Originally Posted by
Logen Ninefingers
You say ‘me first’ but the reality is that most Kiwi’s who pay their bills, go to work every day, ensure their kids have food on the table…they are just doing what mums and dads have been doing since about the year 3,000 BC. These days they live complicated modern lives that are actually onerous with responsibility and obligation. If you have a job then you have obligations to your employer. You can’t be away fishing or flying a kite if you are obliged to be sat behind a desk 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. You have to make sure your vehicle is well maintained and warranted and registered. On it goes.
Yes they look after ‘them and theirs’, but that’s hardly selfish when we have a vast welfare state and free healthcare and education and a raft of other things ‘the state’ (taxpayers) provide. And many of these people give to charity, are active in the community and at their local school, and abide by the law.
If the government undertakes to carry out certain societal functions then why blame ‘selfish people’ when they don’t carry them out effectively? Labour - representing ‘big government’ - has no divine right to stay in power in perpetuity. We don’t all have to buy into Labours worldview on what constitutes ‘fairness’, and we shouldn’t just be moralised at and lectured to by people who have an unrealistic and one-eyed view of how society functions.
You should let go of hackneyed marxist archetypes such as the ‘greedy’ businessman, the ‘selfish’ middle class, the ‘salt of the earth’ poor and downtrodden. The real world is a lot more complex and nuanced than this blinkered method of categorising people.