Public Address | Cafe | Polity: English canards

Ian Dalziel

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 09:32:33 +1200

surrounded with hedges decorated with razor wire
He always struck me as the mined ha-ha sort.
(at the risk of having 'beamed' eyes over his 'moat')
;- )

Kumara Republic

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 22:52:36 +1200

Of course, a beautiful home seems to numb social responsibility on average.

I sometimes wonder if Bill English's beautiful home is surrounded with hedges decorated with razor wire, Joburg or Lima-style.

Tom Johnson

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 19:01:58 +1200

Of course, a beautiful home seems to numb social responsibility on average.

andin

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 16:13:14 +1200

can someone like English sleep at night

Bet he sleeps like a babe swaddled in warm fluffy bedding not a container for waste cardboard numbed by alcohol to keep the cold at bay.

linger

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 13:23:57 +1200

The thing is, when English says, “won’t somebody think of the poor rich people” (oxymoron alert!) he’s using that as an excuse not to attempt any kind of social policy aimed at inequality reduction – such as a universal guaranteed income, for example. Calling him out on his lies is…

Kumara Republic

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 12:39:11 +1200

I am sick of this bullshit bizarre framing of who has it the worst in N.Z. It's like English wants us to feel sorry for the Poor old rich taxpayers keeping the lazy poor in beer and ciggies. What a turd of a man.

How can someone like English sleep…

Ieuan

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 12:35:22 +1200

I think maybe you just agreed with me? :)

Rob S

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 12:00:22 +1200

It seems like this is not a problem that we fix by changing tax structures.

Disagree strongly.

Taking money from the rich [your opinion on the morality of this may vary from mine] and using it to build better housing and sustain those who are not "high achievers" and putting…

Sacha

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 11:18:41 +1200

This government also has form for claiming black is white, and getting away with that.

Sacha

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 11:14:59 +1200

You're right, we have re-elected governments who have created an imbalanced low-wage economy over the last few decades.

Ieuan Wickham

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 22:48:42 +1200

Can't help but feel there's something more fundamental wrong here. The problem I see is that a portion of the population is a) working, let's say 1x full time ($30k pa on min wage), b) receiving financial assistance from the state, however insufficient that may be, and c) still functionally…

Thomas Lumley

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 22:06:08 +1200

I've written about it a few times, too. I think it's a contagious and dangerous sound-bite.

StatsChat
the 'shorter and with more swearing' version on my blog
StatsChat again
and StatsChat again, with numbers from Kiwiblog

Tom Johnson

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 19:55:12 +1200

How can someone like English sleep…

Tinakori

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 18:26:36 +1200

Have you changed your calculations, Rob? I recall you on this blog using the number 45% for the proportion of income tax paid by the top 10% income earners.

Euan Mason

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 17:19:01 +1200

Rob this needs to be made into a press release. It's too important to have simply as a blog. Most people fail to understand how GST impacts on relative taxation of different income groups, and their misconceptions influence voting patterns and ultimately social policy.

mpledger

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 16:03:56 +1200

The other thing to realise is that peoples tax and benefits change over time. That the people paying the most tax now and getting the least benefit are most likely 55 year old business managers with independent children. It fails to take into account that 30 years ago they were…

Sacha

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 16:01:28 +1200

Keith Ng also posted on this a couple of years ago.

Hilary Stace

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 15:24:51 +1200

Or lots of rental properties.

Alfie

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 13:06:37 +1200

Actually the top earners usually have very good tax accountants who know all about tax minimisation and they often pay a lot less tax than poorer people.

And that my son, is why we have offshore trusts.

Hilary Stace

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 12:47:40 +1200

Actually the top earners usually have very good tax accountants who know all about tax minimisation and they often pay a lot less tax than poorer people.

Fen Tex

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 11:48:57 +1200

That 37% of the incoming net tax is paid by a group of people who earn 30% of the income in New Zealand (from English’s table) and hold 60% of the wealth (according to Statistics New Zealand).

This is a sentence opposition parties should want in the headlines or near…

Kumara Republic

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 11:21:16 +1200

I've always interpreted such surveys as an indicator of middle-class decompression and the weakening of organised labour movements. Even then, the rentier class has successfully convinced society's battlers that those below them are to blame for holding them back. Remember the 12 Cookies joke that circulated not long after the…

linger

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 11:07:31 +1200

or, putting it another way,
understanding true levels of taxation
is just too ’canard
so it's understandable
if print journalists
duck all responsibility
for correcting
the English errors.

matthew

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 10:46:26 +1200

Stop this right now. Accuracy has no place in politics in this day and age. Your reasoning contradicts uncle bills truthiness and at the end if the day I don't think the public really cares whether the minister of finance is good with numbers.

Rob Salmond

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 10:07:02 +1200

Here’s a link to my workings

Public Address

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 10:07:02 +1200

Discussion from blog post.