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A wholesome scenario - Olive - 28-09-2025
From David Slack's substack this morning:
"Treasury says we’re broke. Now what?
A joke has stayed with me my entire life:
A man visits a fortune teller at the fairground, hands over his twenty dollars and waits as the fortune teller gazes into the crystal ball. Finally she looks him in the eye and tells him: You have twenty years of bad luck ahead of you.
She stares, he stares back. Finally he hands her another twenty dollars and asks: And then what happens?
She tells him: You get used to it.
Treasury cleared its throat this week and offered words to similar effect.
Our finances are unsustainable. An ageing population will crush us under healthcare and superannuation costs. By 2065 we could be looking at 32% GST, and no national super until you’re 72.
Forty years of bad luck, and then we get used to it.
For sure, it’s a menu of misery. I don’t doubt the accuracy of their numbers. But it hinges on a crucial assumption: We stay on the road we’re on.
To be fair, this plucky little nation that prides itself on the ingenuity of just a few Kiwi has proven to be doggedly determined to remain on said current path: keep doing things the way we do, go on relying on dairy exports, go on dreaming of ever-rising house prices.
Perhaps Treasury’s message here is simply what it appears to be: the traditional neocon rutting call of we’ll go broke if we don’t slash government spending.
But maybe it’s is an inspired use of those words to make us finally bloody do what needs to be done: make the most of our possibilities. In which case — good call, Treasury. We don’t have a demographics problem. We have an imagination problem.
Regular readers may recall that this newsletter is very much a believer in our enormous possibilities, particularly in terms of renewable energy.
To recap my grand dreams for us as the Saudi Arabia of clean energy, I imagine an economy thriving as energy-intensive industries move here to make genuinely zero-carbon products.
In this world of abundant solar and wind and hydro energy, we thrive, and collect abundant tax on it.
In this world of abundant solar and wind and hydro energy, we thrive, and our productivity bounds ahead. Young people have well-paid jobs that reward their skills they acquired from a Finland quality education system. By 2065, our free tertiary education has produced two generations of highly skilled workers. Productivity hasn’t crawled up at Treasury’s assumed 0.8% annual rate, it’s been running at 2-3% because we actually invested in our people.
In this world of abundant solar and wind and hydro energy, we thrive because we’ve completely remade the housing economy and created a generation that isn’t spending 60% of income on rent. Capital gains tax means houses are homes, not poker chips. The property speculation casino is closed. That capital has flowed into productive investment, into those green energy projects, into R&D and into actual businesses that make actual things.
In this world of abundant solar and wind and hydro energy, we thrive with the infrastructure of a 21st century clean energy economy. Fast rail between Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga has cut commute times and opened up the regions. Every school has solar panels, slashing education’s energy costs. Every state house is insulated, cutting health costs from respiratory illness. And there’s abundant clean power for new industries.
The Universal Basic Income pilot worked so well we’ve rolled it out nationwide, funded by a carbon tax and a proper CGT. Young people aren’t fleeing to Melbourne and London - they’re coming back. And bringing others with them. We’re not ageing as fast as Treasury projects because we’re a place people actually want to live.
An important note for my degrowth friends. Why am I banging on about growth again when the planet’s already burning?
This wouldn’t be growth for growth’s sake. It would be what Jason Hickel calls selective growth. It would be growing the specific things we need for human flourishing while actively shrinking the destructive sectors. We could be growing our contribution to a global transition while shrinking consumption at home. Free public transport means fewer cars. Warm, efficient homes mean less energy use. Local food systems mean less shipping. Durable, repairable products instead of disposable junk.
I’m not talking about making more plastic crap for landfills or building more roads for more cars. I’m talking about growing the things that let us shrink our footprint. I’m hoping for a scenario that replaces carbon-intensive activities and moves industrial activity towards a more sustainable base.
The right kind of growth in renewable energy could enable degrowth in consumption. They don’t have to be opposing forces. We could be richer in time, health, community, and purpose while consuming less stuff.
We’re not facing a fiscal crisis. We’re facing a crisis of imagination. The opportunity’s there. The technology’s there. The only thing missing is the will.
