The treatments keep being shittier than the illness (Patreon)

National eh. They bloody love to privatise. Their latest brain fart is to privatise a form of social welfare. 

Nicola Willis, National's Deputy Leader and finance spokesperson, gave a speech where she talked about National's "new" idea of a social investment fund. It's not really new because Bill English kept trying to make fetch happen, and he failed. I'm not sure why Nicola Willis thinks this iteration of National will succeed where a considerably more talented version of National failed.

The high point (low point?) of the speech was this bit:

"My hope is that the Social Investment Fund would become so effective at delivering results that ultimately New Zealanders seeking positive social change for the disadvantaged might choose to invest their funds with it."

Hey rich folk! The Government is now abdicating responsbility for social welfare, so we'd really like it if you'd volunteer to chuck some money in to do the job that they're supposed to do.

Frequently I'm told that if I think there should be more tax paid then I could volunteer to pay more than I need to (sidebar: I actually do); but then, folks get all smug and say that nobody volunteers to pay more tax than they need to. In fact a lot of right wing folk believe that tax is theft. It's truly baffling that they now suddenly think rich folk will want to "invest" in social welfare.

And these are the same rich folk that National wants to give tax cuts to, and then they have the chutzpah to ask for some of it back.

This is all coming in the midst of inflation getting increasingly out of control. Central banks have been biffing up interest rates, but inflation just seems to be going up. So central banks will continue to increase interest rates. Except do you know who that hurts the most? The people who are already doing it pretty tough. People with big mortages are now getting spitroasted by high interest rates and the price of cheese. 

Central banks seem hell bent on driving up unemployment to "cool down" the economy to get inflation under control. 

There are other things that have been done in the past to try and bring inflation under control. One of those is increase taxes. Especially at the top end. Those people are the ones who can afford to pay more, rather than those already struggling. And you'd likely see fewer jobs lost if you did it that way. What's one fewer Porsche this year? Way better than a hungry family having to choose which parent isn't eating tonight.

And yet we don't have a government with the courage to do this. 

The happy bonus of increased taxation is that we can then afford to do the things that National wants to privatise without having to rely on the generosity of the rich (which doesn't really exist btw). 

We could pay doctors, nurses and teachers what they really deserve. We could invest in infrastructure. Do you know what else we could do? We could ensure that people have enough money in their pockets to feed themselves, and their families, and put shoes on their children's feet. 

Give people enough to live with dignity and you'll also see a major crime drop off too. All round the country people are having meltdowns about ramraids. Fucking no surprise that this is going on when people are doing it hard. Making it legal for police to take photos of Māori youth and threatening to put ankle bracelets on our rangatahi isn't a solution to this problem. It's an escalation. 

Crime isn't the illness, it's a symptom of the illness. The illness is people struggling. The illness is poverty. The illness is hardship.

The treatment isn't social investment funds.