Opinion: A comprehensive, principle-based redesign of tax policy is urgently needed

 Addressing inequality needs more then tax reforms - a culture change.

One of governments/ policymakers task is to stimulate it’s economy, accordantly to the social stratification ratio to it’s population. This is not the case here in New Zealand. For years we have a very one- sided, unbalanced economy.

Working and middle class people in this country simply do not have enough decent job opportunities. The consequences are increasingly visible with  talented youngsters unemployed or leaving the country and many families not able to pay the bills for daily necessities - a poorer nation.

PM - Minister Joyce - current national policies of allocating infrastructure needs in sectors such as energy, transport and telecommunication in the billions and skillful jobs to foreign countries/ companies needs to be reviewed.

I always love how the talk is about redistributing (taxing).  There is very little discussion about how you actually grow the wealth base.  Taxing to redistribute creates nothing. I'm sure we could close the gap tomorrow if we wanted to, but who cares if the gap is zero, if the average income is $1000pa?

Now if Susan is actually talking about changing policies to encourage people to create wealth, then I'm all for it, but the article is sufficiently vague to be able to read it anyway you want!

Susan raises some excellent points, which at least suggest the endless 'rich are getting richer' debate might need to be re-calibrated.

Working for Families was misguided because the loose eligibility crtieria provided a welfare (I mean, tax credit) rebate to many people the underlying philosophy didnt mean to subsidise. I'm not saying I know the answer, but I am saying the statistics are not as clear cut as they are alleged to be.

In addition, before the 1980's a low percentage of New Zealanders owned shares or interests in mutual funds. Today, especially with Kiwisaver, this is quite a different figure. Longtitudinal studies on how the wealth is distributed would be interesting.

It's interesting in New Zealand we don't seem to celebrate success, with the 'good for you' mentality of some other countries. I think the negativity about success is part of a national attitude. If we had a national ethos that success was to be admired, we might see an attitude change.

The rich have always been with us, the illusion that the poor could join in the party has been a recent phenomenon that has turned out to be short lived and impossible. The rich just need to start the illusion up again, to get the masses back to the hamster wheel, lotto just isnt enough to cut it on its own.

Wealth is built on exploitation, and the reason we have a code of laws is 'so that the strong should not harm the weak'.

The reason people allow the exploitation is because they believe a lie.  The lie is this, that the same wealth can one day be theirs.  Once the gap becomes so great that they realise that the wealth is forever beyond their reach then you have 'social unrest'.

In NZ the top wage is around 125 years of work on the average wage.  In the USA its over 13,000 years of work on the average wage. 

When you have a society that encourages firms to pay workers as little as possible in order to maximise the profit from their labour and redistrubutes this profit unequally then you need to have laws that in turn redistrubute this back to those whose labour earnt it, and the society that provided the enviroment for it to be created.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a huge proportion of our population, something like 40%, effectively pay little net tax, once all the welfare support is dished out to them, and  a small proportion of higher earners pay a huge amount of the tax take.  eg what proportion of income tax is paid by just 20% of workers, think you will find it is substantia! I don't have the figures at hand, may be someone does.  So what on earth is she on about?

Have just come across some figures for USA in 2008, the top 25% earning $67,000 or more, paid 86% of federal income tax, bottom 50% paid 2%.  Suspect figures will not be too dissimilar for NZ

Yeh,WFF, that was just a subsidy to employers so they could pay workers substandard wages, which in reality is probably all they could afford. In th end the problem comes back to the banking system, it is meant to be a  self governing, conservative, boring industry providing liquidity to our economy and keeping black market lenders out. Instead its become a self serving monster sucking the life out of the economy, clipping all our tickets as we try to survive, lets put the blame where it belongs the rest is just a side show.

For all sorts of reasons, people are not equal. Why should their pay be any different?

More marxist drivel.

  Your dead right their even in the dark days of Comunist Russia. Where everyone had a job and a place to live..The elite (Card carrying Comunist party members) Could shop at the GUM store to buy American ciggies Beluga caviar and Georgian Champagne.Pheraps all systems are flawed and have a limited time of efficiency.But at the moment the residents of Detroit and Gary Indiana..Would be glad, to have a job and a place to live.

Management set their own salaries so of course increase theirs by more than their employees.  These are signed off by Directors, who sign off each others' increases.  It's a joke. 