We can stay on that path to a grey dystopia, all working longer, paying a third more for everything, watching our kids leave for countries that actually have a future.
Or we can choose the green machine: become an energy superpower; our kids hugely equipped: our cities livable; our regions thriving; and the pension age still 65 because we have the money for it.
You could get very easily used to something like that."
RE: A wholesome scenario - Oh_hunnihunni - 28-09-2025
The culture that bases its economy on the idea of endless growth being a good thing has to have an end point surely, because it simply runs out of resources. Growth is not an infinite process, a cycle that renews itself is far more sustainable, especially if it allows for evolution and innovation, for change.
We are so lucky here in this country. Small educated population, stable government (despite our differences), peaceful lives, established systems - over the years we have been a test bed for all kinds of new tech, new products, new ideas. Why not take some risks and start looking at those new economic theories that aren't based on using up whatever is there in order to make more money as soon as possible?
Maybe even think about keeping people and kindness, equity and wellness in the economic equation? Can't hurt that much surely?
RE: A wholesome scenario - Lilith7 - 28-09-2025
Clean green energy, kids taught empathy in schools, education free to all at every level...
We could, we could...why don't we just do it? Why not try to bring out the best of human nature rather than encouraging the worst.
RE: A wholesome scenario - zqwerty - 28-09-2025
Because there are lots of people just like Heisenberg who want to keep slogging everyday in the rat race climbing up the earnings ladder looking down from their already high earning position at all the toiling masses struggling to attain high status through gaining more money trying to emulate Heisenberg and the like to gain the exalted position that he sees himself in.
It's called living in "hazard" and has a fundamental appeal to all humans at the evolutionary level and is hard to leave behind and see another way. It's how we used to live when we were at the "hunter/gatherer" stage on our evolutionary path and we became addicted to the "buzz" then and still are. Drug addiction is another manifestation of it, so is pursuit of the opposite sex or whatever, the thrill of the challenge and competition.
RE: A wholesome scenario - Lilith7 - 28-09-2025
(28-09-2025, 11:49 AM)zqwerty Wrote: Because there are lots of people just like Heisenberg who want to keep slogging everyday in the rat race climbing up the earnings ladder looking down from their already high earning position at all the toiling masses struggling to attain high status through gaining more money trying to emulate Heisenberg and the like to gain the exalted position that he sees himself in.
It's called living in "hazard" and has a fundamental appeal to all humans at the evolutionary level and is hard to leave behind and see another way. It's how we used to live when we were at the "hunter/gatherer" stage on our evolutionary path and we became addicted to the "buzz" then and still are. Drug addiction is another manifestation of it, so is pursuit of the opposite sex or whatever, the thrill of the challenge and competition.
Well, it stinks.
I've known the odd addict over the years, most worked like hell ( & continue to do so) & got sober.
So change is possible. if we were to change for the better, then those still wanting to live in hazard could go off & do stuff like mountain climbing or whatever.
We're a weird species...
RE: A wholesome scenario - zqwerty - 28-09-2025
I had a girlfriend once who started the Woman's Refuge in Christchurch, also worked for the Human Rights Commission, a woman of the world you might say, I was with her for 5 years on and off, she left Chch in the late 60's when she was 16 years old after her Mum died and got into the wild scene up in Wellington that came into being during the sex and drugs and rock and roll years, she met lots of friends up there and told me that many of them died from drug taking, almost all in fact.
RE: A wholesome scenario - Lilith7 - 29-09-2025
(28-09-2025, 05:16 PM)zqwerty Wrote: I had a girlfriend once who started the Woman's Refuge in Christchurch, also worked for the Human Rights Commission, a woman of the world you might say, I was with her for 5 years on and off, she left Chch in the late 60's when she was 16 years old after her Mum died and got into the wild scene up in Wellington that came into being during the sex and drugs and rock and roll years, she met lots of friends up there and told me that many of them died from drug taking, almost all in fact.
I think that when we're young its always a hell of a shock when someone we know, who is our age dies. Until then it always seems that only older people die.
I had a dance teacher a few years back, who helped set up Shakti here, similar organisation.