TAYLOR SWIFT AND THE CRISIS OF LATE STAGE CAPITALISM

According to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon the country needs more concerts at Auckland's Eden Park. Who knew Taylor Swift is the answer to the country's economic woes?


EARLIER THIS month Anne Salmond provided a far more accurate description of the State of the Nation than Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, of course, would ever admit to: 'Racial inequalities are accelerating, the economy is tanking, the health system and many public services are collapsing, and many New Zealanders are voting with their feet. Current policies are not just robbing young people of their future. The future of New Zealand is at stake.'

While an increasingly hapless Christopher Luxon is clutching at increased tourism and more concerts at Eden Park as the answer to the country's economic woes, the crisis of the failed market economy grinds on. The Government's agenda of austerity, supposedly designed to lift the country out of recession, has placed the economic burden on the shoulders of those least able to afford it. An almost maniacal pursuit of fiscal restraint and cost-cutting has only deepened the cost-of-living crisis, with food, energy, and housing costs at sky high levels. The National Party's election bribe of tax cuts have provided next to no relief for most people.

But having royally screwed things up, the signs are that the Minister of Finance Nicola Willis, who appears to be a one-trick pony in terms of economic policy, is intent of pursuing further cost-cutting. This will only push up the level of social deprivation and accelerate further the collapse of public services already severely underfunded. With ACT leader David Seymour, on behalf of both local and foreign capital, beginning to agitate for further privatisation, there's a legitimate argument that says that our public services have been deliberately set up to fail.

We know too well the failures of neoliberalism, some of which Salmond referred to. But it is not enough to simply to tinker with this failed model and expect a different result. As Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick has observed:

'Luxon’s State of the Nation wasn’t a vision for the future. It was a reheat of the rhetoric that’s failed us for more than 40 years. Doing more of the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Doing things that your own advice says will increase inequality and climate changing emissions is selling out your people and our future.'

A Taxpayer Union-Curia poll this month indicated that more than half of the country is concerned that we're headed in the wrong direction. The onus is on the opposition parties to meet that concern with a real economic alternative to the failed neoliberal model.