The multiple is getting out of hand. Reduce the multiple so that it is more equal, but enough for people on here to feel they are better than others aka 'are getting ahead'.

Meanwhile, my wife and I are creaming it.

Equal pay implies that all work is equal. It isn’t, so it ain’t.

"Experts" like Wilkinson and Pickett, authors of "The Spirit Level", completely miss the obvious correlation with culture and religion. There are numerous studies on this aspect by academics like Iannoccone, Barro, Stark and McCleary.

The nations with the least inequality happen to be numerically dominated by a single culture that works this way. The nations with the highest inequality in the world, happen to have a dominant single culture that tends powerfully towards inequality. Saudi Arabia, for example. The more "multicultural" a nation is, the more confusing the results will be; as some cultures tend to inequality within them, others tend to a high rate of success among their adherents, and others tend to a low rate of success among theirs.

Japan is number one, with its monoculture with a strong work and savings ethic. The Scandinavian nations next - Lutheran and Calvinist "social capital" at work there. Nations whose predominantly Protestant past has not yet been significantly watered down by mass immigration and multiculturalism occupy the next few positions.

The USA is of course the most multicultural nation in the world. No surprises at the inequality there. Another factor is the high proportion of poor recently-arrived immigrants, in which the USA leads the world; the USA also leads the world in the rate of "remittances" sent back to their countries of origin, by immigrants, many of whom remain quite poor in USA terms, but wealthy in their "country of origin" terms. 

By the way, this is nothing to do with "race". Culture is not race. Anyone can change their culture. We all had miserable pagan ancestors somewhere back in our past.

The UK is a special case, apart from its relatively high level of multiculturalism. Recent studies from the London School of Economics have stated that Britain's 5 decades of "Town and Country Planning", and the resulting high land prices; have been a more powerful force for social inequality than income disparities themselves. Maybe NZ and some other nations are also starting to suffer from this effect. Academic studies have certainly pointed to this effect in California, where they have operated similar policies of "urban planning" for not quite as long as the UK.

If we were to analyse the amount of "income redistribution" that is already taking place in all first world nations, the question would have to be asked, how much more could the economy stand without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs? It is not just a matter of cash transfers via social welfare; every one of us carries a price tag of millions of dollars in State spending from birth to death; most of us will never pay back in tax, what has been spent on our health, education, public safety, infrastructure and amenities. Even those of us who never earn their own income and never pay tax, are millions of dollars ahead of around 50% of humanity.

Roger Douglas pointed out years ago that if everybody got simply "given the money" and then paid their own way in free markets for health, education, and transport at least; even the poorest could live like kings. Instead of beating up on Sir Roger, we could seriously look at "value for money" in all the spending of "transferred wealth" that already IS taking place. And we could look seriously at the causes and pre-indicators of inequality. Marriage and the traditional family were powerful forces for equality for several reasons: marriage and subsequent "inheritance" that crossed socio-economic group boundaries being just one obvious reason.

Another interesting factor in society-wide measurements of "inequality", is that many recent immigrants, while they are "low income" in terms of the host society, frequently "remit" a large proportion of their income back to their families in their country of origin. By the standard of their country of origin, they are a "high income earner". The "Index of Global Philanthropy" published annually by the Hudson Institute, has recently been re-titled "The Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances", because remittances are so significant; more significant, in fact, than philanthropy.

"Remittances" from the USA to the rest of the world, massively dwarf all other international flows of philanthropic giving. Ironically, the USA stands accused of high "inequality" within its borders, AND of low State-provided "Aid" to the rest of the world, compared with, say, Scandinavian countries. But the Scandinavian countries PRIVATE sector "aid" is almost non-existent, while the USA's is significant; and when "remittances" are taken into account, funds flowing out of the USA utterly swamp all other international aid flows by any measure of comparison. Interestingly, New Zealand is one of the few other outstanding examples; Pacific Island immigrants remit large amounts of money to their families back in their country of origin, while constituting a major factor in the existence of “inequality” as measured within New Zealand.

The following are causes of increasing inequality and decreasing social mobility. With all these factors at work, it is a wonder we do not have much worse inequality than we do; and furthermore, efforts to address this inequality through income redistribution are inevitably failures.

