Kiwi Fail [updated]

At a time when everyone in the country is strapped for cash, when business is tight and incomes for everyone are stretched—even the income of government, which is spending one quarter-of-a-billion dollars a week more than it extracts from all of us—this government has decided to throw yet another quarter-of-a-billion dollars down the black hole of Kiwi Rail, with another half-a-billion dollars to come in the next two years.

Thanks John.

Thanks Bill.

Thanks Steven.

And thanks David Farrar, who’s now so far up the backsides of his own luminaries he’s prepared to defend even this patent irresponsibility at a time of penury:

“The Government really has little choice. One can’t sell Dr Cullen’s train set. No one would buy it.”

As Paul Walker responds, “there is an important message in the point you make.”

There sure is.  And here’s a clue to what that point is: What’s the real value of something that no-one wants to buy?  Answer: Nothing.

I suggest you keep this quarter-of-a-billion-dollar generosity in mind tomorrow when Bill English tells you how he’s devised new schemes to extract more money from you rather than cutting his government’s coat according to the cloth they can afford.

UPDATE: Steven Joyce argues that bailing out KiwiFail with our money will put it on the road to success.  It’s the same patently stupid argument that’s been used in making five previous bailouts over the last twenty years.  But this time, this bailout will be different, of course . .  .

Says Liberty Scott:

    “It should be so obvious to a child that buying something that is worth NZ$690 million and having to spend $750 million to save it is lunacy. Labour receives the blame for the former, and now New Labour National does for the latter.
    “What to know why you're not getting a real tax cut? Ask both of those gangs of reckless spendthrifts. Why their parents didn't spend a couple of hundred bucks to buy them train sets when they were kids so they could indulge in this pastime is beyond me?”