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OPINION
It's the end of 2018.
From a personal standpoint it's been a good year. My wife and I welcomed our daughter into the world after five years of battling infertility and four rounds of IVF.
My business got over lumpy moments in 2017 when a couple of clients folded, and thrived again in 2018, and I finally found a barber that does my hair how I like it and doesn't cost a bazillion dollars.
From the world's perspective it was pretty terrible.
International crises unfolded that we just didn't have the bandwidth to deal with - the worst famine in 100 years is happening right now in Yemen, it's been estimated that 85,000 children under the age of five have died from starvation - but that news barely reaches us.
The bad orange man continues to be bad, and both major parties in the UK seem hellbent on Brexiting themselves into uselessness.
Right now, all throughout the media there'll be lists of forecasts for 2019.
But I'm not going to join in. I'm hopeless at forecasting. I said the iPad would be a passing fad, and since then I have stayed away from making predictions.
Instead, I'm going to give you a list of things I want to see happen in 2019:
The world actually does something about climate change
Every year some politicians go swanning off to a different country to sign a new climate deal or reaffirm an existing one, then they all return to their countries and nothing much happens. Citizens all band together and make lovely sounding promises to drive their cars less, or not fly, in order to cut down their carbon footprint, but as I've already said, over 70 per cent of all harmful emissions covering the entire planet come from just 100 companies. Let's do something about them. Let's make them pay for what they're doing so they maybe try a bit harder not to do it.
After my last piece on climate change I had someone contact me telling me about the fee and dividend scheme. You tax carbon emissions, with the tax increasing, and with the money from that tax you give it to everyone. Each person gets the same amount. Obviously your power prices would go up but it's been worked out that each family would be better off if we did it this way. But seriously, let's just do something. Anything. 100 companies. Come on.
The world actually does something about immigration
Hot button topic this. Immigrants. Everyone's got an opinion on immigrants. Just this month New Zealand joined the majority of the world's countries and signed the UN Compact on Migration. National said it'd pull us out of it as soon as it got back into power because it wanted to protect New Zealand's sovereignty in deciding its own migration policies. Except we do. And can continue to do so. All around the country the anti-immigrant base had their blood all angried up as they shook their fists at the nearest people who didn't look like them. "But muh sovereignty!" they'd say. Thing is, if they looked at the compact they'd see that one of the major objectives is to make it not so appealing for people to leave their own countries. This would mean fewer immigrants. Let's stop creating refugees! Let's stop ruining other countries so that people are forced to flee! Let's try and create an equitable world so that people can sit in their rocking chairs on their porches and go "you know what, I quite like where I am, I've got everything I need, I'm going to stay here".
I guess what I'm really asking for is a change in narrative on immigration. When immigration is done legally and controlled, every single country that has had immigrants has benefitted from it. Bar none. It's not immigrants who take jobs and houses and keep the working poor from getting ahead. It's the people who call themselves "job creators" but who actually need and exploit the workers to create wealth. Don't blame another group of working poor for there being working poor. This leads me on to my next wish for 2019.
Make the inequitable more equitable
New Zealand's inequality is pretty bad. According to the OECD we're in the bottom 10 of 39 for inequality. We're worse than Greece, which has been an economic basketcase. We're often cited for having low productivity and this holds us back - and so the Government is doing exactly the right thing to stimulate productivity. It's lifting the minimum wage. Those with better economic brains than mine have long been saying that short-term an increased minimum wage like what New Zealand is aiming for can hurt some businesses but that in the medium and long term we'll benefit as it drives productivity up, since businesses gotta innovate. Success! Let's also make it more attractive to start a business or do something productive with our money than for rich buggers to buy another house. This spreads capital AND houses around. Let's give those in need what they need. Worldwide, 42 people have the same wealth as 3.7 billion, but sure it's the family on welfare that's the problem. Jeff Bezos makes the median Amazon annual salary in 9 seconds, but let's shout and scream at those in line at Work and Income for bludging.
That's all. Come on 2019, let's make it a year of improvement. Not with resolutions to go to the gym, but with deep seated and entrenched change.
Oh yeah, and build some more bloody houses.
'You think about all the times it has rung out, all the weddings.'
