The snide privilege of those who mock GST off food

1. “Something must be done, this is something, so it must be done.”
   Sir Humphrey Appleby.

   • Sure we need to be compensated for the GST on food. But there are better ways to compensate than taking the GST off food.
     The answer is a UBI: give everyone in New Zealand, young and old, a tax-free weekly $30 to compensate for the GST on the average weekly food spend of up to $134.
     For a family a four that would be $120 a week. Not too horrible. You’d still have to tax the rich, but it would make more sense than tampering with GST, only to see the saving disappearing into the pockets of those on the production chain instead of reaching the consumer.
     This small UBI could become the foundation of a bigger UBI in the future.
     Support for a UBI comes from the unlikely quarter of the NZ Initiative’s Eric Crampton, as RNZ reports:
     It would be cheaper for the Government to offer a UBI, a weekly universal payment, than to remove GST from food.
     New Zealand Initiative chief economist Eric Crampton said the Government could offer everyone a near $30 weekly payment – double what they would save on food if GST were removed.
     “Removing GST from food is a pretty terrible idea. Any objective that you’re trying to achieve by taking GST off of food is better achieved through other mechanisms that do less harm,” Crampton said.
     “The Tax Working Group in 2018 showed that for the same cost to government revenues as a hole in GST exempting food you could provide a universal transfer to every household in the country that would give twice as much money to poor people as the effect of taking GST off of food for them.”
     So why will the Labour Government not simply announce the introduction of a UBI to help people cope with the cost of living?
     https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/494693/cash-handouts-cheaper-than-removing-gst-from-food-better-for-poor-economist

2. The G.S.T. never had public support in the first place. Why would average working people ever want tax burdens shifted off the billionaires and dumped onto them?

   • Why would ordinary people pay tax?
     Kristoff I would for better public services and specifically quality education and health care.

3. The is the very least they can do. But if they can do less than their very least, they will. This is the state of the modern Labour Party.

   Labour need a swift kick in the pants to get them to move. Vote TPM to give it to them.

4. No matter how many verys you write GST of food is very silly as a way to help the poor . You want to tax the rich yet want to give them a huge tax break by removing the tax from their wagu steak saving them $ 5 per steak at the same time as saving poor people 50 cents on their sausages. . Far better to give a direct boost to those that really need it .

   • Then why are we in the position we need a direct boost…? 9 years of National is why.

     • 6 years of Labour has done nothing for the poor or the rich .

       • oh really o’reilly the rich haven’t benefitted…really? you’re SOOOOooo full of it

   • Wrong gst off food is not a very silly way to help the poor. Sure gst off food gives a tax break to wealthy and top end middle class. But the simple fact is food is the only discretionary part of a poor persons money. Take gst off a poor persons $100 food bill reduces their bill to $87 and puts $13 directly in their pocket or buys more food or better food for hungry kids. Every economist accountant tax collector or rich prick who wines about inefficiency doesn’t need $13.

     Poor people already paid income tax, paid tax on petrol to get to work to get the income to pay the income tax and paid the council rates component of their rent, they shouldn’t have to pay tax on the food they eat to get the energy to get the money to pay all the other taxes. How will they get ahead when their expenses are disallowed to be claimed against tax like the wealthy can are privileged to do? How will they ever buy a home? Why was the 1/4 acre pavlova paradise stomped!

5. FTT as the only tax. Simple, fair, hardest to evade. It even encourages saving .

6. It is the very least they can do. It is insufficient and will be clawed back, eaten into and eroded by supermarket price increasing on non food items, by further interest rate hikes, food producer cost pass ons and the army of government bean counters needed to administer a complicated tax full of exceptions and legal challenges.
   Its typical Labour, don’t do whats really needed, CGT, wealth tax, transaction tax and redirect that cash back to the low and now middle and working poor oh no, lets give the rich the biggest breaks as usual.
   Fuck labour.

7. if GST is dropped from food, I think that the supermarket price gougers will keep the prices the same, or with a small change and pocket the rest. How can we trust them to do anything else?

8. Those who need this tax cut most have already been issued with community cards.
   Government should pay GST on food products on behalf of all community card holders and recover the cost from increased personal tax on those who earn more than $100,000 per annum.

9. Don’t worry, Labour will manage to somehow do a lot less.

10. Meh, it’s a nice idea in theory, but you already know so as to remain “budget neutral”, they will hike GST to 17.5% sooner rather than later (possibly at the same time). So while you initially pay less for fresh food, you will pay more for everything else, you know, things like not fresh produce, petrol, electricity, appliances, haircuts, etc. Don’t tell me they would never do this – GST (or VAT as it is known in Europe) is already at 17.5% (or more) in many European countries (but not on food though!). Needless to say they won’t be announcing this minor detail before the election.

