Kevin.S wrote: •From the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, the gap between the rich and the rest widened faster in New Zealand than in any other wealthy country |
Tagit wrote: I think that if you get the principles right, the rest will follow. The principle of beating people for being successful is very 'Kiwi', but the reality is that it is a proven way to fail if taken too far. When it gets to a certain level those people start to jump ship and take their wealth to greener pastures. Same argument is proven by many places with super low tax rates having millions of wealthy people and companies domiciled in them that were not born/created there. Imagine how much tax they take even at super low %'s. Give people and companies enough incentive and they will take their toys to play somewhere else. This is the real world situation. Imagine if we has super low company taxes how many international companies might want to base themselves in a desirable location (the place and the work force available) like NZ. They then bring higher employment and better salary levels, so our PAYE collection goes up to help compensate for the lower corporate taxes. Same for wealthy individuals. The problem is how do you transition to this without years of low tax take as you evolve. The idea of taxing the wealthy end to prop up the low end is OK, and the wealthy will support it, but only to a point. After that the system is broken and will fall over. In a perfectly fair world every individual would contribute the same amount of $'s to our society via their basic taxes, with the variation coming in consumption taxes that are linked somehow to the financial impact of that consumption i.e. it is totally fair. Reality is that social harmony requires more from the wealthy to support the less wealthy, but even this compromise has a cost in overall wealth creation. Can anyone really supply a moral argument about why the wealthy should pay many times for in taxes than the less wealthy? All the real arguments are the pragmatic ones about social equality and social stability. They are completely correct, but they aren't about being 'fair', and they aren't about creating the maximum overall wealth. |
Joker wrote: As a famous British Lady once said - "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of someone else's money" |
onthedrop wrote: Quick google search yielded those numbers for me so not too worried about there accuracy but was pointing out that taxing higher earners is not a new concept. |
sr2 wrote:
Interesting investigation on 7 sharp tonight, it appears the "gap between rich and poor" hasn't changed for the last 20 years! http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10244667/Rich-poo r-gap-not-growing-report (You might want to re-examine your data source) |
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