Open Mike 14/08/25
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6:00 am, August 14th, 2025 - 12 comments
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Today's Posts (updated through the day):
Should Labour attend a set-up? [posted late last night]
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360788480/two-helicopters-two-prime-ministers-and-pavlova-was-27000-lunch-worth-it
Life's styles of the wealthy and sorted.
Where luxon lies about its exposure to aussie tourists!
It's tough work, but someone has to do it. It also helped keep the Queenstown heli business going.
Filtered out.The homeless living in cars and vans….
or the "lucky" living inside (albeit crammed into potential death traps), and there are more than one….
The (we don't do) 'performative' excuse raised a chuckle over here..
.. isn't much of a politicians life/work just that..?
..'performative'. .?
I can't see how 'performative' won't enter the popular culture/lexicon…
It's a useful addition…
('stop being so performative ..!)
The Labour and Green parties need to realize that Treasury is not politically neutral (nor objective) and its actively fighting against the left wing parties interests (and the countries economic interests) with its advice and assessments.
Ep18 Treasury Long Term Insights Briefing on Fiscal policy with Gerard Otto
Very good article in Newsroom on the plight of NZ's braided rivers: https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/08/13/long-read-we-strangled-our-rivers-now-theyre-fighting-back
Nature always has the last word. No exceptions.
Vernon Small's recent article (paywalled) strongly supports Labour introducing a Wealth Tax rather than a Capital Gains Tax. He reasons:
"a wealth tax should be an easier sell. It can be tightly targeted to just the very wealthiest, with a generous threshold that exempts several million of assets, making it easier to define who will be in, and who out, of the tax net…..A wealth tax would have the added advantage of being the preferred option of Labour’s potential coalition allies the Greens and Te Pāti Māori – making a post 2026 fiscal policy that much easier to agree."
He also correctly points out that a WT raises revenue immediately whereas a CGT is very slow to bring in revenue.
I just hope Hipkins is listening-with his track record I doubt it.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360777840/capital-gains-over-wealth-tax-choice-labour-may-come-regret
I miss David Parker. Perhaps he still has some voice in the party.
Me too aj.
I think it would be better to first make the current tax legislation fair. So get rid of the multitude of exemptions for a start.
There are many along the lines of "… this income is not treated as income for income tax purposes.." These usually benefit the wealthy, not low income earners.
All income should be subject to income tax, regardless of the source. Why should unearned income be treated any differently from wage / salary income. The only fair way of taxing income is to tax ALL income.
A person works hard for 40 plus hours a week to get $50,000 annual income has to pay income tax on that hard work.
Somebody who makes $50,000 on the sale of an asset they've owned for a year just through the increased value of that asset should be subject to the same income tax.
We should be looking at moving away from taxing hard work and towards taxing wealth. It makes far more sense (and is fairer all round) to have no tax on work and to heavily tax income / profit from unproductive use of capital (just making money from money).
Incentives work. Make productive investment (businesses, jobs, etc) more lucrative and less tax on returns from productive investment.
We need MP's in office who don't throw this sort of thing in the too hard basket.