11. Does anyone really believe that prices would drop by 15% if GST was removed?

12. The FTT taX HAD THE POPULAR SUPPORT BACK IN 1986/87 .
    But big business and the finance industry opposed it supposedly on the grounds they didnt have the means to operate it . So we got stuck with GST.

13. GST off all foodstuffs would make a huge difference to persons budgeting to feed families; if it does happen to benefit the rich more than the poor, so what ? Australians don’t do this, and nor do the Brits, but once again, in New Zealand, the children of the poor are getting penalised by sociopathic neolib politicians devoid of even the basic commonsense to consider the numerous negative outcomes for hungry and malnourished children.

    A Commissioner for Children, or a half-decent Minister for Children would be addressing these issues but they’ve been silenced too.

14. There will many many rubbing their hands in glee at the thought NZ may move it’s world envied GST system to the sort of systems used overseas. The system we have is Govt administration light so very cheap to run, it is near impossible to avoid/game and it is easy to manage by the people who have to do all the numbers and returns.

    The Aussies have GST on some foods but not others so they are constantly chasing their tails, at a huge admin cost. A chicken for example can be taxed 4 different ways depending on how it is being sold. That is a massive opening for companies/people to game the system. Besides it will achieve bugger all cost reductions for Rangi and Mary Smith on the street, to think it will is naive.

    The cost of living is directly related to the inability of the Government to spend smart. If they started doing that when they came to office we would not be where we are today, it is that simple.

15. Inflation is a direct result of the obscene amount of money printing that Ardern and Robertson did in order to, quote, “save us” from something we apparently needed saving from but didn’t ask for. You can’t increase the money supply by such a staggering amount and expect to not have huge inflationary pressure as a consequence.

    • On that basis the cumulative Q.E since 2008 ,explains the global explosion in property …prices.

    • True that.

    • Ahh, another, financial sitting on the sideline firing blanks economist genius!

    • 100% right. But taking less tax will give the poor a small break and if nothing else will give this government less money to waste.

    • Sure Fidel. It also somehow drove up inflation globally. Amazing accomplishment.

    • So I take it that from your response that you have issues of printing money for the GFC and CHCH earthquakes as well then?

16. I get from this excess profits from banks that are pushing up interest rates! That seems number one, inflation problem!

    As for GST on food instead of fresh food in food parcels, people should be given things to grow that are easy in pots, such as spinach and parsley – and vegetable kits. You also save on all the packaging and landfill.

    Most kids are taught growing food at school now, they just need the first steps done.

    “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.

    Should be mandatory that roadsides have fruit trees, likewise parks and state,communtiy and new build houses and apartments if they have a garden area.

    Food insecurity is only going to get worse!

    • save NZ. Much of what you say is right, but we’ve been experiencing unpredictable home growing conditions latterly. The foliage of my and others’ potatoes in containers was hit by a blight, and I’ve abandoned tomatoes after a couple of difficult years when they’ve rotted inside before ripening, and store bought ones have been the same. Some of the greens are still ok, but spinach is space challenging and beans have also slowed down. Bulk buying eg onions, even in small amounts, no longer works, as they rot or sprout, which they didn’t use to.

      Planting fruit trees in all state and council housing properties, and school grounds is a no-brained, but the often wasteful commercial growers will squeal like slaughterhouse pigs, and their imported seasonal workers depend upon their earnings to subside their economies back home. It should still be done – even of those once delicious Central Otago apricots are now tasteless.

