A new poll shows that a majority of the country think the economic and political system are rigged against them.
The Ipsos poll, taken in May of 2017, shows that women and those earning less are even more likely to consider the system broken.
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Fully 56 per cent of Kiwis questioned agree that traditional parties and politicians don't care about people like them.
Just 16 per cent disagreed with that sentiment, and the unemployed were far more likely to think the system was rigged. In other countries like Australia dissatisfaction was higher.
But the economy got even worse marks than the politicians.
Six in ten - 64 per cent - agreed that the country's economy was rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.
And they're right. Just look at how National runs pretty much anything: to advantage their donors and cronies, and who gives a fuck about anybody else? And so we get employment laws designed for employers, housing policy designed for property speculators and existing Boomer homeowners, and climate change and environment policy designed for polluters. As for Labour, while their heart is in the right place, at the end of the day they're about not rocking the boat too much. They'll still let the rich fuck you over, but they promise they'll give you a lollypop afterwards to make you feel better about it. Except they've already promised not to give anyone any lollypops, for fear of upsetting The Market, so its just the same old shit with different faces at the top getting paid.
And then we wonder why a quarter of kiwis don't bother to vote...
The scary news about this survey is that 50% of respondents are so fucked off with this situation of establishment parties collaborating to fuck them over that they'd vote for "a strong leader willing to break the rules" - i.e. Trump. Of course, that would only make things worse. The solution here isn't less democracy, but more: to vote for real change. The problem is that no-one is really offering that (no, Gareth Morgan, you're not. And you hate cats, so you can fuck off). And the party closest to offering real change has tied itself to an establishment albatross, and in doing so promised not to change anything much.
Unless the establishment parties start delivering to people, this sense of political alienation is only going to get worse. The scary thing is that they probably don't mind that one bit.