Loomio
Thu 25 May 2017 5:12AM

Views on the 2017 Budget

DG Daymond Goulder-Horobin Public Seen by 107

What are your thoughts on the 2017 budget released today? I found a source which has the previous and this years number's which would be a good look.

breakdown of gains and losses in budget
http://insights.nzherald.co.nz/article/new-zealand-budget-2017

2017 glance (take it with a grain of salt)
https://www.budget.govt.nz/budget/pdfs/budget-at-a-glance/b17-at-a-glance.pdf

The Family Incomes Package looks like a clever trick to get voters to stay on National's side. Mostly because it is framed to be of great benefit to people with families but in reality it will not save that much for people with families as many people have been talking about (to the point when even David Seymour of ALL people actually criticized it). And secondly a large portion of voters are ones that have families so its part of the game that they target them for votes rather than the younger generations through policy such as this. Its framed in other words to have little benefit but create a perception of it being the savior of families with children which is the TM of mainstream

MM

Miriam Mallinder Thu 25 May 2017 10:21AM

I think that it is a clever move by National. I have seen sheeple vote in short sighted manners for an extra $1000 in their pockets before. Many public do not delve deep into Party policies, they just listen to the top end marketing, and make decisions on silly whims or emotions or literally follow the "in" crowd.

I think the Internet Party needs to put up a good case for its good policies ... to point out nicely and in a balanced, researched fashion that policies are the things to vote for, not a cheap bribe.

Examples I have seen:

In England the Halifax Building Society offered GBP 1,000 to every savings holder, and every mortgage holder if its members voted for it to become a Bank. It became a bank and almost overnight its service diminished. (for the record I voted against it)

In New Zealand the Government used an incentive of a gift of money for people to join Kiwisaver. You can't get out of it once you are in ('holidays' are limited) and you lose your freedom of choice, people run for the 'free money'.

To his credit the political reporter DID point out strongly that National was clearly buying votes. Yay for some balanced journalistic comment for a change eh.

LY

Loui Yukich Thu 25 May 2017 4:24PM

working for families is a lot of hype it should be called working for employers

its one of the biggest mistakes Helen Clarke ever made as the nett result is to subsidise low waged employers rather than increasing real wages which is the actual problem

its a joke

the money should be moved into increases in the minimum wage to at least $25.00 an hour and putting the cost on to the mean fisted employers rather than the tax payers

yet again the Tories out flank Labour and they struggle to come up with any real social democratic response

just more neo liberal clap trap

regards

LJY

DG

Daymond Goulder-Horobin Fri 26 May 2017 3:09AM

Indeed, and again with this new "Family Income Package" some misinformed voters will run to the establishment thinking that they will save them from poverty and starvation when in reality it may save a few dimes for families while our Universal Basic Income policy (UBI) which we have planned will at the very least provide the basic needs to those in struggle.

UBI is one of our solutions to fix this instead of simply raising the Minimum Wage as employers will simply readjust there Marginal Costs of Production and fire employees, or outsource production somewhere overseas such as China. the UBI does not change Costs to the firm and would even encourage more production (though prices would increase slightly.)

You should be able to find it on the Loomio thread :nz:

DU

Ryan Mon 3 Jul 2017 4:07AM

The other good thing about having UBI instead of increasing wage, is that companies would see some extra profit flow back into the shifted economy anyway when people have excess money left to spend on top of no longer worrying about living costs.

So companies could potentially profit share that back to employees....meaning that one way or another the wage gets a nice little boost here and there...but it's across ALL Kiwis regardless of whether they have a family or not.

This is more fair than simply offering a small monetary incentive to win a targeted group of voters in the short term, instead of actually planning for the entire countries future in the long term :)