KC SHOEN
The United States is in free-fall, and its fleeing donor class are looking for a new place in which they can pull the ripcord and land softly with their assets and stocks in tact, ready to commit more colossal rape of sovereignty via resources extraction and revenue stealing from another location not yet despoiled by such republic-ending ravages, and have chosen Aotearoa.
It appears, however, that New Zealand doesn't want 'em.
Dylan Lawrence, the General manager of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) put it quite plainly:"...we say the investment's got to be good for New Zealand not just good for the investor, and by that I mean how real is it, does it create jobs for New Zealanders, does it bring capability networks, technology, or does it provide access to new markets?" (Emphasis added).
Mr. Lawrence doesn't seem so smitten with just firing open the storm doors of permanent residency to allow access to the pathological stock buy-back prostitutes of the American financial, capital and investment sector. And why should he? It would allow these psychopathic vermin access to a new environment with which they can destroy the ecology, wring the economy bone dry until it is a parched fissure of immense inequality, then prop up its mortal remains to directly updraft monies via diminishing purchasing power and depreciated wages of the working class: exactly as they have done before.
It is neither aberration nor accident the expanding wealth gap that was occurring here prior to CoVID 19. Although not nearly the Great Crevasse of The Disparate United States the suspicions of potential impropriety should remain raised. It is under cover of CoVID the US will slide into fascism, and it is that same cover that could see New Zealand inadvertently become the next playground of toxic capitalism to wreck the diverse but delicate economic landscape, while it is still has not yet started its full recovery.
And whilst many should be concerned about 20% of New Zealand's wealth being in the possession of 1% of the population, and the fall of the median income within the last year , it should be understood that inequality is already a blatant feature of capitalism, existing in every freemarket society and is not incidental. CoVID 19 has exacerbated this element of the globalized supply-side/ suppressed wages construct through small business closures and high unemployment via redundancies. Since the global market melt-down of 2008, the worlds financially affluent have benefited from stock buy-backs and the 'zombification' of many financial institutions across the entirety of all western nations, those having still not generated any true revenue in over a decade, and are perpetually being issued governmental bail outs to continue functioning as frontal facades
The unemployment rate has held steady at 4% percent, and the wage subsidy scheme issued by Jacinda Ardern's government have proved effective enough to stop the train from riding off the cliff, with Auckland itself hemorrhaging 250 jobs per day on average during that same spread of time (June-August 2020) before settling down to recent relative normal. The country still stands poised to rebound locally and can well take on the international markets again when they resume into the 'new normal'. The 'team of 5 million' (or which I and my family were proudly part of) coordinated the most dramatic crushing of CoVID the world has witnessed, even through the island's 2nd wave of the virus.
All taken however, the concern should be placed on governments fealty to corporate confluence directed firstly, at the likes of Winston Peters , whom is not bashful about receiving favors in exchange for policy consideration from himself and his current party. Anytime members of government who get testy when confronted by the local media about questionable receipts of gifts and money from special interests, or feigns indigence at being rendered reasonable questions that do not coddle them need to be evaluated with great scrutiny ( props to the local media for putting the 'wood' to him, and not backing down)
Concern, also, needs to rest upon candidates, like Judith Collins, whom possess right-wing, nationalist tendencies, favors combative rhetoric over substantive , measured debates on policy and stewardship, and are seeming lacking in self-awareness when its comes to their own willful ignorance. As I have often pontificated with great redundancy, all forms of conservative Nationalism should be absolutely dismissed as nothing more than xenophobic and corporate servile rhetoric used to partition those of the normative 'aggrieved' class against those whom are 'outsiders' , blamed for all societal ills and shortcomings.
Speaking of service to the 'managerial/ elite' class , Jacinda Ardern also needs closer scrutiny on this matter. Although rather a seemingly harmless gesture of economic good will to allow James Cameron's crew to fly directly into Wellington during New Zealand's Level 4 lockdown to complete filming for the Avatar series in March, it also expresses a potential favourtism the Prime Minister possesses toward vested Corporate confluence, even during a pandemic.
And however impressive her emergency management of CoVID in Aotearoa, and her previous pronouncements of being a 'social democrat' , having gone as far as to acknowledge the outright failure of Capitalism , Ms. Ardern has yet to demonstrate the will to put a halt to the over-protectionism of the New Zealand real estate market, which has ballooned unrealistically over the last two months (August through September 2020), and has not addressed the inevitable outcome of such protracted parlance upon inequality. Ardern was also a silent partner when it has come to the Deputy Prime Minister Peters' various conflicts of interests over the last year.
These rather seemingly inane examples of governmental inaction and self-interst is exactly how the American Corporate Vampires can seize the blood of New Zealand for sheer profiteering at the expense of the working class. In the U.S., it started with a simple letter of an appointed Supreme Court Judge that set off the American Corporate elite to push back against the counter-culture of the 1960's. Today, every American politician (irrespective of 'Party', which has no further ideological meaning beyond window dressing currently) is 'purchased' by way of a lurid and filthy corporate pandering called 'lobbyism'. Policy is then 'purchased' as collusion , as both maladroit and cowardly entities then set about raping the system through reduction of public safety nets and social programs (including retirement pensions), and consuming all the rest in reckless abandon for thier enrichment. with 1% of the population holding 97% of the wealth and access thereto.
So, to my Kiwi and Māori whānau, this American pākehā is sending a harsh warning:The shit can happen here. CoVID is still among us, and if you need any further 'motivation' as to the legitimacy of this fact-based article, I direct your attention to the 220,000 dead corpses buried under various American geographic locations that 'lie' as proof that the corruption allowed in the U.S. help kill them all (and continue to kill more). The American donor class does not care about you, your country, your family or your lives. The New Zealand government, alongside Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of these self-aggrandizing American psychopathic 'Captains Of Industry' should be put in serious check, unless a future world of inequity, involving living hand-to-mouth in perpetuity coupled with spates of homelessness sounds like a good option....
