Written By:
weka - Date published:
11:27 am, May 18th, 2023 - 15 comments
Categories: budget 2023, Chlöe Swarbrick, greens -
Tags: green budget day
Micky has a post up on Budget Day and what the government are doing and not doing. This Green Budget Day post is a discussion space specifically for green and other alternative economic visions are. An opportunity to bring some goodies to the table.
The Green Party have a tweet up this morning with this image from a Newshub poll.
That’s NZ MSM asking in election year, how popular the idea of a wealth tax is. Well done to the Greens, activists and NGOs on shifting the mainstream narrative on tax reform (this is an example of how the Greens influence politics despite not having so much conventional political power).
The stories we tell about how things can be different matter a great deal. As Chloe Swarbrick says in her opinion piece in the Herald, “All of these things were impossible, until they weren’t”,
This Thursday, the Government could end poverty. It could boost teachers and nurses and midwives and emergency service workers’ wages and conditions to rival Australia. It could knuckle down and commit to the scientifically necessary actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture, transport and manufacturing. It could put more conservation rangers in our native forests, restore wetlands and daylight streams across our cities.
It could pay for these things like the First Labour Government did, with taxes on those who profited handsomely during an extremely difficult period of time for everyone else.
…
Covid-19 exposed that the things we’ve been told are impossible are simply a matter of political willpower. Direct payments to people who need it, flexible working arrangements and rent freezes were issued at lightning speed. The needs of everyday people were prioritised.
Government Budgets, like laws, aren’t passed down from the gods. They aren’t written in scripture. They are the product of decisions. Those decisions reflect the values and priorities of decision-makers.…
He and the Minister of Finance have spent the past few weeks tempering any expectation of real change, let alone transformation, in Thursday’s Budget. They’re talking down spending, talking up trade-offs and trademarking “bread and butter”.
These are their decisions. Tinker or transform. Choose an admittedly unfair status quo or choose the change empowered by a historical majority.
We’re already on the middle road. It’s flooding.
You cannot keep a world below 1.5 degrees of warming without taking the necessary, and now requisite, radical action to actually achieve that. That means you cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. You cannot end poverty without raising benefit levels to livable incomes. To do otherwise is to decide that some people deserve to live in poverty. You cannot get house prices to affordable levels when you refuse to define what affordable levels actually are.
You cannot say that you are pulling all of the available levers while ruling out land back, a capital gains tax, a wealth tax or rent controls.
Here is the Greens Progressive Tax Reform policy from 2020. This is a costed policy, with details on how it would work in the link. It’s important to start with the why of tax reform,
In Aotearoa, there is enough to go around. But the tax system has allowed wealth to accumulate with a small number of us, while most of us have only modest assets. We tax work in Aotearoa, but we don’t tax wealth.
COVID-19 has exposed wealth inequality, and the economic response to the pandemic is making inequality even worse with government stimulus spending benefiting wealthy asset owners. The Greens have a plan for a more equal Aotearoa, so everyone can flourish.
Our plan for fairer tax will help redistribute wealth from those with the most wealthy so we can support those with the least. Ours is the only tax plan that will ensure we can continue funding strong public services in the years to come, and make sure those with the least have enough income to live with dignity.
(Authors can’t link to twitter or youtube in posts currently because it makes the post invisible in the Mobile version of The Standard. I will put links in the comments).
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https://twitter.com/NZGreens/status/1658916998699704325
James Shaw's brief explanation of the 2020 Wealth Tax policy
Thanks Weka. Timely post, and good reorientation back to relevant issues (and away from the mindless clickbait of 'infighting' and scandalous carry-on usually posted about the GP).
For a glorious few months in the first round of COVID, public health and well being was put before private profit. If the Govt. had made COVID related payments direct to citizens through IRD rather than employers, it would have been better in the situation, when a viable vaccine was not even certain.
Labour not using its once in a generation 2020 MMP majority to retire Rogernomics, tax the rich, deal with the untaxed capital gain based economy, and get serious on Climate Disaster, will be in the history books, not as a mystery (given the paucity of left wingers in the Labour Caucus) but as a massive lost opportunity.
Greens have great policy and I am a Green voter, supporting the brand despite the media channel gang ups and some own goals from a small number of MP level Greens.
Max Rashbrooke's twitter thread on the problems with taking GST off food
https://twitter.com/MaxRashbrooke/status/1657868390055432192
Tax wealth by all means, but don't just hand it out to the bottom, us it to provide world class education, health dental and housing, .
Good point. GP policy is both/and (see CS’ NZH piece), but talking about those other things more is important.
Didn't the public awareness of how the richest are screwing over the rest of us come from the report released by parker..?
NZ has been talking about poverty and wealth for a long time before April 2023.
Yes..it has been discussed by the chattering class..as part of general dialogue..
But I feel the tax report that put numbers on that ongoing rip off by the rich…released by parker..really brought it sharply into focus for most nz'ers…and has well-tilled the ground for legislation to deal with that..that is what I feel the parker report has achieved..
And he/it deserve recognition for that fact…
Actually the Green Party media releases have been very supportive of this budget.
Of course they wanted more, but their comments on tax were pretty muted.
sensible approach, the lead in critiques were enough, no point in criticising allies on a day when they're under attack by political enemies.
Ghahraman,
https://twitter.com/golrizghahraman/status/1659018772601262080
I'll be interested to see what they say next about the climate budget.
This is the Greens at their best. Chloe has nailed it with that piece. Hope they keep on in this way, perhaps with a more explicit links between inequality and poor environmental outcomes.
I hope so too. Looking forward to seeing what new policy they have for this year.
AGM early July, the start of their election campaign?
why scrapping the $5 prescription fee saves money in the long term
tl;dr: because people who cannot spare $5 will just come back to the ER a few days or hours later – at $700/night for readmission)
why is Adrian Orr desperate to plunge NZ into a recession?
tl;dr: fighting inflation by killing the economy is extremely stupid. good work by Robertson countering this neocon insanity.
but NZ is still a long long way from the pavlova paradise we once were. (tweet is from the US but still applies to our stunted wage growth, rampant inequality, and runaway housing market)
another wet bus ticket uninspirational budget that misses the mark and fails to substantially improve anything