This weekend GP appointments were made free in South Auckland to reduce the pressure on Emergency Departments which were overloaded due to seasonal illnesses, Covid, and staff absences due to illness.
What a great initiative, but wouldn’t it be even better if we made it universally free on a permanent basis? Kind of like the half priced public transport that was so popular it was extended.
Make more services free, universally, permanently. The government might even get elected again and shouldn’t worry about the other lot, they talk a big game but they are seldom willing to roll back popular policies even if they oppose them at the time.
What else?
Dental care – it is beyond affordable. What the heck are they filling teeth with gold and platinum? Are the fluids they use more expensive than the most expensive substance known to man – printer ink?
I appreciate there are overheads but the prices are insane, any one on a lower income with any significant work to do is going to struggle and realistically many many people will be forgoing dental treatment because it is unaffordable on top of the necessities of life.
So here we are then, a first word country where people are going without basic medical treatment, I’m obviously not talking about cosmetic dentistry, to get by. Is that what we want as a society that some people get great quality health services and others get none?
It does seem to be what National and ACT want through their planned reduction in funding to public services. This will result in a growing need to pay privately meaning that those with wealth can enjoy top quality medical treatment and those without get a bare safety net that provides the basics, slowly, sometimes too slowly.
Is there anything wrong with that? If you work a bit harder, invest a bit harder, inherit a bit harder shouldn’t you be entitled to the best services your money can buy? Clearly the cost would be exorbitant to fund services to that level for all.
Nothing says a meritocracy like providing low standard services to the majority but allowing those with ambition to strive for more than their share.
Why not carry it a bit further than health services? Personally I think the idea of providing people with additional free, or very low cost, basics is more doable than necessarily moving towards a UBI, which will be a hard sell.
Universal services are easier to administer, for example think how much effort is saved providing a train service if you’re not charging travelers? No more cash handling, no more tickets, no ticket barriers, just get on and off as you want.
But lets not stop with government services how about we provide every single household with a basic level of electricity, water, internet, and locally produced food, at a very low cost or free?
People who want more than the basics would be welcome to purchase more of course, the fact that someone buys fillet steak rather than mince or sausages does not impact those having the later, unlike people jumping the queue with medical professionals.
Perhaps when there is a glut of cheap food, say for example a harvest of apples, all of the lower grade crop that the exporters and the supermarkets don’t want could be given to the people for free rather than left to rot?
We could all go along with our hessian bags to the local community distribution centre and get our free apples like good little commu…. er I mean citizens – nothing to see here. Same thing when China buys less beef and lamb, although perhaps a different sort of bag might be needed.
University should be free of course, if the pandemic taught us anything it was that many of our citizens could really use a bit more education, in particular science and literacy. Student Allowances should clearly be universal, I’ve always thought it mental that we’ll pay someone to sit around but not to develop their skills and knowledge.
The government could roll out free things incrementally – like school uniforms. Either legislate so that people can buy generic options from the likes of the Warehouse cheaply or provide free uniforms so that this does not become a barrier to education. Sure schools will need funding if they are not using a monopoly position to rort students for overpriced uniforms, which brings us to tax.
Now with a lot of additional services being provided by the government we’re going to need a lot more tax, like a real lot. But that is a different post, look for a coming column about the merits of taxing the wealthy more highly – it’ll be called something like “if you thought the old tax system was progressive check this out” or “sure you can call it tall poppy syndrome, we call it a guillotine”.
OK some of them will complain and threaten to leave, that is fine, let them go. A lot of them seem like jerks anyway.
Bye bye Mowbray family that made a fortune selling toys that wreck the environment with thousands of plastic water balloons – how will we get by without your genius? Bye bye Ian Taylor, bye bye Russell Coutts, you’ve done some good stuff but really at this point the country would be better off without you and your whinging, quite frankly you’re a bad example for the children.
We’ll also need to look at the elephant in the room that dwarfs all other cost pressures on households – homes. Upcoming column “Houses – they’re for people to live in not your portfolio”.
Look forward to simple solutions like “you can own two properties and no more, time for a massive fire sale to first home buyers and state housing” or “as a tenant you paid 90% of the mortgage so you own 90% of the house – hurrah”
So imagine if we did all of these things, every single one to take effect from 1 April next year. Imagine the looks on the faces of those that call our current Prime Minister a communist – surely that alone would make the expense worth while?
Now I know what may of you will be saying – these are no-brainers Nick, we should do all of them heck we’ve got a majority government there is actually nothing politically stopping them, but how can we achieve it without a song?
To which I say, good point here is just the thing. Now as Billy points out some of the older lyrics are a little archaic, but have you listened to “God of Nations” recently?
Sadly the high resolution video has been removed from YouTube, so please excuse the quality of the video in this one, the audio is still fine:
Free for all.
Finland , Sweden , Danemark, Norway : all Scandinavian countries are based on socialist policies with good free education, housing, higher taxes and a more egalitarian society. Did I mentioned less crime asxwell?
yes 40 years of underfunding public so that it doesnt interfere with private profits. who knows how much money private health insurers have made?