The Fraudulent Cost-Of-Living Crisis Doesn't Stop New Zealanders To Be Generous
A Satisfying Rant To Release My Penned Up Anger About Getting Fleeced On A Daily Basis And The Great Kiwi's That Sooth It.
For the first time, I looked at my Substack's geographical paid subscriber stats. And I was blown away by what I saw:
Tiny NZ is equal in paid subscription to the USA, a country of 333 Million. For every New Zealander, there are 66 Americans. How generous are you, New Zealand?
New Zealanders suffer an enormous so-called “cost-of-living crisis,” even more than most other countries. In my opinion, “Cost-of-living crisis” is way too nice a word for what is really going on.
What is really going on is that ordinary people are getting fleeced for the mad and irresponsible COVID measures, wasting trillions of Dollars worldwide.
If we had done nothing (especially not tested everyone with misleading PCR tests), the so-called pandemic would have probably never materialized, or at worst, fizzled out within two years all by itself through natural herd immunity, as all other pandemics in the history of mankind did before.
Inflation increased due to borrowing and printing money. So did the combined wealth of the super-rich and many shareholders. But wages hardly did. Neither did the income of most small entrepreneurs and self-employed. On the contrary, some went bankrupt, and many are still struggling.
But it doesn’t stop there. It gets much worse. Blaming the inflation rate for the extreme rise in costs, especially for food, is a complete lie.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) latest monthly consumer price index figures show that annual inflation was 4.0% in the 12 months to May, up from 3.6% in April.
It is a laughable 4%.
How does that justify the increase in the price of 500g of butter at my local Woolworths from $5.50 to $7? That is a rise of over 25%, not 4%.
Okay, there might be some supply chain multiplications going on, but my gut and my wallet are telling me that we are getting ripped off. That’s how I feel almost every day now—ripped off.
It doesn’t help that I spent some time in Thailand enjoying beautifully balanced 400 ml, three-shot Pina Coladas overlooking a stunning beach for $6 a glass. Just last week, I paid $23 fucking dollars for about 150 ml of weak pineapple-coconut piss, heaps of ice, and a hint of rum.
Two things get me going: Weak cocktails for horrendous prices and getting robbed in bright daylight by respectable people in suits driving expensive cars.
200g of my favourite Lindt chocolate went up to $7 a bar, a double-digit increase.
You want to piss me off? Deprive me of my Lindt chocolate.
And so it goes on and on with most items. Most increased from 10% to up to 50%.
A package of feta cheese was $5 last year. It is $7 now. A 40% increase.
Inflation? Shut the gate - mate. We are not that stupid.
Cost-of-living crises?
This sounds like it is nobody’s fault.
Oh well, just one of these things - nothing we can do about it. Regrettable but unavoidable.
Fuck off.
This is not due to inflation. This is pure fucking greed by big companies. They hide behind inflation and blame inflation for rising prices. So sick of it. And our government does nothing about it.
No one is held responsible or accountable for the massive waste of money during the pandemic.
For example, Australia bought over 250 Million vaccines for 25 Million people, costing tens of billions of dollars (The exact amount is not disclosed and is “commercially sensitive”.) More than half expired and were thrown into the rubbish. We throw tens of billions of dollars into landfills right now.
And who bought them?
The one and only Gates puppet, Professor Jane Halton who dominated the Australian Covid Commission and was explicitly imported from her CEPI CEO post in Geneve, or wherever, by the Australian government to rip us off.
She had left Australia years prior for the CEPI and WHO positions and had no reason to be back at all.
Did Australia have a shortage of big-wigged health bureaucrats to fill the COVID commission?
One thing Australia will never run out of is big-wigged bureaucrats. They arrived together with the rats and first prisoners and easily outbred the rats. When was the last time you saw a rat in Australia?
And yet, despite being smothered by home-bred b..rats, it had to be her. I wonder who “arranged” that.
Oh, in case you don’t know: CEPI is Bill Gates’s little pet pharma NGO that wants to vaccinate the whole world.
What a fucking conflict of interest, and no Australian journalist or media outlet says “hello?”. Nothing to see here apparently. No enquiries into this, no commission, nothing, nada. And we pay for that bullshit every day with our grocery bills.
My power bills increased dramatically, too, despite having solar. There is media talk in Australia about charging home owners to feed power back into the grid during peak generation. You heard that right - charging you for giving them your solar energy. If you think the world is fucked up enough by now, think again.
For the past year, my online “news” feed has been increasingly filled with “how cool home storage for solar is.” Yes, it will cost a significant chunk of your retirement money, but hey, it will amortise in no time—your grandchildren one day will have free power and can store it—hurray.
Nudge, nudge.
Many obliged, but not enough.
Phase two has just started. People are now charged for feeding the hard-earned solar power (they are still paying off the loans for the panels) back to the grid. Buy the expensive storage batteries or pay.
And who is the biggest producer of storage on the planet? Our super-hero free speech (but no reach) warrior, Elon Musk.
