Green Party Leader Shaw kicked off his election campaign by talking garbage about a topic that his Party knows little about - namely the relationship between the tax system & level of poverty in a nation. Specifically, he stated,
"We can choose to end poverty and ultimately it will be up to the voters to decide in October whether or not that's what they want to do."
Not true. No nation has ended poverty, not now, not ever. The Green's fake policy is based on a 2.5% tax on our "net" wealth (assets-liabilities). The Party magically thinks on top of achieving "net zero" carbon emissions it can add zero poverty. Why their obsession with the word, "net"? Did the pandemic mess with their brains? Do their MP's think they've got super powers to achieve zero Covid, eliminate the virus & end poverty, all whilst hitting zero emissions. Where did the bonkers extremism come from? What's wrong with them?
Net wealth taxes have fallen out of favor in the OECD and are being abandoned. In not one country where they were introduced was poverty ended.
The OECD report (with a link below) says that "there were only four OECD countries that still levied recurrent taxes on individuals net wealth taxes in 2017. Decisions to repeal net wealth taxes have often been justified by efficiency & administrative concerns and by the observation that they have failed to meet their redistributive goals".
Given net wealth taxes have failed to end poverty and are being dumped, why did the NZ Herald go & run the silly leading headline by its Deputy Political Editor, "Green's Wealth Tax Very Clever". No, the Green's net wealth tax idea is dumb. Very dumb.
Why don't the Greens stick to environmental matters? But most of all, why did the Party's Leader go out of his way to mislead Kiwis by saying its up to us whether we want to "end" poverty - that we can "choose" to do so by voting Green, when that statement is untrue"?
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