This really annoys me. This Major Campbell Roberts presumably is a preacher not a politician. I’m not knocking anyone’s belief here. Whatever rocks your boat. But the Major should stay out of “poverty politics”:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10849609
Herald editor Simon Collins is too far gone for their to be any hope for him to be neutral so it’s no surprise he ran this non-story. It is effectively the reporting of a Major Random’s opinion with no statistical substance.
I’d have asked for cold hard facts – foodbank activity. Increases in visits to Sallies counselors. But Collin’s just quoted a religious figure.
Saying that the ‘middle class”, have to pay more taxes to save society is just ill-directed sentiment. High taxes cause bankruptcy if they are arbitrarily applied for some wishy washy feel-good reason. Increased productivity should engender higher wages and it should be up to a firm to decide when this occurs. And those nasty business people aren’t going to give away money.
But they will pay to keep good staff instead of letting another business steal them away. This is when wages rise for good reason.
When the minimum wage rises without good cause, the cost of producing anything rises. Then housewives pay more at the supermarket and have to take on a second job ’cause hubby can’t earn enough on his own. Then you get the stories of how the minimum wage needs to rise and how the rich people are awwwful and how New Zealand is full of these baad rich people.
That’s when men start thumping their wives and drinking more. We tend to get bad tempered when told it’s someone’s else’s fault that we can’t get ahead:
He said New Zealand was now one of the most unequal developed countries, with a disturbing ethnic divide. Pacific children were 50 times as likely as Europeans, and Maori children 23 times as likely, to get rheumatic fever because of cold, damp and overcrowded houses.
 So? Nobody forces people to live together. The rheumatic fever bullshit is more than likely because New Zealand has a shitty weather system. You don’t get rheumatic fever in California.
A quarter of all male Maori spent time in the Corrections system.
So? If you don’t do bad shit you don’t go to jail.Â
He said a big rise in the minimum wage between 2000 and 2008 did not cause higher unemployment, and raising the minimum further would be an effective way to lift the incomes of large numbers of workers.
He said New Zealand should also abolish tax on the first $5000 or $10,000 of income, following Australia which tripled the tax-free threshold in this year’s Budget from A$6000 ($7640) to A$18,200 ($23,200)
Give the message that you don’t even have to pay for any of your own costs if you’re a poor schmuck.
Tax breaks for the poor had to be funded by higher taxes on middle and higher earners. “That has to be based on the expectation that the well-paid and wealthy will pay more tax.”
Well, you’d be hard pressed to find them – they’ve frigged of to the States, Asia or Europe.Â
He also called for a major house building programme and a universal child benefit.
Can the RMA and watch the housebuilding take off and unemployment fall. What we don’t need is to be treated like kids.
