The
NBR rich list is in the news again, with Labour MP’s showing us what to expect when
they next take over the sand-pit in the Fortress of Legislation:
The rising wealth of those on the National Business Review Rich List raises questions about growing inequality in New Zealand, Labour MP Andrew Little says.The 2013 Rich List is bigger and richer than ever before with the total minimum net worth of members now at $47.9 billion, an increase of $3.5 billion on last year’s list.Graeme Hart again tops the list with an estimated net worth of $6.4 billion, up $400 million from last year.
When
you see mention of that word, inequality, it only means one thing for the Left:
the ledger has to be balanced up by the redistribution of taxation. Sorry, but
the majority of families in New Zealand earning under $60,000 are paying no net
tax after transfers, that’s near half the families in the country, while 12%
only of households, the high income earners, are paying 75% of the tax take. Never
was so much owed by so many to so few, yet the ruling ethic of a
philosophically bankrupt West is those few must be put to the Income Tax Act
2007 and plundered even more.
So
Graeme Hart and Bill Gates earn more than me: big deal. Doesn't mean their
lives are any better than mine; I have the money to buy everything I need, and
both these gentlemen and I squeeze through the toothpaste tube at the
same rate and that'll be the case no matter how much more they earn. All our
standards of living are unrecognisable to past generations thanks to the
industrial revolution and the innovation and wealth creation of free markets.
But to do what the social democrats are doing, regulating and destroying free
markets and forcibly taking the earnings these individuals and families have generated through risk
taking and entrepreneurship to 'even us all up', just takes all of our freedoms
away completely, and puts us living in the jail of Nanny State, our pursuit of
happiness destroyed. Best to leave people with their own
money, and create the right incentives for a free and prosperous society: don't
worry your neighbour might have more than you, because to 'fix' that you have
to legislate the surveillance state and subvert the civilised society
completely.
Before advocating legalised theft of other peoples' efforts, go rent a movie called The Lives of Others, and see if you really want to live in the world you'd have us all inhabit, Mr Little. Because that world ends in this:
Before advocating legalised theft of other peoples' efforts, go rent a movie called The Lives of Others, and see if you really want to live in the world you'd have us all inhabit, Mr Little. Because that world ends in this:
Great post Mark, I have been seeking to educate a couple of my well educated socialist friends (yes I have them) with the same realities. How can people learn so much yet know so little?
ReplyDeleteThe rot starts in the schools. 95% of secondary school teachers belong to the PPTA, similar for primary school teachers in NZEI. The founder of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci, said the free West would not be defeated by the gun, but grabbing the minds of the young.
DeleteInequality is fine with me as long as it's not generated by government policies to favor cronies.
ReplyDeleteBill Gates is a crony like his buddy Warren Buffet, I don't know much about Graeme Hart.
You have not considered the idea that the only dominant areas of economic growth are within those circles where the wealthy dominate. The wealthy are the ones growing, not the poor or middling classes. Free markets have not achieved economic growth for everybody, so to suggest that you are enhancing the freedom and liberties of all is a lie. In fact you could say that the growth free markets have achieved means that the wealthy continue to dominate and actively reduce the ability of most to grow and exercise liberties etcetera. Your argument relies on a trickle down affect, which has been resolutely debunked. Also, you need to explain why we should privilege the liberties and freedoms of so called "wealth creators" over other people. If the reason for this is because you correlate wealth creation with dessert - you obviously have no regard to the average working man.
ReplyDelete"In fact you could say that the growth free markets have achieved means that the wealthy continue to dominate and actively reduce the ability of most to grow and exercise liberties etcetera."
DeleteWe do not have free markets, we have markets hampered and distorted under the yolk of the state. The wealthy continue to dominate by the use of state coercion rather than free competition on a truly free and unencumbered market. Truly free markets are the great leveller providing opportunities for the poor and making the wealthy actually earn their money rather than siphoning it from the state.
To Anon:
DeleteDid your read my post?
I am 'the average working man' ... that said, we are all individuals and that term, average, says a lot about the rut your mind is stuck in.
Capitalism is what has made Western civilisation the best in human history, no other before us has had such high standards of living: it has been the civilisation to which those in stagnating, often cruel, planned economies have sought to escape, from the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, et al. It's just so sad that the West has lost it's way, taking the socialist path back to the poverty of mind, spirit, and actuality that it always ends up. Your comment, I'm afraid, is a shining example of this.
Question before we continue: what do you think a free market is? Define it for me?
In the meantime ponder how the wealthy can reduce my liberty when my every dealing with them, via the capitalist transaction, is made voluntarily, as opposed to my relationship with the state which is always coerced. As I stated on the follow post, which you also may want to read - Persecuting Rich Pricks:
http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/persecuting-rich-pricks-abc-of.html
Wherein I wrote, quote:
"Unfortunately my advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism - noting the crony capitalism we have is to capitalism what sea horses are to horses - has never been about money; it's only ever been about that wonderful, evolutionary thing that capitalism, and only capitalism, is based on - the voluntary transaction. I'm a freedom freak: peace baby, the true sixties legacy, not those suited communists in the Greens Party whose every policy is the advocacy of force. Only on the voluntary transaction can there be a voluntary, free society. I said unfortunately because this has meant that while I'm comfortable, I'm not rich enough to build a space station. That's what I would do if I had money in real quantity. I'd build a space station and remove myself from the ugly, brute society we've created for ourselves, yet again. As generation text say, 'I'd be outa here'."
