CHRIS LUXON: PEDDLING FAILED TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS

When Chloe Swarbrick asked the Prime Minister whether he thought the job of Government was to reduce inequality, Chris Luxon dodged the question.

 

ONCE AGAIN, NZ First MP's Winston Peters and Shane Jones have gratuitously attacked Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March. Echoing the days when New Zealand Prime Minister Rob Muldoon used to lambast his critics for not being 'proper New Zealanders', Peters and Jones reached back into the 1970s for some ugly racism to suggest that Menéndez March is something akin to a second-class citizen and therefore has no legitimate right to refer to the country as Aotearoa.

'Why is someone who applied to come to this country in 2006 allowed to ask a question of this Parliament that changes this country's name without the referendum and sanction of the New Zealand people?' Peters trumpeted in Parliament yesterday.

Because it smelled like another outbreak of the culture wars that the right rode to election victory in 2023, the incident has been extensively reported in the media. But what has gone unnoticed and unreported by the media is a much more politically illuminating incident that also occurred during Question Time.

Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick asked the Prime Minister how 'all the growth his government was chasing would be distributed fairly among all New Zealanders.'

It was fair enough question but one which Luxon decided not to answer. Instead, he chose to attack the track record of Labour and Green's, accusing the two parties of 'running the economy into the ground' when they were in office.

Swarbrick tried again. 'I'll put it simply: does the Prime Minister think that it is the job of Government to reduce inequality?'

Obviously Question Time is a place where empty rhetoric trumps substance most of the time, but we still might have expected Luxon to come up with something better than: 'We are managing the books well because if you care about vulnerable people, if you care about low and middle income, working New Zealanders, you run the economy well—not into the ground like you lot did.'

It was at this point that Winston Peters felt compelled to come to Luxon's rescue and asked:  'Is the Prime Minister telling Chloe Swarbrick that we will not be following the Marxist model of wealth redistribution that she advocates?'

Luxon, of course, agreed with Peters: 'Well, I'm just saying that we are not going to make the great leap backwards to socialism.'

Despite the bluster coming from Luxon that his government is 'laser-focused' on growth, all he has to offer the country  is another dose of failed neoliberal trickle-down economics. And this is certainly 'backward-looking'.

The big idea behind trickle-down economics is that by providing tax cuts and other financial benefits to the wealthy and large corporations, (like mining companies, for instance) these entities will invest their additional wealth into the economy, creating jobs and opportunities for everyone. However, in practice, this theory has been debunked time and time again. Instead of reinvesting their wealth into the economy, the wealthy often decide to hoard it, invest in speculative ventures, or use it to increase their own power and influence. As a result, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, leading to increased social and economic inequality.

This is the point that Swarbrick was making when she asked Luxon to explain 'why after years of increases in economic growth, do the top 10 percent in this country hold almost 60 percent of the wealth?'

Luxon again failed to answer the question. Instead, he dug something out of the Mike Hosking playbook, suggesting that Swarbrick was lacking in aspirational values: 'I mean, again in that question, what you see is not celebrating people who have been successful, you know? That is good. We want more ambition in this country. We want more aspiration.'

All of Luxon's empty rhetoric though cannot conceal that his government is peddling failed trickle-down policies that have been proven not to work. This can only further exacerbate the country's already alarming levels of inequality and social deprivation. It will also only help to perpetuate an economic system that benefits the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

The onus on the opposition parties is to provide an alternative to trickle-down economics. While the Labour Party has still provided no evidence it has rejected neoliberalism, the Green Party has.

He Ara Anamata might be the Green Party's 'Alternative Emissions Reduction Plan', but to achieve its emission targets the Green Party is also proposing a radical shake-up of the failed market economy.  He Ara Anamata represents a fundamental rejection of what Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick has described as 'economic fundamentalism'. It is effectively the Green Party's Green New Deal. It seeks to offer a viable economic alternative, focusing on sustainable development, social equity, and the creation of good-paying jobs.

These are policies that propose running the economy for the benefit of all, and not just a few. Messrs Luxon and Peters might like to attack such policies as 'Marxist' and 'socialist', but that's their problem.