tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442430064359197279.post3572790325300885869..comments2024-03-26T10:03:51.827+13:00Comments on Karl du Fresne: As I said to my long-suffering spouse ...Karl du Fresnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05054853925940134404noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442430064359197279.post-11149808168371903362009-03-07T22:48:00.000+13:002009-03-07T22:48:00.000+13:00I, too, could see the debt tsunami coming to engul...I, too, could see the debt tsunami coming to engulf us. The clearest thought I had on the matter - and the I use it as a personal benchmark - was the day in March 2003 that Bush invaded Iraq. <BR/><BR/>At that point, the United States committed itself irrevocably to monster deficits, rising interest rates (to fund same) and unstable oil prices for years to come. Peak oil is icing on the cake. All of these would start slowly, accumulate over time and then that would be that. <BR/><BR/>That week, my wife and I decided to sell our houses and buy a farm and to remain as free of debt as possible. The crunch wouldn't come for some time, but we didn't want to be caught out. <BR/><BR/>As it happened, the dairy boom saw us sell that farm after almost 4 years for almost double what we paid for it. That was April last year. Later than I had hoped, but perfect in the event. Before Sanlu and before the crash in August. I wanted it gone by Xmas '08 as I could see the clouds gathering on the global financial horizon. <BR/><BR/>Interesting you blame Labour (in part) as it was Labour who resisted the National Party (and the Dom Post and the NZ Herald) campaign for tax cuts - despite surveys showing year-on-year that most Kiwis weren't too fused about tax cuts. <BR/><BR/>National would have been into the business-first-and-best mythology boots and all had they been the government. Labour was more restrained and moer measured. Cullen put the state's books in good order for the first time in a generation. Our situation now would be arguably be FAR worse had a National government been in power. <BR/><BR/>Of course, National is now working overtime to wreck all that in the mistaken belied that tax-cuts will spur consumption and thus a recovery. They won't. <BR/><BR/>As you rightly point out, we need to produce things, not consume more. <BR/><BR/>But the problem we have there is that the wages paid to the people who work in the primary producer sector too often are terrible. Their hours and working conditions are also often terrible. I could bore you with stories about people people working on dairy farms around Foxton.....working 14-hour days and starting at 4am and getting one day off in a fortnight. If that is New Zealand's bright future, you can have it. I'm outta here. <BR/><BR/>I don't want to be a slaving peasant in a land run by the farm-owning aristocracy who use parliament to enrich themselves and impoverish everyone else. <BR/><BR/>That's where National's policies will lead us. All power to the employer and screw the workers. <BR/><BR/>Read the laws they have passed recently. one can come to no other conclusion. <BR/><BR/>John Key promised to improve wages in NZ and has instead done everything in his power to seem then curtailed. <BR/><BR/>But then, having watched the National party for almost 30 years I know they are the party that can be relied upon to do the wrong things for all the right reasons. They belive a lot of things that simply aren't true....and the global catastrophe how upon us proof the very policies they advocate don't actually work. <BR/><BR/>But they can't see that. They never do.Steve Withershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04221815213521767405noreply@blogger.com