Posts by Euan Mason
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Rob this needs to be made into a press release. It's too important to have simply as a blog. Most people fail to understand how GST impacts on relative taxation of different income groups, and their misconceptions influence voting patterns and ultimately social policy.
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So long as rich people are making money the Key government is happy, and any solution that would restrict such money making is absolutely out of the question. Moreover, their ideal is that people should be able to make money while contributing hardly anything of real value, simply by being clever traders. When you accept that this is their mindset, their policies actually make a kind of warped sense. The problem is, of course, that it's extremely hard for rich people to get even richer while solving the very real problems encountered by desperately poor people. It it were easy to find such solutions then we would no longer have poverty in New Zealand, everyone would be in clean, dry & comfortable accommodation, and we would have a society where everyone really did have a chance to succeed, irrespective of their circumstances at birth.
Social housing funded by a capital gains tax and higher taxes on the rich (with no loopholes) would do so much good.
How bad does it have to get before the wider electorate is disgusted enough to turf out the crazies in the government benches?
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GST. A poll tax by any other nsme would smell just as putrid.
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I'll look forward to it. Completely agree that it is more about ethics than law. Tax avoidance can be unethical when the law is wrong.
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They are trying to treat the symptom rather than the disease. We didn’t have begging, or at least not so pervasively, before Douglas & Richardson did their dirty work.
It’s the same in London; I was shocked at the level of deprivation I witnessed during the 90s after having seen a prosperous, democratic socialist London during the 1960s. Thatcher has a lot to answer for.
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Speaker: The real problem with the ‘Kiwimeter’, in reply to EJ,
The wording was "Māori should not receive any special treatment." I can't simply disagree with that statement because I take issue with the way it's phrased.
Completely agree. Meeting treaty obligations does not constitute "special treatment". This was a loaded question.
As for why the survey is being done by TVNZ, probably:
1) For marketing, to sell more advertising; and
2) To give Mike Hosking something to inanely pontificate about. -
I agree, Rob. This could have been handled so much better. See http://thespinoff.co.nz/03-03-2016/a-designers-last-lament-for-this-whole-sorry-flag-fiasco/
It's not all about Key, no matter how much he and Hooton might want it to be. It is, however, slightly sad that a Prime Minister could see a flag change as his big legacy.
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OnPoint: Yeah nah, but what *do* we…, in reply to Soon Lee,
Soon Lee, excellent point about momentous events prompting a flag change. That is what motivates Key. He really wants to claim he's radically changed NZ for the better, poor fool.
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Moving writing about Sophie, Rob. There are no words to express how I felt after reading it.
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I enjoyed watching it, and I agree that the news content is vastly better than TV news, as usual, but the images are not as good. Seeing great professional broadcasters with bad hair awkwardly make their way on screen was a bit like reality TV radio, and entertaining in its own right. Expect to see more external clips, better done, and yes, better sound as they refine this. I think it will surpass TV news in all respects eventually, not just in news value.