Another year, another budget presented by another government where the worst people get handed money that has been stolen from the best people. Instead of this being rightly condemned as wickedness, it is seen as somehow ‘virtuous’ and only right and proper: what I call “The New Zealand Disease”. Frankly folks, if $350 is ‘big stuff’ to you, then you are well and truly up a creek.
One of the amusing things about the budget is a lot of criticism from the ‘usual suspects’: how it isn’t generous enough for them. Must be causing sniffs of self pity in the Beehive at the ingratitude of it all. “It is better to be seen as a miser than generous,” as Machiavelli sensibly put it – Ardern et al. will find this out in due course.
The worst government in our history was the socialist one from 1935 to 1949. They started all sorts of nonsense that meant for a couple of generations a person could:
- Leave school at 15 years old
- Start a job the next day
- Marry young
- Be given a state house when you marry
- Get a ‘state advances’ loan to buy a house in due course
- Get a family benefit
- Get free this
- Get free that
- Get a pension at age 60.
And you never had to do any actual ‘work’ either.
This twaddle snuffed out the pioneer spirit that built a great nation, snuffed out innovation, snuffed out individuality, snuffed out quite a lot of things – the damage caused was incalculable. My stomach churns when I think of humdrum lives that didn’t reach any potential at all (let alone ‘full’); of things not invented; of industries not started and of prosperity that never was.
Human nature was out and sterility was in and – in predictable “New Zealand Disease” fashion – it’s seen by history as frightfully virtuous; left wingers and the ignorant coo and ahhhhh in awe.
Eventually the money ran out and severe economic changes were made that took years to recover from. Like zoo animals, a sizeable percentage of the population simply didn’t possess the skills to survive in the big wide world, having been treated like babies for half a century. Worst of all, a large chunk of the population lost all respect for institutions. The clearest indication of this is the level of voter turnout at election time; from 92 to 94 per cent in the 1981 and 1984 elections to barely 75 per cent in recent times.
In short folks, for decades from 1935 successive governments ‘bought off’ the underclass – threw money at them and turned them into babies.
When that stopped (by having the affrontry to suggest they go and get a ‘real’ job and manage their own affairs; act like adults), their attitude was “if youse don’t give us nuffink then _____ youse!” Because any amount of money is never enough, such people never see how much is actually spent on their welfare-sated miserable lives or how little is spent on those of us who are the best people.
So next time you are wondering what causes ram raids, mental illness, drug addiction, family violence, hopelessness, despair, gangs and other horrors, you can lay the blame squarely on the Labour Party and the Savage Government. Handing the highly addictive poison out in the first place, then taking it away, is what is responsible for 15 per cent of the population genuinely being lost, angry, broken and unable to cope with the simplest aspects of life.
