Each year I like to gather my thoughts and summarize what has happened over the last 12 months.

Reading back over previous years summaries, it seems they have been me ragging on the Jacinda government for its impressive track record of failures. This year, I want to share share my thoughts about why I think our country is in such rapid decline. It is not just NZ on the slide, much of the western world seems to be moving in the wrong direction.

I give my predictions at the end as always. (See my predictions for 2021 below.)

My whole life I have been a prepper. I have always firmly believed the future belongs to those who prepare for it today. Predicting the future is the key and we can look to liberal a.k.a. ‘progressive’ strongholds in America to see where we are most probably going. One man’s disaster is another man’s opportunity and the sinking of the Titanic was a miracle to the live lobsters onboard for example.

The west is still currently best. Our western societies were founded on limited government and personal freedom. At the core our western governments exist to protect life, liberty and property rights. Oh how we have strayed, as we have allowed, nay demanded, the government intervene into every aspect of our lives. If you believe the government exists to fix your problems, then you are part of the problem.

Over the last 4 years alone we have seen a 40% increase in government spending and 15,000 more state employees. Anything done by government is going to be inefficient because the government is a monopoly. We need to make the government smaller, but the opposite is happening.

To be successful New Zealand needs to be run like a business with 5 million equal shareholders. It will take a successful businessman with a successful track record to turn NZ around. New Zealand is currently being bankrupted.

The government takes in $100 billion in taxes and that should be the operating budget. We all have to act in a financially responsible manner. Why should our government be any different?

We are being told that relatively we are doing OK so we can continue to borrow and interest rates are low so we can service a bigger debt.  In just a few more years at this rate our debt will be out of control and as interest rates go up it’s going to become very painful to service the ballooning debt. Never mind, we can blame it all on Covid. Problem solved.

Liberal ‘progressive’ big government thinking is predictable if nothing else. The result is always the same: poverty, inequality, homelessness, crime and high taxes; all of which have gotten far worse in NZ over the last 4 years.

We elect governments that promise to fix these problems, only to have these problems exacerbated through further government intervention. Increased intervention into the housing market for example has seen property values double and rents increase 10% year on year. Truly staggering.

Interesting to note is that Kiwibuild is now 4 years into its 10 year program to build 100 000 homes. Kiwibuild has finally completed one thousand homes (only 99 thousand to go.) Really, 480 homes should be subtracted from that as KiwiBuild money was used to stop all the homes that were going to be built at Ihumatao. Government does not exist to build houses or house people. That is the task of the free market which can do it at a fraction of the cost.

I have been trying to predict whether New Zealand’s financial mismanagement will cause us to become the next Venezuela, or if race-based policies will cause us to become more like South Africa. Perhaps a mix of the two is more likely.

Minister of Finance Grant Robertson continues to urinate on us and tell us what great rainfall we have had this year. I could convince you all I was rich if I borrowed tens of billions of dollars and printed up tens of billions more. The Covid relief fund was just the rural growth fund on steroids. We have fallen into the same ‘modern monetary’ trap that caught America many years ago. Massive borrowing and money printing creates inflation which adversely affects quality of life, especially of lower income earners and beneficiaries.

California is the epicenter of Woke ‘progressive’ government. They are a few years ahead of us with their homelessness, inequality and crime, but we are moving in the same direction. Californians had a chance to give the boot to their governor Gavin Newsom this year and install a conservative to try and turn the state around. However, Newsom was voted back in, resulting in a wave of people leaving California and moving to Republican-controlled states like Texas and Florida. Elon Musk, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan and Gordon Ramsey all left for conservatively run states. Even with all the illegal immigration, California’s population fell for the first time ever in 2019 and will almost certainly fall more. Highly productive taxpayers move out to be replaced with more people to hop on the gravy train.

Cancel culture has been a large part of my life since I started selling the MAGA baseball caps about 2 years ago. I received several more police visits this year and the cops even tried to confiscate my firearms for being an alleged “white supremacist.”  If I didn’t have a Person Of Color partner and off-white kids I probably would have lost my guns. Cancel culture has been a bit of a hassle at times, but it has been great advertising for the red caps. 

It was disappointing to see a sitting Member of Parliament start a petition to get my friend Lee Williams fired from his job. It was even more disappointing to see his employer fire him. Then it was disappointing to see the Givealittle and GoFundMe accounts I set up for him get shut down. Then it was disappointing to see Westpac shut down his bank account. Regardless, we managed to raise $10,000 for Lee and he managed to escape back to England. It is great to see him still active on YouTube and other platforms. All credit to Lee for his resolve. 

RIP Jessie Anderson who committed suicide after the media went after him for speaking out against the UN Migrant Compact. The same Newsroom reporter who continues to slander me as a “white supremacist” ran a series of articles until Jessie’s life was ruined and he lost custody of his son.

