DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Boxing, banks and boring Bill

In which Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath takes his regularly irreverent look at some of the past week’s headlines.

1. “ ‘Next Decade A Demoralising Trudge’ – English” – Bill English essentially tells an audience to abandon all hope of meaningful economic reform on his watch. Yes, folks, it will be three more years of the same old failed Keynesianism from Mr Glum. Don’t expect any change in personal or corporate tax rates before 2017. That’s correct: 2017.
   Bill, here’s a heads-up: you will probably be warming the Opposition benches long before then. If you want to save your sorry ass, you could do a lot worse than lifting the income threshold for taxation to $50k and getting rid of GST. You could do this tomorrow. Of course, you will need to cut government spending by tipping public servants out of their sheltered employment, and privatising most government departments - but the voters will thank you. 
   Remember the voters?
2. “Chocolate boycott supported” – A wildlife centre in Christchurch is following the lead of Auckland zoo and dropping Cadbury products, in response to Cadbury putting palm oil in its chocolate.
   Now, I don’t necessarily agree with the logic behind this (apparently orang-utans are being pushed out of South East Asian rainforests as palm oil is harvested) but it shows that people are capable of spontaneous voluntary, co-operative, goal-oriented action – without bureaucrats there to manage them. A number of individuals acting in a co-ordinated manner creates an ‘invisible hand’ that can have far-reaching and powerful effects – without the state needing to be involved. Peaceful protest - without coercion, property damage or threats of physical violence against people. Just as it should be.
3. “U.S. Budget Deficit At $1 trillion” – Well, gee, when you bail out banks and car companies; attempt to ‘stimulate’ the economy by spending money you don’t have; and block the normal corrective processes of the free market (that tend to weed out delinquent companies and redeploy their personnel into more secure jobs) – you do tend to end up with a national debt described by economists as “mind-boggling.” Naturally, some unnamed senior Democrat is promoting another round of handouts.
4. “Swiss Banks’ Veil of Secrecy Slips” – Ghouls from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service harass U.S. citizens for operating Swiss bank accounts, and threaten the banks themselves. So far they have extorted $780m out of Swiss bank UBS by threatening to charge them and their customers with tax evasion and money laundering. All part of the grand plan to shut down “tax havens.”
   But what are these “tax havens”? They are national jurisdictions that steal less of people’s earnings than various socialist governments such as those in the U.S. and European Union. The people who use these havens to escape arbitrary and confiscatory levels of taxation in their home countries are reviled as tax evaders. Their only “crime” is to wish to retain a greater proportion of their legally earned wealth then the politicians and IRS thinks they should be allowed to keep.
   How dare they, the greedy capitalist pigs!
5. “Guns & Hoses Slug It Out” – In Masterton last Saturday night, twenty pugilists from the local Fire Service and Police fought a series of bloody battles – a titanic struggle that was eventually won by the fire fighters, raising thousands of dollars for two local charities. 
   That’s me in the photo mopping the face of courageous Mike Drummond, whose eyelid I later stitched back together. Most of the eighteen men and two ladies who faced off in the ring that evening had trained long and hard, including one policemen who lost 25 kg along the way.
   I salute these gladiators, one and all, for the long hours of training and preparation, and for an entertaining spectacle on the night.          

See y’all next week!
Doc McGrath

* * Read Richard McGrath’s column every Wednesday here at NOT PC * *