StrypeyApr 9, 2024

"I get sick every time I go to the doctor that I still get subsidised and I can't opt out of the system. Now that's wrong. I was trying to take the welfare state off the middle class."

#JennyShipley, 2017

https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-9th-floor/story/201841731/the-challenger-jenny-shipley

What this atomised mindset misses is that it's not her being subsidised, it's the doctor's surgery. If you want to contribute more according to your means, you do that by raising taxes, in ways that target those on higher incomes.

#neoliberalism #PublicHealth

The Challenger - Jenny Shipley

In part four, Guyon Espiner talks to Dame Jenny Shipley about being the first woman on the 9th Floor, plus coups and coalitions, welfare reform and Winston Peters. And, above all, her commitment to change.

RNZ
Show threadStrypeyApr 9, 2024

I've made so my attempts to listen to this interview. I find it painful that Shipley - who is clearly quite intelligent - still can't question her assumptions, despite decades of observing the social consequences of her government's policy.

Listening to her holding forth about taking subsidies from the taxes of average kiwis is mind-boggling. Her government took far more from them by cutting benefits and abolishing universal unionism, creating the casualised, low wage economy we now live in.

Show threadspmatich vk3spm 
@strypey I recall a march in Hamilton in the 80s. The chant was
Jenny Shipley’s got no soul. Put her on the bloody dole.
Not much has changed.
Apr 9, 2024 at 9:42pmWeb