Posts by Trevor Nicholls
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The message should have been that the Labour party believes that the existing set of taxes is unfair on the majority of New Zealanders. The growing inequality which is blatantly obvious in a wide variety of metrics and which is palpably felt by large sectors of the economy shows this to be a Fact.
Instead of falling back on a "we think a CGT is a good idea and our working group will recommend how to implement it" they should have gone bigger and made the battleground fair taxation for all. As the freezing workers' families (singled out by Blinglish in the first debate) showed in later coverage, they were actually quite amenable to foregoing tax cuts in favour of a more equitable economy. Pity that didn't get more traction in the sea of potential new taxes.
Of course what we're seeing in the media is a few very well off people telling us that a lot of ordinary people are freaked about paying more tax. It's more than projection; it's propaganda. -
Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to simon g,
TV3 poll out tonight
I predict fear will win over hope. Hope I'm wrong :-)
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Up Front: The Surprisingly Sincere Up…, in reply to Jeremy Andrew,
I have no objection to stating my name in public, hell, I'm posting here under it, but I can imagine there are some people with reason to be more sensitive about it than I.
I have never voted on election day and have always gone in one afternoon earlier in the week. Once there was one other voter in the polling place, the other times I had it to myself. So if your identity is a sensitive matter, this option may help you.
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Thank you for this, Emma. I hope you're staying well.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to simon g,
Another TVNZ/Colmar Brunton poll out tonight.
Will it be "explosive"? Or "dramatic"? Will it "turn [our] expectations on their heads"? Might it be "career-ending"? Or herald "desperate times"?
Punters need to be told these things. Pundits need to say them.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to simon g,
These details matter.
They matter so much that it should be mandatory to state them when reporting the headline numbers. The narrative in some places (being written by journalists who should know better) is that National has arrested if not reversed the Labour surge. The details don't support that at all.
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The National meme is correct in that the tax burden does unfairly fall on "hard-working New Zealanders".
The truth is that the tax burden should be more equitably borne by the New Zealanders who don't have to work hard, because their income and capital, which dwarf those of hard working New Zealanders, are earning colossal sums of money for them.
The hardest working New Zealanders are those in two or more jobs at minimum wages because the cost of health, housing, education and food is just too damn high.
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Hard News: Media Take: Scandals, selfies…, in reply to Jason Kemp,
Was that National ATM slogan out before or after the $10b promise of new roads ?
Actually I believe it's been borrowed/bought/stolen from Australian right wing parties at the last election.
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Still, there's something deeply symbolic about a senior cabinet minister losing his seat - in the event it happens.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Gavin White,
As Bart Janssen says, there's very clearly a relationship between the closeness of the election and turnout (compare 2005 and 2014 as an illustration). Downs' theory on rational voting, if I recall correctly (although he argued that voting was only rational if your vote was almost certain to decide the result, which is of course exceedingly unlikely).
I read yesterday that (due to polarisation and gerrymandering) fewer than 5% of potential voters in the USA are in even theoretically competitive congressional districts.