I was thinking about this quote from The Standard as shown on Kiwiblog.

Business New Zealand and other assorted tossers. Stop calling our country ‘New Zealand Inc’. This is our home. This is where we live our lives and raise our families. It’s not some profit-maximising engine for your shareholders.

Now, it’s a funny own-goal to have described your own party leaders as “assorted tossers”, but another thing struck me.

A whole lot of people live in their business. Farmers do. Dairy owners do, motels, camp grounds, and a lot of people who own other business like restaurants live under the same title as their business. If their business fails, so does their business.

In fact, farmers are a prime example of this. And they’re the driver of our economy.

But The Standard is make up of union flunkies, who live in a world where higher wages are demanded just because a new calendar has been hung, and the business is expected to submit to the most unreasonable demands, even it it means hurting those who put up the money to establish that business.

Then, when that business goes under there are new demands for massive redundancy payments, even though by definition, there isn’t any money left.

The workers go out and find new jobs sooner or later, but the effects of a business failure on an owner can be catastrophic, often leading them to loose the place they were raising their family, savings, and possessions as well as their income.