government – Page 61

Could The Government Fund Itself With A Georgist Tax?

One of the great political problems is how to fund a government. Governments cannot realistically be funded by donations, so they have to levy taxes. No matter how you slice it, levying taxes on the people will always create discontentment, and not levying them is often no better. This essay discusses whether Georgism might work for New Zealand.

Georgism is a political philosophy named after American theorist Henry George. The essence of it is the belief that, while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from land (often including natural resources and natural opportunities) should belong equally to all members of society. Income provided by things that are part of the natural world, and which do not depend on human activity to have value, should be the common property of the citizenry.

Georgist ideas were very popular a century ago, before the rentiers used their ownership of the apparatus of propaganda to persuade the population that government should be funded by taxes on labour and consumption. Since then, the mainstream media has normalised the idea of taxing labour and consumption, mostly by not allowing any discussion of Georgism, and by restricting discussion to a narrow range of pro-capitalist models.

Alt-centrism finds much in common with Georgist ideas. Georgism is a very alt-centrist approach to funding a Government, because it rejects the Establishment, and their focus on taxing labour. Georgism stands directly opposed to the Establishment because it is precisely the Establishment who profits the most heavily from charging rent. In taxing the Establishment the most heavily, Georgism accords with alt-centrism the most closely.

An Australian study suggested that heavy taxation of rents could provide up to 87% of the funding necessary to run the Australian Government. The remaining money could be raised according to a similar philosophy – i.e. it could tax other properties whose value did not depend on human labour inputs (such as oil and mineral royalties), or it could charge fees to use common property such as the electromagnetic spectrum and fishery stocks.

Georgism rejects the idea of levying taxes on economic activity that is the result of a direct human labour input. The idea is that tax on ground rents ought to be enough to fund the Government, and therefore that taxes on income would no longer be necessary. For a modern state like New Zealand, the numbers don’t quite add up, but a Georgist tax could be enough to slash income taxes.

According to the New Zealand Household Expenditure Statistics for 2016, rent costs comprised 31.8% of New Zealand’s total weekly housing costs, which were themselves 25.6% of the total weekly household expenditure of $1,300.

31.8% of 25.6% of $1,300 is $105, the average weekly household rent expenditure. Multiplying this by 52 weeks equals $5,460 every year per household on rent. Multiply this by the 1,500,000 households in New Zealand, and we arrive at a figure of $8,190,000,000 charged in rent money every year. This is just from household rents – it does not include commercial rent, rural rent, mineral royalties, banking license fees or fishing licenses.

The Australian study linked above found that the total resource rents of Australia were over two times the size of just the household rents – in fact, household rents are only about 40% of the total resource rents charged in Australia. $8.2 billion divided by 40% gives us a figure in the ballpark of $20 billion dollars every year.

The total operating costs of the New Zealand Government run at about $76 billion per year, so a Georgist tax of 90% on resource rents wouldn’t cover more than a quarter of this.

However, it’s notable that individual income taxes bring in about $37 billion every year to the New Zealand Treasury. A Georgist tax of 90% on all resource rents would therefore provide the leeway to slash individual income taxes by a half.

Another way to look at it is that New Zealanders pay tax of around $7,400 on income up to $48,000. So if there are 2,500,000 taxpayers in New Zealand, this suggests that a Georgist tax on resource rents in New Zealand could replace all income taxes up to $48,000 per annum.

Eco-Georgism is a variant of Georgism that gives special consideration to the environmental challenges facing humanity this century. This involves heavy emphasis on making polluters pay for the externalities that they introduce to the environment. This would combine the heavy tax on resource rents discussed above with e.g. carbon taxes.

21st century Georgism for New Zealand, then, would be the political philosophy of funding government activity through two primary means: heavy taxes on resource rents, and heavy taxes on all activities that cause environmental destruction.

In particular, ground rents on urban locations, such as city-centre shops and rental apartments, would be taxed the hardest. This is because such economic activity amounts to little more than parasitism. Shifting the burden of taxation to this kind of extortionate activity, and shifting it away from labour, will also make the economy not only more fair, but also more efficient.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

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New Zealand First Supporters Preferred National in 2017, But Not in 2014

A study reported in the mainstream media this week suggested that New Zealand First voters would have preferred that Winston Peters had gone with the National Party after the 2017 General Election. There has been much wailing and regret since the 2017 election, and the composition of the Sixth Labour Government is responsible for a great proportion of it. Numbers man Dan McGlashan, author of Understanding New Zealand, has the stats.

At the top level, the statistics do suggest that a slim majority of New Zealand First voters preferred National after the last General Election. The correlation between voting National in 2017 and voting New Zealand First in 2017 was 0.04, whereas the correlation between voting Labour in 2017 and voting New Zealand First in 2017 was -0.15.

These are very weak correlations – neither of them are considered statistically significant. The National one is positive and the Labour one negative, which does indeed tell us that the overlap between New Zealand First voters and National voters was larger in 2017 than the overlap between New Zealand First voters and Labour voters.

