At Catallaxy Files, Steve Kates views the statement of the next Prime Minister of New Zealand with disdain:
The stupidity of some people plumbs depths that are always hard to fathom. Is it really all that hard to learn from history? Jacinda Ardern: ‘Capitalism has failed New Zealanders’. Listen to this bewildering idiocy and marvel how someone can remain so ignorant in the midst of a world of socialist horrors.
New Zealand prime-minister-elect Jacinda Ardern has described capitalism as a “blatant failure” in the country, nominating poverty and homelessness as her priorities when she takes office.
Speaking in her first sit-down interview, on TV3’s The Nation, Ms Ardern said New Zealanders were not feeling the benefits of prosperity. Asked if capitalism had failed New Zealanders on low incomes, Ms Ardern was blunt: “If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that’s a blatant failure. What else could you describe it as?”
“When you have a market economy, it all comes down to whether or not you acknowledge where the market has failed and where intervention is required. Has it failed our people in recent times? Yes.
“Wages are not keeping up with inflation (and) and how can you claim you’ve been successful when you have growth at roughly 3 per cent, but you have the worst homelessness in the developed world?”
I personally had no idea that the economy was so terrible in New Zealand, with literally hundreds of thousands of New Zealand’s children living in starvation conditions. According to Wikipedia, there are less than five million people in all of New Zealand, and roughly 20% of the population are under the age of 15: that means at least two-hundred thousand children are starving right now! That’s nearly Venezuelan levels of privation. How has such a shocking humanitarian crisis engulfed a modern, first-world economy with no warning from the media or our political leaders? We must organize help immediately!
