The books are already fucked
Added 2020-05-05 02:34:52 +0000 UTCYesterday during Post Cab the Prime Minister tried to temper expectations of a massive spending lolly-scramble of a budget. She said "I need to warn you, this budget will see us continue our careful approach to the books".
Fuck your careful approach to the books. The whole world's economy is shitting the bed. Now is not the time to be coy. You told us you'd be a transformative government so just get on with it and transform some shit.
As supreme shit-poster Morgan Godfery pointed out, "this government has the most significant mandate for change in almost a century. The Prime Minister is the most persuasive Labour leader in almost as long. We’re literally in the early stages of a global emergency and the government is signalling... business as usual."
For people who voted in Jacinda Ardern's Labour, they didn't want a friendlier younger John Key. Incremental conservatism got us increased child poverty, defunded social services and a bunch of shitty Lockwood Flag options. Those of us on the left wanted light rail, green jobs, a shit tonne of houses, and some change and decency. Now the Government has basically got eleventy zillion dollars signed off to get the economy going again and they're going to take a "careful approach to the books". Nobody wants that. Not even Roger Douglas. And he's proper awful.
So if your starting point is already fucked books, then prudence isn't going to unfuck them right now. That ain't it chief. It's not time to unfuck debt levels or anything like that. It's time to spend spend spend. Buy a trainset for everyone. Ministry of Works, Job Guarantee Schemes. Ministry of Digital Economy. Have some imagination and do something creative. Helicopter Money for everyone? Pah! More like helicopters for everyone.
If you choose some half assed wishy washy careful with the books strategy then National will have every piece of ammo to go after you for lacking the planning and imagination to get us out of this whole clusterfuss.
This is not the time to go "oh well things were working pretty well before COVID-19, let's aim for that". Shit was not working before COVID-19. And just because COVID-19 was the prick that fucked the economy, doesn't mean that the economy wasn't already asking for it.
The economy was built on lies and entrenching rich white people's wealth. For god's sake don't aim for the status quo. Be best Labour.
Comments
have to hard agree this is the time to transform not stay the course
Games Pad
2020-05-06 05:14:31 +0000 UTCThis budget has come a bit early. They couldn't plan for this and have been fighting fires.
David Hellyer
2020-05-05 07:39:45 +0000 UTC