BEWARE – THE CAT HAS CLAWS

Swimwatch has discussed before the danger Nicola Willis is to New Zealand. She comes in lamb’s clothing but is a skilled and ruthless street insurgent. This week she is having a crack at Labour’s spending contribution to New Zealand’s 6.9% inflation.

Like all right-wing zealots her answer is to “cut spending and provide tax relief.”   

Willis goes on to say, “For context, this Government has increased government spending by an additional $52 billion between 2017 and this year,” Willis told Newshub Live at 8pm.

I’d love to know where the “context” in that distortion comes from. The “context” dear Nicola, is that New Zealand has weathered a pandemic in those years that has involved the provision of wage subsidies and the like to get us through. But like the lies she learned to tell in the Marsden School playground, Willis is happy to lie by omission – providing no “context” for her dishonesty.

Would she care if the waitresses at my favourite restaurant, The Grounds, went without pay during the lockdown? I doubt it. As long as Willis paid less tax, the suffering she causes waitresses and labourers is part of the fun of it all. For Willis and her mates watching manual workers suffer is better than a night at the opera. That is what the National Party means by context these days.

Of course, Willis was always going to have a crack at the Government’s decision to reform the bureaucratic structure of the health service. She takes the easy shot of saying the money spent on clerical efficiency she would spend on, “more operations, more services, better mental health care.” She seems incapable of linking a better management structure with, “more operations, more services, better mental health care.” An opposition that complains about everything usually comes up short on election day.

Willis went on to say, “National’s priority is providing tax relief.” Could that possibly be because she sees that as the best way to make more money for Luxton and Willis? I don’t know how many right-wing nut jobs have tried to convince the world that less tax will make everybody’s lives better. The greediest man in the world, Donald Trump, tried it and failed. Now the greediest woman in the Marsden school yard is promoting the same theory.

I can’t believe Willis is the Shadow Minister of Finance. Her knowledge of basic economic theory is less than mine – and mine is pretty bloody awful.

You see, Willis clings on to the idea that reducing personal tax boosts the economy. People will spend more. In addition, she has this idea that lower taxes will improve savings and investments and as a result the productive capacity of the economy.

However, this really is, “the big lie.” In the home of tax cut theory, the USA, their     Congressional Research Service found that a Willis style reduction in tax rates over 65 years “had no correlative impact on economic growth.9

It was left to Grant Robertson to ask the obvious question – what would National cut?

“There is no free lunch here, so if National is saying that, what are they going to cut?”

My guess is, “operations, services and mental health care.” As I have said many times before, New Zealand vote for Willis at your peril. The fields of Marsden School do not lie.  

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