The Letter
19 May 2014
20 cent Company Tax Rate
Last week Jamie Whyte, using Treasury’s figures, issued a fully-costed Alternative Budget showing how by removing $4
billion of corporate and middle class welfare the top personal and company rate could be reduced to 24 cents. Jamie
Whyte has used last week’s budget figures to update his alternative budget. It shows the National government could have
reduced company tax to 20 cents.
It would double growth
Using widely accepted economic models a top personal tax rate of 24 cents and a company tax rate of 20 cents would
double New Zealand’s standard of living in just 15 years. Not even the government claims that its new election year
spending will lift growth. As Jamie Whyte said at a campaign meeting on Sunday, reducing the company tax rate is good
economics but not good politics because companies do not vote. National’s budget just transfers money from one group to
another. Electorally it works because the groups that receive money, families, are popular and numerous and those who
pay, higher income individuals, and business are not popular.
Entitlement politics
The idea that people are entitled to other people’s money is now so widely believed, that when ACT questions the
morality of entitlement neither voters nor politicians nor commentators can imagine any other way.
Voters
Jamie Whyte says he meets people who ask, “What are you going to do for me?”. Students want him to take money from
others whose circumstances they cannot know about to pay for their degree. People who “believe that living in a
democracy was something akin to being born into a mafia family. You get a say in who is going to be extorted and you can
get your hands on a share of the proceeds”.
Our politicians are communists
To quote Jamie, “On The Nation it became clear that all my opponents, with the possible exception of Peter Dunne, did
not believe in private property. On the topic of Auckland house prices, Winston Peters claimed that “we are selling our
houses to foreigners”. When I pointed out that houses are not collectively owned and that individual New Zealanders were
selling their houses to whomever they chose, he insisted that I was wrong about this. And, as you can imagine, Russell
Norman and John Minto agreed that the government should decide who you may sell your house to – or, in other words, they
agreed that it is not really your house.”
The media thinks entitlement is just common sense
The Letter does not care if Linda Clark gives media training to David Cunliffe. (It does not seem to be working). What
worries us is Jamie Whyte’s observation about Linda Clark’s The Nation commentary: “Without any argument or evidence,
she dismissed my detailed plans for cutting corporate and middle-class welfare and reducing tax rates as “mad”. It was
just obvious to her that low government spending and low taxes is a mad idea.”
State Radio
Guyon Espiner interviewed Jamie Whyte on Radio New Zealand and claimed that ACT by lowering the top rate of tax from 33%
to 24% was making a “gift” to people earning over $70,000 a year. He went further and suggested Jamie Whyte was trying
to enrich himself. As Jamie says, “Of course, the government could tax all the money you earn. But it does not follow
that your post-tax income is a gift from the government. You might as well argue that your TV is a gift from your local
burglar because he has chosen not to steal it.” Jamie’s speech is onwww.act.org.nz
The politics of hate
In an earlier issue, The Letter predicted that Labour would come to regret joining in with Winston Peters in promoting
policies that are thinly veiled attacks on the Chinese. In a multi-racial country racism is a genie that is very hard to
rebottle. When our friend Michael Hirschfeld was Labour Party President, no Young Labour supporter would have thought it
smart to blog as he did last week that Jamie Whyte is Jewish and that Jews care about nothing but money. But then
Michael would not have approved of today’s xenophobia
The only victim of the Judith Collins Affair is…?
The only victim of the Judith Collin’s affair is Shane Taurima, the TV presenter who David Cunliffe has ruled out of
standing for Labour. The TVNZ Inquiry found Mr Taurima had used his position at TVNZ to promote his Labour candidacy. To
do this he used his TVNZ email account and held meetings after hours at TVNZ. The Inquiry could not put a monetary value
on the use Mr Taurima made of the state broadcaster’s resources. (There is an airfare that is disputed and Mr. Taurima
has repaid). In contrast, the Auditor General found that the Parliamentary Labour Party used hundreds of thousands of
taxpayers’ dollars to illegally fund their election campaigns. No Labour MP was “ruled out” on those occasions. Shane is
a victim of Labour’s new standard. Now it is just perception of wrong doing and you are guilty. If that is the standard
there are going to be a lot more Shane Taurimas being ruled out from standing.