Who is as insulted as I am over PM Key’s statement, reported in today’s Dom Post, around why the highest earners will get the tax cuts in this week’s budget, at the expense of the 92% who earn under $70k/ann (http://tinyurl.com/23natqb)? ”We can be envious about these things, but without those people in our economy all the rest of us will either have less people paying tax or fundamentally less services they provide”
Well, my daughter is taught by a teacher earning under $70k, most of the police who put their lives on the line for us earn under $70k, nurses who fix us up when we fall over earn under $70k, and the vast majority of people who actually make this country tick – the backbone of the nation – earn under $70k. Are these people any less deserving? Do they not ensure that the wheels of industry are well oiled, the streets are safe and our citizens are provided with the services required of a first world country? Of course they do.!
How bloody insulting.! As I blogged earlier this year, there are a myriad of reasons people live and work in New Zealand – and tax is way down this list. These changes will, if anything, drive middle NZ across to Australia and further afield. Mr Key – just be honest with Kiwis and stop feeding us your propaganda: these tax cuts are not about creating equality of opportunity, driving higher productivity, developing a fairer tax system or building more equitable society – because they will not achieve any of these goals. If you believe they will, then I suggest you start studying your economic and financial text books and reading your case studies – those published this century – not last.!
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that our high achievers are not deserving – they are – but so is everyone else. The increase in tax through the GST hike to 15% is broad and all-encompassing – so should the tax cuts be.!
“It would be munterish of Labour to commit to reverse the GST hike when they don’t as of yet know where the country’s finances will be in 2011″.
No it would be basic sense to state the position as it doesn’t matter what the state of the nation’s finances are. As the tax changes in the budget this week according to smile and wave are “revenue neutral” all you have to do is what you are going to do which is increase the top tax rate back up to 39 cents and create a tycoon tax rate for individuals earning over $500k of 49 cents in the dollar. Duh.
We’ll see, and I stand by my statements.
Come on now, we cant go to hard on the finance company founders, ceo’s, directors, corporate trustee’s or all those at all levels of the bank credit debt fueled leaky home rort that rubber stamped everything in sight while transfering as much credit money into their family trust funds as they could while the going was good, it has been one of the greatest privatising of the profits and socialising the losses that the wild west markets of this country has ever facilatated, hell we cant treat them to bad or they won’t come back again.
John Key just loves his banking frat buddies so much he wants them to all move here and party hard and leave the place trashed just like they do anywhere else they have been allowed to run amuck:
“National MP John Key gets a gleam in his eye when he starts talking about New Zealand becoming the “Jersey of the South Pacific”.
“Why not have an offshore banking industry based here?” he asks.
“In the right conditions you could attract 200 banks to register here – each with a CEO and staff. You could attract insurance companies. Bring back lots of Kiwi accountants and lawyers. Single out clusters – such as high-class yachts – or other special sectors as the Irish did.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/company-taxation/news/article.cfm?c_id=691&objectid=10336608
This is what John Key and his banking frat buddies left behind at their last party HQ:
“Barely a day goes by in Ireland now without some blaring headline announcing some scandalous revelation in the great unravelling of the former Irish economic miracle.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10640476
Cactus said:
No you don’t sound sorry at all, please don’t pretend. And you make incorrect assumptions that I was the client being wined and dined by the corporates – I have been on both sides of the professional relationship thank you very much, and worked so many hours at corporate jobs on projects worth so much money that literally my only friends were my work colleagues and clients since I didn’t have time to socialise with anyone else **ah those were the days** **Dinners and bubbly at SPQR on the expense account at the end of a big project were always good**
1) Your value system is clear cactus – the person who provides the money and runs the show is the most important person (or in your parlance, the most “valuable” person). That is of course an assanine concept which predominantly makes sense to people whose values system is capital based not people based. And here is one thing I learnt from corporate life – nobody is irreplaceable. There are plenty of SMEs out there who run BETTER when the owner is on leave, thank you, letting the competent and highly trained staff get on with the actual job.
2) Wow you really believe that the smartest people in society are of course the ones who went to university and came out the other end with a “respectable profession”. ***BEEEP**** WRONG. Why don’t you look up “Steve Jobs” “Larry Ellison” and “Bill Gates” before you continue. See if you can’t figure out who said “Now you have an MBA, you’ll never be as successful as me! (a university drop out)”
3) Do you actually have any idea how many FORMER policeman, nurses, and teachers are now successfully running their own businesses of all kinds using the experience and people skills they got in those roles? And yet you would right them off right now just because they chose not to graduate as medical doctor or lawyer in the first place, when you talk about people in those professions and “their intellectual or entrepreneurial traits that do not measure up.”