Provision of services, etc, with public money, that primarily benefit the wealthy, and the neglect of infrastructure that was a greater benefit, proportionally, to lower income earners. The neglect of roads, and time wasted in congestion, has a disparate impact on the poor, who tend to depend more on motor vehicle use than middle class people who can choose where they live and can organise their life around public transport. Public Transport routes converge closer to city centres, so that those who live in the higher-priced homes in those areas, find public transport convenient but those who live in lower-priced homes further out, do not.

The subsidy of cultural centres and art galleries benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor. New Orleans was a classic illustration of the consequences of concentration on trendy cultural vibrancy and the like, by the local administration, at the expense of vital infrastructure that was fought tooth and nail by chardonnay greenies and NIMBY-ists.

Worth a specific mention, are "free" public goods like Water (in some jurisdictions). In so far as poorer people use a lot less and yet pay for the resource, and wealthier people use a lot more, the cost burden falls disproportionately on the poor in comparison to politically unfashionable "user pays" systems.

Background reading: "Back To Basics", by Joel Kotkin

http://www.joelkotkin.com/Urban_Affairs/NAF_GrowthStrategy.pdf

The “conservation” of land, and restrictive zoning, has a disparate impact on the poor, on the young and those who do not own properties, in favour of the more well-off who maintain their nice views and surroundings, while property values escalate out of reach of all who are not already property owners. An excellent article in this respect, is “Green Disparate Impact”, by Thomas Sowell. (The “poor” population of California is actually being driven out of state by escalating property values).

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/01/15/green_disparate_impact?page=full&comments=true

Also, in "The Housing Bubble and the Boomer Generation", Robert Bruegmann argues that this phenomenon has resulted in "the greatest intergenerational wealth transfer in history", in favour of older, existing home owners, at the expense of young, first home buyers. The "boomer generation" benefitted from pro-development policies that enabled them to buy low-price first homes on the urban fringes, while at the same time the price of all houses was kept low. But now the boomer generation has supported land conservation policies that result in the prices of all homes being driven up, which benefits them but prices first home buyers out of the market. And when these property price "bubbles" burst, it is the people who bought more recently, mortgaged to the limit, who suffer the most from bankruptcies.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/00452-the-housing-bubble-and-boomer-generation

Urban planners have come to favour a "monocentric" urban model, under which these effects are the most marked - that is, property values vary far more dramatically than in mixed-use, multi-nodal type metros. The justification for the monocentric model, is that it creates higher density residential zones that make planet-saving commuter rail more viable. The capital gains captured by owners of CBD properties in a monocentric metro are many times as high as the capital gains captured by anyone in a non-monocentric metro.

The recent fashion to insist that roading and indeed all transport infrastructure be financed from petrol taxes, adds to this trend. Most people do in fact travel by car and pay petrol taxes; while the capital gains that result from the infrastructure they are paying for, is captured mostly by the owners of centrally sited property. The lowest income earners who cannot afford the most conveniently located homes, (including homes located convenient to public transport) end up paying the most into this wealth transfer especially via petrol taxes. Furthermore, the capital gains resulting from the proximity of properties to new commuter rail lines and stations, are always highly concentrated; whereas the capital gains resulting from road expansion are much more diffuse. Subsidies from gas taxes and general taxation, for commuter rail projects, represent a wealth transfer from these "payers" to the owners of conveniently located properties. (Economist Colin Clark described this effect authoritatively in one of his seminal works, "Regional and Urban Location", 1982).

"Infill development" closer to the city centre requires expensive upgrades of old and inadequate infrastructure; while the beneficiaries of this development are invariably wealthier people. If the political fashionability of infill development results in special levies not being made, or minimised, this too throws a disproportionate cost burden onto the land taxes paid by young households closer to the urban fringes. Monocentric urban form itself, which planners are attempting to perpetuate, results in greater inequality. William Wheaton, in "Commuting, Ricardian Rent, and House Price Appreciation in Cities With Dispersed Employment and Mixed Land Use", points out that in the cities he is describing, there is much less of a range of land prices from lowest to highest; jobs and amenities are much more dispersed, and the "premium" price of property conveniently located, is very, very much lower than in monocentric cities where job concentration occurs in one centralised location. This is one reason why dispersed cities like Atlanta and Houston have such low "maximum" prices of real estate.