Our mainstream media disgust me. Patrick Gower of Newshub aired a story about alleged “white supremacy” just days before the New Lynn stabbings. He perpetuated the lie there are 1,700 white supremacists in New Zealand simply because 1,700 white blokes were interviewed by the cops after the Christchurch mosque shootings. No one has called him out on this lie and as far as I know he has not been held to account for inciting racial hatred — illegal in New Zealand.

It is not just the New Zealand media that is a disgusting mess. In America, Kyle Rittenhouse was branded as a guilty white supremacist for shooting 3 white men in self-defence.  On the other hand, American media continues to push Jussie Smollet who was obviously guilty of staging a false hate crime simply because he is in a protected class. Hopefully, Rittenhouse will get many millions in compensation from the corrupt media and Smollet will have to repay the $US 130 000 he cost the local police force.

Another trial I have been following is that of Elizabeth Holmes. She is a woman who was running a health start-up business that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. People were just so desperate to believe in this young woman they invested $900 million. Her story reminds me very much of our own Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who seems to continue to fail upwards as people just refuse to believe they were wrong about her. It is easier to fool people than it is to convince people they have been fooled.

Predictions

A lot of what I am predicting below is fairly obvious, just a simple extrapolation of the previous 4 years.  I am also going to state some of my plans and how I intend to prepare for some of the coming challenges. (I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice.)

• PROPERTY. I predict house prices are going to continue to increase, possibly at an even faster rate.

Inequality drives massive price increases as part of society can afford to buy at inflated rates using equity from existing properties. On top of this we will also have inflation ramping up property prices. The government will continue to lie to us saying inflation is around 4% — how can that be when the price of houses are going up at 50% a year?

Rents are going to climb much faster than the current 10% per year as landlords need to cover the extra cost of mortgage interest no longer being tax deductible. Homelessness is going to continue to skyrocket and the government will continue to buy private housing to be used as state housing. The NZ government is by far the biggest landlord in New Zealand with over 80 000 properties. The government continues to buy homes and are on track to have over 100,000 by 2024. Government is generally very inefficient and each state house cost the taxpayer six times more to run than a private rental. It’s not the governments job to house people, but Jacinda thinks otherwise.  Government is further pushing up house prices as they compete with private home buyers. It is inevitable we will see more land/property taxes as the government simply does not know what else to do about the situation. Tax and spend wastefully. It’s all they know how to do. I believe Jacinda thinks she can house and employ us all and that sounds a lot like communism.

Although I am in the process of selling off my properties, I will hold a couple with large mortgages. Runaway inflation eats mortgages so this is a good way to hedge against inflation.

* POVERTY is going to become more acute as inflation cancels out the small minimum wage and benefit increases.

Grant Robertson recently announced another $6 billion slush fund for “climate change.” Possibly it’s to help cover the cost of the record amounts of coal New Zealand now imports. We live in crazy times.

Official inflation rates are now running at more than double the rate of wage increases. Life is getting much harder for the bottom half of society — ironically they are mostly the ones who support Labour who continue to make life worse for them. Poor people are poor for a reason, I suppose.

Jacinda doubled the welfare budget from $1.9 billion/year to $3.8 billion per year. Giving people more welfare does not solve poverty. I believe expanding the welfare trap does quite the opposite. A happy healthy society is made up of busy productive members, not welfare recipients. Welfare recipients are Labour voters for life, however, so I see further welfare roll out for this and the next year running up to the 2023 election.

• CRIME will continue to get worse, especially gun crime which is trending sharply upwards.

RIP Matthew Hunt. I believe time has shown that the $150 million spent on confiscating the guns off us licensed gun owners was worse than pointless. (Jacinda does not mention the gun confiscations any more). The Royal Commission into the Christchurch mosque shootings exonerated all us licensed gun owners. No apology was made tor us gun ownersm of course. An estimated 200,000 semi automatic rifles simply were not turned in and its scary to think where they are now.

Petty crime rates are going to keep increasing as the government continues to go soft on criminals in an attempt to lower prison populations. Revoking the “3 strikes” rule will put many dangerous criminals back onto our streets.

I suspect we will see more hatred toward our boys in blue. Race relations commissioner Meng Foon kicked things of this year calling the police systemically racist. I acted in haste calling for him to be removed for inciting racial hatred. He is a Person Of Color, so of course he can’t be racist, what was I thinking?

It’s going to become more important to secure our own properties as the thin blue line becomes thinner. Gang numbers continue to climb and police numbers will fall as cops are hired for diversity rather than competency. Living in rural areas may become more attractive as our cities become more crime-ridden.

