Thursday 22 October 2009

Libertarians are taking over

Reader W.S. reckons “libertarians are taking over” – in the unions and the Labour Party!  See what he means:

I offer these two pieces of evidence from this Herald article:

[CTU president Helen Kelly said] ...although the union was open to discussing the idea, she did not believe higher earners should have to forgo any chance of a pay increase so the less-well-paid could benefit.

And:

"Labour's education spokesman, Trevor Mallard, said it was "outrageous" to propose setting the education groups against each other. You don't take money off one group of people in a workforce to pay another." [Emphasis mine.]

So... I guess Trevor and Helen don't support progressive tax rates then... or really... the concept of tax at all.
Who would have thought? The CTU president and Trevor Mallard are both closet libertarians. I knew it!
To paraphrase Harvey Milk - "Come out! Come out of the closet! If they know us, they can't hate us. They can't hate us if they have a libertarian friend. Or a libertarian son, or brother. Come out!"
Hahahaha!!!

4 comments:

Sam said...

Off-topic sorry, but why don't the Libertarian Party run on the policy of voluntary taxation?Income tax, voluntary. GST, voluntary. ACC levies, voluntary. Make that your central platform and you would be sure to resonate with Joe Public.

Then you wouln't need to worry about Libertarians having to infiltrate other partys/unions, and you would kill Big Government in one fell swoop if you ever managed to get the numbers.

Greig McGill said...

@Sam

Make that your central platform and you would be sure to resonate with Joe Public.

You reckon? Most of my friends actually think tax is good. They like the idea that their taxes "help their fellow man". Even the smart ones still harbour these socialist attitudes. Just this morning, one of the smartest people I know was advocating central government rolling out broadband infrastructure to rural areas because "the market would never provide that".

It just gets weary arguing with them. But no, I really don't think "most people" would welcome zero taxes as a campaign promise. They'd not understand how it would work, and say "oh dear, there go those loony libz again". That's the response I always get anyway. YMMV.

I think education, and some kind of progression away from those underlying socialist attitudes is what is needed rather than yet another campaign bribe which I contend most would reject as unworkable anyway.

Philip said...

Here's another one for you:
Which MP said - "Crushing vehicles was also an unlawful destruction of valuable personal property"

Greig McGill said...

Crikey Philip, it was the commieking himself - Keith Locke! Who'd have thought property WASN'T theft after all?