Posts by Gareth Ward
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The thing is, all of our taxes were a lot higher in 2005 than they are today
I've asked this question in a few places - but nobody's been able to answer it (or even begin to engage in it).
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redefining the parts of our national character that are most humane and admirable as being a problem.
This is very true - but the flip-side holds: we need to understand that if our national character is not to generate wealth, then as a nation we simply won't have the tax take/private income of other nations and perhaps have to re-evaluate some of our assumptions re what we can all afford - both through private spending as well as public spending.
Nothing annoys me more than a Govt that says "we're going to cut all these taxes but don't worry, we can keep handing out free ponies as well! How? Well you're not being very ambitious are you?"
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I can't have been the only to read all the 35 points with an increasing sense of open-mouth horror
Read the whole report though, it's intriguing. It seems to me that some (undoubtedly right-wing economist) boffins wrote the bulk of it, but then somebody (presumedly Brash) took a very partisan and personal spin to it to create the Exec Summary.
The tax options I discussed above is what strikes me the most - the report itself says "we won't say how the tax system could be structured but as two examples we could go to a really flat top rate or we could have a tax system like Sweden". Like Sweden! High progressive income tax rates and dramatically lower capital income tax rates.
Yet the Exec Summary says "hey we could have a 20% top tax rate". -
The benefit proposal won't work as proposed -- I doubt Morgan understands what the system does -- but the guaranteed minimum income idea is interesting.
I agree, guaranteed minimum income is an idea I really like. His number is odd though - $10k a year is under the maximum unemployment benefit alone? Yet he wants to remove any right to a DPB or a sickness benefit as well?
Make that number higher and while it's silly to presume that you can remove ALL benefits with that, but you could certainly cut them down (e.g. sickness benefit for only significant illness, DPB would need to maintain etc). -
Perhaps it's the rooting-for-the-underdog in me, but I will put up a couple of defences of some points in the Brash report:
- Taking spending as a %-of-GDP back to 2005 levels is not that an awful idea. Although I still don't get how it would let us have tax rates so much under those of 2005?
- The 20% top tax rate (not flat, top) is one of two options they say would be possible at that level of spending. The other is the Scandinavian model of a dual income tax rate, whereby we keep income tax as is (which must have hurt Brash to sign) and slash capital income (profits, dividends, interest although strangely not realised capital gain). There is a whole lot of merit in that given our problems with capital accumulation and they just proposed a Swedish tax system.
- Removing the layers of complexity in the tax rates (incl the complexity inherent in WFF) would remove an entire industry of tax avoidance. (Note that I don't mean removing the intended outcomes of WFF but perhaps the mechanism that so complicates marginal tax rates and returns).Most of the rest is bat-shittery but those points aren't THAT awful.
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Call me crazy, but I'm going to trust scientists with relevant expertise before I trust Ian Wishart…
That's cause you're a damn liberal lefty.
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"ACT, which basically adopted the New Zealand Law Society's concerns."
Can I ask what those were?
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that much harder for the Greens to get MSM coverage
I suspected it was something like this, but in a more general sense. They've had seemingly ZERO influence on the MSM discussion over this ETS at all - and they're the GREENS! Seems the MSM just isn't interested in them at all anymore.
Even still, go to the Greens website and there is no clear statement about this stuff that immediately grabs.I just want a working Opposition man, is it so much to ask? =)
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Given there's a few Green members around these traps, I'll ask the question I just put on Danyl's blog - when the Maori Party are making iwi-based deals to ram through an awful awful excuse for an ETS, why isn't Metiria Turei (sp?) all over coverage of this? She strikes me as the natural credible opposition voice given her work on Maori and environmental issues as well as being the leader of a Parliamentary Party?
Yet I've seen nothing? -
Steve, because he made that comment in the same speech as:
Or we can have a country where one New Zealander is turned against another, Maori against Pakeha, in a way that Labour strongly rejects.
and then made a bunch of references to the Foreshore & Seabed.
If he wanted to keep it about corporate buyout of the ETS (as he damn well should have) then he could have done it without those bits wrapped around it. Normally hate the "dogwhistle" term but this just seems so blatant