Posts by Keith Ng
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OnPoint: Why Rightwingers Should Support…, in reply to Greg Sands,
The "ideal" CGT you describe doesn't actually sound too bad - applied universally at a flat rate to all capital gains. However, even despite not knowing the details until Thursday, there is a snowball's chance of Labour's proposed CGT coming anywhere close to this. It will be just another set of "winners" and "losers" picked by the government, because some things (e.g. capital gains on a family home) will be exempt. That criteria doesn't fit your analysis - it's purely political.
Sure, I agree - an all-encompassing one is better than one with exemptions. But the question is, is a CGT with exemptions better than no CGT?
I think it's an unequivocal yes.
It doesn't eliminate the problem that some forms of CG are taxed while others are not, but it substantively (or not, depending on what they exempt) reduces the kinds of assets that are tax-free.
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OnPoint: Why Rightwingers Should Support…, in reply to Gareth Ward,
Doh! Humbly amended.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: Radioactive Space Donut, in reply to Jonty,
OK -- I've taken the drugs in a darkened room -- the figures don't look any better?!
Clearly, wrong drugs.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: Now with 70% less wordiness!, in reply to Andrew R2,
Plu-leaze. This $1.2 billion saving exists only if the budget projections re growth, tax increase etc are accurate. Simply they aren't and it won't.
The $2.6b cut to KiwiSaver subsidies is real. Whatever the growth rate turns out to be, this savings will still exist.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: Now with 70% less wordiness!, in reply to Ana Simkiss,
But...isn't there a good thing we will not get, ie more private savings for retirement, and less private debt? Help me understand Keith
Kinda, but not really. That private savings will be offset by public debt (i.e. Government borrowing money). More importantly, they'll go disproportionately to high-income earners.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: A Credible Path to…, in reply to Alastair Thompson,
@al: It's Javascript + SVG, so it's technically HTML5. But the thing on stuff (http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/budget-2011/budget-multimedia) runs on IE7 & 8 as well, because it uses a library that converts SVG to VML.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: A Credible Path to…, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
Don't worry! Treasury confidently predict 4.0% annual wage growth for six years! Which, as far as I can tell, has not happened in New Zealand in at least the last hundred years!
I should probably look this up, but is that a nominal figure? Because inflation is going to go mental, as a result of GST plus the wallop of Christchurch spending.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: Radioactive Space Donut, in reply to Tom Beard,
Just one comment: when I was in Data Viz School*, we were told to avoid red-green colour gradients where possible. Red-green colourblindness is much more common than we usually think, and a blue-yellow scale (while perhaps not quite as pretty) will be visible for more people.
Aye. It is true. I thought about it, but my own impairment is that I'm colour-retarded. It takes me forever to figure out colours on anything. The previous versions of this were grey on white, and yellow on grey.
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The $23b supposedly spent on transport in 2009 doesn't seem quite right.
Yeah, kinda jumps out at you. Not sure what it is, but it's in the Budget expenditure data.
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Nice to see it in visual terms but looks very dark for me - black on olive green not that readable.
Try it again in a dark room. If that doesn't work, try it in a dark room while taking drugs that make your eyes more sensitive to light.