The manufactured surplus – robbing the poor to pay the rich

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
25
0

Exactly how did National get their surplus?

By robbing from the needy to give to the powerful

aurplus2015-620x620

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

25 COMMENTS

  1. Where are these figures from because in areas such as Education the level of funding has been increasing in real terms over the past few years.

    • It’s not simply the “size of government”, Gosman, it’s spending on services such as early childhood education, DoC, Police, community organisations, etc.

      I’ll tell you one government that has exploded in size since 2008: the Prime Minister’s Department. Their budget increased since 2008 from $25,470,000 to $49,298,000 in 2015/16 – a near doubling in just seven years.

      (More on this in a coming story I’m working on, complete with citations.)

      You really need to dig deeper into issues like this, Gosman, rather than making superficial statements. No wonder you have very little credibility.

      • I really only care about the size of government spending as a percentage of GDP. If you can grow GDP you can increase the amount of Government spending so long as it is remains approximately the same level percentage wise.The trouble is the left just wants to keep growing the size of government until it sucks the life out of the rest of the economy.

        • I really only care about the size of government spending as a percentage of GDP.

          Really?

          So why are you devoting so much time posting above, about government expenditure of education?!

          You’re keen to trumpet (purported*) increase in spending on education, but then you ” really only care about the size of government spending as a percentage of GDP”…

          Okaaaay…

          * I haven’t time to check your “facts”, though if experience is anything to go by, you’re not presenting the whole story.

        • And the right continue with contempt, arrogance and a despicable speaker of the house to suck the life out of the people of this country. They should be ashamed. They won’t though, they are too arrogant for that and that is why Groser was found to be acting unlawfully. Remember that this time, it was all Groser’s doing and not Labour or the lefts fault. Change the record Gosman.

        • How to suck the life out of the economy and ship billions overseas.
          The Telecom Story

          Now before you respond with how difficult/long it was to get a phone connected back in the 80s. How long/difficult is it now to get broadband in the provinces? Near zero spend on infrastructure by Telecom while they sucked out dividend and pumped the share price and then they had the temerity to ask the government to pay for installing fibre.
          It’s the old “How capitalism works. Privatise profits, socialise losses.”

    • Oh Gosman. So simple. So much fun.

      The ‘size of government’ is a Fox News meme repeated by Republican candidates.

      Neoliberalism extends the government into many areas such as justice, survailence and treasury. Thanks for the fancy graph from the treasury – neoliberalism made that piece of shit possible.

      Turn off the internet and turn back on RadioLive…you friends are talking

      • Yep Frank’s fighting a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

        Oh for the money to pay decent paid trolls. The National ACT parties will need to run a few more $5,000 a head fundraiser.

    • The GDP spend is being maintained at the cost of extensive increases in borrowings.
      Not so fiscally virtuous, especially when it is accompanied by large reductions in taxation for the better off.

  3. After National’s slashing of health, education, police, etc, in the late 1990s, Labour was elected to office in late 1999.

    One of the first actions from newly-appointed Health Minister Annette King was to make a capital injection (no pun intended!!) into her portfolio;

    https://fmacskasy2.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/1-5b-injection-for-health-9-dec-2001.jpg

    and

    https://fmacskasy2.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/more-money-promised-to-fund-gps-health-clinics-17-nov-2001.jpg

    The question is; how many New Zealanders will die before voters have their fill of National’s tax cuts and slashing of services?

    In 1998, it was Colin Morrison’s passing that finally woke New Zealanders to what kind of country was being delivered up to them: https://fmacskasy2.wordpress.com/tag/colin-morrison/

    • I would estimate that nat voters will have there fill when they relise selling there only asset, a house, to fund one or two years medical expensive is stupid when destroying the welfare state.

  4. Can someone please explain to me when, in the light of the graph above the Nats are forever going on about the huge debt left them by the Labour government? I had always understood Michael Cullen had left the government’s books in surplus (borne out by the graph above) but that’s certainly not the song I hear endlessly sung by the Nats. And I have yet to hear any Labour MP stand up to the Nats and tell them they’re lying. Forgive my ignorance on this one, but can someone please enlighten me with the facts (as distinct from spin, lies etc)? Thanks.

    • When the government tells lies a thousand times, and the complicit mainstream media keeps quoting them like an army of parrots, then the people start believing the lies.

      That is how it works, sadly. Advertisers do something similar, it is a form of brain-washing, and they would not be doing it, if it would not work (on most).

    • “And I have yet to hear any Labour MP stand up to the Nats and tell them they’re lying.”

      Just because you haven’t heard them say it, doesn’t mean they haven’t said it. It just means the news agencies haven’t reported it. Read Hansard or watch Parliamentary TV, and you’ll hear them say it.

    • It’s ideological. National believe retirement should be funded by property speculation.

      Labour believe retirement should be funded by savings.

  5. Seeing as any given statistics from National are at best dodgy and at worst complete lies – I don’t actually think there is a surplus at all. It is simply clever creative accounting backed up by spin and a toadying media. It is a PR exercise designed to soften us up for another round of tax cuts for the rich, paid for by the poor. Immoral, corrupt and disgusting – the usual way that National operates.

    • Thanks for the link, a very good analysis!

      I notice a couple of things which aren’t expanded upon, things which are commonly said in our mainstream media without an explanation of what it means for actual people.

      “Treasury, Reserve Bank and other bank economists have commented that the current high net immigration is holding down wages” – you do hear regular people making a similar comment and the right usually responds with the assertion that it isn’t true. But here we have Treasury and the RBNZ saying yes, it’s true.

      If we allow large numbers of new immigrants into NZ who are from economies with lower wages than NZ then they will accept lower wages than NZers because that’s what they’re used to. Which lowers the minimum bid of cost of labour and keeps labour cheap for employers. It also increases the pool of labour, increasing supply which keeps labour cheap for employers.

      The winners are employers, the losers are NZers and the new immigrants… well on balance they’re probably winners. Overall not good for regular NZers.

      And then there’s this: “Unemployment is forecast to fall to 4.5 percent by 2018 (Treasury thinks anything less would cause inflation)”.

      It has long been a tenet of the left that government has an unacknowledged policy of keeping unemployment above zero, in order to keep wages down.

      What this means in real human terms is the economy is structured so thousands of NZers will not have jobs. They will be scrabbling, desperate to get a job, any job, because unemployment benefits are not actually enough to live on. So when they go to interviews they are desperate and will not negotiate a higher wage, they’ll take whatever they can get. And those on lower employment rungs know there are plenty of desperate unemployed ready to take their place so they toe the line. Great for employers, gives them plenty of “flexibility”. Horrible for poor people and their families.

Comments are closed.