Blithely accepting Farrar's erroneous figures as fact. Is there nobody in the Herald editorial team with the ability to apply some basic common sense to this discussion?

We are following the debate on UBI with interest, but we do not regard the Taxpayers' Union as either…

Trickle, the trickle has been delayed but not forgotten. We are supposed to be richer.

The trickle down now needs to be delivered on. There has been a lot of honey made and no trickle, so…

While that does come to $38.4b, it assumes that once a UBI was introduced,…

He's not lying. He's making stuff true by saying it.

Last year I think we collected about $29 billion in taxes anyway, so you would literally have to ramp up taxes enormously ...

Aktually John, the 2015/16 tax take is $76b. Or if…

No reason why exactly the same approach could not be extended to non-accident illness and disability support. There was a good opportunity to do this in recent years when the current govt had hiked the levies higher than they needed to be.

Which guy and why?
;-)

I've said…

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201794344/maintaining-job-security-for-the-next-generation-of-workers

Another missed opportunity for some more balanced information.

Not entirely sure I see how that works. I know it's a claim sometimes made by proponents of UBI – but I don't see the chain of reasoning. Something to do with transforming capitalism so that it doesn't squeeze the last drops of goodness (and…

Yup. Probably. And it might even do that. But low wages are hardly unlikely to disappear any time soon. They're a fact of…

I don’t know, this looks like a balloon loaded with candy. Is the…

Absolutely not. The welfare needs of some people are way higher than others. But it could do away with some kinds of welfare specifically. Like the unemployment benefit and superannuation. Super basically is already a UBI, it's just…

I think that already has happened. Many professions are not as well paid as they were because people like being professionals more than they like cleaning toilets. Not just because of the…

__"Nothing for anyone to fear. No robbing Peter to pay Paul. No licence to laze. It ensures that precariously employed people – and students and mothers and others – will always have $175 of publicly-sourced income each week from which they may pay their…

They have been regualrly meeting Greens leaders, according to some stories. Does need to be reflected in some actual joint public work this year though.

Floating policy balloons is a tried and trusted political tactic thats been around for hundreds of years, I get that. But floating balloons that gives aggressive political opponents (and their proxies) opportunities to frame…

Exactly.

One of the Offspring (who does the Facebook thing) tells me that the intention of some of the younger set (who are not as politically detached as some might think) is to split their votes between Labour and the…

Gosh, what political comms experts could possibly have anticipated that? #headdesk

You're damn tooting about that.

Why, oh why cannot Labour see this?

Perhaps Labour should get out and about a tad more and…

I listened in to Duncan Garner on Radio Live this afternoon, and while he said he welcomed a discussion…

Jenny just showed me a Listener piece about lousy…

It would however help if he and Little were on song when media interview them about it.

At least, that’s my understanding.…

It's hard to pick a number for this, it being rather arbitrary. 50% is a psychological magic number. Your other point is much more salient – that if the corporate rate stays at 30% then pretty…

IRD stats page

This sort of option, yes.

Would be awesome as the current system doesn't appear to be working or sustainable for much longer.

Because if we did that, the Julie Christies, Paul Reynolds and Rod Petricevics of this world would flee the country, unable to live on a mere million or so a year after tax?

Get up off your knees!

I get a shortfall of $2.7b by reducing the above $70000 rates to 46%. Way less than my lefty prejudices would have me think. If you bumped the corporate rate back up to 33% (and, you know, actually collected it)…

I also think that the top tax rate should never exceed 50% on principle.

I think it would be hard to enumerate them into a small list. It's a change in the way…

e.g. Getting rid of the marginal tax rate insanity for those receiving government support (WFF, a benefit etc). Surely…

I think it's actually entirely about that. Because everyone can see given even one second, that it is possible to rejig all the taxation so…

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/10/finland-universal-basic-income-ubi-social-security

Actually there's a really good tax reason to do this. It's effectively a tax free allowance: you slice it off the bottom and add it on the tope. One effect is that people join the system who otherwise might not.

It's fundamentally a simplification mechanism, and…

$11,000 matches the base Jobseekers, but it doesn’t meet the Jobseekers plus Accommodation Supplement – Morgan had this at $2,000 pa on average for people on the old Unemployment in ’11. So either you have…

Much more of this openness and perhaps we will see less of the…

It's past time that Labour got with the Greens and showed the public a collaboration which could govern capably and with integrity. Labour has no show alone.

I'm sure there will be broad co-operation with the Greens on this type of issue, but…

Can we expect something to be presented pre next election or will this be…