The German Greens have ideas that only the ACT party would articulate here. The World Socialist Web has published an article about their latest programme here. Sue Bradford would be horrified.
Germany’s Green Party recently agreed to a new economic programme, published under the title “The Green free-market economy.” The programme paper was developed by prominent party figures under the auspices of the party’s parliamentary faction leader Fritz Kuhn, heralding the free market as the guardian angel of the environment—and their own wallets.
“If the state effects social justice all too bureaucratically, then we end up with an expensive and incapacitating welfare state,” the Greens write. “Green politics require an encouraging and enabling state, which does not curb social life but opens it up.”
The source of such reasoning is well known—it stems from the ideology of neo-liberalism. According to this outlook, it is not unemployment that is responsible for the high number of people on social security, but welfare payments that are responsible for the high number of unemployed.
.....If any questions remain about the direction in which the Greens are headed, they are clarified by the chapter on budgetary policy. Here they demand “a rule that ties the permitted [state] expenditures to the development of [state] receipts.” “Such a rule,” they continue, “effectively limits [state] indebtedness.”
Laws strictly linking public expenditure to the levels of state receipts rank among the most effective means of lowering social spending. They practically eliminate the right of parliament to decide on the level of public expenditure and leave fiscal policy to the arbitrary decisions of the state bureaucracy.
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3 comments:
NZ Greens are not really greens, but a hodgepodge of luddites and socialists/neo-communists.
They lack intellectual stature, the best examples being Bradford and Kedgley.
I only wish that we could have economically literate Greens here - and then we really could become a clean green nation
I would be hesitant to take the word of a socialist web site on this matter. They have a tendency to distort the facts according to their own Marxist agenda. Basically, as I understand this Green Party, they are saying two things.
First, they want a welfare state but without the disincentives and problems of a welfare state. In other words, they want their cake and want to eat it as well.
Second, they want a market without allowing the market. They want a controlled, free market, a contradiction in terms.
In the end it appears they want reality to be different and think that by stating that is what they want that wishing will make it so.
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