This does make Peters’s decision to go with Labour instead of National somewhat surprising. One explanation for it may be that Peters was judging his voters based on what they were in 2014.

In the 2014 election, the demographics of the New Zealand First voters were different. The correlation between voting New Zealand First in 2014 and voting National in 2014 was -0.34, and between voting New Zealand First in 2014 and voting Labour in 2014 it was 0.11. This correlation with National voters is statistically significant, which means the two groups are significantly different to each other.

So although it might be true that a majority of New Zealand First voters in 2017 would have preferred that Peters went with National, a majority of New Zealand First voters in 2014 would have preferred that Peters went with Labour, had he come to hold the balance of power then.

The reason for the change is the considerable number of Maori voters who switched from New Zealand First to Labour between 2014 and 2017. In 2014, the correlation between voting New Zealand First and being Maori was strong, at 0.66. New Zealand First lost the confidence of many of these voters during the next three years, and by 2017 the correlation between voting New Zealand First and being Maori had fallen to 0.38.

Because the correlation with being Maori and voting Labour is also strong (0.42 in 2014 and 0.58 in 2017), it can be seen that the shared Maori connection may have been enough to tilt New Zealand First’s loyalties towards the Labour Party.

A second point is that New Zealand First are nationalists, and concomitantly have a high proportion of people born in New Zealand among their voters. The correlation between being born in New Zealand and voting New Zealand First in 2014 was 0.69, and in 2017 0.54.

This high proportion of New Zealand-born voters makes New Zealand First very different to National. The low-tax, low-solidarity model of the National Party appeals strongly to those born overseas, and this is reflected in their voters.

The correlation between being born in New Zealand and voting National in 2017 was -0.41, which reveals the depth of globalist sentiments among National voters. The correlation between being born in New Zealand and voting Labour was 0.22 in 2017, on the border of statistical significance, but much closer to New Zealand First than to National.

New Zealand First, therefore, shares two very strong qualities with Labour that they do not share with National – a high proportion of Maori support and a high proportion of New Zealand-born support. These qualities may have been instrumental in making Peters’s decision.

So although it may be true that New Zealand First voters in 2017 would have preferred Bill English as Prime Minister, there are solid strategic reasons for Peters to have made the choice he did (whether he came to regret it afterwards must be the subject of a different analysis).

Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan and published by VJM Publishing, is the comprehensive guide to the demographics and voting patterns of the New Zealand people. It is available on TradeMe (for Kiwis) and on Amazon (for international readers).

Our Cruelty To Each Other Is What Keeps Them In Power

With another election fast approaching, many are taking the time to cry about the current New Zealand Government and how terrible it is. Few of these people are willing to take the time to consider that the alternative is at least as bad. As this essay will examine, they keep us like so many puppets on strings, and our cruelty to each other is what enables them to do so.

There’s no denying that Jacinda “The Unready” Ardern is a terrible Prime Minister. She looks and sounds every bit like an inexperienced young woman who would rather be at home suckling a child than trying to lead a modern nation. Making emotion-driven decisions with no apparent philosophical grounding whatsoever, she comes across as a horribly out-of-her-depth Marxist puppet.

Ardern rightly comes in for a lot of criticism, but what her critics neglect to acknowledge is that she only got in to begin with because the alternative was shit. This can’t be overemphasised. It was the utter shitness of the Fifth National Government – their hamfisted incompetence and psychopathic lack of empathy for the nation’s disadvantaged – that caused Winston Peters to finally say ‘Enough!’ and throw his lot in with Labour.

If the National Party hadn’t neglected the mentally ill by negligently underfunding the mental health system – something that was reflected in the nation’s suicide rate – they might have won enough votes to keep power. If they hadn’t proven themselves incompetent to deal with issues like medicinal cannabis law reform – something that saw African nations like Zimbabwe surpass us – they might have won enough votes to keep power.

Many on the right like to bitch about smacking, as if abusing a child was an inherent right that was granted with being a parent. These people have no respect for how appalling the rest of us find it. Society at large is also responsible for cleaning up the psychological damage caused by the trauma that smacking inflicts.

Again, it’s not reasonable to demand the right to abuse children and then complain when someone who opposes this gets voted into power. The right’s own cruelty, and their own stubborn, arrogant refusal to acknowledge that their cruelty is cruelty, gave the power to the left to put Ardern in charge.

By the same token, however, neither will the left have the right to complain when the National Party inevitably takes power again.

When the Labour Party decided to double the refugee quota to 1,500, they consigned tens of thousands of New Zealand women to the lifelong trauma of being a victim of sexual assault or rape. They did this in the name of wanting to appear “anti-racist” – in other words, to virtue signal.

Labour’s decision this week to lift restrictions on refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa was the sort of stupidity that will see many people turn away from them. The reason for those perfectly reasonable safeguards was the appalling rate of sex and violence crimes committed by men from the Middle East and Africa. The restrictions – in place since 2009 – will have had the effect of preventing hundreds, if not thousands of rapes.

