Posts by Keith Ng
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Sean Maitland,
Deborah, you are correct that beneficiary income is net – but Labour have said they will be increasing beneficiary payments by $10 to match the increase in workers net pay after the tax cut takes effect.
Keith conveniently missed this.
As I said on Kiwiblog (and as Gareth pointed out), I used the wrong word, but the right numbers. Labour's costing is based on IRD figures which includes pensioners and beneficiaries. It includes 3,438,370 people.
It doesn't miss much (except, of course, for how much capital gains these people make).
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Bart Janssen,
That means Labour are about 7.5b off the mark and unlikely to be able to pay off any debt from these tax changes.
There's about $4-5b which are legitimately challenged, where Labour has a case to answer. And yeah, that'll have a massive impact on their ability to pay off debt.
It is disturbing how variable such important financial predictions are, almost like folks are mostly guessing.
They are. They're (usually) not awful guesses, and they are substantially better than nothing, but that's why looking at what the assumptions and parameters are is so important - so we can sort out the stupid guesses from the educated ones.
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
1) I suspect you need a rather thick skin if you work at Treasury and 2) you don't need to look too hard to find occasions where Treasury numbers should be taken with an unhealthy amount of salt.
What Russell said.
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OnPoint: It's real, in reply to Idiot Savant,
I/S: no, government is not all about redistribution. It's main function is to provide public goods that otherwise wouldn't be provided, to look after the interests of the community in a scale and in a timeframe in which individuals can't.
Redistribution is a part of that, but certainly not all of it. And this obsession with handing out money for private consumption is throttling the ability of governments to do use it's resources to do stuff for the long-term public good.
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OnPoint: It's real, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Because Labour is a left-wing party and wants to roll back some of National's upwards redistribution. You can't just live off sterile economic management; it needs to be for something.
For more money in your pocket?
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OnPoint: It's real, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
My suggestion to avoid a slow start is this:
BUT THE SLOW START IS NOT A PROBLEM.
Why is it a problem?
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My (non-trolly) concern is that with all due respect to BERL, the income modeling is also based on very long-term projections. I think we’ve all learned to take anything coming out of Treasury with a pound of salt, shouldn’t we do the same with a private company that I assume didn’t do this work for Labour as a public service.
BERL only did the part on CGT. They were very transparent and quite conservative, and you can read their report here: http://www.ownourfuture.co.nz/assets/BERL-report.pdf
The income tax part was done inhouse, probably using models that I made for them ages ago. It’s pure arithmetics, scaling the current tax base using Treasury’s GDP forecasts – no magic beans whatsoever. Yes, it’s taken with a grain of salt. So? It could be wrong, but it’s the baseline from which we make decisions.
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Can someone please explain how CGT will suddenly encourage people to move out of property investments and invest in more “productive” areas of the economy?
(I withdraw my answer in deference to Dave's below.)
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Speaker: The great New Zealand phone…, in reply to BenWilson,
It's also why most hackers get caught. They're people too.
Ahem, that's why most of the hackers who get caught end up getting caught. I'm not sure if the ones who don't get caught are the same kind of benign(ish), not-for-profit braggards.
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OnPoint: Why Rightwingers Should Support…, in reply to James Butler,
Optimistic but intriguing! It doesn't change the efficiency argument: It's still going to mean that people will invest in things that are not necessarily the best investment (e.g. Houses), but it does mean that they won't consume the gains immediately. Unless they borrow against their houses for consumption...