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Sunday, March 2, 2014

Mike Butler: Labour's lurch to the Left



Matt McCarten, described as a hard-Left political head-kicker, is Labour leader David Cunliffe’s right-hand man, a move that illustrates the party’s lurch to the Left. What does a Left-ward lurch look like? Look no further than McCarten’s prescription for last year’s Budget:
1. Abolish 15 per cent GST. Replace with 1 per cent financial transaction tax as recommended by the New Zealand Bankers Association. Same money.
2. Abolish PAYE on wages and salaries. Replace it with a wealth tax and a capital gains tax when shares, businesses, land and property are sold. People are taxed when they’re cashing up, not when they are making it.
3. 90 per cent Death Tax. You can’t take it with you. Grown-up kids should earn their own money anyway.
4. Rent-to-buy homes underwritten by the state. Limiting homes to two a family and having a capital gains tax will keep prices affordable.
5. State-created work schemes for all long-term jobless.
6. A living wage set at $20 an hour minimum. It would be a stimulus package.
7. No tax on profits kept in a business.
8. Free public transport in major cities. That would get people out of their cars.
9. Victims get 100 per cent state compensation for loss or injury. Offenders work it off if necessary.
10. Make KiwiSaver a state-owned fund and buy all the Government’s non-core commercial assets.
There you have it. McCarten wants the government to take your Kiwisaver investment, take 90 percent of your Mum and Dad’s life savings when they die, a wealth tax, a capital gains tax, increase unemployment by pricing low-paid workers out of the market, and turn the country into one big government-run make-work scheme. That’s a lurch to the Left.

Source
My Budget would do the trick, Herald on Sunday, May 19, 2013. https://unitenews.wordpress.com/category/matt-mccartens-herald-on-sunday-column/page/3/

2 comments:

Don said...

From that prescription, he & Putin would be comrades, need any more be said. His appointment & statements that he & Cunliffe will in future make, should ensure the Key government get re-elected as a true majority government.

paul scott said...

Chris Trotter called it 'a lurch towards sanity'

1.Paying for people to have babies.
2.secret Trusts
3.coalition with Communist Green
4.Virtual Nationalisation of Power Companies prices
5.National Kiwi Insurance Company

None of these programs have any analysis you can read. Cunliiffe is a sloganeer.
6.My home is a doer upper, I am an ordinary New Zealnder.
Cunliffe is a gift to New Zealand
next chance 2017, even then I doubt it.