They don't think an economy based on speculation, immigration and residential property is viable... naturally there will be some pain until the transition to a more productive economy.
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Killing off farming & growing the public service like Topsy will 'transition (us) to a more productive economy'? Yeah right.
This economy is increasingly infected with a 'post work' attitude. Working is for schmucks. Go have a look at the roads in any of our major cities at any time of the day and the roads are absolutely clogged. Must be people 'working from home', working 4 days a week, 'on a course' (a golf course), or travelling to their next 'meeting'....or they are on 'jobseeker'. We are the new Greece.
Transitioning to a productive economy? 'Mate, you're dreaming'.
Fundamental reform in the fiscal/investment environment is needed. Netiher Labour or National are proposing to do that.
Unfortunately I don't see how keeping the 39% top income tax rate while reducing the bright-line CGT down to two years will have anything but a further negative effect on productivity.
Right wing parties are up against Progressives / Social Democrats...whatever they are calling themselves these days.....whose raison d'tre is to roll out more socialism, redistribute income from 'wealthy' to 'poor' (Robin Hoodism) and re-make society. It is literally what progressivism is all about. They don't believe in capitalism, they don't care about debt, they respond to an inflation crisis by pumping more money to people that will spend it and accelerate inflation. At the end of the day these people only ever produce a drop in living standards in their endless quest (and it's the ultimate in tilting at windmills) to make everything fair.
Unsurprisingly, giving away 'free' stuff is really popular with many voters.
Faced with progressives whose entire reason for existence is to further the aims of socialism and redistribute income, right wing parties HAVE NO OTHER OPTION than to offer tax cuts. It is highly disingenuous of the left to howl with indignation whenever right wing parties find ways to offer tax cuts, because if right wing parties didn't they would lose every single election to the socialist lolly scramble merchants on the other side of the fence.
Roberston's claims to be fiscally responsible and have everything always 'fully costed' is akin to me racing out and borrowing $5 million dollars and then telling everyone it's all ok because even though I have a job that pays me an average salary I've itemised what I'll spend the $5 million on line by line and it's all 'fully costed'. I'll be spending this amount on wine, this amount on women, this amount on song, this amount on consultants, and I've set up an 'Infrastructure Fund' of $1 million for work on my house. I've then managed to find 'savings' of $50,000 from the money I've borrowed, and of course I have the 'savings' in my (borrowed) 'Infrastructure Fund'.
This country has entered a twilight zone where we have a finance minister who doles out money for RAT tests that are never used, cycle bridges that are never built, light rail that is never started, a media merger that was canned, a mega-polytech merger that was not needed.....it's all 'fully costed' folks! All this waste and non-delivery is 'fully costed'. "Oh, fully costed is it? Well that's a relief". It is beyond a joke.
The party of economic management can't come up with costed policies though, and base it on dodgy gambling taxes & a foreign buyers tax which violates many international agreements.
How bad is that esp when they apparently have the "skills" of an ex-CEO economic master.
Lets correct this for a start.
For the first 2 years of Labour govt they brought the Debt to GDP ratio down to the lowest level for decades & only after Covid hit the globe & then the 2 devastating cyclones, that ratio has climbed significantly, so its only last 3 years of the govt, not 6 as is being misquoted.
And that was to support businesses to stay afloat, support employment, managing the Covid response & support for devastated areas. e.g. without support, horticulture would have been be wiped out, to never recover in regions like Hawkes Bay, roads & rail lines need to be rebuilt, peoples homes destroyed etc.
But never mind what I think, what do you think?
You constantly criticise the govt for our high debt levels, so tell us how do you reconcile National promising $14.6 Billion in tax cuts (which they know full well can not be anything like fully funded, instead of reducing our Debt?
Even Right Wing Mathew Hooton says you're being conned.
Tell us how Mathew's wrong.
Not one single person in the media calls Robertson out on his 'fully costed' bull sheet. It was 'fully costed' to for 10 Waters to blow out by $1 Billion?! WTF?!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...AC5I6GA2FPH54/
Three Waters cost blowout expected to hit $1 billion in ‘mega-bureaucracy’
By Kate MacNamara
29 Jun, 2023 04:55 PM
Amendments to the Three Waters reform plan have blown out establishment costs by an estimated $1 billion.
Matthew Hooton: National's tax plan is a cyncial con-job.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...FSJA6LVJ6DOWU/
Though another con-job is the NZ Herald's paywall (sorry about this).
Keep going with your 'fully costed' horse sheet when the whole country can see Robertson wasting billions and billions of dollars with zero accountability. It's actually become a sick and sadistic game for the left and its patsy media enablers to bray about 'dodgy numbers' when any numbers Labour comes up with are demonstrably not worth the paper they are written. A $130 million 'hole' in Nationals tax plan you say? Goodness me, however will they cope! Well, if that does transpire then I guess they'll cope the same way the Labour government coped when they found $200 million for a disastrous and absolutely needless polytech 'mega-merger'......and then another $100 million just to keep the whole thing afloat.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/shows...nts-staff.html
Newshub Nation: National polytechnic merger Te Pūkenga buckling as it asks for more money and fails students, staff
25/03/2023
Laura Tupou
Gray Gibson
'There are serious concerns about the management of Te Pūkenga as it asks for more money for I.T. systems while course completions are plummeting and some enrolments are down.
January 1st, 2023, marked the official start of Te Pūkenga, the new national polytech and institute of technology conglomerate.
In 2019, then-Education Minister Chris Hipkins said the merger would be "transformational," but as it unfolded, it did not meet the Minister’s expectations.
Four years after the merger began, and three months into the fully formed crown entity, Te Pūkenga has been chewing through funds, shedding staff, and has poor provisional results for Māori and Pacific students.
Two former polytech CEOs and a current staffer and union representative spoke to Laura Tupou at Newshub Nation about their concerns.
"I'm fearful that we've put all of our eggs into the Te Pūkenga basket,” former co-leader of Unitec and Waiariki Polytechnics Keith Ikin said.
“I'm fearful that students don't have a choice."
Ikin was involved with Te Pūkenga until the end of last year. He dreads "the ongoing carnage of non-achievement and non-delivery just continues on,” and if it got worse, it would be a travesty, he said.
Merran Davis, who was CEO of Auckland’s Unitec Institute of Technology before joining Te Pūkenga in September 2020, said things were getting worse in terms of enrollments, equity, staff morale and student morale.
"That will continue to happen because the trust and credibility is gone," Davis said.
Steve McCabe, a senior lecturer at MIT who also functions as MIT's TEU (Tertiary Education Union) Branch President, said people would start pulling out.
“It’s going to be a death spiral,” he warned.
"If we continue to operate in this way, we are going to see the entire edifice just collapse.”
In 2019, Te Pūkenga was formed after intense consultation with the vocational education sector.
Hipkins acknowledged at the time that the system was “unsustainable”.
"Last year alone the government had to put an extra $100 million into the polytech sector simply to keep it afloat, even though the number of students was declining."
Official advice provided to Hipkins at the time around whether money could be saved said mergers were “subject to execution risks”.
Advice listed the main risks as "very high and extended costs of change”, "a lack of regional responsiveness", and "the risk of systemic failure."
$200 million was then spent on the transition costs to merge the 16 polytechs and institutes of technology with the nine industry training organisations to form Te Pūkenga.
Four years on McCabe was still waiting to see any benefits in his day-to-day experience as a lecturer, in a sector that was promised transformation.
"Twice a month now on my bank statement, my salary comes from Te Pūkenga and not from M.I.T," he said.
"That's about the most profound change I've seen."'