Increases in regulatory expense and the costs of obtaining licenses for commercial activity and the like, tend to inequality. A major food canning business began a few decades ago in its founder's garage. These "rags to riches" stories, are no longer possible, except perhaps in the entertainment industry. In a hard-hitting open letter, successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur T. J. Rodgers argues that California has now destroyed the conditions under which Silicon Valley was able to begin, especially cheap land and cheap small business premises.

http://www.fcpp.org/images/publications/Cyprus%20letter.pdf

Low land prices enable maximum participation in agglomeration efficiencies such as those represented by Silicon Valley. High land prices, on the other hand, represent barriers to entry, and advantages to incumbents.


This phenomenon, and the other barriers to entry into business that I mentioned above, is also covered in the book “The Mystery of Capital” by Hernando DeSoto. Interestingly, well-established larger businesses are often supporters of this phenomenon, as it keeps competition to a minimum, hence the little-publicised support of many wealthy people for regulatory, socialist politics.


More recommended reading: “Intellectual Class Wars”, by David Horowitz, "Freedom of Opportunity, Not Equality of Opportunity" by George Reisman, and “Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know it”, By Charles Johnson:
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=8204


California is probably the outstanding illustration of all these effects of misguided policy of "Liberal Left" government on poorer people, which the same government and politicians claim to care about more deeply than "free market" politicians. A recent article made this comment:


"....As recently as the 1980s, Californians generally got richer faster than other Americans did. Now, median household income growth trails the national average while the already large divide between the social classes—often bemoaned by the state’s political left—grows faster than in the rest of the country....."

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/november-december-magazine/sundown-for-california


The trend towards greater levels of immigration, and relaxed criteria for language, qualifications, and wealth of immigrants; causes increased inequality. Immigrants in the past tended to be fewer in number, of high qualification, and socially mobile. Our political culture now demands less discrimination, and what is more, does not require the immigrant to assimilate. Large numbers of modern day immigrants merely swell the ranks of the immobile underclass.

The subsidy of tertiary education with public money, causes inequality. Tertiary education itself, tends to increase inequality, due to the higher incomes commanded by graduates. To use taxes, which remain unnecessarily high on low income earners, to subsidise this, only worsens the situation. An outright free market situation with all students paying fees, and a broader use of direct student-based “scholarships”, would actually produce less inequality than the system we have now, and would produce much better results in terms of relevant qualifications. I suggest that many of the poorer folk who do make it to Uni under the current system, could be tending to make poorer choices of qualification, which would be eliminated by better guidance under a scholarship-based system especially scholarships funded by private enterprise which best knows of its needs for people with certain qualifications.


The fully socialised public schooling system, actually increases inequality because the numbers of people who can afford to pay taxes AND pay private school fees is obviously going to be low; in contrast to any system where parental choice is at least partly subsidised with tax breaks or "vouchers". This is why 3 times as many Australian schoolchildren, proportionally, go to private schools, than in NZ.


Breakdown in traditional marriage is THE single cause of inequality of which our cultural elites are most in denial about. The obvious thing is the disadvantage to children brought up without a father, or with a string of perverse male role models in their lives. But also, marriage across socio-economic boundaries, and subsequent “inheritance”, were powerful reducers of inequality. Declining religious observance and churchgoing is also a factor in a lower rate of marriage occurring across socio-economic boundaries.


There is an obvious contrast between single parent families and double income families. In previous eras, there were less of both these things. Obviously, if we progress from a societal model where most families have 2 parents, with ONE working; to another model where there are a large proportion of double income families and a large proportion of solo mothers, either working or not, we will experience an increase in inequality.


The trend for wealthier people to have "planned families", and the poorer not, obviously causes inequality.


There are now more selfish attitudes, the "me" generation, with more childless "singles", who are relatively well off, than at any other time in history.

With all this stuff I have covered, is it any wonder we have "inequality"? If we constantly turn on higher income earners and present them with "the bill" for society's own Darwinism, how long can this last?

As I said before, if we were to analyse the amount of "income redistribution" that is already taking place in all first world nations, the question would have to be asked, how much more could the economy stand without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs? It is not just a matter of cash transfers via social welfare; every one of us carries a price tag of millions of dollars in State spending from birth to death; most of us will never pay back in tax, what has been spent on our health, education, public safety, infrastructure and amenities. Even those of us who never earn their own income and never pay tax, are millions of dollars ahead of around 50% of humanity.

It is quite audacious to say that actual transfers of cash ON TOP OF THIS (in welfare payments) are “inadequate” and that the highest income earners are being “greedy”. The amounts already paid disproportionally by the higher income earner, are already massive long before actual cash payments to the “less well off” are considered.