17. I heard on Heather’s show on ZB yesterday the rant went on for hours.

18. But even if the laughable comic opera, that’s not that comical, which is the pretence of our gubbimint dissolved gst on everything we’d still have the problem of how gst got onto everything in the first place. Phil Goof was the gst peddling neo-liberal parasite embedded within Old Labour and until recently, the fucking of Mayor of Auckland and Auckland can only exist so long as the term logical fallacies exist so’s it can live beyond it’s means.
    GST is a tax on humanness. In fact, I’d argue that it’s not a tax in the conventional sense at all. I think it’s a crooked rort dropped on us by a fiefdom of Don’s who dreamed gst up to rort the general public albeit a little at a time individually, rather that than tax the living fuck out of the tiny minority of multi-billionaires, multi-millionaires and the four foreign scum banksters literally stealing record post tax profits from us with complete impunity.
    Kiwi’s are great at arsing about with the minutiae` of the rambling scramble of pithy details their corrupt MSM feeds us while we’re getting walked all over, exploited and abused by a hyper-rich power-group more than happily exploiting us with the help of a politic they, the roger douglas hyper-riche, has previously, legally corrupted.
    Read this, and don’t stop reading until it fucking sinks in.
    ‘Astonishment’ at lobbyists advising Transparency International on ethics and rules of their own industry’
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/494351/astonishment-at-lobbyists-advising-transparency-international-on-ethics-and-rules-of-their-own-industry
    The current blood sport of price-rorting is great! It’s fantastic! It’s opportunities knocking! The dirty banksters and their parasites like the real estate crim’s and the dodgy, essential-services cartels like supermarkets and fuel companies love you for falling prey to their scams. Go us, right!
    Since we no longer have unionism thanks to Block Head Jimbo Bolger and no proper and sharp toothed MSM players on our side there are only two things we can do. We can side with our primary industry and strike the fuck out of the debt pimps or we can write letters to the King of England and ask for a public, royal commission of inquiry. And in that, we should Cc in the all bought and paid for governor general because the crown will suggest you do that as a first step. I know, because I’ve already been there.

19. I can hear ‘them’ neoliberals warming up the voices to ready themselves for a round of, we’re ‘innit 4ewes!’ But not that!

20. Tax free electric cars, first year fees free at university.
    All Labour’s bribes benefit the middle and the wealthy far more than poor. .
    GST off fruit and vegetables is no exception.

21. ” …as if the NZ Herald gives a fuck about poor people! ”

    That’s NOT who they are misleading !

    The Herald were never a friend of post 1984 LINO despite the NZLP really ever formulating policy that would hurt the established privileged gentry despite the fearmongering of the bastions of unregulated capitalism like the Herald.

    I remember Tim Murphy ( now at newsroom ) editor of the Herald editor write some viscous editorials about the then Clark Cullen Labour led government when it looked like Don Brash might have a chance at removing Helen Clark ( 2004-05 )

    They have to have an enemy to attack ( when LINO ) looks like its going to threaten the Heralds constituency and manipulate free market opinion in favour of the Nasty NACT’s vested interests.

    But even Clark and Cullen never deviated away from the foundation of the free market so despite any tinkering the Heralds powerful supporters were never ever really disadvantaged or threatened.

    This snide privilege Bomber is the python spraying its venom at its victim before it goes in for the kill.

    Its just a rerun of recent history mentioned above but the difference is Luxon is no Brash ( former reserve bank governor ) and does not command Crosby Textor the propaganda ( possibly ) that the Shyster and his henchman used to manipulate the modern settlers racism and hatred.

    The only hope for a campaign of resistance is time , generation , continued awareness of the many growing victims of this current plutocracy and as it turns out Te Pati Maori who have recovered from their animosity and misguided loyalty of supporting the ” almost legal cabal and finally realised that what is good for Maori is good for our marginalised , destitute , financially raped and impoverished men , women and children regardless of tribal affiliation , sexual orientation and race.

22. Trouble is Labour are very simple. They wouldn’t get the joke about the maths teacher who couldn’t work it out with a pencil. Too vulgar for the middle class as it is too basic to consider innate human life. The world seems set not in concrete but in titanium. People talking about the microbiome and good soils and what happens in our bodies and heads from inadequate food are just too backward to be bothered with.

    What does a microbiome do?
    Microbiome refers to the group of up to microbes, or 1,000 bacterial species, that live in your body. This bacteria helps with digestion, destroys harmful bacteria and helps control your immune system. When you eat, only a small portion of nutrients are absorbed through the walls of your stomach.
    What Does Gut Microbiome Have to Do With Your Health?

23. The 5 comments say it all. Pah-thetic.

    Josie Pagani on Stuff in her headline said Labour had to do a big thing. I imagined talking about the longterm, ie nothing else now. Instead, free dental treatment and increasing the retirement age by one year to pay for it.

    This election is the last chance to talk about reality, and, mebbe … change it. At least in our small corner.

    I just can’t imagine James Shaw shouting, nor Davidson. I don’t know TPM well enough.

    Comfort now, mass death in 5, 10 ( probably) years. Climate change is always quicker than the predictions.

24. my only reservation is no gst what are you going to cut EXACTLY(not vague assertions about govt waste)but a list of actual programmes…with a govt too cowardly to tax the rich?

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