by Keith Locke
While many New Zealanders are struggling to make ends meet, others could afford a hefty $1000 to hear (and be photographed with) the former British PM Tony Blair when he spoke in Auckland today.
Yes, Mr Blair is a politician for the rich. He only became Prime Minister after flying to Australia in 1995 to get media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s approval.
He also helped BP and the other oil companies by invading Iraq. Protesters outside his talk at Eden Park have described him as a war criminal, and would like legal action taken against him while he is here. They say that the Iraq war was based on a lie – that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction – and that hundreds of thousands of people needlessly died following the invasion.
Blair is still a hawk. In John Pilger’s latest film, The War You Don’t See, Blair is quoted saying that Western nations need to be prepared to take military action against Iran.
Don’t be fooled by his current “celebrity” status.
Published in Justice & Democracy | Society & Culture by Keith Locke on Thu, July 28th, 2011
Tags: Foreign Afffairs, international politics, international relations, iran, iraq war, John Pilger, Ruper Murdoch, Tony Blair, War Crimes
More posts by Keith Locke | more about Keith Locke
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Those people that could afford are entitled to spend their money on what they want, thats why its called THEIR MONEY, who are you to judge what people can and cant spend their money on and who they choose to see.
I cant speak about the other baseless accusations against him, but there are people in power who have done far worse than Blair.
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yeah…bush…and obama…
..so that’d make him number three…
.he’s still a major war criminal…
..your point…?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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keith..cd u plse address the questions raised in the general thread..re yr stance on overthrowing gadaffi..
chrs..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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And if there are people who have done worse than Blair, what has that got to do with him? You’re just trying to distract from the bad he has done – why?
Btw, if you “can’t speak” about the accusations, you can’t say they are “baseless” either. Major fail.
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Keith, is any different to your fawning visit to Cuba? Did you ask whether its rulers would be questioned over its human rights abuses or its roles in African conflicts in the 80s or 90s? Or are you also suggesting that Iran should be encouraged to develop Nuclear weapons?
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Video of the protest is at http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5353152/Protesters-slam-Tony-Blair
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/oct/27/freedomofinformation.politics
I wonder if it will be later revealed that another popular, smiley leader (close to home) was also being managed and manipulated by corporate interests at the detriment of those he was supposed to serve…?
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Oh yes there have been people in power who have done ‘far’(?) worse than blair; Atila the Hun, Ghingis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Stalin.
Really how ‘far’ worse were these bunch of psychopaths?
The police should have been helping Toad arrest Blair!!!
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blair was on prime news..
he is very watery/unsubstantial…
..he gave/gives the appearance of close to breaking down to component parts..
..and becoming a puddle on the floor..
..what annoyed the most was his ‘poor-me’/snide comment that ‘one thing’ he ‘couldn’t be blamed for’ the english rugby team wearing black..
of course..standing behind/around him..as he made that grim/thin-lipped joke…
..were/are all the men/women/children he killed….
..waiting for him to join them…
..he also seemed weighed down…
..and why wouldn’t he be…?
..does he scrub hard each nite..?..
..to try to wash the blood off…?
..vile/evil little man..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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phil, post your general thread comments on the Libyan Mess thread.
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Minto et al yelling through megaphones outside Eden Park look like extremists on the fringe.
If they really want to make a serious difference, and put Blair under serious presure, (and make other leaders think twice about doing the same thing in the future) then they need to make a serious legal attempt to press charges for war crimes – not act like clowns.
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He (and Bush & Howard etc) should be before the War crimes tribunal, not charging $500+ for spreading their version of ‘democracy’ to those who believe the world should be run ‘by the rich for the rich’ Kia-ora
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Looking at the news coverage, it seemed clear to me that those attending were rich, so the title of Keith’s post is quite fair and reasonable. I’d have said ‘spoiled Toffs’ but I’m not so discrete as Keith.
The extent of the Police presence there was quite remarkable I thought – did they fear Minto and his noisy crew? Van after van after van, set-jawed cop on stony-eyed cop. Perhaps it was Toad that put the frighteners up them!
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http://robertguyton.blogspot.com/2011/07/great-to-meet-tony.html
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We did. Lawyers drafted an application for an arrest warrant detailing the allegations of war crimes against Blair. It was sent to Attorney-General Chris Finlayson on Wednesday. All Finlayson had to do was sign it and file it in the District Court and the Police would have arrested Blair upon his arrival at Auckland airport.
But Finlayson ignored it, despite the fact that New Zealand opposed Blair’s and Bush’s Coalition of the Killing in Iraq and many of the world’s top experts in international law agreeing that there is a strong case for Blair to be tried for war crimes.