And yes, re Gekko. Per my quote above, crony capitalism is to capitalism what sea horses are to horses. We don't have free markets now, nothing like it. But that wasn't the point of this post.
DeleteRegarding my latest post up regarding GCSB, the worst example of a crony capitalist in NZ is now Wynyard:
http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/tweeting-on-surveillance-gcsb-bill.html
"We don't have free markets now, nothing like it. But that wasn't the point of this post."
ReplyDeleteI know, my comment was in response to Anon. I'll check out your link though.
And of course my post should've said 'yoke' not 'yolk'. Or maybe, as the sickly fatty part of an otherwise nutritious food, it was probably quite appropriate for state interference in the market ;-)
"When you see mention of that word, inequality, it only means one thing for the Left: the ledger has to be balanced up by the redistribution of taxation."
ReplyDeletethis shows your complete lack of understanding. in fact the best way to reduce inequality is by making sure wages and salaries are more equitable. there is no way you can justify the top management of a company receiving several hundred times the income of the workers who produce the goods. a higher salary yes, but not hundreds of times higher. perhaps three times as high.
the various assistance mechanisms we have now, accommodation supplement, working for families etc, are all a subsidy by the government to businesses, so they don't have to pay a wage that allows their workers to live a decent life.
increase the wages across the board by 20% and you immediately increase the tax take by 20% or in fact more, as people move into a higher tax bracket. at the same time welfare expenditure goes down because that drastically reduces the need for accommodation supplements, benefits of various kinds and so on. at the same time it puts more money into circulation as those people will spend their increased income on a daily basis. that creates more demand which is good for businesses.
it may mean that the bloated profits of the super-powerful international companies go down a bit. oh what a pity.
if you're talking about movies how about seeing fire in the blood.
the most startling figures from that movie -
antiretroviral drugs, which can completely control aids, will cost $15,000 per year per patient in the united states. in africa millions yes millions of people died because the drug companies blocked the import of generic drugs from india. that is until a group of people broke the blockade and brought those drugs in. the cost per patient initially less than $350 per year is now less than $100 per year per patient.
so the drug companies for the sole purpose of protecting their obscene profits let millions of people die, so they could continue to sell $100 worth of drugs for $15,000
and the trans pacific partnership agreement that will perpetuate and extend that model is being negotiated in secret to further increase the power and wealth of those kind of companies, under the guise of free trade.
that's the picture of your capitalist paradise.
Carhy, I've got family 'events' basically all of this weekend, so won't be able to deal with an adequate answer until next week. Some random points in the meantime:
DeleteI don't have to justify what management of a private business are paid: it's none of my business, and if you make it the governments business then the little we are left of a free West is gone and we are the Soviet Union. I mean that. It's economic failure over long term.
You haven't read my post. I don't care about inequality. I don't care Graeme Hart earns more than I do. I have what I need and money is not a big motivator as far as my quality of life is concerned.
Ultimately wage rates relate to productivity: you can't just magic up an across the board 20% wage increase. The lack of economic and historical understanding is yours: those planned economies, dependent on planned lives, that have tried this have ended up only equal in poverty.
Our current Western economies are fare more planned than laissez faire: we don't have free markets. The dysfunction we see is due to the state involvement in it. We have a worse economic crash coming than from August 2008 because the planned fix for that has been more of what caused it, and the size of the state through Europe and US has not been reduced.
Getting closer to my point, do you understand what a free market is? It's merely as complicated as every individual in a society transacting voluntarily with one another in their pursuit of happiness. A peaceful meeting place. Put the fist of govt in that, the voluntary market is distorted and destroyed, the signals gone. That's why they can't even buy toilet in Venezuela:
http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/of-market-signals-toilet-paper-and.html
Markets aren't perfect, but left alone they correct malinvestment quickly, compared to the asset bubbles grown by central planners.
But here's the chief thing you've missed. Read through this blog, read my byline: this issue is about the free, voluntary society versus the state planned and coercive society. To tax me there has to be the surveillance state, and I resent that like hell. If you do nothing else please read my latest post, all of it, here:
http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/tweeting-on-surveillance-gcsb-bill.html
Also this post:
http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/the-westminster-principle-in-taxation.html
And while I'm at it, this:
http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/beneficiary-fraud-versus-tax-evasion.html
Thanks for taking the time to read. Apologies for typos, I've no time to proof this.
One more thing: there are few better examples of crony capitalist companies, able to game play regulation and have govts hand them licence monopolies, than drug companies.
Delete