Refer back to the Roger Douglas solution I covered above. Stop blowing billions of dollars on State provided services of extremely low value - let the market provide the roads, the schooling, the health services, the housing. Give "the poor" the MONEY, not the $1 of services that cost "the wealthy" $3 already.

For the sakeof our more casual visitors, I'll precis the above posts

        R A N T .

Leemee see if ole Gummy has this correct : NZ has a long history of progressive taxation , slug the rich , bleeding the productive sector dry ........

..... and then using those monies , through a myriad of government departments , programmes & packages ...... to even out the income , for all Kiwis ..... the egalitarian society , where no one can be unfettered , and rise too far above the clamouring hoards , seeking their " entitlements " ......

And the upshot of all this is , today , a massively inequal distribution of income & wealth in New Zealand .......

....... meebee it's high time that NZ gave unfettered capitalism a go , 'cos socialism hasn't done the job it was designed for .

Inequality of outcome doesn't - by itself - prove lack or inequality of opportunity.  Inequality of outcome may also be - in fact, inevitably is - the result of equality of opportunity. 

The information that we really need, to assess whether inequality of outcome is the result of a lack of opportunity, is the extent to which the people in the poorest deciles are the same people as were there one, five, ten years ago. 

Over to you Bernard, is that information available?

For my mind the gap seems to be generational, and based mostly round trusts and property. The difference in wealth between my parents and myself (and my partner) is almost embarrassing, even though only my father worked and they had 3 children. We earn considerably more than them, have become very frugal with our money and yet will never attain anything like the kind of wealth they have ammassed through cheap property, borrowing and spending. We're too busy paying off student loans and a house that cost way too much! All of our friends who earn ok money are in the same situation - taxable income seems to have very little to do with it.

The system in NZ is designed to make the rich richer.  They are by far the best placed to make the lion's share of the gains from appreciating assets.  Unlike all other OECD countries, we fail to have a CGT, land tax, estate tax, or any other relevant tax on assets.  There is a CGT-by-another-name that is easily avoidable by the asset rich. 

So our Gini coefficient score, already higher than most other OECD countries, will inevitably get higher. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009-1.png

This will eventually lead to riots a la UK and other social unrest.  It cannot be the pathway to a unified and progressive society. 

Joy

Cheers to all

The UK riots are definitely related to wealth inequality...large swathes of UK wealth is tied up in their hereditary class system, and just gets pass down through the generations....social mobility is limited.

Looks like the UK has a few issues, when they start robbing people in restaurants and on the street with impunity then its a big problem. The question I ask myself is this what the underprivilaged have been waiting for, the chance to take from the ones who got of their butts and did some work. Loved to see them try it in the States with all the concealed carry and you no longer have to be backing down to use force.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024001/UK-riots-2011-London-Birmingham-people-forced-strip-naked-street.html

Israel is getting in on the act

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6b9d9c08-c299-11e0-9ede-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1UaDpXJgc

Race based?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/katharinebirbalsingh/100099830/these-riots-were-about-race-why-ignore-the-fact/

Hear is a free ebook http://www.conservativenannystate.org/

The Conservative Nanny State

How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer

by Dean Baker, published May 2006

Economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. In fact, conservatives rely on a range of “nanny state” policies that ensure the rich get richer while leaving most Americans worse off. It’s time for the rules to change. Sound economic policy should harness the market in ways that produce desirable social outcomes – decent wages, good jobs and affordable health care.

Dean Baker (b. July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, with Mark Weisbrot. He previously was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.
 

For any true intellectuals still following this site:

Here is a fascinating discussion of "inequality" by the amazing "Systems Analyst" Jesse Ausubel:

