The difference between a surplus and landing a 747 on a pinhead

mickysavage
9 years ago
Categories: budget 2015, Economy, john key, Minister for International Embarrassment, national, same old national, tax
Tags: michael cullen

The difference is that they are completely and utterly different.

But John Key yesterday drew this comparison and would have us think that they are like each other and that this is why the National Government is reneging on promises made repeatedly over the past six years. I listed a few of these promises recently. If you go to John Key’s website and google “surplus” then you can see that John has been very interested, some would say fixated on the subject.

Realistically, modest budget deficits do not matter. It is better to keep the machinery of state operating than to cut good programmes just to make the books look better. But John Key and Co have made such a big deal about getting to surplus that they should be punished for their failure to do so. And standing there and saying repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly that a surplus will be achieved in the 2014-15 year is so stupid and dishonest that he should be castigated for doing so, even if in reality it is no big deal if Aotearoa does not reach this milestone.

Anyway here are a few differences between a budget surplus and landing a 747 on a pinhead:

Landing a 747 on a pinhead is utterly impossible whereas achieving a budget surplus is not too difficult. Just ask Michael Cullen who posted 9 of them.
John Key has never promised to repeatedly, repeatedly land a 747 on a pinhead.
Landing a 747 on a pinhead, if it was possible, would require rapid deceleration coupled with rapid descent. Achieving a surplus would require something as basic as not giving stupid tax cuts to the already wealthy.

The take away line? Those 2010 “fiscally neutral tax cuts” (another lie) that National implemented are the reason that the country’s books are still in the red, despite Key’s many promises that surplus nirvana would be reached.