An interesting piece from One News. Bill English gave another underwhelming speech on National’s economic plan, which basically boiled down to ‘tax cuts!’.
We assume that business people are obsessed with tax cuts too but that’s simplistic. A young businesswoman, Anna Hamilton-Manns, told English she wanted a real plan. His response was ‘tax cuts’. To which she said, “when you’re doing well, tax cuts is almost semantics” (ie. you get the benefits from the tax you pay in public services it provides you and your community). Hamilton-Manns said what she wants to see is an actual plan, not just reflexive tax cuts. It was a refreshing and intelligent outlook, and cuts to the heart the of the hollowness of National’s economic plan.
National automatically assumes that tax cuts will somehow lead to growth but they don’t seem to be able to explain how that happens. It reminds me of the South Park underwear gnomes:
Let’s be 100% clear on this. There is no evidence to suggest and no reason to think that the kind of tax changes National is talking about will improve New Zealand’s economy. Putting up GST on middle New Zealand to give tax cuts to the rich few and claiming that this will boost growth because it somehow induces the supposed businessman Atlases that ‘support’ us to work harder. It’s is just a re-hash of trickle-down economics without the name.
Trickle-down never worked and it won’t work now.It’s just an excuse for the rich to contribute less to the cost of governing the society that has enabled them to become wealthy in the first place. And actually many well-off people don’t want that. We are happy to pay our part for a better country.
Update: Anna Hamilton-Manns commented on this post
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