http://phe.rockefeller.edu/PDF_FILES/LiveLikeAmerica.pdf

".........What causes the surprisingly persistent inequality of skewness and obstacle to
the crowning success of a top income? The engineer and co-inventor of the transistor,
William Shockley (1910–1989) described crowning success in science in a way
that explains the skewness of incomes as well as scientific achievement.
Many achievements require successfully connecting the links of a chain. In 1957,
Shockley [9] noted that publishing a technical paper requires connecting links to (1)
choose a good problem; (2) workon it; (3) recognize a worthwhile result; (4) decide
when to stop; (5) draft a report adequately; (6) profit constructively from criticism;
(7) submit the paper; and (8) survive referees’ objections. One might separate the
chain of achievement into more or different links, but the chain clearly has several
links. Critically, failure in any link means failure to reach the top. Crowning
success requires success with every link, and if the probability of success in each of
Shockley’s eight links is 50%, a crowning success is as rare as eight straight heads
in a coin toss. The probabilities at each step do not add to success, they multiply.
Raising the probability of succeeding at each of the essential, separate links by
the slender distance from 50% to 55% doubles the chance of final publication. And
raising the probability of success of each linkby half, to 75%, lifts productivity
2500%. The 2500% difference between 4 and 100 papers is a career, the difference
between publishing to earn a doctorate and a life’s work........

"..........When the logarithms of income rather than incomes themselves
are normally distributed, the distribution is called lognormal. When probabilities
multiply rather than add, they make a power of difference.
Physicists Elliott Montroll and Wade Badger used anecdotes to contrast the
additive or linear events that cause symmetrical distributions against the multiplicative
or nonlinear events that cause skewed ones to be fit by logarithmic transformation
[13]. They illustrated the additive with ‘‘The shin bone is connected to
the knee bone, the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone is
connected to the hip bone....’’ The addition of bones makes a bell-shaped normal
distribution of heights with roughly as many individuals taller as shorter than the
crowd of people in the middle. Among adults, the chance of meeting someone
whose bones add to a height 50% taller than yours is finite and tiny, while the
chance of meeting someone 10 times your height is certainly zero.
In contrast, Montroll and Badger illustrated multiplication of links that skew
distributions by ‘‘For want of a nail, a shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse
was lost; for want of a horse, a knight was lost; for want of a knight, a battle was
lost; for want of a battle, a kingdom was lost. All because of a nail.’’ A skewed
distribution with a long tail fits kingdoms won.
For producing wealth and living like top consumers, consider eight other links:
(1) adequate brain, (2) essential education, (3) ambition for wealth, (4) determination,
(5) communication and networking skills, (6) willingness to take risks, (7)
being in the right place, and (8) working at the right time. The chance of meeting
someone with 10 times your income is not zero. The lognormal distribution of
logarithms of income normally distributed in a bell-shape may fit the skewed
frequency of crowning successes at the end of links.
Although the lognormal can fit some skewness, even it may not reach high
enough because people at the very top operate differently [14]. While most earn
wages that multiply as they succeed along the links, those at the very top frequently
lever their income through speculation in commodity futures on margins.
At the top of small businesses, bosses organize laborers to lever their income. In
laboratories, graduate students and post-doctoral associates slavishly lever publications
for the lab head.
Although charity and transfer payments may temper the skewness of income
distribution, the linked tasks whose probabilities multiply persistently lift only a
few to the highest income........"

Ausubel is another author who is guaranteed to get the crypto-Maoists / crypto-Stalinists wanting to throw people who quote him (and indeed, actually understand him), into a gulag. George Reisman has the same effect.

No mention of the second law of thermodynamics, then?

This will help:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5425983/Labour-MP-stays-positive-about-CGT

Even if/when they lose, I can't see em' dropping it, so it's just a matter of time before NZ implements a CGT.

Cheers, Les.

www.nzmea.org.nz

How many people have watched Sir Paul Callaghan's presentations on how to increase national wealth? What you need, is new jobs at higher average pay than the current average.

I have just noticed that the economies that have "equality", that are picked as role models by the "pro equality" people, all happen to have a LOT of "added value" industry.

There are plenty of countries that have high equality, but everyone is poor.

Perhaps we are wasting our time looking at "inequality" when we don't have Toyota and SONY, or SAAB and Bofors. If we try and get ourselves "equality" without having Japan's or Sweden's industry, the result MIGHT NOT look like Japan or Sweden? It might look like, oh, Bolivia, or Pakistan, or Cuba?

Another thing that I notice about lefties who love Sweden - they are ALWAYS silent on Sweden's nuclear energy, and the fact that it is one of the world's major arms exporters. Our lefties think we should shut RAKON down in Auckland because they supply GPS's to militaries around the world, but they love the welfare State paid for by SAAB fighter jets and missiles, and Bofors cannons and munitions, and Dynamit Nobel explosives. And the tanks and APC's, and the gunboats and naval vessels.

Lefties are always hypocrites. The few who are not pig ignorant, have extreme bad faith.