Some banter to make the election bearable

Overseas voting begins today, and there are just four days left to enrol. So what better time to have a chat about how we are all feeling about the election? Josh and I thought we’d have a kōrero, and we’d love you to join in the comments! 

Emily: Josh, I’m so worried about the election. I can’t concentrate on anything else. And all my friends who work in the community feel the same; we are all freaking out.

I guess like, my - in no particular order - worries are -

• A National-led government but with an even more powerful NZ First and ACT bloc
• I hate TOP and worry both that they’ll usher National in over a left bloc, and I’m also worried they’ll go under 5% and waste all those left votes 
• My TOP theory is that National will immediately roll Luxon and then say he said he wouldn’t work with TOP, but our new leader will.
• Winston Peters as prime minister

Josh: I wrote a whole-ass essay on why leftists shouldn't vote for Opportunity but also why I think it's better having them as the MMP kingmaker than Winston Peters. It's not my fault that no-one listens to me. When I run things I will pass a law saying that they have to, and everything will be wonderful. 

I mean I don’t listen to you so I can’t blame them. I only really feel hopeful that Chris Bishop will lose his seat.

Silver lining! He can go back to working at the dart factory and we'll all be better off. 

Since cigs are making a comeback thanks to this government he will have plenty of work. Overall, I am not hopeful at all about a government change.  

I was thinking about my post after the last election and how I was gutted, obviously but had a “well we all need to get back to working to help each other” attitude…There’s no way I can muster that attitude again. Like really. 

Let’s talk about the debates…I’m not watching them, and I hate them. I’m not watching them because I know they’ll make me so mad, but they still do. 

The only way I could recommend political debates is as a cure for people who suffer from low blood pressure. 

Why is it always Chris v Chris!! We are in MMP, this is the worst.

Hooray for MMP! It's given us anodyne room-temperature-milk dudes competing to be pretend Prime Minister and Winston Peters as Actual Prime Minister for like… nearly every election under MMP. 

There’s never any vision for the future. It’s just National blaming Labour and Labour blaming National but I doubt either Chris has any idea what kind of Aotearoa we want to make together.

I hate the media coverage it is so awful. Like these shit-ass fucking pathetic polls saying do you think: “Chris dominated!😍” Not to be dramatic, Josh, but I want to riot France-style every time I see our fucking media do this cutesy fun election bullshit. 

I hate it so much; it's the primary reason I decided that working in corporate over a journalism job I'd been offered would be a more honest career choice. Stop calling the election like it's a fucking sports match or the plot of a trendy spicy series! Stop acting like the decisions made and the governments elected don't have a real impact on actual human lives! Stop bemoaning the lack of drama! With AI and World War 3 and the endless crisis in our Despair Rectangles we've had enough goddamn drama, why can't you encourage politics to be boringly competent? 

A friend called this “the closest and most crucial election of my life” and I feel the same. 

It's crucial because if the Right win again they'll fuck everything up even more than they currently have, which is a lot, but the Labour party will - at best - only slow the decay, if they get their way. They have literally promised not to do any of the vital things that would fix our most pressing structural and systemic problems. So sure, the election is crucial, but not as crucial as it would be if it was a party who was actually going to do the needful versus one that will do the opposite of needful. The only hope is that the Left get the most votes and Greens and TPM refuse to form a government unless the needful gets done. So I'm voting for that slim chance, I suppose. 

Also, don’t get me started on Ryan Fucking Bridge. 

Kind of interesting how objectively stupid objectionable dudes who are as much fun to have in your eyes as a handful of broken glass and who back right-wing politics as a kind of lizard-brain reflex always seem to just kind of flop into a media commentary job? And then they end up being drafted into safe seats for right-wing parties? What a mystery, I wonder if we'll ever solve it. 

I will say it’s funny that the National Party posted a thing saying Luxon was the “winner” like I kinda love that - I’m going to do that myself now. Just declare myself the winner of anything and everything.

What are your election day plans? I have a Green Party Party but I may just get drunk and cry. Maybe get drunk and cry or do a live chat here, lol do we have to bring the Discord back to life? 

Probably. But I'm going to be offline. My election day plans are to turn off the internet, put my phone in a 2006-era text-and-calls-only mode, and get in the sea. Only by being actually underwater will I be able to preserve my sanity. But hey do you want to talk about the actual specific reasons why everything is fucked and we can't have nice things? Because no-one will ever let me talk about it in person without their eyes glazing over like it's a magic spell that induces a coma. 

Josh are you doing to talk about the Reserve Bank because I thought I told you I’m already depressed. You cannot make this topic interesting. Still…I can almost feel your face lighting up at the chance to talk about how much you hate neoliberalism so go on. 

Look you know perfectly well that the only reason I took this job was so I could live every autistic man's dream and inflict my special interest on a captive audience. So here we go. You know about how the right-wing parties (and Labour when they're in government) are always bashing beneficiaries? What do you think would happen if every unemployed person... got a job?

I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.

