wrong" choices, it is also supported by cutting speed limits, because it isn't just about safety, it happens to make driving less attractive compared to slower modes of transport.

However, Labour is now subsidising road use, and that includes road freight (note rail and shipping operators don't get any cut in fuel tax or road user charges, because they don't pay any, but they get subsidised anyway by other means).

So you have a Labour Government that says tax cuts (proposed by National and ACT) will threaten health and education.... but then implements tax cuts, completely blanking out the fact that this either means less money for other spending or it means more borrowing - for tax cuts.  How "sustainable" is that?

It says tax cuts will benefit the rich the most, and then implements tax cuts that do just that.

It says cutting fuel tax will jeopardise spending on transport, and then implements tax cuts on fuel.

Finally, it claims climate change is the great crisis that especially needs New Zealand, the country that emits 0.09% of global CO2 emissions  must radically change how it lives, by constraining private motoring, but then subsidises road use like no government in recent history.

Votes are much more precious that policy objectives though, as is leaving a fiscal bomb for the other side if the election is lost, although if it were up to me, the next government could think long and hard about whether it subsidises public transport and rail from general taxes anyway (assuming it wants to do that), and leaving fuel tax and RUC for roads only.

Ardern's legacy isn't kindness

It's been over a week, and it's remarkable that Jacinda Ardern has simply disappeared from the politics of a country she exercised almost unprecedented levels of power over, for the previous few years. The (leftwing statist post-modernist identitarian) world has cried out "why", and far too many have come to the conclusion that it's no doubt sexism (in the country that gave her the greatest electoral mandate of any Prime Minister since 1951, and had previously had two female Prime Ministers).

However, Ardern's resignation appears on the face of it to reflect two things:

• Fatigue from someone who isn't intellectually or emotionally able to handle the time and the stress of the position
• Fear of an election campaign during which scrutiny will be its highest and the chance of defeat the strongest yet.

She is, after all, an almost accidental Prime Minister. She wasn't expected to become Prime Minister after the 2017 election, as National was so well ahead in the polls, it's just that National had "spent" its coalition/support partners over previous terms, and so angered Winston Peters that he chose to swing left.

Of course in this neo-identitarian political age (a variation on classic chauvinistic identitarianism), Ardern's age and sex were notable as an "achievement", enhanced by her clearly being someone who never seemed to covet the role (which is now born out by her fatigability), made her a darling of international media.  The Anglosphere in particular is dominated by mono-linguistic types who pay little attention to the likes of Sanna Marin, the Finnish (young female) Prime Minister who chose to ignore the wrath of Vladimir Putin and seek Finland's membership of NATO. A position of courage, and not remotely a position the likes of Ardern (or indeed Hipkins) would ever take in foreign affairs, as New Zealand's foreign policy since the Lange age has been to be largely weak against those that challenge Western countries (see, for example, how pathetic Ardern/Mahuta were in response to China's trade sanctions against Australia). 

Ardern was notable for embracing an explicitly sympathetic and emotional image to leadership, and for declaring how kindness in government is a virtue. This is extraordinary from a politician who has led a government that, by and large, has sought to take more of people's money, borrow more from future generations and to direct and centrally manage and control more intensely than any government since the Muldoon era. 

I suppose Ardern will regard the generosity of her government with welfare benefits to be "kindness", which of course is really kindness with other people's money.  That "kindness" certainly will have relieved some poverty, but also contributes towards a dependency on other people's money, and the labour shortage that has emerged since the end of Covid restrictions. Lindsay Mitchell has written eloquently on this noting that the number and proportion of people receiving a main benefit at the end of the last six December quarters is up 22% compared to when Ardern first became Prime Minister.  New Zealand has both a critical skills shortage, a restrictive approach to immigration and is generous to those who don't want to work, but Ardern can't connect the dots.  At no point has this government noted that being too "kind" with other people's money encourages people to be economically idle.

