The Government's working for families package is set to expand this Saturday. It really seems wrong to me that the welfare state is being extended so far into middle and upper income earners. You are considered rich if you earn over $60,000, and so are taxed in the top tax bracked (39%), yet under working for families you can be earning $142,000 per year, and yet still receive a benefit if you have six children.
This is seriously wrong. It is simply a massive exercise of income redistribution. Consequently, even fewer people in New Zealand will end up paying the taxes - many others will receive benefits which come close to wiping out the tax they pay.
And of course this is an extremely inefficient mechanism for doing so. The taxes are collected (with compliance costs for empoyers and employees), filtered around IRD for a while, and then in many cases sent back where they came from.
It reminds me of Sir Humphrey from Yes Minister. "We don't measure results - we measure activity."via vt 6105 lom
This is seriously wrong. It is simply a massive exercise of income redistribution. Consequently, even fewer people in New Zealand will end up paying the taxes - many others will receive benefits which come close to wiping out the tax they pay.
And of course this is an extremely inefficient mechanism for doing so. The taxes are collected (with compliance costs for empoyers and employees), filtered around IRD for a while, and then in many cases sent back where they came from.
It reminds me of Sir Humphrey from Yes Minister. "We don't measure results - we measure activity."via vt 6105 lom
Comments
The problem is not the redistribution of money to wealthy parents, but the philosophy that underlies the Working for Families scheme. Steve Maharey sees the scheme not as redistribution but investment. We taxpayers invest in the next generation because we will benefit from their economic productivity in the future. To Maharey it is simply intergenerational interdependency, but on a national level, so it is only fait that everyone has access to that support whether wealthy or not - that parents are paid for the contribution they make to society.Given this philosophy, as long as the Working for Families scheme exists it is only fair that all parents are rewarded for their investment in the future of our socialist state. However it would be better for the government to back off and allow families to rediscover intergenerational interdependence at a grassroots level.Traditionally it was parents that bpre the cost of the education and rearing of their children, and that helped their children with the costs of marriage and establishing a new home. There serious lack of a heritage, legacy and inheritence mentality among the baby boomer generation who hold the balance of power in our society today. The Working for Families scheme only serves to reinforce that, and redistribute parental authority to the government. It is Socialism at its worst, quietly disguising itself as "common sense" policy.via vt 6105 lom
What's wrong with Income Redistribution?via vt 6105 lom