Charles Chubb
In light of this new National budget coming out, I want to address a few of the fallacies and inconsistencies I have seen in the media response over the week.
First is the sudden interest in bringing us back to budget surplus. The question I heard was, how can you give tax cuts before you bring us back to budget surplus?
It seems incredible to me that when the budget becomes about letting us keep our money, then budget surplus is an important issue.
There is no problem going into deficits when you’re spending money recklessly! Deficit doesn’t seem to matter if we are being compassionate to the right groups, or bending to unions.
If there were genuine concern about the deficit, they would be able to answer how much national debt increased under the previous Government (hint: it nearly doubled in proportion to GDP).
Secondly is the laser focus on a tiny portion of New Zealanders. The government has delivered tax cuts for “All New Zealanders”.
“What about these 9000 who are worse off?” says Tova.
A general rule of life is that you can’t please everyone.
At the very least this budget makes the majority better off. Most importantly, they make the most important people better off; the middle-class taxpayer.
I am a firm believer that government policy should never cater to or ‘target’ the rich or the poor. I believe it should always target the middle class, because they are the biggest group, pay the most tax, use the fewest services and generally get the worst deal when it comes to help.
It’s about time that working New Zealanders get something from this Government and if that’s at the expense of 0.0018% of the population – so be it.
Finally, they seemed disappointed that the Commerce Commission is going to be reined in and won’t be investigating “record profits” anymore.
The phrase “record profits” itself is laughable because it is the goal of every company to make “record profits” each year. That’s how you know you’re growing.
It seems convenient to turn a blind eye to the record government spending of recent years, the money printing and general inflationary pressure which drove the cost of goods up and the value of money down.
By its nature, this is going to drive up the nominal profits of big companies.
It’s no surprise the relatively recession-proof industries, banking and supermarkets, are going to continue business as usual, with inflationary pressures pushing up the nominal number in their bank account.
These are just a few of the things which caught my attention in the response to the budget over the last week.