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Just for the record I understand the price was halved because they had not sold enough tickets.
There are obviously going to be a lot of rich people going to the Rugby World Cup.
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The conservative estimate of 110,000 civilian deaths that occurred during the Iraq war and the destruction of the country’s essential infrastructure was just an unfortunate consequence: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10637526
The 179 deaths of UK military personnel will be honoured despite the fact that the war they fought in was illegal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Griffin_(British_Army_soldier)
It must be remembered that Blair was only acting in the best interests of his country and any war brings benefits to big business and many British companies reaped huge profits from the war: http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/CommentAnalysis/CorporateWatch/IraqWarProfits.aspx
It is perfectly reasonable for the rich to support and admire Blair because he knows that economic growth is more important than people. Sometimes you have to flout international law, do secret deals with tobacco companies and lie to ensure the profitability of British businesses and the fact that Blair was very good at this makes him someone to be admired, not criticized. Any Prime Minister worth his salt would do the same and if only Fiji had oil rather than coconuts John Key would be perfectly justified in initiating an invasion there.
I think this is the line of thinking that nzmr2guy was attempting to follow…
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I think not.. Viva the revolution !! Kia-ora
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Our own recently published “rich list” prompts a number of questions;
http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.com/2011/07/rich-list-prompts-questions.html
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Mr. Tony Blair, as before them Mr. Felipe Gonzalez, has become accustomed to the “high life” and not out there, no one takes away. Appeared with the inimitable Cherie, along with Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, with the facade of a beautiful house in Sardinia behind. The Blairs have been to Sardinia and the fortress of Berlusconi (in a protected area where ordinary mortals could not build), and then perched in the hot season.
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toad says “We did. Lawyers drafted an application for an arrest warrant detailing the allegations of war crimes against Blair. It was sent to Attorney-General Chris Finlayson on Wednesday. All Finlayson had to do was sign it and file it in the District Court and the Police would have arrested Blair upon his arrival at Auckland airport.”
Right – so instead of giving Finlayson several months to look into the legalities of if there’s a real case or not, you gave him two days.
That looks more like an amateurish publicity stunt quickly thought up two days before Blairs visit, rather than a serious attempt at war crimes charges.
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If the protestors had only given Attorney-General Chris Finlayson more time to consider the case, the police would have arrested Tony Blair for war crimes. Quack.
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Is solka’s most intelligent contribution an animal noise, or the strawman arguement?
Congrats solka – you achieved national standards at infantile level.
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Best dinosaur noise ever, imho. From a children’s book the name of which I’ve forgotten.
Animal noises say so much!
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B.C.
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The problem Keith and Robert have is with this concept of “rich”; a $1,000 ticket shouldn’t be beyond the means of most New Zealanders, it’s only 300 quid, and thus you shouldn’t need to “rich” to be able to attend, merely in work with a decent job and have a will to hear Blair speak.
And there’s the rub; New Zealand incomes are just too damned low.
I was one of those who voted for New Labour back in the day; the Tories (ie the remnants of Maggie’s era) just had to go. And if Blair had half the brains that John Key has, he would still be in the big chair. As it was, his government became as evil and pernicious as those he replaced, so they had to go too.
Blair may have invented centerist politics, but Key is going to teach the world how to do it properly.
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db –
I’m not sure how the logic of your point is supposed to go; Blair certainly did out-Thatcher the Baroness, but how is our low minimum wage supposed to increase if Key continues to out-Thatcher Blair?
I’m sorry, did you think our low-wage environment was an unintended consequence of the tory changes to legislation that happened here after Ruth Richardson’s ‘Mother of all Budgets’? (another Thatcher-inspired piece of work!)
ECA, Student Loans Act, all shoved thru’ to shift the costs onto individuals, of institutional infrastructure, so that the Government of the day could boast cutting spending and the external deficit.
All they created was a country brought to it’s knees, a property crash in ’92 that brought down Marac finance and a lot of property investors (well, can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs …) and set up conditions where the few remaining with capital were able to dictate terms to all those who lost savings and property, and to their children.
The low wage environment is a symptom of mismanagement of business and corporate sector – if they were in any way competent, they could afford to pay decent wages. Instead they rely on WINZ topping up lousy pay with tax credits to families, accommodation grants to low income earners & beneficiaries, all of which just keeps property speculators and bad business owners in the money.
Not improving the standard of living for the many in any way shape or form.
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Contrary to your response in the other thread, I actually agree with a lot of what you say in this response.
