The tax and spend solution to inequality
Stuff reports:
New Zealand may be headed for a “Victorian-style” future of haves and have-nots, author Max Rashbrooke says.
Yes modern day New Zealand is just like Victorian times in terms of inequality. We spend a massive $20 billion a year on welfare and this is compared to Victorian-style. We spend more on that subsidising education and healthcare for New Zealanders. But it’s never enough.
He invites the reader to imagine New Zealand’s 3.4 million adults were represented by just 100 people.
The person in 90th place on the wealth spectrum has so little wealth it is “barely visible”, around $500 of assets on average.
It’s generally called being young.
Rashbrooke surveys the policy options that have been suggested could create a more equal society. They include:
- Introducing wealth taxes like a capital gains tax, or reviving inheritance tax
- Have strict limits on how much an individual can donate to a political party
- Introducing highest-earner to lowest-earner company pay ratios
- Increasing taxes for the highly-paid, and lifting benefits
- Launching a government “matched” savings scheme for the poorest families giving them up to $200 a year
- Automatically granting some wealth to people on reaching adulthood
- Build enough houses to drive down prices so more people can own one
- Restrict lending by making banks hold more capital against mortgages
- Remove, or limit, tax breaks for property investors
It’s the usual hard left policy prescription. Never mind it has failed in every socialist and communist state in the world. So the “solution” is:
- Tax people for dying
- Taxpayer funded political parties
- Make it illegal to get paid over a certain salary
- Tax rich pricks more
- Pay people more not to work
- Have taxpayers give students free cash when they turn 18