How on earth did he “convince” all the “independent” journalists that fill my “news” feed that power storage is “so cool” and “the right thing to do”? I don’t know. He just did.
They nudge and increasingly force homeowners to spend tens of thousands of dollars on solar solutions to save the world from the “bad” climate like the taxpayer-paid “safe and effective” vaccines saved us from this lethal virus.
In five to ten years, people will realise that nothing significant has happened to the climate, especially when they stop reading and watching “the news” and start looking outside their windows. Or even go outside and look at the ocean.
Hmm, did it really rise 13.25 mm over the past five years? It's hard to say. Is that on a high or low tide? Despite seeing stupidity explode all around me over the past four years, I am still flabbergasted that people can still do more stupid.
And in five or ten years times, when the climate crisis reaches its expiry date, and the billionaires move on to the next lucrative panic, millions of Australians will sit on mountains of solar power they can’t feed back into the grid, and all their expensive batteries have reached capacity.
I am sure Bill and Elon will devise an excellent solution for that. Like a whole range of new appliances to use up that excess power AND save the planet simultaneously?
In what a fucking economic world do we live in? We have too much power now, yet power prices don’t drop. What happened to supply and demand regulating prices?
Oh, “it’s complicated”, I read.
Solar panels produce too much power when we don’t need it. Well, we can’t blame “the experts” for that. I mean, who could predict something weird like that? Sun shines through the day. But the power is needed at night? Who could predict such a thing?
Or, maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the massive over-the-top vanity and virtue-signalling solar and wind power projects fuelled by climate panic. And the kickbacks involved? I don’t know. You tell me.
I don’t have the patience and time to research everything myself. We used to have great independent journalists and media outlets and even politicians that kept an eye on all this shit going on. But not anymore.
So, all that is left is extrapolation to determine what is happening.
I simply extrapolate what happened during Covid into the future.
Covid appeared pretty lucrative for a few. No one was told off for robbing the whole world. No one went to jail. No Nuernberg 2.0. No one got prosecuted and sentenced for crimes against humanity.
Fantastic.
Why wouldn’t you then repeat and expand your strategies to other lucrative areas?
Why would you not create new urgent “problems” that no one is allowed to investigate or verify because they are super-technical and super-complicated (like viruses and the climate)?
Why wouldn’t you create new panic to convince the stupid masses that “something” has to be done? NOW. Sea levels are rising by up to 5 mm a year. WE CAN’T WAIT. Otherwise, the world will be flooded tomorrow.
Why wouldn’t you then offer highly specialised solutions only very few insanely rich billionaire start-ups can provide and the taxpayers of the world happily pay for? (Like capturing fucking carbon in a tank or spraying reflective chemicals into the stratosphere?)
Why wouldn’t you do stuff that makes you even more stinking rich and powerful if you got away with the past scam? Why wouldn’t you?
Why wouldn’t you continue if no-one stops you?
I wonder what else needs to happen before people start to get pissed off about this greedy cabal and our government fleecing us. But I digress again, sorry.
I probably had a tiny bit too much coffee this morning. :-)
Against that grim economic background, I am very grateful for the financial support some provide. I don’t expect it, and I will never try to enforce it through paywalls and shit like that. My posts will always be free for all.
I also like the diversity in readers a free Substack provides.
To me, freedom is not a commodity.
I have nothing but scorn for writers who “sell” their freedom and resistant posts to their followers and exclude all non-paying readers from reading or commenting, creating the perfect echo chamber in the process.
Almost all of them, coincidently, have thousands of supporters. I still have to meet small-scale writers who put a paywall up.
One great exception for the big shots comes to mind: Jeff Childers.
I do not agree with his hypocritical Christian vibe and the glorification of Trump, but I want to give credit where credit is due. The man can write; he is so funny and articulate. And he doesn’t use a paywall. I believe he does well financially from it, and he bloody deserves it.
Of course, many other prominent writers have integrity, especially
(Where are you Igor?), and I apologise for not naming them more.Digressing again. Finish it, man.
This makes my paying supporters extra special because they do not gain any extra content. They do it from the bottom of their hearts, and I appreciate it. It is not only the money; it is the gesture of generosity.
I never really thanked them. It is about time. Thank you so much, especially New Zealand. The Kiwis are impressive.
They are not only leading the world in being generous - at least in my tiny Substack world - but punch far above their weight, as I realized when I looked at the free subscriber stats:
Despite only accounting for 5% of the free subscribers, despite being by far the smallest country and being fleeced more than most, they account for an impressive third (33%) of all paid subscriptions.
That is fucking awesome, New Zealand.
I miss you, people. I want to write more about New Zealand again. I hope something interesting about beautiful Aotearoa—the land of the long white clouds—comes up soon.
tēnā koutou to my NZ whanau
Be proud, be gentle, be wise, be patient - freedom will always win in the end because slavery is not sustainable.