What sort of evil would expose thousands of innocents to the depredations of people like Mohammad Farah, just for political capital?

Farah, who has sexually assaulted a string of women since coming to New Zealand as a refugee from Somalia in 2000, has repeatedly expressed the attitude that women owe him sexual favours – and he shows no sign of repenting. Why would he repent, when this attitude is common in his part of the world and is probably held by many of his male peers?

The Labour Party move will open the borders to more unrepentant sexual predators. More New Zealand women will get sexually assaulted or raped in the street, in local parks, at the swimming pool or in their homes. Grooming gangs will start up, preying on working-class Kiwi children of all races. Critics of the measures to open borders to the worst of the world will be pilloried, and threats to revoke their rights to free speech will be made.

Would it be any wonder, then, if vulnerable and marginalised Kiwi voters, demoralised by such insane moves, elected not to vote next year, and did so in sufficient numbers so that National came back to power? Simon Bridges (or Judith Collins) might well end up being another ignorant, cruel, out-of-touch autocrat, but they will only get away with it because of Labour’s own ignorant cruelty.

The only permanent solution is one based around genuine compassion for our own peers and neighbours. If we had the wit and will to take care of our own problems, rather than crying out to politicians like baby birds in a nest, there would be no reason to subject ourselves to the cruelties of the ruling class.

Labour can only get away with their bullshit because National neglected the mentally ill, the homeless and medicinal cannabis users. National will only get away with their bullshit because of Labour’s stupidity in opening the borders to cultures that believe women owe men sexual favours. If we Kiwis would govern ourselves correctly, with a long-term view informed by accurate science and genuine solidarity, we wouldn’t need either pack of scumbags.

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What The “Thug’s Veto” Means For New Zealand

Further confirmation that the New Zealand Justice System is comprised of arse-licking cowards was delivered by this week’s verdict in favour of the Auckland Council and Phil Goff, who had last year banned a couple of Canadian speakers from speaking at council-owned venues. Despite the fact that the ban was clearly a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the New Zealand High Court let them get away with it. This article discusses what this decision means for New Zealand.

It seems when the men and women of our Justice System aren’t locking up cannabis growers for years while letting repeat sexual marauders go free, they’re busy undermining our God-given and natural human rights.

New Zealanders have the right to free expression and the right to freely share opinions. This right is not only granted by the Will of God, but it’s also written into our Bill of Rights Act, Section 14 of which reads: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”

We also have the right to freedom of assembly (viz. Section 16: “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.”) and the right to association (viz. Section 17: “Everyone has the right to freedom of association.”) and the right “to adopt and to hold opinions without interference” (Section 13).

Therefore, New Zealanders had the right to attend the Molyneux-Southern talk, and the move to ban it was in violation of those rights.

The High Court decision clearing the Auckland Council and Goff from any wrongdoing sets a very worrying precedent. It’s now official in New Zealand that if you want to silence someone, all you have to do is threaten violence, and that person will be kept quiet out of safety concerns, and then the courts will take your side.

This is not the first time such a thing has happened. In Nelson last year, author Bruce Moon had been due to give a talk at the Nelson Public Library, but it was cancelled on account of threats made to library staff.

Neither those whose threats cancelled the Molyneux-Southern event nor those whose threats cancelled the Moon talk were ever prosecuted. This is astonishing – and deeply worrying – because both acts were undeniably acts of terrorism. Using the threat of violence to deny New Zealanders the right to assemble peacefully and to peacefully share ideas is terrorism by any honest standard.

What these two cases have in common is that, in both cases, the alt-left were the terrorists and they were motivated by a desire to silence those they perceive as political enemies. Central to alt-left mentality is a persecution mania revolving around a supposed Nazi resurgence. This persecution mania leads to alt-leftists justifying all kinds of abuses in the name of the greater good (yes, history repeats).

The worry for many, especially those who understand how free speech is absolutely vital to the correct functioning of civilisation, is that the cowardly High Court decision will give the greenlight to further threats of violence. Now that it’s possible to silence your political enemies by threatening violence, more of society’s dregs will be motivated to do it.

This is of particular concern to us, being a media enterprise that champions free speech. VJM Publishing, despite a committed adherence to alt-centrism, is in no way exempt from being targeted by the alt-left, as our Fan Mail column proves (we have also been targeted by the Human Rights Commission). Therefore, a High Court ruling encouraging violence against those perceived to be enemies of the alt-left must be cause for concern.

All of this is part of a wider leftist rejection of free speech as a tool that upholds oppression. As those who identify with the left continue to sink into Slave Culture, they will become ever more resentful of those with the ability to freely discuss intellectual ideas about political issues that concern them. This resentment, coupled with the High Court’s approval for threats of violence, means that future attacks on free speech are likely.

Unfortunately, as this column has previously mentioned, the left doesn’t care about free speech, or much else to do with freedom. They have happily drifted into authoritarianism, and they now fight for that. This week’s victory for the authoritarian left is a loss for New Zealand. The rest of us can only hope that the judgment is overturned on appeal.

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