I already am! And it's this: Every neoliberal economist in the country, which is almost all of them, would roll their eyes back in their skulls, open their mouths, and emit a paralysing wail. And the Reserve Bank - the mouths of its economist bosses locked open in that same unceasing scream - would go to the console from which they control the economy, which consists of a big red toggle marked RAISE/LOWER INTEREST RATES. That's the only button they have. And they'd raise interest rates to ruin as many people and businesses as possible to get unemployment up to a level that will allow them to close their mouths again.

This is so ridiculous. Why are economists like this? Why do we run the economy this way?

Because economists are chiropractors.

If you've ever been to a chiropractor, you know you can carefully describe your health problems, and then - whether the problem is in your spine or your spleen - the chiropractor will say "right, we're going to crack your back."

Neoliberal economists are like if chiropractors ran the world because they're so convenient to rich people. They spend years getting a doctorate in pseudoscientific gobbledegook created by semi-religious figures that only bears a passing resemblance to the real world, and they spend the rest of their career advising politicians to try and get people to act in the way their pretty equations say they should. That's what they're doing when they raise interest rates (which makes everything more expensive) to combat inflation (which is everything getting more expensive). Even though our inflation is because of a global pandemic, a bag of rotting mince wearing an orange skinsuit starting a war in Iran, and corporate greed, neoliberal economists look at it with a kind of robotic bemusement and say "making everything more expensive will fix this." Never mind that it's breaking our back each time they do it. Because they all believe it's the right thing to do. And because the Reserve Bank Act, created by politicians acting on the advice of economists, tells them they have to do it.

So the unemployment that politicians are always saying they're trying to get down and the beneficiaries they're always bitching about are the result of… their own actions?

Yup! The Reserve Bank was created by government, and the Reserve Bank Act enacted by Parliament, and they could change it at literally any time to prioritise full employment, and they don't. And then they demonise the beneficiaries. Kind of unfair, isn't it?

Well at least we have brave journalists who will point out that obvious contradiction whenever a politician brings up unemployment or beneficiaries!

Ha. About that. For some reason, journalists never mention it! It's weird! I wonder why! 

So that's what National believe. What about Labour?

Oh, Labour believe the exact same stuff. They just pretend not to. That's why when they're campaigning for election they talk about how nurses and teachers deserve better pay and when they're in government they get all sulky about giving nurses and teachers better pay.

What's stopping them from actually spending money on all the things that nearly everyone in the country agrees are broken, like our munted health system?

Well, there's a bunch of expensive people in Wellington whose job is to make incorrect economic predictions over and over and over and make sure the size of Government - as in, the amount of money we spend on things we need - never meaningfully increases. They're called "Treasury." They're cheered on by all the neoliberal economists working in think tanks whose job it is to never ever ever ever stop opining on every subject they're experts in (every possible subject) but most especially how Government can never ever ever ever spend money on all the things that need doing.

Treasury? They sound fun! Like a friendly bunch who are definitely looking out for normal people and not at all like a soulless miser cult who tell every incoming government exactly how they get to govern.

Yup. Labour are signed up to the same Treasury-"encouraged" constraints on borrowing as National and they refuse to meaningfully raise taxes on the rich. It's like someone saying "I'm going to go for a swim" and then carefully putting on a straitjacket instead of a wetsuit. Because of those self-imposed constraints, if Labour get elected they won't have any money to spend fixing the stuff that's broken, like hospitals. People will get mad at Labour for not doing anything, they'll elect National who will again do the opposite of what's needed, and the problem will carry on forever. The Chrises should just finally give in to their urges to be exactly like each other and kiss and combine their flesh into one porridge-flavoured megaparty that will govern forever and ever. 

This close to the election I’m pretty sure people will string me up and crucify me for hosting you saying a bad word about Labour so thanks for that. 

Emily if you naively expect people to do the right thing for all of us, how can you ever expect them to be politicians? 

I mean I have a feeling I know, but tell me, what would fix all this?

A good start would be reforming Treasury and the Reserve Bank by firing all their neoliberal ghouls into the sun, but failing that, to get them into a room and give them a stern talking-to. Giving the Reserve Bank more tools than a "make-everything-more-expensive" button and reforming Treasury's "governments-must-run-surpluses-and-keep-spending-under-30-percent-of-GDP" mandate. Making them at last understand that their job is to make sure our current generations and the next can live a dignified life, and that the that their role as part of Government is to do what is needful for citizens, not to make a series of arbitrary lines go up. That everyone who can work should be able to. That the jobs available should be meaningful and useful, not just what the market arbitrarily decides people should be doing. That we're actually going to spend money to fix the health system and decarbonise and give people housing and everything else that desperately needs doing. But that would only happen if we had a finance minister as committed to doing useful things as Roger Douglas was to fucking everything up in 1984.

So it won't happen? 

Not without Chlöe Swarbrick as finance minister, no.

Makes you want to….vote Green. Just to watch Ryan Bridge and those soulless capitalist piggies on LinkedIn suffer. Imagine how much they’d lose their minds! 

Oh believe me, I already am. So yes, vote Green, if only because it's the only way to make all the ghouls start screaming at once. It would be so, so funny. 

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