No not the one with Winston Peters, the one with Hipkins.
He has planted Labour in an almost impossible-to-justify position on NZ Super.
On Ryan Bridge Today yesterday he said Labour will not change the age of entitlement. Will not means-test. Will not cut it. Will keep it in full indefinitely.
We currently have around four people working to support every pensioner. That will be two workers for every pensioner within the next 10-20 years.
Anyone with half a brain can see it's not sustainable, in full, forever.
I recall following Phil Goff on the campaign trail in 2011 (hospital pass).
He was all about 'making the hard decisions for tomorrow, today'.
Well Chippy is running from that motto quicker than Usain Bolt in a pair or Nikes.
What he's doing here is making a pretty blunt political assessment. This will win us some working class votes and keep us competitive with Winston and National.
He's going after labourers who can't wait till 65 to retire, let aloe 67. He's going after low-wage workers who can barely afford groceries, let alone an extra 3.5% on compulsory KiwiSaver.
You could argue that's smart politics. Pick a point of difference. Hammer it home.
The risk is massive though. Labour's biggest Achilles' heel is taxes.
telling people, you'll keep an unaffordable expensive, universal programme forever will leave them wondering who's going to pay for it.
Who'll be taxed next.
Once you add in the pay equity claims at up to $13-billion, the gaps start to look more like big black holes.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
The left have no soul. They are ideological liars. Napkins will promise stuff and then not do it. Its their cognitive processes that are fundamentally flawed as the leftie is too wrapped up in 'feelings ' and 'woke ideology ' as opposed to reality. There is not a competence cell in their being.
Here's what will happen if the loonies get back in: taxes will rise, govt departments increase, efficiency decreases, the country grinds to a halt, good people leave, dole queues grow, the lefties are in heaven, there are more puberty blocking programs in schools than maths and english classes put together, more good people leave, crims are loving it, certain race based criminals can not go to jail, no matter what they do, more are let out of jail, after all, what could go wrong letting these poor crims out of jail?, more good people flee, less money for tax collect, economy slows even further, never mind yells chippy, im borrowing billions, and the printer is also printing billions, inflation spirals out of control, more people leave, taxes go up, they have to to support the welfare state the left love so much, dependant on the state - thats the key to the left thinking, more good people leave....hang on, wait.....there is not many left, just pensioners and unemployed crims. Can a leftie tell me in this situation who supports who?
Dont think this will happen, just look back at the last left govt.
I think you will find Usain Bolt always wore Puma, otherwise spot on about Hipkins.
Not defending Hipkins the drongo, but we're often told that New Zealand will soon have only two workers for every pensioner, implying that universal superannuation is becoming unaffordable.
This is a deliberately misleading way to frame the issue. We don't discuss other government spending such way - for example, New Zealand currently has only 3.7 workers per school student, yet nobody suggests schools are therefore unaffordable.
The real question is not how many workers exist per recipient, but how much those workers produce. If future workers are significantly more productive through technology, automation and capital investment, a 2:1 ratio may be no more burdensome than today's 4:1 ratio.
A better measure is the share of national income required to fund superannuation, healthcare, education and other services.
There's also an inconvenient truth often overlooked: future generations are being asked to fund not only pensions, but also today's ever-growing government debt. Compounding interest payments on today's borrowing are effectively a deferred tax on tomorrow's taxpayers.
The real challenge is therefore not simply demographics, but whether productivity growth can outpace the combined cost of superannuation, healthcare and debt servicing. If not, pensions may prove to be the least of our worries.
The left keep proving that they don’t care about numbers at all really.
All of their policies are by people that can’t count good for people who can’t count good 🤦♂️🤦♂️
Worker - pensioner ratio 'crisis'.
I'm 79, vast experience, got more marbles than I ever had, but persona non grata in the workforce since I turned 65.
I'd love to still be working and paying tax to help pay for my pension.
I'm very grateful for the pension, but more and more older folk are feeling the pinch - often asset rich, cash poor.
Geeting young people into a home for example - a bit of lateral thinking, plus a will from our 'masters', should be able to work out 2+2.
I still enjoy golf, fishing and cultural things, but most of us who are 'over the hill' would leap at a chance to work, say 20 hours a week.
Mentoring, advising or whatever, as long as it didn't involve running a half marathon.
And many of us still have humour, a rare commodity in the enlightened times.
Let's be brutally honest, much of of the 'work'
that people do is digging hole and filling them in again.
It is not a new phenomenum, for 'work' to be created to justify one's wage packet.
'Work schemes' in disguise (eg Victorian domestic servants) redistributed wealth, to a minor extent, but had many benefits (and downsides of course).
Cathedrals etc used to be built to employ people and give them a living wage.
Instead of handing dosh out to those who will never work, maybe we should be designing more cathedral equivalents, so that we all contribute to our society in some way, not just bleed it.
Life is a team sport (as is marriage) - we all need that ongoing experience.
Has lateral problem solving really died?
Ameni
Funding all Labour’s promises is no problem. Either Napkins will dump them after the election and hide behind closed door coalition negotiations, or Napkins will implement the Green Party tax agenda to pay for it and hide behind closed door coalition negotiations. As for the cost of pensions the wheels are not going to come off in the next three years so Napkins will just kick that can down the road.
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