Monday 5 November 2007

Tax cuts, and soon

Helen Clark promised personal tax cuts as a Labour policy to be announced next year, and even if she announced it through gritted teeth, she still failed to have heart palpitations at the anathema of allowing some of us to be stolen from a little less. See, Helen, it's not so hard, is it.

Her challenge to the Labour-Lite party is a good one, saying that while Labour will deliver tax cuts without cutting "social spending" and that Labour's move will expose National as a "one-trick pony." Given the Nats' 'me-too' policy predilection, there's a some truth there, isn't there.

Given the challenge, perhaps the Nats should grasp the nettle of opportunity and announce the common sense position that every housewife and house-husband already knows: that serious cuts in tax can only take place with serious cuts in spending.

Given the negative results achieved in the government's ten-year spending binge with your money, cutting government spending can only have benefits. And given the enormous list of useless ministries, departments, agencies and quangoes that contrive to suck up your money on logos, lying and long lunch hours, there's plenty of slashing and/or selling to be done.

It's time now for the Tories to have the courage of some sort of conviction, and soon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Leader was talking about tax cuts with Paul Holmes on ZB this morning. Paul was pushing the line that structural surplus means we are over-taxed, and she was again pushing the line that its treasury's fault. I wish he has asked her to explain why treasuries advice that tax should be cut in 2005 was dismissed as an 'ideological burp'. The other thing that shows her bent is that she was again referring to tax cuts as a 'cost'. Goes to show who's money she thinks it is!

Anonymous said...

How is it possible then that so many people see her as a preferred prime minister?

Who are they?