Raglan Niall  May 27

#NZPol
Take time to explain the basics.

Wealth/asset taxes are generally based on 'Net Worth'. If you don't know what this means you will likely think an asset tax will hit you harder than the reality.

Your Net Worth is your assets minus your liabilities
Eg you have a $3 million house, a $2 million mortgage and $100k of loans. Your net worth is $900k and that's what a wealth/asset tax would be based on.

I thought a co-worker was trolling me when he loudly proclaimed he wouldn't be able to afford the Green Party wealth tax so he'd never ever vote for them. After asking some questions I realized he genuinely did not understand 'net worth' and after explaining the above he said fairly quietly, 'I did not know that'.
#Accounting #Econ
#Democracy #TaxWealthNotWork

Show threadWorik6d ago

@Niall

I see why people want wealth taxes, and I have (years ago) looked closely at them

The big problem is how easy they are to avoid in a society with economic freedom. I believe strongly in upper limits to private wealth, but I know no way to achieve it in a social system based on private property

Show threadWorik6d ago

@Niall so perhaps we should have a social system that is not based on private property.

That is harder to organize.

The attraction of capitalism as a social system is its incredible resilience. Been two centuries now, still going

Can we separate our social systems from our economic ones? I think we can, and that is the way forward

Show threadWorik

@Niall so I want to see from political parties:

Housing treated as essential infrastructure and planned.

Housing treated as an unalienable human right, not to be horded

Plannng generally. Markets find prices, they do not make plans.

Incomes policy. Prices at the supermarkets are not too high, incomes are too low

Education, healthcare and infrastructure to take the lions share of state revenues

A target of never letting government spending drop below 50% of GDP

May 27 at 9:12pmWeb
Show threadWorik6d ago

@Niall as for taxes the only taxes reliably paid by the rich are consumption taxes, and they are very regressive

But citizen dividends are very progressive

We should combine them

Increase GST (and charge it on overseas money transfers) to 25%. The extra 10 percentage points to be redistribute equally (yes billionaires in New Zealand, both of them, get it too) to anybody resident in Aotearoa with an IRD number

Do the dividend quarterly and make it ineligible for means testing calculations

Show threadRaglan Niall  6d ago
@worik I like the idea of citizen's dividends. I would rather pay for it from a carbon tax but that's a minor point.
Show threadWorik6d ago

@Niall To shave a minor point even finer a carbon tax is a consumption tax

I fear carbon taxes were a fantastic idea in 1997. A bit late for marginal instruments now, unfortunately as far as the climate catastrophe is concerned.