Search Results » @author Res Publica

Which is exactly my point too. So far, all Williams et al appear to have produced is a great deal of indignation at the very idea that Hager would impugn their honour in public. None of the responses I’ve seen thus far have seriously engaged with the …

Given the Taxpayers’ Union’s longstanding enthusiasm for aggressive political campaigning, there is something mildly amusing about seeing them object quite so strongly when the same sort of scrutiny is pointed in their direction. But I think you’re …

It also gives Hipkins a kind of out, if he can thread the needle of negotiating hard enough to avoid the impression that has dogged Luxon of being taken for a ride by his junior coalition partners. Labour can quite truthfully say: this wasn’t our policy, …

There’s quite a lot around long-term, cross-party approaches to things like education and infrastructure that I think Labour could pretty easily get behind. Beyond that, there seems to be plenty of potential common ground around land-use reform, …

Sure. I think shared care is, in most cases, a perfectly sensible starting point. But it’s not a cure-all, nor is it appropriate in every situation. The overriding consideration still has to be the welfare and best interests of the individual child. What …

I hate to break it to you, but telling voters that they’re stupid, wrong, gullible, or have had their brains messed with by propaganda isn’t a particularly productive electoral strategy. At some point, if people aren’t persuaded by your politics, you have …

It’s great that we’re having this debate, but remarkably little of it has actually touched on what I think is the interesting question raised by the post: how TOP can and cannot fit within a Labour-led government. Instead, there’s been an awful lot of hand …

Even worse than the stupid culture-war bullshit about climate change is National’s frankly scary lack of any coherent vision for how the New Zealand electricity system should actually operate. LNG is only one example. We’re heading into a fundamentally …

TOP’s policy sounds like a move towards asset and means tested pensions. No, it’s a move towards a UBI. Which everyone gets irrespective of their means and situation. And there’s nothing to stop a hypothetical Lab/Green/TOP coalition layering additional …

But that’s rather my point. Even at the historic peak of NZ home ownership, around a quarter of households didn’t own their home. Today it’s about a third. Those people count too. A retiree living on Super with a mortgage-free house and a retiree living on …

That’s a great policy!

But surely that’s an argument for transitional arrangements, rather than against changing the tax base? I’m 38. I’m perfectly happy for the tax system to make sure my grandparents can afford to remain in the home they’ve spent their lives in. They made …

I’m not sure I accept the premise that an LVT is inherently regressive. Regressive for whom, and measured against what? I agree that an annual LVT creates a genuine problem for some people who are income-poor but land-rich. I’ve already said that needs to …

Hi. Millennial with two mortgages here. I don’t think framing this as an intergenerational war gets us very far. Of course, a tax on land will fall disproportionately on the age groups that disproportionately own land. That’s an incidence of the policy, …

I agree with Weka that TOP doesn’t really fit neatly into the traditional left/right spectrum. I’m just not sure that it has to. It seems a little strange to complain that the existing political settlement isn’t up to the task, while simultaneously judging …