Yes, tax paper gains dammit! Why taxing the Rich is like banning machine guns
I don’t think this attack tweet by ACT is as effective as they were hoping…
…Wait – it’s THAT easy? Sweet Fuck, I thought it would take WAY more than just taxing the rich! This is fabulous, tbh I was on the fence about taxing the rich, but an ACT meme convinced me it’s way more simple than I thought!
Try again ACT.
It’s ironic because ACT is taking so much in donations from the rich to protect their interests at the cost of society.
Bernard Hickey has argued, “We could have gotten $200 billion in extra tax revenues if only there had been a fair tax system which meant that capital gains were taxed at the same rate as every other type of income.”
In a liberal progressive democracy, it doesn’t matter what role you play in the complex super structure of our society and economy.
It doesn’t matter of you are a garbage collector, a dr, a nurse, a drain layer, teacher or tradie – if you all stopped doing your jobs the system can’t work.
Everyone deserves to share the collective harvest of civil society with public services and policies focused on the public good enshrined in the intrinsic civil liberties each individual has.
Wealthy individuals who become mega rich thanks to the landscape generated by those values are required to pay more back into the system they have benefited from beyond the bare necessity of ruthless accountancy practices.
These rich pricks have designed the system for themselves, ‘you can’t tax unrealised capital gains’ the Right scream, like bullshit we can’t!
Council rates are based on valuation and you can borrow against that capital gain.
If it means the mega rich have to sell a mansion or two to pay the tax bill, so fucking be it!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.
Let’s target this at the very rich so that the rebuild in necessary infrastructure can occur!
Listening to the rich scream unrealised value can’t be taxed is simply not true, of course we can tax it!
Taxing the rich is like banning machine guns.
When you start trying to ban machine guns, gun fetishists scream the machine gun you are trying to ban isn’t a machine gun.
They scream technical bullshit to explain a semi automatic gun isn’t a machine gun and that using machine gun is a loaded term because blah blah blah.
I say fuck that shit.
If it looks like a machine gun, sounds like a machine gun and kills like a machine gun, it’s a fucking machine gun and we are banning it.
Exactly the same with untaxed capital wealth, if it gains like income, allows you to borrow like income and provides like income, it’s fucking income!
Reserve Bank data shows land/housing value has increased by 600% since 2001 and the only reason it’s been allowed to go on like this for so long is because the State is too gutless to stand up to those creating wealth through property speculation.
Nationals 3 biggest donors (Hart, Mowbray and Bolton) have a combined net worth of 15 billion!
The Bottom 50% of NZ has 23 billion.
The top 5% of NZers own roughly 50% of NZ wealth, while the bottom 50% of NZers own a miserable 5%!
If you are not outraged at how rigged our capitalism is and how National and ACT are fighting a class war against the interests of the poorest for the interests of the richest, then bugger off Australia already!
It’s time the real Left stepped up.
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How much Tax did the Nact government get by introducing a tax on paper boys and girls again?
Rather TAX Paper boys and girls rather than TAX Paper Gains ???? B/S IMHO ????
It does give you another reason to vote for ACT too.
It’s amazing how mild universal democracy like education, health and defence for all is Act Party goals. That’s a mild form of class warfare.
The weaker or suffering has to fight for trannies. Let me give you an unserious comment but it’s a serious comment.
Fuck you Helen.
Ouch Sam, is ACT going to cut your benefit?
Ahh, the old all lefties are on the dole insult. How hackneyed, how predictable, how terribly trite. Perhaps you should remove that silver spoon from your arsehole, you pointless waste of space.
Of course they are not all on benefits, some are in Parliament. Or is that a Government benefit too?
Or are you just off your meds again? Your post makes no sense.
That you would promote Acts tax policies during a period of high inflation while pretending to be an online pharmaceutical expert and professor of the English language does produce nonsensical responses do you agree?
Where have I promoted ACTs tax policies? They aren’t what matters to me.
For many in the political world the aim still seems to be amassing more tax revenue, as much as $200billion extra, or other extraordinary amounts. However a long lost golden rule of economics is to not tax more than what is needed. I think a few simple tweaks, perhaps raise the top rate of Company Tax for example, a gradual reduction in the rate of GST, a lower tax rate for low income earners, and it (the tax system) would be about right. As for adding other taxes like a Financial Transactions Tax: why? We’re not recording years upon years of deficits. Many people are struggling, yes, but introducing additional taxes could easily exacerbate that problem.
Sounds like common sense Daniel
The fact the rich have coughed up lots of money to help get the National and Act parties in power says a lot. Why would the rich do this, what is there reasoning, are they not happy and why are they not happy and whose interest do they have at heart, do they even have a heart, these are the question NZers need to ask themselves before voting.
Oh and you are seriously delusional if you believe this is actually something Labour would do this close to an election, or at all really.
I totally agree with you Mart but the problem is back to attitudes as you can see any day of the week here on this column.
I still think FTT is as close to a winner as you can get.
And that the situation wont be solved until we introduce civics at primary school and maybe Uni. Our problem is twofold. “I work hard and studied hard to pay everything for my family therefore I am a good citizen”. That is a fundamental good thing which needs finessing because we know that while its laudable life isnt so simple and the second thought is “Aspiration(Greed) is good” – If I know someone who owns 9 houses, I can do it too and live the high life. That’s a hard one to get rid of because all our media (traditional and non traditional) is based on consumption and aspiration and even envy.
These are the fundamental beliefs that we need to change. Not because they are terrible because they are reasonable but as our Gen X onwards got further away from the second world war and started a huge drift from their communities people began to lose sight of others and what really matters.
You probably all think this is a bit of an ideological rant but I’m basing it practicality not ideology. This was reported in the Guardian and on Kiwiblog. The truth is the rich currently wont stand for wealth taxes no matter how much we need them.
The Guardian reports:
A record number of super-rich Norwegians are abandoning Norway for low-tax countries after the centre-left government increased wealth taxes to 1.1%.
More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv. This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, it added. Even more super-rich individuals are expected to leave this year because of the increase in wealth tax in November, costing the government tens of millions in lost tax receipts.
Norway has lost the equivalent of $90 billion of wealth since they increased their wealth tax. They have learnt that people and capital are mobile.
“It doesn’t matter of you are a garbage collector, a dr, a nurse, a drain layer, teacher or tradie – if you all stopped doing your jobs the system can’t work.”
This is thee gun….the only way (or one of) to fix the system, aka, get the political class to work for us rather than big money interests.
As for the rich and the bottom 50%, I’ve never liked either of these terms, they are unappealing because most of us either pretend or would prefer that we were in one and not the other. We should be talking about the wealthiest among us (and the many names that is more specifically associated with them – the 1%, the aristocracy, the billionaire class and so on) and ‘us’ in general, as in, the 1% own more wealth than ‘half of us’. No one wants to be in the bottom, no one, so its time we rejigged certain wording for certain situations. In short, in order to fight the wealthiest among is, we need to appeal to as many people as we can.
The problems we have as a country are a manifestation of 40-50 years of successive bad Governments with bad Government Policy, both Labour & National, just like Pepsi & Coca Cola they taste very similar and are made from very similar ingredients.
Just like Secondary Tax what a load of Bullshit, that is meanwhile the wealthy keep getting all the cream and are skinning the cat at the same time.
Just like Secondary Tax what a load of Bullshit, that is meanwhile the wealthy keep getting all the cream and are skinning the cat at the same time.