Half a century ago, New Zealand had one of the highest standards of living in the world. I’ve published links to the graphs on previous occasions. But today our standard of living is in the toilet.
The reason for this is that for the last half century we have persisted in being a farming led economy, whereas most of the rest of the world (or at least those further up the OECD ladder) have moved away from farming, into other businesses, mainly high tech.
Property crashes and all that other stuff you mention are just sideshows; the only important statistic is that New Zealand’s two biggest industries (farming and tourism) are both lower in productivity than the OECD average, so the more farming and tourism we do, the further we fall down the ladder. It’s a game we cant win, heck we cant even break even.
To fix New Zealand’s low wage economy, we have to have better paying jobs, and that means a change of mindset from farming to high-tech. We have some of the best businesses in the world, like Tait Radio, F&P healthcare, and a brilliant film industry. We need lots more of this, and its the government’s job to make New Zealand attractive places to do that kind of business. But even the very smart Mr Key can’t escape the farming lobby that is both our lifeline and our downfall.
Of course, if we had high paying jobs then we would have more tax revenue, and have more tax revenue without doing what the socialists want to do, which is to raise tax percentages and types of things taxed and generally try and bleed the rich of their richness. The socialist answer to New Zealand’s woes are very unattractive. (But I will agree that at least Goff is trying something, even though he’s trying bad. Key hasn’t actually got anything at all on the table. What a terrible choice for voters)
More tax revenue which would let us do socially sensible things. Like look after those folks we cant (and increasingly wont be able to) find jobs for.
It can all come together, once one accepts that a higher paying job economy is the lynchpin to a socially reasonable state. Unlike many left wingers (or which I’m not, despite some folks assertions to the contrary), I don’t accept that the key to social reasonableness is to deprive the rich of their wealth, ill-gotten or otherwise. The trick is to grow the economy so that there is more money sloshing around everywhere. More sloshing, more tax revenues, more social programs.
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dbuckley, we do need better paying jobs but we also need to pay existing jobs better. There are too many New Zealanders working in essential, skilled jobs who are paid the minimum wage. The minimum wage should be for those new to the work force or lacking experience, I see lots of skilled people doing jobs requiring maturity, experience and initiative being paid at rates that unqualified school leavers earn. ACT would say that we should pay school leavers even less to differentiate but we just need to pay wages that allow people to survive independently without relying on the state for a top up. Most New Zealanders earn less than $28,000 per annum and the median household income is only $35,000, no wonder we have children living in poverty!
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“a $1,000 ticket shouldn’t be beyond the means of most New Zealanders”
I’m sorry, could you run that by me again?
Most New Zealanders should be able and willing to spend $1000 on a ticket to hear a man speak (and incidentally have to run the gauntlet of some of their fellow New Zealanders calling for that man to be arrested for war crimes)?
Seems an odd statement from you db.
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sprout says “the median household income is only $35,000″
I notice you continue to give totally wrong figures for this.
The median weekly household income (according to the latest Statistics NZ quarterly income survey) is $1236, which is $64,000 per year.
Your figure is closer to being right for the median PERSONAL income, but not from just wages, but all sources (i.e. including all those on benefits and those who earn nothing – students and stay-at-home parents, etc), which is $529 per week ($27,500 pa).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income_in_Australia_and_New_Zealand
http://www.emigratenz.org/new-zealand-incomes.html
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http://www.salaries.co.nz/
Some opinion on the issue of median incomes and measurement of poverty
http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=28
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Sprout – yes, agree, I’ve argued previously that any business that pays it’s employees (or even most of its employees) minimum wage is a low value business, and is the sort of business that we don’t need. I’ve said we should raise the minimum wage frequently and aggressively to either make these business either a decent value proposition, or that they will fail.
The sorts of businesses that pay these low wages are subsidised by businesses of higher value, and thus these low value businesses are unfair to decent businesses.
Greenfly – “I’m sorry, could you run that by me again?”
Sure: a $1,000 ticket shouldn’t be beyond the means of most New Zealanders
I also said “and have a will to hear Blair speak.”
These are two separate issues; the first is to do with our economic state, the second to what you think of Blair the person. I’m not calling for him to be arrested for war crimes, though I’d have no philosophical issue if he were.
However, I find no surprise in the action of our state when presented with an arrest request they don’t like or find inconvenient.
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SPC – Your wiki link has wrong information. NZ houshold income is around 30% less than Australia – not 60% less.
It has obviously done just what you have – used median income (for one person) instead of median income (for a household)
And the figures have no working referrence.
