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National’s big plan to assist with recovery in a post-COVID-19 world appears to be an extra big dollop of corporate welfare. Once again the pitch seems to be for people to vote National because they aren’t quite as bad as Labour.
National Party leader Simon Bridges has proposed giving businesses cash grants and low-interest loans at a cost to the Government of $8 billion.
He said more needed to be done to help small firms survive the next few months.
Bridges has suggested that businesses that can prove a 50 per cent drop in revenues across two successive months because of the Covid-19 lockdown should get grants of up to $100,000 in the form of a refund of the GST they paid in the second-half of last year.
If businesses paid more than $100,000 in GST over the period, they should also be entitled to a five-year loan of up to $250,000 from the Government on which they would only pay interest at the rate of 0.7 per cent a year.
If you were ever in doubt that National have abandoned their free-market credentials and are in fact big-spending socialists then wonder no more.
Bridges has been banging on for weeks about poor spending with the wage subsidy, but now he is advocating pouring billions into corporate welfare.
Business doesn’t need subsidies, they need customers. The economy needs activity, not endless mindless cash handouts.
National and Labour really are different sides of the same freshly minted socialist coin.
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