The reality of the "kindness" narrative is no joke to the victims of ramraid attacks, and the growth in crime, because the "kindness" is interpreted as there being an easy ride for perpetrators.  The fact so many of the victims are recent migrants who own businesses is a community that maybe sees less kindness in the rhetoric, particular the notion that the reason some young people drive cars to steal stuff is claimed to be poverty, rather than opportunistic nihilism.

Another group not feeling the kindness includes immigrants who invested time and money into New Zealand and have been told to fuck off back home leave.  The former owners of Tennyson Cafe in Napier, who migrated from France, poured $600,000 into the business, brought their children over and had to meet financial targets for the business to get permanent residency.  The pandemic, of course, got in the way, and they failed to meet the targets.

The family’s first year in Cafe Tennyson and Bistro did not go as well as hoped, but the year ended March 2020 was much better and boded well.  The Debords invested more than $600,000 in the business, and the kids Lisa, 10, and Thibaut, 12, had settled in and were thriving at a local primary school. For the past two years, while other cafes around them have closed and laid off staff, the Debords have battled on.

Immigration NZ said because the didn't meet their targets (regardless of reason) they could not be allowed to remain, local MP and Cabinet Minister Stuart Nash supported them, but of course these were the rules set by the government he is a part of and Ardern led. So imagine a family, relocated halfway across the world, setting up a successful business, contributing financially and personally to a community, being told by an unproductive minion of the burgeoning Ardern state to leave.  Claims that it was an administrative decision is ludicrous in the context of a government with a majority able to change the laws to address such discrepancies.  For someone who gained her mandate due to handling of the pandemic, it is a curious blind spot that Ardern literally couldn't care less about people from overseas who contribute demonstrably to New Zealand, being allowed to stay. It's something that foreign fans of Ardern wouldn't believe, because they think she's the antithesis of "Trump" and everything they hate, when in fact she's led a government highly sceptical of immigration, not least because of a strong streak of Maori caucus antipathy towards immigration (and trade union dislike of people who represent competition for their members - this is the left treating individuals as economic units - something that is often decried).

The legions of people who couldn't get home during the pandemic, whereas various minstrels, thespians, clowns, ball players, politicians and businesspeople were given special access to MIQ, was also the other side of the "kind" government, that granted special privileges to those who ticked the right boxes.  Ardern led a government of "pull" as Eric Crampton wrote about.  Ardern's Government was kind to the "right" kind of people, such as people working in horse racing, international film producers, America's Cup syndicate employees, minstrels performing and businesspeople with stands at the Dubai Expo.  Average New Zealanders don't have that sort of "pull".

Then there are the Afghans who helped New Zealand forces not getting automatic visas to move to NZ after the Taliban took over.  What could be less kind that for people who worked with foreign forces not being granted residency when their psychopathic totalitarian enemy takes over?  However, the Ardern Government's attitude to foreign policy was more about signalling virtue than substance.  Calling for a ban on nuclear weapons is the sort of naive student politics that demeaned Ardern, as was calling climate change her generation's "nuclear-free moment". Then again if she meant New Zealand taking action that would have no impact on a global issue or problem (which is what the nuclear ban achieved) then she might have been right.

A lot of money has been spent by the Ardern Government, yet the performance of public services continues to be woeful, not least because the incentives of prioritising the interests of vocal professional unions are not on consumers of those services.  The DHB model was poor, but centralised healthcare is unlikely to deliver innovation or pressure for efficiencies.  On education, the desire for more centralisation is clear, as diversity in education delivery is an anathema to a government full of sympathisers to teachers' unions.  The Ardern Government doesn't want parents directing schools when it has grown the educational bureaucracy in Wellington so much.

That's been the other effect, the massive growth in the Wellington bureaucracy more generally.  A 38% increase in policy analysts, a 43% increase in managers and 56% increase in information professionals reflects a bloating demand by the Ardern Government for regulatory and policy work, and little of it is about getting the state to do less, but rather to do more.  It's part of her belief system in an activist state, but this philosophy hits the reality that you can't make a lot of things "better" by just throwing more public servants at it to analyse what to do, especially since whole ranges of options are completely ruled out politically. It's telling that the Ardern Government wouldn't even look once at commercialising water, even though it has been somewhat of a success in Auckland (for fresh and waste water only), because it is only interested in options that centralise power.