• ECONOMY The government is going to continue to flood the economy with borrowed-printed money. Taxes are going to have to increase, but I can’t see that happening majorly before the next election. The national debt will well surpass 50% of the GDP and I hate to think where it may be if Labour get a third term. A nation-wide land tax is inevitable which will just push rents up even more.

When the government spends, that money competes with every other dollar available for limited labour and resources. Some 15,000 more public servants in a relatively small economy makes a real dent; as does paying over the odds for land, rentals, consultants, and so on. Today, government spending is more than 40% higher than when Labour took office four years ago.

I have always been big on property, but this year I am going to move more into crypto and shares. Tesla is still a good stock buy at around $1000. I have been putting all the money I have been making off selling MAGA hats into Tesla shares and have seen a 10 fold increase since I started buying over a year ago. (It was great seeing Elon Musk win Time Man of the Year.) Bitcoin and Ethereum have proven they are more than a good store of wealth. Most Bitcoin are now mined and we should see its value climb. There are some great platforms that make using crypto just as simple as using $NZ. I will not be holding NZ currency as I am convinced we will see its value erode away more than 10% per annum.

• EDUCATION This year sees two new concerning additions to the school curriculum: 1. The teaching of a slanted version of New Zealand history. 2. The government finally admitting they are gearing up to teach Critical Race Theory, the core tenant of which is the notion of ‘white privilege’. Teaching white kids to feel guilt for their skin color is a disgusting thing, teaching non-whites they are born handicapped in our society might be even worse. So much for the lie we were told that we are one people.

I saw a poster at my son’s public school last year. It said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can break my heart.” The meaning of the original saying had been completely reversed. We are failing our children in so many different ways, obsessing over bullying, racism and the perceived victim/oppressor narrative. Not to mention failing them on obesity rates.

I have decided to put my kids into a private Catholic school, not something I ever thought I would ever do. It should keep them further away from the needles that the government has just announced it is going to stick into our kids if they get a chance.

• DEMOCRACY The government will continue to remove control from local governments and centralise it in Wellington. DHBs will be disbanded and replaced with centralised Wellington control. It’s been amazing to see the number of government employees balloon under the Ardern government. They are not frontline workers, but unproductive keyboard tappers in Wellington.

The He Puapua roll out will continue. It is nothing to do with any treaty or UN declaration; it is just an unelected grab for power. The ‘3 waters’ assets grab has been delayed briefly, possibly to give the government a chance to bring in the proposed hate speech laws. Hate speech laws will be effective against anyone speaking out against He Puapua and 3 Waters. The government has bribed the media to push the power grabs, but has not yet found a way to bribe the “team of 5 million.” I think the tribal takeover may be slowed, but am convinced it can not be stopped. It has been going on in one form or another for decades, long before Lake Taupo became privately owned.

‘3 waters’ will be passed; it’s already a done deal. The government will be keen to get it sorted as soon as possible so it can be forgotten about before the next election. The Ardern-Gayford wedding should be a good distraction.

We will loose more public beaches in 2022 as Andrew Little speeds up settling the 600 claims over every inch of our previously publicly-owned foreshore and seabed. He Puapua calls for co-governance/veto rights by 2040. By that stage, private property rights will be destroyed. I have started selling off my hard assets in New Zealand.

The government has shown it is prepared to do some pretty radical interventions in our housing market. Significant natural areas can be used to re-designate the use of private property making it valueless. People will gladly give up their re-designated real-estate rather than continue to pay the associated Rates. Unfortunately, our Bill of Rights is very weak and can not be relied on to give us any real protection from the government’s increasingly radical agenda.

More private property will be purchased with taxpayer money to be handed over to our Treaty “partners.” All private property was supposed to be protected in the last “full and final” Treaty payment. But each new government seems to want to pander further to the tribal elites. “As safe as houses” no longer applies in New Zealand. Having a second residence in a foreign country is an absolute must for any prepper. A foreign bank account is a good start. There are so many stories of South Africans who did not prepare for the collapse of their country and were stuck with assets they could not take with them.  Bitcoin is an excellent mechanism for moving money around.

• MAORIFICATION

I laughed at NZTA (the Land Transport department) being renamed Waka Kotahi (first canoe) this year. Maybe the name would have been better used for something to do with the ocean. I can’t even imagine what crazy renaming we are going to see this coming year.

The separate Maori health system is being implemented. It will result in an even greater bloating of bureaucrats. Health outcomes won’t change of course till peoples lifestyles’ improve.  A separate health system is against our Bill of Rights but which is shown to be pointless.

Everyone has the right to freedom from discrimination in the Human Rights Act 1993.

