National is not counting its chickens for granted

mickysavage
4 years ago
Categories: class war, Economy, housing, national, same old national, Simon Bridges, tax

We are sprinting into election year and the policies are starting to emerge. And today Simon Bridges and National are going to announce a new policy that will surprise and astound you.

Yes we are talking about tax cuts! Who would have guessed?

From Derek Cheng at the Herald:

National leader Simon Bridges will today outline the party’s economic goals and who will benefit most from the party’s proposed tax cuts.
But he is keeping mum on how much people will be better off from the tax cuts, saying that will be unveiled later this year.
Bridges said the party will also target costs of living, including reversing new costs on landlords in an effort to lower rents for tenants.
But there would be no requirement for landlords to pass those savings on to tenants.

Figures will be announced later in the year.

Bridges has his own bullet list of things that he wants to achieve including:

Economic growth at 3 per cent per annum at least
New Zealand’s per capita growth rate in the top half of the OECD
Reducing the after-tax income gap with Australia
Reducing the number of New Zealanders heading overseas
Reviving business confidence

Of course this has been tried before. Remember this from 2008?

And New Zealand’s growth rate for the March 2019 quarter compared to others in the OECD suggests that our growth rate at the time was 2.5% compared to the OECD average of 1.8% and the European Union figure of 1.5%.

As for the reduction of New Zealanders heading overseas this is almost inevitable. As the climate crisis worsens New Zealand will be seen as a haven and more people will stay put. Not to mention Kiwis living in Australia thinking of returning home.

It is potent politics. The combination of appealing to personal greed and hatred of government and politicians means that a sufficiently large number of people will think it is a good idea to make it viable.

And it feeds into National’s reputation as being good economic managers. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

National is also proposing to reverse Government policies that have slowed down real estate price increases, including loosening restrictions on foreign ownership of residential properties. In what way we do not know. Obviously engorging out of control real estate prices is more important than making sure our kids can afford to buy a home.