Hard News: Yes we canny
146 Responses
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Two thoughts: before we go banging on about socialism and victorian divisions, read George Orwell's fabulous essay on language of politics. And anyone who thinks it's easy to balance a budget should play Budget Hero from the American radio show "Marketplace". I'd love to see a NZ version of that game, with a little more visibility into the end state of the various sectors.
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"...Well it's only unacceptable if it doesn't work for them..."
I would say that as of about 7pm last night it stopped working for Key.
"As slippery as a snake in wet grass" might yet come to be seen as an important marker in a sea change in attitude to National.
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Danyl Mclauchlan wrote:
WFF certainly strikes me as redistribution of capital from the individual to the community; its not classic Marx since it privileges those with families over those without but its still a centrally organized redistribution of wealth. If it ain't socialism (a) what would you call it, and (b) what is?
By this definition, all taxation is socialism.
I'd agree it would be socialism if the government took all of your capital (this would be your savings in terms of money) into community ownership, but surely 'Working for families' is just a variation on a normal taxation regime--effectively it just sees children as reducing the real income that you have to pay tax upon.
There are other ways that you can do this (e.g. levying tax on total family income rather than individual income), but this has obvious difficulties.
By the way, taking children into account when setting tax policy seems astonishingly sensible and obvious to me (and I thought this even before I had one of my own).
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The Herald editorial is a bit of a classic.
After venturing that "even $70,000 is a modest income these days", it dismissively observes that most of the extra money for education has gone on teachers' pay ("Beside them, the 5 per cent lift in schools' operational funds looks insignificant"). Those rotten old teachers, eh? What important job do they do?
The new pay scale for head teachers, of course, tops out at $68,611. Some way short of modest, then.
The Herald then concludes that the money in the tax cuts "rightly belonged to the overtaxed all along".
Sigh ...
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I suspect they've also learnt a little from last year where they released their student loan policy, and then got absolutely trumped by Labour's policy a few days later.
Well Kyle, Labour has announced its tax policy. There is no reason now why it can't be trumped...is there?
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Conversely Craig, there's a pretty strong response to the question "do you want a tax cut?".
Unless polling companies start conducting face to face interviews with lashings of Sodium thiopental and polygraph machines, response bias is always going to be a factor.
And seriously, would you say "yes" to a complete stranger on the phone who asked you the question "Do you want a tax cut if it meant cuts in Health and Education"? The so-called Bradley Effect is an enormously contentious theory, and one I don't find entirely convincing BTW. But I do think it's fair to say that people dissemble when they hold views they think their peer group would consider distasteful or offensive.
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That is completely unacceptable. The policy that they seem to happily state is the core of the election and ongoing policy platform and they won't reveal it until then? Absurd, absurd, absurd.
And on Morning Report Key tried to make out that they've had a tax policy for 6 years. So can he tell us anything about it ? No, we'll have to wait until "well before the election", whatever that means.
It seems to me that the media have for years been running the meme that "We Deserve Tax Cuts and the Goverment Is Being Greedy And Won't Give Them". Just watch any report by Duncan Garner to get the gist. Mediawatch did an excellent item on it last year (IIRC) about the general bias amongst the media which holds that tax cuts are the normal state, and the status quo was an aberration.
I suspect it is this incessant meme that has coloured a lot of people's thinking about the tax cuts. There seems to be a lot of people saying that they expected more and generally being ungrateful about the level of the cuts being made.
And finally, is anyone else hacked off because the media won't call Key on his claim that "you've waited 9 years for a tax cut". FFS, Labour campaigned on raising the top tax rate, and it was one of the first things they did after assuming power.
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Kyle and Matthew, I don't doubt it could help politically (although there seems to be equal potential for harm) but that wasn't really my angle on it. I dislike when any party is willing to play the electoral game in such a callous manner - and there is unfortunately plenty of that from most sides flying around at the moment.
If they get in because it worked for them, I will begrudgingly tip my hat for the political play. But I will not be exactly ecstatic that it took concealing absolute core policy until weeks before the election, such that the electorate can't get a well analysed and digested view across all parties' views.
