Polity: The Taxpayers' Union rides again!
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Angela Hart, in reply to
Exactly my point.
I guess there may be a substantial number of voters who want to leave everything to their elected representatives, but I’m not one of them. I want and expect to be included in early stage public discussions on major policy options. Experience has shown that many and varied viewpoints can point out potential problems and strengthen a policy or an engineering solution prior to implementation, saving cost and enhancing the chances of success. It is, in my humble opinion, stupid not to consult/discuss widely.
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A commenter Save NZ pointed me to a Canadian town Dauphin Manitoba where an experiment in a sort of GMI was trialled in the 70s. Until the oil shock/deflation etc killed it. The data saved is only now being uncovered by a researcher Evelyn Forget.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-mincome-experiment-dauphin -
Matthew Hooton, in reply to
Are you suggesting that political parties should not allow public discussion of significant policy possibilities?
I think that if you genuinely want a policy discussion, you need to put some parameters and/or numbers around what you might consider. Otherwise you're just saying to voters "hey, how about $200 a week?" out of any context. And if you don't do that, you can't then say that people are lying if they say, "well, if the looked like this, it would cost $X - is that what you are suggesting?"
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linger, in reply to
you can’t then say that people are lying
Repeating that assertion doesn’t make it correct.
As has already been pointed out on other threads, you can quite validly accuse people of lying, obfuscation, or bad faith if they base their example costings on assumptions they know to be unrealistic.
DPF and the TU very much a case in point. -
Matthew Hooton, in reply to
you can quite validly accuse people of lying, obfuscation, or bad faith if they base their example costings on assumptions they know to be unrealistic.
You assume bad faith, but a UBI has always been understood since first proposed by Milton Friedman among others in the 1960s to provide a basic income that someone could live on (basically - no frills of course), and for it to be universal.
If someone makes a calculation on these assumptions you can't say they are acting in bad faith, let alone that they are lying, especially if you then refuse to rule out any of these assumptions by saying "hey, $200 a week is just an idea, not a policy".
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James Littlewood*, in reply to
the UBI is at the “what if “stage
So why release it? It's one thing for a government to fly kites. But for an opposition? All that does is Key's own job for him, extinguishing the debate before it's even been had.
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Matthew Hooton, in reply to
extinguishing the debate before it’s even been had.
Except the debate has been going on since the 1960s. Unless they mean a non-universal universal basic income.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Even in my head I can guestimate $300 per week plus $85 per child would come to about $60b. If govt currently take more than $72b that's a great wack, but not "all their revenue". And it replaces most current spending (approx $25b) on social welfare.
Nor is that anything like the whole story. Wealthy people (like you and I :)) would be in a very good position to pay more tax. In our family we could afford another $770 a week - a vast increase in what we currently pay - and not be one dollar worse off.
Discussing the UBI by waving around big scary numbers without pointing these things out is not really doing the job either :) -
Joe Wylie, in reply to
...a UBI has always been understood since first proposed by Milton Friedman among others in the 1960s...
Not as preposterous as your claiming Nelson Mandela as some kind of champion of supply-side economics, but hey. nice try. The concept of a UBI was being discussed in far greater breadth and detail than anything Friedman proposed centuries before the Harvard school.
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Guess we can gather from the 'debate' this week that that the word "universal" is not a useful way of framing this now.
"Guaranteed income" or suchlike might have attracted less clutching of pearls and black/white responses. Would still have fitted Labour's 'future of work' framing too.
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James Littlewood*, in reply to
Not as preposterous
But preposterous, nonetheless. When was the last discussion of UBI in the NZ media?
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Jason Kemp, in reply to
Later, National can propose its own, with a different name, to wild applause from the usual suspects.
Actually National doesn't have to propose its own they can just continue on with Labour Party policies which are in effect UBI to all intents and purposes.
I wrote about this last week after watching Robert Reich at the #futureofworkNZ conference which as I understood it was a public way of open sourcing policy.
I only watched the one discussion but it was very clear to me that a formal UBI was seen to be years away but we need to talk about it now kind of tone going on.
I blogged
"His (Key's) support for the Labour Party “working for Families” allowances and tax credits is definitely a form of UBI even though he doesn’t recognise the policy intent."
in Robert Reich in NZ #futureofworkNZ – future of work
A few days later Bernard Hickey wrote in Bernard Hickey: Key fickle on minimum wages
To quote from Bernard:
"John Key described the idea, suggested as one of many at Labour's Future of Work Commission, as "barking mad" and "utterly unaffordable". In 2004, he described Working For Families as "communism by stealth", yet he kept that programme more than eight years as Prime Minister.
He is also a staunch defender of several other limited versions of Guaranteed Minimum Income New Zealand already has.
The biggest is superannuation, the minimum income guaranteed to anyone over the age of 65. Some argue it is utterly unaffordable in the long run as the population ages, but Key is not one of those.
Working for Families is another. It effectively guarantees a minimum income for families with children, albeit through a tax-credit system that supplements earned income, rather than an untaxed benefit independent of other income."Clearly there is a public policy debate needed. It should be much more of a zero base process though and accept that compared to many other countries we already have the equivalent of UBI style allowances built into our tax structures.
I would think that any future UBI style policies would recognise existing allowances and not just plonk extra expense on the top.
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BenWilson, in reply to
If someone makes a calculation on these assumptions you can’t say they are acting in bad faith, let alone that they are lying, especially if you then refuse to rule out any of these assumptions by saying “hey, $200 a week is just an idea, not a policy”.
The bit where it turns into bad faith is when it's claimed that these assumptions are Labour's policy, and then broadcasting that with a megaphone.
Yes, I understand why you'd do that, from a completely partisan perspective. If partisan is the perspective you want here, then is it any surprise to be called for lying? If you didn't want to be accused of lying, then perhaps a less partisan approach would have been advisable.
Instead of "Why the Labour's UBI is unaffordable", the framing could have been "A UBI with these assumptions is unaffordable. Without some of them, it's perfectly doable, and I believe it should be done". You can then chip your partisan bit in with "And National are looking at doing that". If it's true. I think it probably isn't true, which is why you wouldn't say that, because that would actually be lying. But maybe I'm wrong about that.
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Rob S, in reply to
+1 Thanks for articulating this approach by Matthew Hooten which comes across as disingenuous and only another attack line from National with their calling it "barking" and all tax and oh noes it will ruin us etc.
With the highest numbers they can pull out of their collective arses used to discredit an idea with considerable merit.
The Key governing terms have been one of the least progressive and do nothing periods of leadership our country has had. The main imperative of National is don't rock the boat and dismiss any other opposition ideas reflexively whilst smearing their leaders with lies and distortions.
Its big dairy will save us has bitten us in the bum and we're left with high house prices and lower income groups sinking into third world poverty levels.
The rich getting richer and the devil take the hindmost is all that they offer.
We have a charismatic salesman leading us with a tired pack of hacks rotating shift on cabinet positions hoping that no shit sticks to them whilst jostling for position for when he gets bored with the whole thing and ups sticks to Hawaii or wherever.
Christ what a shemozzle. -
Tom Johnson, in reply to
John Key is a poster friendly national boy, unlike bill e and donny b , yet still the same trump like caucus bullshit behind him.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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