Then there is whole issue of "co-governance" which means that Iwi are treated as equals in government to central and local government, and given power to choose their own people to sit alongside those chosen by election (who are ALSO chosen in part by those selecting Iwi representatives).  It also means abolishing one-person one-vote, as nearly happened in Rotorua.  The fact the Ardern Government is so willing to consider abolishing a core tenet of liberal democracy to placate Maori nationalists is far from kind. Finally Ardern's concern about freedom of speech being a weapon and wanting to suppress disinformation presents an overly confident view of the state benignly suppressing what is "bad", without suppressing what is good or even useful.  It is understandable that she is keen to see less rhetoric that supports the likes of the Christchurch shooter or those claiming conspiracies for all sorts of issues, but her inability to see the importance of freedom of speech created plenty of justifiable criticism.  Her philosophy feeds into the rhetoric of dictators from China to Russia to Nigeria to Venezuela, who simply call criticism "disinformation". 

The narrative now being conveniently trotted out about Ardern is the abuse she receives from critics, and certainly no one can justify threats of violence against her and her family.  Yet her main opponent in 2020 was Judith Collins, and abuse of her is largely brushed to one side, and of course many of those who decry abuse of Ardern are more than happy to tolerate abuse of male politicians as Graham Adams wrote in The Platform.  I'm old enough to remember the constant references to Robert Muldoon as "piggy", and the idea that somehow people shouldn't be able to throw pejoratives at women in power any less than men is rather chilling.  People have the right to call their leaders names and be rude about them, even if it is puerile and they don't like it, what they don't have the right to do is to threaten them. Ardern undoubtedly gets some nasty threats, and different ones from men because she is a woman, but it's intellectually lazy polemics to claim that the country that granted Ardern a remarkable mandate in 2020 is also dripping misogynistic hatred of women in power (despite having also granting a mandate for Helen Clark to govern for nine years), when hatred of men in power is just brushed over as part of the game.

It's good for Ardern to give up, nobody should be in the job if they find it too difficult, but just over a week on, and it is clear that Hipkins has just tweaked the dials, and done little other than give the impression he's a bit less woke-authoritarian, and he's more than willing to extend unfunded tax cuts (fuel tax/RUC discount) and say he's "reviewing" policies that Ardern and her whole government were dead keen on hanging their hats on.

What the polls suggest is that the politics of "kindness" were seen by enough of the public to be empty of substance, but it also suggests that Christopher Luxon has a fair way to convince people that his alternative is one of substance.

A key question will be whether a National-led government is actually going to embark on the sort of reforms needed to turn back the tide on the growing centralising state, and incentivise individual responsibility, entrepreneurship and freedom of choice,

In a postmodern generation that believes truth can be mine or yours, telling the truth and restating old wisdoms can be a revolutionary act.

"The prince across the water is now the world’s most famous truth bender, but he is far from alone. Last Friday, Trevor Noah, the South African comedian and US television presenter, defended the notorious skit in which he asserted there had been a “racist backlash” in Britain when Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister.

Rather than present proof of his claims, or apologise for his error, Noah argued that a joke can only be judged by its intended audience. “I wouldn’t tell a joke about South Africa the same way in South Africa as I would outside South Africa,” he explained. In other words, it mattered not that British people knew his joke to be untrue: he was making the joke for a liberal American audience, who believed it was true....

The intellectual origins of this nonsense go back to the postmodernism of thinkers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Discourse is oppressive. Language, custom and tradition exploit the weak and sustain the powerful in their privilege. Victims of the powerful participate in their own oppression through their assumed social roles.

These concepts have been taken further by thinkers and radicals in America, and the arising critical theories are not only commonplace there but increasingly a matter of consensus among academics and politicians here as well.

And so truth is reduced to a battle between discourses. Whatever the evidence, the truth might be said to be merely “your truth”: a story that exploits one group and perpetuates the power of another....