Tribal takeover is happening in many of New Zealand’s public services. Child protection services are now basically tribal run. There are tribal legal panels. Police have been given a special set of guidelines when dealing with members of our Treaty “partners.” It is just a matter of time before we see segregated police forces and prisons. I am curious to see how the forthcoming tribal supermarkets are going to operate. Will they be taxpayer subsidized? Will loads more people identify as Persons Of Color to get cheaper groceries? David Seymour is part Maori. Will he get be able to get discounted food?

I had better not say too much on this topic as the forthcoming hate speech laws may be retrospective.

Covid will go on, and on. It is all the Ardern government really has, and Kiwis seem to like being saved from it over and over again. Death rates show that over 99% of us have nothing to fear from it, but that is beside the point. As stated Covid is all this government has got. Once the pandemic is over, they will be back to defending their appalling record on housing, poverty and the economy. For now people are scared… and this government fuels the fear to keep themselves in power. They are not going to let it go without a fight. Omicron has given them a new opportunity and they will milk it for all it is worth.

Any guess on how many covid ‘variants’ are coming in 2022? I am guessing 3. Each one is potentially more transmissible and less severe than the last. Maybe there will be a whole new virus. Viruses certainly seem to be more effective than Climate Change in inducing fear and scared people are easily controlled. We are certainly going to see more Kiwis marching as they wake up to the realization that there is no end to the ‘vaccine’ mandates. If they are not shown on the TV then did they really happen?

• DIVERSITY AND TERORISM

It was sad to see another terrorist act committed by a foreigner in NZ this year. This time, however, it could have been stopped. The terrorist was known to the authorities. In fact he was being monitored by a team of over 30 government agents at the time of the attack. But they did not stop and deport him because of his skin color.  New Zealand had some very good laws stopping people coming here from high risk countries. These were removed after Ardern came to power. New Zealand should reinstate those laws before we end up like London where knife crime has become epidemic. Mayor Sadiq Kahn loves to say “diversity is our strength” and then in the next sentence say that terrorism is a part of living in London. Londoners had the chance to vote out Kahn this year, but he was voted back in.

• WOKEISM

Everything Woke turns to shit. At its core Wokeism is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It may be the greatest threat to mankind.  Wokeism shuts down free speech and freedom of expression.

We see the most Woke federal government ever in America currently doing real damage to the country. They have opened the southern border allowing 2 million illegal migrants to flood in. Their bloated spending bills have fueled inflation to 40 year highs.  NZ is following the same Woke agenda.

Until we go back to valuing facts over feelings, the future is bleak. We are certainly the most systemically racist country in the world with the He Puapua Apartheid rollout well underway.

So that is this year’s lot. It’s negative, but the situation is not all bad and we are living in times of great opportunity. Many economists I listen to say we are living in the greatest transfer of wealth ever, and it appears to be true. Society will pay the price. It seems we are on train tracks where the only variable is the speed of the train. Maybe more Kiwis will jump ships, or trains in this case.  I see more people moving to Australia over the coming years.

May the New Year be a happy one for you

HERE ARE THE PREDICTIONS I MADE LAST YEAR FOR 2021.

2021 may be another challenging year for those who are not well prepared. It is human nature to learn from the past to prepare for a better future. Those who are well prepared will thrive and those who are unprepared will falter. Survival of the fittest, as it should be.

The artificially low mortgage rates and money printing should mean property prices continue to climb so it should still be a good year for property owners and investors. The government’s war on landlords will no doubt continue to restrict supply and continue to drive up rental rates. My advice to anyone not in the market to do so as soon as possible. If you have a Kiwisaver, you may be able to use it for a deposit. If you are adding rental properties to your portfolio then I strongly recommend using a good property manager to make sure you are vetting your tenants properly. They are easily worth the small fee they charge.

I foresee the country remaining fairly stable. I have some concerns for the coming vaccine rollout and for the coming hate speech laws. You don’t prove someone a liar by ripping out their tongue, you just prove you can’t handle what they have to say.

As always it is worth having some cash and a month’s food on hand. You don’t really own what you can’t defend and I am a big supporter of everyone owning the means to do so. I wont go too far into this topic here as I can feel Mr Zuckerberg breathing down my neck as I am typing this.

Diversity is our strength and whereever possible you should try to have several income streams. I am always looking for more revenue streams to insulate myself from the Cancel Culture and changing economic conditions.

We can expect to see some amazing advances in technology in the coming year. Space exploration looks really exciting with yet another Mars Rover on the way and expected to land February 2021.

Elon Musk is doing some mind-blowing things with his SpaceX company and all going well should see manned missions to Mars later this decade. Mr Musk is a hero of mine and although I am not a big share investor I do hold some Tesla shares which I plan to cash in to buy a Tesla pickup when they become available.