I know it's politics to do what it takes to get you in there, but I (perhaps naively) still dislike it.
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I know National hasn't released any policy announcements yet (I find it annoying, but hey)...but have I missed all the major policy announcements from any of the other parties?
Apart from the one currently in Government of course, but umm...isn't that what Governments are supposed to do? Roll out policies?
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"As slippery as a snake in wet grass" might yet come to be seen as an important marker in a sea change in attitude to National.
Tom: I know I'm never going to convince you on this, but if John Campbell was all that one might think that Corngate interview would have had a little more impact on the 2002 election.
BTW (and Russell might be able to correct me if I'm wrong on this), but hasn't Three News and Campbell Live been finding recently that dumbing down is doing it no good in the ratings? While I hate to say it, if I'm going to suffer through prime time television news and current affairs One tends to win out by default. And I didn't find Campbell's effort with both Key and Clark particularly impressive.
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"...Well it's only unacceptable if it doesn't work for them..."
I would say that as of about 7pm last night it stopped working for Key.
"As slippery as a snake in wet grass" might yet come to be seen as an important marker in a sea change in attitude to National.
While the media, and people on here keep saying that, National keeps building a stronger lead in the polls. It's not shown any sign of being a sea change over the past year or so of non-policy.
Key and his strategists will be laughing all the way to the government unless it changes. The media might think he's slippery, they might say that loudly to the public. If people still vote for National, what does he care?
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While I hate to say it, if I'm going to suffer through prime time television news and current affairs One tends to win out by default.
'Eye to eye 'on Maori TV sunday at 6:30 pm is always fun,Craig.
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Well Kyle, Labour has announced its tax policy. There is no reason now why it can't be trumped...is there?
Yes but they probably figure it'll have more impact as part of the election campaign, rather than a budget response. It's their biggest election policy, as big as the others all put together. You want that close to when people vote and you want maximum impact, and that'll be August - September.
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And seriously, would you say "yes" to a complete stranger on the phone who asked you the question "Do you want a tax cut if it meant cuts in Health and Education"?
I'm one of the few people who would say 'no' to the straight question 'do you want a tax cut?' But I do think the point that 'tax cut' has positive implications, and 'cuts in health and education' have negative implications is important.
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'Eye to eye 'on Maori TV sunday at 6:30 pm is always fun,Craig.
I think Eye To Eye is a TVNZ production, (first screens on TV1 on a Sunday morning), and is replayed on Maori TV. The sunday morning slot may be unfortunate, but I understand it still outrates the 'prime-time' Maori TV replay by a factor of ten.
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'Eye to eye 'on Maori TV sunday at 6:30 pm is always fun,Craig.
In much the same way topless jelly wrestling is fun, Peter -- messy, degrading to all concerned, probably in breech of multiple health and safety standards but strangely hypnotic. :) I do have to work on my lip-reading so I can follow what happens when everyone starts bellowing at once.
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Don't say that too loudly around Craig. He calls it "prudent" for National not to release policy yet. I think he believes that Labour cannot come up with any policy of its own unless National comes up with it first.
Matthew:
Sorry for the tardy response, but I had to do some serious calming breathing before replying.
The crap psychic auditions for the next series Sensing Bullshit are next door, and the long-distance psychoanalysis isn't working for you either. I do try to do people the courtesy of fairly and accurately engaging with what they actually say, and would appreciate it being returned.
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even $70,000 is a modest income these days
Jesus Christ. These people are utterly divorced from reality, aren't they?
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Jesus Christ. These people are utterly divorced from reality, aren't they?
Divorced? I don't think they made it as far as the altar.
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Labour has been very bloody generous to the breeders in the past four years
I've breed 2 in the last 4 years, I'm not feeling the love Russell. Remind me again please where Labour has been
Bloody Generous
The pre-school my kids go to part time refuses to partake of the 20 free hours because it won't cover their costs, I haven't had enough kids and I'm too much of a rich prick to partake in WFF.
Things that would make a diff to me
- tax deductible child care
- tax deductible private health insurance
- options on where I could send my kids to school other than the one I'm zoned for
- income splitting -
By this definition, all taxation is socialism.
