Nat/act/nzf 2023

[Bjauck]

St Mathew-in-the-city Church incorporates rainbow colours in its logo. Of course the Rainbow also symbolises the promise made by God after the flood.
Flying a rainbow flag was surely a message of love.

https://www.stmatthews.nz/single-pos...thews-new-logo

[davflaws]

You must be the most defeatist poster on the thread. After just a six year woke government you want to retreat ranting and raving into the tropic jungle like a lost WW2 Japanese soldier in the 1950’s!

Don't discourage him. The Whitsundays are calling Balance.

Let's wish him well as he contemplates the white sand and sparkling water, and enjoys the spectacle of the woke 'do gooders' fighting with the parasites, losers, and beneficiaries (there may be some overlap here) as our few remaining resources are dissipated by wasteful spending and this sh!thole country sinks further into the woke collectivist swamp.

I'm sure that Balance's personal qualities - his warmth, tolerance, friendly attitude, love of humanity, sympathy for other people less fortunate, and 'milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein' will endear him to the locals over there.

He will certainly find it easy to make new friends and will live out his remaining years surrounded by love, affection,and warm and close human relationships.

[Panda-NZ-]

Mental health minister scrambles as Suicide Prevention Office is caught in spending cuts directive.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350...ce-caught-cuts

All this effort to be inhumane, when they can simply put in a CGT or cancel the landlord tax cuts.

[Daytr]

I had a bit of a radical thought yesterday.
We have a very blunt tool using interest rates to tame inflation / cool the economy, which only impacts those with debt I.e those starting out or those who can least afford the hit. Meanwhile those debt free are getting higher interest rates on their deposits and can carry on spending up large.

So what if we combined floating interest rates with floating tax rates on the higher income bracket?
Surely it would slow the economy more quickly & spread the burden more evenly.

[Balance]

Latest poll - Government extending lead over Opposition.

What are the polls telling the msm?

https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/n...at-15-5-points

[nztx]

I had a bit of a radical thought yesterday.
We have a very blunt tool using interest rates to tame inflation / cool the economy, which only impacts those with debt I.e those starting out or those who can least afford the hit. Meanwhile those debt free are getting higher interest rates on their deposits and can carry on spending up large.

So what if we combined floating interest rates with floating tax rates on the higher income bracket?
Surely it would slow the economy more quickly & spread the burden more evenly.

Talking about blunt tools - how's Chippie doing with filling gaps on the front bench where everyone
seems to be running away, diving overboard & hiding ?

[Daytr]

I had a bit of a radical thought yesterday.
We have a very blunt tool using interest rates to tame inflation / cool the economy, which only impacts those with debt I.e those starting out or those who can least afford the hit. Meanwhile those debt free are getting higher interest rates on their deposits and can carry on spending up large.

So what if we combined floating interest rates with floating tax rates on the higher income bracket?
Surely it would slow the economy more quickly & spread the burden more evenly.

Has anyone got anything serious to say / critique?

[Joshuatree]

Govt Up 1% since Feb.
More telling is this
New Zealand Government Confidence Rating plunges 17pts to 81 in March

Not long to find out if this Govt is a slow moving train wreck and inflation rears it's head.

[Ferg]

You will need to explain the concept of "So what if we combined floating interest rates with floating tax rates on the higher income bracket?". That can be interpreted a few ways.

[Bjauck]

I had a bit of a radical thought yesterday.
We have a very blunt tool using interest rates to tame inflation / cool the economy, which only impacts those with debt I.e those starting out or those who can least afford the hit. Meanwhile those debt free are getting higher interest rates on their deposits and can carry on spending up large.

So what if we combined floating interest rates with floating tax rates on the higher income bracket?
Surely it would slow the economy more quickly & spread the burden more evenly.

Are you talking about a type of windfall tax? In any case, If you earn 10% interest, you pay 3.9% as tax; if you earn 1% interest you pay 0.39% tax. We already have a type of floating tax rate on fixed interest investments, which of course has no allowance for the effect of inflation on the fixed interest investment. So 10% interest rates combined with 3.9% tax and say 7% inflation would see a negative net economic return. Currently * we probably still have zero or negative, after tax and inflation, returns from fixed interest assets. Why wring more tax out of these taxpayers?

Also the debt free investors may also have investments that lose capital value during periods of high interest rates.

It is often during periods of low interest rates that most countries capture tax on “windfall” capital gains. Not NZ in general though, so that absence may exacerbate the asset price inflation, and wealth inequalities in NZ.

* Currently the inflation rate is about 4.7%pa. 12 month term deposits yield about 6% gross interest pa. At a tax rate of 33%, the net interest is 4%, providing the investor with a net economic loss of -0.7% pa. Sure, the investor has the choice of spending all their net interest during the year, but that will come at the cost of shrinking their wealth in real terms, and reducing their income in subsequent years. Wealthier individuals would rely less on fixed interest and more on equity investments providing (untaxed) capital gains.