The crime is always exploitation, and the currency is always victimhood because that is what the theories say. The truth must be bent to fit the template, and, handily enough, the theory tells us the truth is malleable anyway."

by Nick Timothy, Theresa May's former Chief of Staff, with an insight he couldn't get his boss to do the foggiest thing about addressing.. in The destruction of truth is at the heart of Western cultural decline  (Daily Telegraph)

Identify for yourself where and how this is seen across academia, the media and in education across NZ... and in the utterances of so many politicians

All I care to say about the Royal nonsense

We should be pleased that the Harry/Meghan show has appeared over our Christmas/New Year period, as it leaves space for real news to be covered in due course.  The enthusiastic coverage of this absolutely zero news story tells you all you need to know about how much most of the media cares about important information and news, vs. entertainment.  

Personally, I couldn't care less what happens to Harry and Meghan, they mean absolutely nothing to my life, nor the life of 7 billion others.  Last year three people I knew passed away, two unexpectedly, so I don't see any sense in exercising more than a sliver of intellectual (!) or emotional energy on two people I don't know, who if it weren't for Harry's father, would be ignored for being two mediocre, dull and underachieving whingers.

Not PC posted a link to an excellent piece by Michael Hurd "Harry & Meghan: A Couple About Nothing"

Take this:

You’d have to be a morally hollow, mentally dense and frankly pretty depraved person to be fascinated by the cultural zeros we refer to as Harry & Meghan.

Yet here we are: living in a culture where we’re supposed to pretend that two parasites who DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING are the epitome of achievement.

Now I think this is slightly unfair, it is not depraved to be vaguely curious about a man who actually thinks he can reconcile with his family by throwing them under the bus, then denying that's what he did, and I doubt anyone thinks they are the epitome of achievement BUT the cultural and media response implies that these two people are important, when they are not. 

Yet there is one piece of supreme value in this whole show - it is a case study in the post-modernist philosophical sewer that infects academia, media and mainstream discourse.

Why?

The reality evasion of both of them is palpable. They are two of the most privileged, least-disadvantaged people on the planet, both could choose to live a quiet life, raise their children and travel and live in luxury but choose to tell the world how absolutely awfully they claim to have been treated by the family that GRANTS them this privilege, and then complain about how AWFUL the media are towards them by calling them out on the inconsistencies, contradictions and interpretation of their narratives, THEN they claim they just want a quiet life.  

They paint the story of a world and a media who threaten them, at the same time as they court and demand attention and want public validation, on their terms, to tell their story of pathetic, manufactured woe.

The reality evasion is added by the apparent complete falsehoods in Harry's ghost written book, from being given a gift that hadn't been invented yet to buying an airline ticket on Air NZ on a route it has never operated, for a class of travel it doesn't have.  

This is all easily explained by being "their" truth, an anti-concept if ever there was one, because it denies that there is an objective reality.  "Their" truth is just "their" feelings, not facts, but post-modernism today is all about feelings.

The two of them are so emotionally incontinent. Anecdotes and feelings substitute for evidence and facts, perceptions of oppression and privilege are much more important than actual facts.  Caring about people's feelings is a substitute for caring about actual outcomes and events.  

Finally, denying the inferences you actually make - in particular making claims of issues around the colour of Archie's skin, and now pretending that this wasn't a claim of racism at all.  It's 1+1 = whatever we say it is stuff, and don't you dare say anything else, or you're just one of the bad people"

So THERE is a merit in what they are doing - they are the poster-children of so much that is wrong today.

So if your children ask what you think of this story tell them that these are two people who have achieved next to nothing, who have untold levels of wealth and privilege, complaining about how unfair their lives are.  Tell them that they will learn nothing of value from them, and that the attention they get from media is the opposite of what they deserve.

Iran is on the brink of a revolution for freedom.. and the world's politicians should be loudly in support

The Islamic Republic of Iran is an abomination, it is a theocracy that demands absolute obeisance to a collective of men who claim to be channelling the will of God, applying a branch of Islamism that in practice is just a form of medieval barbarism.

Have no doubt, Iran is the centre of a courageous struggle, led by young women, against a system that is specifically designed to ensure they submit to an authority led by old men.

