"We're also competing against a lot of people in politics who come along and say... it's those rich people's fault, we'll just take even more money off them and give it to you."
This is the fundamental lie of neoliberal politics. A total inversion of the truth, which is that neoliberal parties say 'it's those poor people's fault, we'll just take the money off them and give it to you', and they do.
What social democratic parties like the Greens, TPM and TOP say is that people only get obscenely rich because the state allows them to plunder - or does it for them - from funds that could be used to fund public infrastructure and services. They propose that we stop doing this, so the real wealth created by the workers and professionals of this country can be shared fairly across the population, instead of hoarded by a few hundred neo-feudalist families.
A classic example is the food situation. According to a recent article on food rescue projects in the NZ Listener magazine (May 11-17), enough food is produced in Aotearoa to feed 40 million people. Yet every week 7% of kiwis - a population of roughly 5 million - go hungry.
Yet what does the new government Seymour is part want to do? Cut funding for school lunches, while giving a tax cut to landlords, who are - compared to those struggling to get enough to eat - comfortably wealthy.
"...one of the biggest supporters of extra regulation is big business. If you're a big business, more regulations are a pain, but they're going to hurt and maybe wipe out your competitors and stop any upstarts coming and competing with you."
Take the NZ Food Act 2014. An anti-competitive food safety regulation would have one set of standards that only the largest market players could afford to comply with. But the Food Act has 3 different sets of standards, applying at different scales, so smaller businesses have lower compliance requirements than larger ones. It's a good counterexample to Rimmer's broad brush claim, as is the EU Digital Markets Act.
You know I actually have some sympathy for this woman. She's expected to meet tier 2 of the Food Act because it's a processed product. But if she was making the juice as she serves it, she'd only have to comply with Tier 1.
It's just fruit juice for chrissakes, not milk. As long as she's sterilising her bottles etc, the health risk is infinitesimal. The only other rule I'd expect her to follow is being transparent about it being unpasteurized.
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