Your second link backs up my figures.
Your third link is not for household income – it’s for wages.
I agree with your forth link, that poverty rates are not neccessarily accurate, because if those in the middle get a better income, poverty rates as a percentage of median go up, and iof the middle goes down, poverty rates as a percentage of median go down.
So poverty rates don’t necessarily reflect the actual number of poor poeple.
On top of this you have people with low incomes living well and people with medium incomes who struggle to make ends meet.
It has as much to do with how you spend your money as how much money you get.
Last weeks poverty special on close up had a single mum with five kids stuggling to feed them, but able to afford several thousands of dollars a year on cigarettes.
And an ACC beneficiary spending double what she needed to on rent on an above average house, but complaining of having no money.
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The points made by Photonz1 are one reason why housing affordability is such an important issue and why a city with unaffordable housing (virtually every city in NZ but Auckland in particular) can never aspire to be a liveable city while housing remains unaffordable. I have just completed a 100 page submission to the Productivity Commission on this matter.
I trust the Green Party understands that if many of these people lived in a market with affordable housing their net incomes after tax and mortgage would be much increased.
I do not know why so many people believe that sheep and cows have a greater right to live on the ground than people do.
Also one of the weaknesses of expressing poverty levels as a percentage of the average income is that it generates some major anomalies. E g if Gates and Jobs came to live in NZ tomorrow poverty the number of children living in poverty increase. That’s why median incomes and house prices are a much more useful statistic than averages.
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Owen – even using poverty as a percentage of median income has problems.
When the income of middle NZ increases, that means poverty rates go up, and they get better when middle NZ’s income reduces.
Even though the income of the poor didn’t change.
In fact using this method you can have an increase in income of the poor, but the poverty rates increase if middle incomes increase by more.
And someone not in poverty in Auckland can be much worse off than someone well below the poverty line in Bluff.
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Photonz, I just posted some links on a google search, you were debating the matter with someone else – do you not think that the wiki one might be the source of the misinformation (the page it cited at Statistics New Zealand is no longer there to check what sort of mis-reference was used).
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Photonz1- If the median wage is only $27,500 and most households would have either one or two combine incomes how could the median be more than double? The fact there are many single income household would pull the median down as well. The figures you referred to were from a survey of the residents in Greytown, Wellington, hardly representative of the whole of New Zealand. It pays to read the whole link.
http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2006CensusHomePage/QuickStats/AboutAPlace/SnapShot.aspx?id=3579900&type=au&ParentID=1000009&expand=2000050&scrollLeft=0&scrollTop=493&ss=y
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income_in_Australia_and_New_Zealand
http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/Income/NZIncomeSurvey_HOTPJun10qtr.aspx
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The median “wage” is not $27,500 you may mean to say median income (this includes beneficiaries and super).
http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/Income/NZIncomeSurvey_HOTPJun10qtr.aspx
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The link above
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If you read the information in the Statistics link you will note they include those over 65 in the median income figure but exclude those over 65 in the household figures. Thus the difficulty understanding how they can be so different.
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sprout says “If the median wage is only $27,500″
No – that’s not the median wage – that’s the median income, including students and stay-at-home parents who earn zero, and part time workers who work 2 hrs a week, and beneficiaries and those on the pension.
Thre are three distinct things here
- median income (from all sources, including those with no income, so it’s often quite a low figure)
- median wage (median income for those working for wages and salaries)
- median household income (median combined income for ALL the people in the household)
SPC – sorry got my sp cees and my sp routs mixed up.
SPC says “do you not think that the wiki one might be the source of the misinformation ”
Yes – it has to be wrong, and is possibly where sprout has got his incorrect info from.
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Point taken, SPC and Photonz1, as you say Statistics New Zealand define them as income from all sources or wage and salary earners. The median income for wage and salary earners is higher as you say at $40,000, but I’m not sure if these are full time earnings or also include part time, so it could be less. The latest median household income figures from Statitics NZ were for 2009 and were around $30,000 ($338 per week) so the $35,000 would be close for 2011.
Apparently we have had 5% inflation over the past year and the average wage increase was less than 2% so while I appreciate any corrections regarding my statistics, the reality is that a large proportion of households and wage earners are struggling and the gap between the wealthy and the poor is widening rapidly (the rich increased their wealth by an average of 18%).
http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.com/2011/06/median-wage-drops-while-company-profits.html
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Unless you have a belief that a wage gap between poor and rich is philosophically wrong (is that communism?), then the presence of a gap of any size is a non-issue. It doesn’t matter how wealthy the wealthiest are, or even the upper middle income earners.