It is the most irrational and mindless of governments - for it is theocratic. Not only do the mullahs claim they are following the "will" of their Almighty - but they alone are the ones with the "inspiration" to pass laws and compel and prohibit peaceful individuals to do as they see fit.

Iran may have scrapped its utterly immoral "Morality Police", but it is still a regime characterised well as Taliban-lite.  It is a death cult, that worships and commemorates those who spill their own blood, and blood of others for their superstitions and they should be called out on it by all leaders of liberal democracies.

However you don't hear or see much. Notwithstanding Jacinda Ardern's logical efforts to ensure Christopher Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray (posh wealthy young folk who have that utterly inane occupation "social influencers" - that role whereby you produce videos in the hope countless other airheads are attracted by your clickbait) got out of Iran safely, it is telling that the great heroine of leftwing women has not said much about Iran at all.

Given Ardern's remaining star power internationally (notwithstanding how much it has waned domestically) this is disappointing.  She's big on getting an international stage for climate change, notwithstanding her government has had little influence on policy on it, whereas influencing regime change in Iran that would literally liberate women is something she chooses not to do.

No doubt MFAT has told Ardern and Mahuta (noting Mahuta is much more socially conservative than Ardern) that it isn't wise to say anything, because of trade.  

MFAT sees Iran as a "sleeping giant" noting on its website:

 It remains an untapped market with a lot of potential, although financial and banking sanctions, the difficulties of doing business in Iran, along with a stalled Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or nuclear agreement) and Iran’s blacklisting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will continue to affect humanitarian sanctions-exempted trade for some time.

Exports with Iran have dropped dramatically in recent years, but no doubt there is ambition to have it grow again.  I know from experience that the default position of diplomats is always not to "disturb" relations in the hope that it will make future trade fruitful, but bearing in mind Ardern has claimed to never be afraid to "talk tough" it's odd there has been no pushback.

After all by far the main reason the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a big export market is BECAUSE it is the "Islamic Republic" led by a death cult of misogynistic terrorism sponsoring arms proliferators.  The regime in Tehran is, on the face of it, antithetical to the values of Ardern and the Labour Party, because it is antithetical to the values of any decent liberal democracy.

Yet Ardern is saying little, no doubt because diplomats think there are "opportunities" for trade.  Mahuta, having demonstrated next to no interest or history in international relations, is hardly likely to push back, since her interests are much more focused on Maori nationalism, and by and large as Foreign Minister she parrots the standard MFAT line on every topic (which is low risk, but also low reward).

Revolution in Iran would have profoundly positive effects not just for most Iranian people (not the thugs, rapists and murderers who are the hand maidens of the regime), but also the Middle East more generally.  For Iran to no longer sponsor Islamofascist attacks across the region, including backing Hezbollah.  

However it should be first and foremost about Iranians and Iranian women and girls in particular. Unlike the unhinged ravings of leftwing woke university professors, Iran is a literal patriarchy, it has a literal rape culture.  It is a culture that punishes women for "immodesty". As Hammed Shahidian wrote "Modesty in dress, especially women's hejab, secures society against chaos and individuals against self-incurred harmful thoughts and deeds".

In other words women better cover up because men are too weak to control what's in their trousers.

Religion in liberal democracies is about freedom to choose and worship as you see fit, and freedom to leave religion if you see fit, but in Iran you cannot leave Islam.  It is compulsory.  

So it should be that politicians across the free world should be supporting the women protesting and calling for freedom in Iran, because it is morally right, and because these women are human beings with the same rights to choose how they live their lives as anyone else.  

The fact that so many politicians choose to keep largely mute on this, whilst demanding private companies address an anti-concept called the "gender wage gap" shows the depths of their hypocritical privilege (which they finger-wag about constantly) and the turpitude of their cultural tunnel vision to not even recognise women who are oppressed on a grand scale and deserve to be supported.

Finally, I'll give a nod to Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, whom I disagree with 95% of the time, who has been consistent on this in the past year. 

Iran's revolution is one for humanity, and of course it is telling that the jackbooted blood spillers of Beijing and Moscow are backing the regime.