ANNUS HORRIBILIS

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says 2021 was 'awful' but her Labour Government did its bit to make life a misery for many New Zealanders...

PRIME MINISTER Jacinda Ardern has been doing some end-of-the-year interviews, although none of them have been with Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking. In an interview with one of her favourite journalists, TV3's Jenna Lynch, Ardern reflected that it had been an 'awful year' and shockingly revealed that she hadn't had a haircut in five months. That's because she apparently won't use anyone but her Auckland hairdresser who has, of course, been 'enjoying' life under lockdown. We should be appalled that Ardern has had to endure such hardship.

Of course 2021 won't go down as one of the country's vintage years. The optimism that briefly rose at the end of the last year when many of us thought the worst over was quickly squashed by the arrival of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. And with the emergence of another strain, omicron, the future still remains uncertain.

Even so, it hasn't been such a bad year for some of us.

Thanks to the work put in by journalist and commentator Bernard Hickey, we now know that the wealth of the country's rich elite has grown by a staggering fifty percent over the past two years. Writing in his newsletter The Kaka with an edited version republished by Spin Off, Hickey observes:    

'In short, by my calculations from Reserve Bank figures on term deposits, household financial assets and house and land valuations, asset owners’ wealth is on track to rise by $872 billion or 50% to $2.63 trillion within two years of the outbreak, including:

a $45b increase in cash in bank deposits to $319b, which incorporates a $21b rise in non-financial bank deposits to $110b and a $24b increase in household deposits to $209b;

a $608b increase in housing equity due to a $648b rise in the value of houses and land to $1.74t and a $40b rise in home loans to $318b; and,

a $257b increase in the value of shares, bonds and other non-bank financial assets to $954b.

All of that increased wealth and cash on hand is due to government payouts and the actions of central banks here and overseas. Yet the money keeps flowing to those who already have it.'

Nice work if you can get it. Indeed this pandemic has only served to intensify New Zealand's already chronic levels of poverty and inequality. It has been a nightmarish year for many with food banks barely able to cope with the increasing demand on their services and many of them reporting that this Christmas will be 'crunch time'.

And, as Bernard Hickey also points out, 'the waiting list for public housing has risen 65% to 24,475 since the beginning of Covid. It has trebled in the last three years.'

Despite the enormous financial stress many are under the Labour Government has offered little in the way of financial relief. The minimal increase in benefit levels has been nothing like what is required to absorb either rent increases or the steep increase in the general cost of living. The working class has effectively been thrown to the market wolves by a Labour Government that has, in sharp contrast, shown no reluctance in bailing out the business sector. It has been socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us.

Somewhere back in the past, it seems such a long time ago now, Finance Minister Grant Robertson talked grandly of 'building back better'. But while the pandemic has laid bare the extreme injustices and inequalities of our economic and social system, the Prime Minster's declaration that 2021 was her 'annus horriblis' should not be taken as encouragement that she intends to do something  about the situation next year. Given her propensity to do nothing that might threaten the interests of the one percent, she would have to display the kind of political vision and determination that has been absent up to this point. 

We remain in danger of heading to what will be the status quo, but much worse. Author and activist Naomi Klein has observed:

'Are we going to accept pre-COVID normal only much diminished? The fact is, we're not 'all in this together as government leaders have often claimed. If you were disposable before, you're sacrificial now.'

The legacy of this pandemic, when it is all over, could well be the further concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a tiny elite, composed of senior politicians, bankers, financiers and corporate executives. There is no place for the concerns and priorities of ordinary people in this future. It is the future that Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has described as 'barbarism with a human face – ruthless survivalist measures enforced with regret and even sympathy but legitimised by expert opinions.'

To prevent such a future we need nothing less than a radical democratisation of national economic and political institutions, giving workers, consumers and communities a say in decision-making within publicly-owned companies, central banks, and throughout the local and central state. 

Of course, I can well imagine the Labour-aligned liberal left dismissing such a conclusion as 'utopian' and, once again, trying to con everyone into believing Labour is 'the lesser evil'. But as US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said 'If people feel as if they don’t have any power, and believe that there is no hope, then we are consigning ourselves to repeat history over and over again.'