What does matter is that those at the bottom end of the income scale have insufficient financial resources available to them. And as I’ve noted elsewhere, this problem is going to get worse.
Under the current economic and societal model, redistributing wealth (the Robin Hood model) is the least good way of addressing the issue. In particular, whereas redistribution is good for the folks at the bottom of the pile who clearly should benefit from such redistribution (and that’s good), the overall impact on the country is at best neutral, and probably detrimental (and that’s really bad).
The red party (non-)plan to use CGT (and an unfair and incomplete CGT scheme at that) as the redistribution mechanism is clearly detrimental as it will be yonks before the CGT income equals the increases in spending planned that will be notionally paid for by the CGT income, by which time the equivalency will have been of historic note only. So the red party are actually just thinly disguising increasing our debt even more to to fund their schemes. Even the blue party thought of that one.
Neither redistribution nor more debt are the answer; we need better ideas and leadership than that.
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Increasing the spending power of our low waged workers creates many economic benefits like putting more money into the domestic economy and saving millions on income support and health spending. It is definitely not detrimental the economy to boost the incomes at the lower end.
This Government has actively held wages below the levels of inflation, kept the minimum wage at a level where it has become unlivable, increased the incomes of the wealthy at the same time by at least 18% and because of tax cuts etc reduced Government revenue. We now have increasing numbers of children living in poverty and $480 million being spent on new Bentley cars over the past year.
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Having a CGT does not increase debt, and even the re-distributive programme of Labour eventually results in lower debt and without sale of assets.
In fact it can be more credibly argues that not having a CGT necessitates the sale of income earning assets (said to necessary to pay for roads) and leaves us subject to greater foreign ownership of our income earning assets.
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“”Under the current economic and societal model, redistributing wealth (the Robin Hood model) is the least good way of addressing the issue”".
Redistributing income from those who spend it on holidays in Hawaii, or gambling in the US markets, to those who spend it locally is neither neutral or detrimental. In fact doing the opposite since 1984 has proven to be extremely detrimental to the economy as a whole.
Ask any small business person how well they are doing at present.
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Sprout – I’m skeptical, but sufficiently interested that I’ll have to get the book from the library.
Kerry – changing wealth redistribution does nothing for the country in terms of its place in the world; we will continue to sink lower down the world rankings of standard of living.
Redistribution can do positive things within the country. Which is not bad, but continues to be a case of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. We need to do better as a country. We’re wasting time and effort on not solving the most important problems, and using that time and effort to apply band-aids.. Get the big problems right and there is money to solve social problems.
The economy has been going downhill a lot longer than since 1984. At least fifty years of decline need to be addressed.
SPC – “Having a CGT does not increase debt, and even the re-distributive programme of Labour eventually results in lower debt”
Eventually, yes, it should, but if there is the $5K tax free zone introduced quickly, then CGT wont be bringing in enough income to cover the revenue loss from all those $5Ks, and thus there will have to be more debt. Temporary, I grant ye, but more debt nevertheless.
And if CGT is the answer then still no-one has addressed the question I posed some time ago: how it can possibly be fair to exclude the primary home from CGT? I think its a good idea to so do, but its clearly not fair – it means some people have capital gains that aren’t taxed, yet others have capital gains that are taxed. How can that possibly be “fair”?
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“”Kerry – changing wealth redistribution does nothing for the country in terms of its place in the world; we will continue to sink lower down the world rankings of standard of living”".
Actually it does. For many reasons, but the easiest one for you to understand is; Low income earners and beneficiaries spend more of their income on local products. Encouraging local business investment and startups. Which become the exporters and big NZ based business of the future. No local customer base means the only local business are low income minimum wage service industries.
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Though I do agree there should be no exclusions from CGT and GST.
However a CGT that includes the family home is politically impossible right now.
The whole tax and welfare systems are too complicated and open to abuse.
That is just an unearned bonanza for accountants and lawyers.
I would have liked to see inheritance taxes on large unearned inheritances and financial transaction taxes also. The fewer places income can be parked to avoid taxes the better.
A credit for business income re-invested in productive local business or R and D, like Germany, to help drive investment in the right direction.
Works well in conjunction with taxes on money taken out.
First home owners could be helped by rent to buy State housing.
Low income earners by a GMI at a livable level replacing benefits.
Low wage earners by making employers pay a liveable minimum wage, so tax payers are not subsidising inefficient use of Labour.
Who knows! With a broader and simpler tax base we may eventually be able to reduce income and business taxes without gutting State services..
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