National has struck a chord with its tax policy. Jacinda describes it as “desperate and reckless”. Lefties on Twitter are catatonic. They are claiming that National is promising people “free money”.
Since when has being able to keep a bit more of your own earnings free money? Isn’t it money earned by the taxpayer? It certainly was when I did Taxation 101.
And here is darling Siouxsie’s contribution
Did you know that National was in government last February? I didn’t, but apparently they were because it is all their fault that there was no money for ICU beds and ventilators even though her beloved Labour government had been in power for two and a half years by then.
Winston describes it as “election bribes”, but says no one will fall for it. To be fair, no one understands election bribes better than Winston, but if National wins the election, they will implement the policy immediately, unlike NZ First’s past promises of reducing immigration or abolishing the Maori seats. Winston’s latest election bribe is to make cigarettes $20 a packet. I will let you draw your own conclusions on that one.
Laila Harre has entered the fray. Don’t you wish former politicians would disappear gracefully, instead of hanging on by their fingernails to every opportunity for perceived relevance?
This one cracked me up. So, she will take the tax cuts, and even brags about how she is richer than most of her neighbours. Spoken like a true Chardonnay socialist. If she was a real socialist, instead of a typical virtue-signalling elitist, she would stay quiet, take her tax cuts and donate the money to a children’s charity of her choice, but of course, there is no exposure in that. Oh, by the way Laila. You do know that child poverty is very much worse under Jacinda than it was under the last government, don’t you? What is that you are saying? La-la-la-la-la?
I love it. It is a genius policy by National. Allowing people to keep more of their own money is not “desperate and reckless”, it is classic centre-right politics. When asked if he was afraid that people might not spend their extra money, thus not giving the economy the stimulus intended, Paul Goldsmith was very clear. He said he “trusts New Zealanders”. Make that man Minister of Finance right away.
Grant Robertson, our actual Minister of Finance, proved what a buffoon he is yesterday when he made the outrageous claim that “the recession is over”. I used to think Robertson was one of the better Labour politicians, (by comparison only) but clearly he has drunk too much of his own Kool-Aid. He has based this opinion on an article written by Liam Dann, but, in typical form, has cherry-picked the bits he wanted to emphasise.
We are already nearing the end of the third economic quarter.
Economists forecast that this current quarter will show the biggest increase in GDP that New Zealand has ever seen – perhaps as much as a 13 per cent spike.
Looking at that rebound in isolation as a sign of underlying economic strength would be absurd.
Which should be a reminder that doing so with the second-quarter GDP number is too.
They are inextricably linked by the artificial policy measures that define them – the Yin of lockdown and border closure to the Yang of fiscal and monetary policy stimulus.
We’ll need to let both play through before we have an accurate measure of our underlying economic health.
The worst symptoms of this recession will likely be felt when, in technical terms, it is already long gone.
So, from that extract, Dann is essentially saying two things; that economists are predicting a sharp upturn in the September quarter, and that the worst effects of a recession are felt long after the recession is actually over.
On the first point, a prediction by economists that there will be an upturn does not mean the recession is over. They may be wrong. Many of their predictions for the June quarter were overstated. Secondly, Robertson is taking the literal definition of a recession – two consecutive quarters with declining GDP – and applying it to the overall condition of the economy, making it sound as if everything is hunky dory. Clearly, with people losing their jobs and businesses closing, we are far from an economic upturn. But most people don’t understand the difference, and will think that, if we are now out of recession, that everything is just fine. It isn’t.
Anyway, neither Robertson nor Dann can possibly know whether we are out of recession or not, as the September quarter has not actually ended yet. They can both speculate as much as they like, but with our largest city being in lockdown for about half of the September quarter, I think talk of a 13% upswing is very optimistic indeed.
We won’t know that until December. In the meantime, National has done something inspiring. It has promised to give middle income earners more money in their pocket. These people vote. This could be a game changer for the election.
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