If you’re a blogosphere regular, you’ll have noticed that recently every monkey with a copy of the Fountainhead and a crush on John Key has been spouting the line that the top 10% of taxpayers pay 71% of net tax. Sounds incredible, eh? That’s because it’s not credible. It’s more cheap tricks from the Nats.
I’ve been thinking about that lawyer Casey Plunket who threatened to leave for Australia over Labour restoring the 39% top tax rate at the stratospheric threshold of $150,000. It means a couple of thousand more tax for the wealthiest Kiwis. Would anyone really move countries over that? Do we need the kind of people that would?
The latest ONE News / Colmar Brunton poll is bad for Labour, and not great for the Left. But it isn’t a verdict on Labour’s CGT proposal – the polling period finished before the policy was announced.
Apparently the undecided in this poll was 14%. I wonder why that was missed out of the reporting?
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The Nats can’t tell us how much their asset sales policy will cost in lost dividends and sales costs, yet they’ve magicked up some numbers with all kinds of dodgy assumptions that supposedly show Labour’s tax package doesn’t add up. Well, I suppose they would know something about borrowing for tax cuts but their attacks on Labour aren’t credible.
The 90% of New Zealanders who don’t trade shares or own a second property suddenly wake up to the horror of a capital gains tax
Local climate change deniers want to organise a debate featuring visiting “celebrity” Christopher Monckton. I’m all for scientific debate of course. But you can’t have such a debate with Monckton, because he’s a serial liar.
More nice work from Greg Salmond… Better add ACC to that list.
Hey, where is Key lately?
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After two weeks of contradictory, panicked lines from National, the Right’s official critique of Labour’s CGT is “it’s a hodge-podge”. The Right, including Bill English and Don Brash, aren’t saying CGT is bad, they’re saying Labour’s CGT isn’t comprehensive enough. Why, then, don’t they campaign on a more comprehensive one? Maybe they were going to.
DPF thinks that comparing Lockwood Smith to a KKK member is “a pretty disgusting smear”. Could this be the same DPF who ran a billboard campaign comparing Labour government politicians to brutal dictators?
In a comment yesterday on Eddie’s post ‘CGT or asset sales? Which do you prefer?‘, Matthew Hooton wrote “Where do I tick “I want both”?” Except for Nat sycophants, most righties acknowledge the need for a CGT. What should they do? Well, a little game theory shows that such a rightie should vote for a Labour-led government, this one time.
I’ve been impressed with Labour on both sides of the ditch lately. Here of course Phil Goff’s Labour party has moved very boldly on the CGT. But across the ditch in Oz, Labor leader and PM Julia Gillard is fighting an even tougher battle on carbon pricing. Go Gillard!
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At the same time as Phil Goff and David Cunliffe were unveiling Labour’s economic vision, Bill English was defending National’s in Parliament.
The media have provided us with five people examples of people who will be affected in different ways by Labour’s tax package. Ordinary families win big and they know it. The vested interests moan and reveal the pure greed that underlies their worldview. Frankly, I think Labour will win support due to both who supports and who opposes its tax policy.
In response to Labour’s tax proposals the Right is trotting out their favourite mindless catch phrase – “the politics of envy”. Should the Left fight fire with fire, and get stuck in to “the politics of greed”?
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You’ve gotta love Hone Harawira’s style. By refusing to use the right words in his oath, Hone exposed the ridiculousness of our representatives swearing allegiance to a Queen on the far side of the world and calling on the aid of a deity that only 50% of us believe in. Lockwood Smith had no choice. The oath is law. It’s the law that needs to change.
It would appear that Don Brash has ideals – and when politically required, he has other ideals.
In fact he has so many ideals that his viewpoint on a Capital Gains Tax appears to veer all over the political landscape especially in his latest press release on CGT. At a guess his only real objection to a CGT is that he is not the person proposing it.
Voters will see Labour oppositions on both sides of the world in a completely new light after this week. Phil Goff and Ed Miliband both took the bold step of taking on hitherto untouchable third-rail issues; capital gains tax in New Zealand and Rupert Murdoch’s pernicious monopoly media influence in England. Both leaders have turned the political landscape upside down and given voters a clear choice between the interests of the many and of the few. Go here for all the details. New Zealand is not for sale – game on for November!
So, Don Brash is having trouble getting any Maori candidates for ACT. Apparently, he identified 3 possibles – 2 turned out to be “unsuitable” (not old white reactionaries?) and one wasn’t interested. My question, however, is this. If Brash does manage to headhunt a token Maori and give them a winnable list place, isn’t that race-based privilege?
According to Gareth Morgan, “all income should be taxed if it is a fair income tax”. So where are taxes coming from right now? Well increasingly more of it is being paid by wage and salary earners, and less by businesses. Hopefully a capital gains tax will partially redress that imbalance.
A former chief inspector of coal mines yesterday told the Pike River inquiry that the underlying cause of the disaster was the weakening of mining regulations in the 1990s. Yet another example of the frequent and costly failures of deregulation. RIP the Pike River miners.
Generally, no-one likes taxes, but Labour’s polling shows Kiwis are surprisingly receptive to capital gains tax. Head to head with National asset sales plan, the choice was clear: 55% prefer CGT vs 32% privatisation. In a contest of economic plans, Labour wins hands down. Even John Whitehead agrees. All English can do is scaremonger about the 35% debt ceiling.
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When Helen was PM, visitors to Beehive offices had to leave their cellphones in the foyers. I understand it’s still the practice. It’s not because Ministers suspect officials of bugging them. It’s because cellphones can be accessed remotely and used as bugs without owners knowing. A Murdoch-owned Fox channel tells how it’s done. Google tells you where you can buy to spy. It’s not just Ministers – the Engineers Union, which represents journalists, found a paper tapping their phones during negotiations in 2005.
Russel Norman put a dagger into John Key yesterday in question time asking whether a series of national and international economic authorities really wanted to “put a dagger through the heart of growth” with a CGT. Key can waffle and whine all he likes, but he can’t avoid the truth of Australia’s enviable growth record with CGT.
We can expect a lot of economic rhetoric in the lead up to November from our political leaders. What does history suggest with respect to two key economic indicators: production and employment?
There are murmurings in ACT today over their new ‘high profile’ candidate, ex-farming guy who’s on the telly sometimes ranting about climate change Don Nicolson. The party’s current policy priorities are lower wages for young people, weakening student unions, and beating up on Maori and there’s concern Nicolson isn’t the right face for the job.
Key used to get away with spouting whatever kind of nonsense he liked. Not any more. His hysterical scaremongering on the subject of capital gains tax seems to have been a step too far. The teflon is long gone, and Key has cried wolf too often.
