The weak link in your plan is that self-restraint is an unknown quality with socialist politicians especially when it concerns other peoples money.

Given that 10% of our population is already in Australia then I’d be worried what will happen then a lot more of us get sick of increasing tax levels. So good luck in ignoring that reality.

You’re talking about two completely different orders of magnitude of cost…

Please start talking after you’ve gained some ability to read a budget…

Which of course is not the case for everyone. There are plenty of jobs (drainlaying, shearing, orderlies, truckies and the like) whose jobs is physically demanding. Lots of these men, and it would be mostly men, are plain worn out by the time they are 55, just getting to 60 or so is a struggle for some them. By contrast us shiny arse’s will still be making a doddery nuisance of ourselves at 75 or more. The idea of a universal retirement age may not work anymore.

There are real policy implications around this.

So, no, JD, I won’t rather cut public service numbers than work an extra five years.

As snoozer explained to you, you can’t cut government spending by a meaningful amount by cutting the number of core public service employees. If you cut them by even 10% you’re only talking $340 million, which in the scale of a country of 4 million people is the kind of chump change (0.5% of govt spending) that Treasury finds behind the couch.

And do you really think that any govt, Labour or National is employing these people for the hell of it? No. They are the ones who organise and plan the actual delivery of public services like health, education, roading. Who do you think decides where and when schools need to be opened or closed? Who do you think monitors and forecasts traffic flows, plans new motorways, gets the consents, hires the contractors?

You can’t deliver public services without public servants.

I strongly suspect that most righties like JD are functionally innumerate. You give them the numbers but are simply incapable of grasping the elementary consequences of them.

That’s why they get stuck on ‘sack all the public servants and the books will balance themselves’ magical thinking.

How about answering Snoozer’s response and actually analyse the figures. You could take a machine gun and shoot every public servant on Thorndon Street and you would do bugger all for the Government’s books.

So what would you do about super?

Increase contributions to the Cullen fund?
Put up the age of retirement?

This is the trouble with arguments with the right. You can never get them past the slogan to actually confront the reality.

Snoozer’s suggested increase in the retirement age is a consideration BUT John Key has ruled out it happening during the time of his government. THis is really typical. They create a problem that will happen but then refuse to implement what may be the only rational response on the grounds of political expediency.

The core public service is too small and too cheap (only $3.6 billon or 5% of govt spending a year) to save significant money while still having the administrative capability that is needed.

Move the reitrement age to 70, however, and you’re cutting out 32% of current pensioners and you’ll save $2.4 billion a year.