Laughable Kate, not only is capital your main value not people, but you can’t even see that people grow their potentials throughout their lives, and one year’s university drop out may be another year’s tech millionaire. Wow how did you get it so wrong? Oh that’s right, you don’t value the person, you value the capital. So when a former nurse, teacher or policeman finally makes it big, they are suddenly redeemed in your eyes? Meh.
Speaking of power, are you aware of the psychology research which suggests that senior managers, CEOs, entrepreneurs and the like are usually more successful if they have sociopathic traits?
Time to recalibrate your ideas Cactus. Meanwhile I’m going to open a bottle of Veuve, excuse me.
“As for Stuart saying that people under $70k are the vast majority that “make this nation tick”?? What nonsense. These people can be replaced at any stage with similar workers. It doesn’t mean they are not important but all work because they have to work. Almost all work in their jobs because they can’t work in a higher paying job because guess what? They would.”
Cactus kate, we live in democracy where we all wield the same power come election time, not just those who are higher paid. Egos like yours are why a right lead gavernment wont last.
As i have said before, everytime National gets in its costs the majority of kiwis in the pocket, and helps those on higher incomes.
This perception that the more money you get paid is indiitive of how hard you work is bollocks and im sick of those with big egos trying to ram it down average kiwis throats.
Indeed, now what is it about people who feel that the size of their bank account is what makes them adequate as human beings?
I laud those who are really financially successful and admire sharp business acumen, I just have the good sense to remember that their **** isn’t golden and smells just like yours or mine.
For those slave-minded peoples who claim the rich are paying it all and only taking their fair share, those that claim if you reduce the tax rates of the slave-minded they will suddenly stop wanting to pay nothing and change from their mindset that taxes are for the common folks, have a look at these most excellent articles with great charts(2nd article) explaining just what really happens under the “chicago way” economic deception that is indoctrinated most of the so-called developed world:
“In 1955, the richest tier paid an average 51.2 percent of their income in taxes under a progressive federal income tax that included loopholes. By 2006, the richest paid only 17.2 percent of their income in taxes. In 1955, the proportion of federal income from corporate taxes was 33 percent; by 2003, it decreased to 7.4 percent. Today, the top taxpayers pay the same percentage of their incomes in taxes as those making $50,000 to $75,000, although they doubled their share of total U.S. income.”
http://www.voltairenet.org/article160877.html
“And the rate of increase is even higher for the very richest of the rich: the top 400 income earners in the United States. According to an analysis by David Cay Johnston — recently retired from reporting on tax issues at the New York Times — the average income of the top 400 tripled during the Clinton Administration and doubled during the first seven years of the Bush Administration. So by 2007, the top 400 averaged $344.8 million per person, up 31% from an average of $263.3 million just one year earlier (Johnston, 2010). (For another recent revealing study by Johnston, check out “Is Our Tax System Helping Us Create Wealth?”).
How are these huge gains possible for the top 400? It’s due to cuts in the tax rates on capital gains and dividends, which were down to a mere 15% in 2007 thanks to the tax cuts proposed by the Bush Administration and passed by Congress in 2003. Since almost 75% of the income for the top 400 comes from capital gains and dividends, it’s not hard to see why tax cuts on income sources available to only a tiny percent of Americans mattered greatly for the high-earning few. Overall, the effective tax rate on high incomes fell by 7% during the Clinton presidency and 6% in the Bush era, so the top 400 had a tax rate of 20% or less in 2007, far lower than the marginal tax rate of 35% that the highest income earners (over $372,650) supposedly pay.”
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Nope, we’re the second least taxed country in the OECD. The one that taxes less than us is Mexico. The ones that tax more than us are doing better than us as well.
I think you’ll find that most of the people that go into nursing, teaching or medicine are there to help people. It’s only sociopaths that do anything for the feeling of power and they only make up a small percentage (3% to 5%) of the population.
Draco,
Dead right, the slave-minded individuals and institutions think nothing of how much misery they cause in their ego maniac pursuit to be at the top of the financial league tables, these people would walk on the heads of women and children to ensure they themselves made it to shore in a shipwreck:
http://www.ifsl.org.uk/output/Reports.aspx
Tax arguments… My head hurts…
I’m going to vote communist or libertarian at the next election so I don’t have to think about it anymore…
And something to think about for those who believe in the cargo cult of Wall St or The City coming to NZ – how everyone thought the Celtic Tiger always landed on its feet, and instead it made a hard landing face first.
Granny Herald – Folly of Tiger is a warning for NZ