Sure, maybe. I really don't think so. Instead of quibbling over terms (look how far that got us) I'll simply state my case.
Taxation in which the state gathers revenue to provide citizens with goods and services doesn't fit my definition of socialism; I think this is totally the best way to go and in other areas of the blogosphere I'm often excoriated as a vile communist for suggesting this.
I don't even mind that as a high income worker with no kids I pay roughly five times more tax than the average New Zealander and get WAY less value out of the services the state provides than almost everybody else - on a pragmatic level that's the only way its gonna work.
What I DO mind is a party - any party but in this case it happens to be Labour - decides to simply take some of my money and give it to someone else, in exchange for that persons vote. From my perspective that's what happened with WFF.
As others have commented, Labour wasn't taking care of the needy in our society - Labour generally ignores the truly needy because they don't vote much and if they did they're hardly likely to support National.
Others have suggested that WFF met some dire need and that there would be 'consequences' if it wasn't there. To me this is simply laughable: the idea that in a period of sustained economic growth, wage rises and record employment Labour decided to shower swing-voting middle-income families with money in an election year out of the goodness of their hearts is simply nonsense.
What really bugs me is that I had to vote for them anyway because the National Party under Brash was not an alternative.
I have yet to decide whether or not the Nats look any better this year. They haven't made any election promises - but then again, neither has Labour - Cullen released a budget which he has to do because he's in government. They're not going to be announcing new policy until a few weeks before the election either.
</rant>
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Actually Danielle I think its a sad commentary on how much class is now part of our social discourse. 70k is a modest salary if you are part of the new New Zealand middle class. The working class, the working poor and beneficiaries might as well be invisible to the Herald's editorial writers, most of the MSM and the class interests they represent. I'm reminded of this article in the Guardian from Will Hutton:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/18/comment.homeaffairs
"...The grip of the ex-independent-school boy and girl had got tighter, it reported, since a similar study in 1986. They now occupy more than half the senior editorial and opinion-forming roles. It's a similar pattern in business, the judiciary and the financial system..."
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What really bugs me is that I had to vote for them anyway because the National Party under Brash was not an alternative.
From a tactical perspective, I suggest it would have been better to vote for the Greens.
Why ? Because if the Greens hadn't made the 5% threshold then, in effect, the party votes for the Greens would have been redistributed to the remaining parties. This would have translated to National getting circa 50% of the Green vote (which would have been just under 5%) i.e. 3 extra MPs.
I'm not saying this because I'm on the Green list, but because I want the Left to vote tactically.
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Sorry for the thread-jack, but both Clark and Cullen can thank whoever deity they like that they're not Gordon Brown.
The Conservative Party has achieved its first by-election gain in 26 years, taking the previously safe Labour seat of Crewe and Nantwich.
Tory candidate Edward Timpson won 7,860 more votes than his Labour rival, overturning a 7,000 Labour majority at the last general election.
Shadow local government minister Eric Pickles said: "We've taken it and we've taken it big."
The contest followed the death of veteran Labour MP Gwyneth Dunwoody.
Her daughter Tamsin stood as the Labour candidate.
The by-election follows dismal recent local election results for Labour.
Mr Timpson, a 34-year-old barrister, took 20,549 votes. Ms Dunwoody was second on 12,679, with Liberal Democrat Elizabeth Shenton third on 6,040.
Turnout was 58.2%, which is very high for a by-election, but was down slightly from 60% at the 2005 general election.
I believe the technical term is 'ouch', and there's the by-election in Boris Johnson's safe Tory constituency to come.
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Divorced? I don't think they made it as far as the altar.
Oh snap, Lucy! That was good. :)
70k is a modest salary if you are part of the new New Zealand middle class.
I thought *I* was middle class. Since I earn the princely sum of 41,100 a year, I am, according to the Herald, the working poor (?!). I clearly need to start getting more militant. <raises fist in socialist salute>
As Tom says, it seems as though the people who actually *do* earn modest incomes - like, minimum wage - are almost out of the picture at the moment. Which is... a bit disturbing.
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