"So far not a single economist has backed up the Finance Minister - all say the man in charge of the nation's books has got his sums wrong." Photo credit: Newshub If you say something enough, repeat it enough and insist that it's true, does that make it true despite the facts?
Steven Joyce must be pondering such a scenario this morning as he becomes more and more isolated over his claim that Labour's election costings have an $11b hole in them.
So far not a single economist has backed up the Finance Minister - all say the man in charge of the nation's books has got his sums wrong.
Now that doesn't mean that Labour is infallible on the numbers, as their forecasts could be flexible. But by saying there's an $11b fiscal hole, Mr Joyce has dug himself into a ditch of his own making. It's easy to see what led to this - National's biggest hope is to paint Labour as inexperienced spendthrifts who would destroy the admittedly strong economy that National has nurtured these last nine years. This leads us to what I call the fast-approaching period of peak promise. We are reaching a critical time where the volume, complexity and audaciousness of election promises reach such volume that voters cease to take them seriously. And now we are ceasing to take the rebuttal or criticism seriously as well. It's hard to believe anything any of them say, as we rightly suspect they aren’t giving us the unvarnished truth. And sometimes it's our fault. Maybe we just don’t want the truth. If a politician said, "We can't afford what's happening here so we are raising income tax to 50 percent as it’s the only honest way to solve a problem", would you vote for them? Of course you wouldn't. You'd prefer the one who lied to you and told you it would all be all right, even if you suspected they weren't totally straight up. It's like bad-boy boyfriends and girlfriends - you know they're up to no good, but so long as you can kid yourself, it's all OK.
Look JT, we know that you would like to tax people as much as any possible, and so does Labour. Of course - I guess you know much better what to do with people's money than these people do - isn't it? Nanny Labour knows best.
But you don't want just to take from the "Rich" and give to the "Poor", what you really want is to punish the people who perform in our society. How dare they doing better than others?
While the "giving the poor" might sound like a nice touch - it is something which damages the very people you want to help. Issue is - there is a competition for high performers out there in the world - and good teachers, good doctors, successful business people as well as capable engineers and qualified trades people can find a good job everywhere in the world. Taxing them over the top helps you just to get rid of these people - and with them goes the economic success of our country.
Increasing tax rates means higher unemployment and a stuttering economy. Is this really what you want?
Last edited by BlackPeter; 06-09-2017 at 10:48 AM.
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"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future" (Niels Bohr)
BP.Assumptions are often wrong; yours nearly always; you are doing exactly as joyce and english do, dirty desperate smearing attempts. You never denied working for crosby/textor; i can understand why just by the way you attempt to manipulate and make things that are false, the norm.
Let me make it official. We are at Peak Jacinda. I found myself cringing at the latest clip of her patronising, condescending, touchy, feeliness.
As an aside...Values...remember them? Terrors of the 70s left that morphed/split into the Alliance/Greens if I remember correctly
Its ok to be touchy feel and have values about abortion though , yeah right.yet another tui your way, enjoy
I have so much respect for her genuineness and honesty but i guess after two or three terms that idealism may wear off a bit on her too in this brutal arena.
Personally not betting either way on the outcome on September 23.
But there is a lot of emotion flying around, including on these boards.
We saw what happened in the US when 'our girl lost'. It was not pretty.
Just saying.
Good point artemis.
I remember also the extraordinary gnashing of teeth by the left here after the last election. They were so convinced that they had it in the bag and got a rude shock. Maybe Labour will cobble together something with the Greens and Winston, but I can't see it. I really can't see Winston in bed with the Greens.
I remember also the extraordinary gnashing of teeth by the left here after the last election. They were so convinced that they had it in the bag and got a rude shock. Maybe Labour will cobble together something with the Greens and Winston, but I can't see it. I really can't see Winston in bed with the Greens.
Agree, Winston and the Greens a highly unlikely scenario.
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Originally Posted by winner69
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