Posts by BenWilson
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I imagine, being a movie, that it will not blindly follow the book's narrative. LOTR did not, and it made a better movie that way. There's only really enough material in The Hobbit for one movie, so I expect the difference will be made up with all sorts of alternate and backstory. Should be quite interesting in that regard, to see if a decent movie can just be plucked out of the notes of Tolkien. I think it likely that it would actually be a better movie in some ways, because the screenplay would not be limited by well known novel. If the Australians let us make it, that is.
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Oh, along with the traditional IT attitude that processes should be adjusted to fit the systems.
Certainly every respectable IT person should at least consider the cost/benefit of a change, and the alternatives that either already exist or could be developed. Usually they have a broader picture of the true cost because they have been involved from start to finish with such things many times, and understand that the bit where you write a dozen lines of code somewhere (or a hundred thousand somewheres more likely in this case) is a tiny little piece of the overall life cycle of change.
I've got no problem with change when there is a clear case for it, when the benefit is indisputable and/or the cost is low. But in this case, neither of those apply, and there are better alternatives.
I'm going with Russell's analysis, that this is the kind of policy that only Opposition parties can really be serious about, because it's not on them to actually come up with a workable scheme, fully costed out, with a reasonable benefit analysis, and a good look at how it's been done elsewhere and whether it really has actually led to any of the touted benefits. Do Australians really eat better than us because their GST system is 50 times more complicated? Or are most people who don't have good eating practices doing it for reasons that have jack-shit to do with tax?
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@Rich
Ben, bollox. You could replace all the relevant IT systems in the NZ grocery industry for a few tens of millions, which is a fraction of the saving to the public.
If it was only the grocery industry that paid GST on food that might make sense. Unfortunately every business in this country that even buys food as a cost needs to now take it into account, because they can't claim GST back on the food any more.
Furthermore there is NO saving to the public. Just redistribution, which I already said could be done in better ways.
If the systems had been built to support change in the first place, which granted they probably haven't been, the cost would be negligible.
But they weren't, and it isn't. It's huge. When GST was first brought in there weren't nearly so many computer systems in place, to start with.
Depending on the exact GST rules, small greengrocers and farmers would have their compliance costs substantially reduced as they'd no longer need to account for GST at all.
No, they also need to fork out to change their systems.
@steve black
When Howard brought in GST he promised that many of the other taxes would be dropped. They weren't. Or do you remember a few which were dropped?
Yup. Income tax dropped heaps. But I'm no defender of Howard or the way the ozzies did GST. It was a bloody nightmare, and even the accountants on the development team of 20-odd did not really understand it, or have a plan for how it could be done efficiently.
@andrea
why not bring in a flat tax for income tax? The "fresh produce" test is a relatively simple one.
That would be in most cases very simple, because systems are already set up to apply an arbitrary tax to each bracket, this number having changed regularly, and could just have that changed to the same tax, or the bracket widened. But quite aside from that, a flat tax would be an enormous change to the entire fabric of our taxation system and encompasses a great many issues of equity etc. Just charging less for fresh is something that could be easily done through subsidization, if it was a good idea (something I'm still not convinced about).
@Bart
However the fact I find it hard to believe does not mean that Ben isn't right.
Well, the Australian experience was different. They had numerous exemptions. But it all started (as Russell may be suggesting that I'm arguing) with the thin end of the stupidity wedge, and that was fresh food IIRC. Once that seemed like a good idea, it wasn't long before practically every product invented needed to be tagged in a database, or the calculation involved 30-odd questions to the poor programmers, and everything that poor people have to buy was on the table for exemptions.
I guess I simply don't see the business of the IRD as being about Social Welfare. We have other departments for that. -
We don't vote for power but for representation.
I can't speak for you, but I vote in the hope that the representatives I select might have some influence on power. Since the party I voted for has no influence on the ability of the legislature to pass laws, and holds no ministerial positions I lucked out. Ergo, my vote was worthless.
I hope you can see I'm NOT actually taking this position, but showing you that your reductio ad absurdum can go both ways. You drove to the ridiculous conclusion that Maori party votes were infinitely more valuable than NZF votes, based on the outcome. I'm showing it extends in the opposite direction. Basically, I'm saying that the relationship isn't the simple (outcomes/votes) ratio you're suggesting. It's much more complicated than that.
But I do agree with you, I think, on the whole, that the fact that the outcomes are far from equal is not ideal. I'd like to push towards ideal, whilst understanding that there's still going to be imperfection. Some of the imperfection even has strong arguments, like the thresholds and the Maori seats. I just happen not to agree with them.
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I totally oppose the idea of this exemption. The simplicity isn't just for purposes of economic purity, it also comes with a massive reduction in compliance costs. I say this as someone who was a programmer in a financial institution in Australia at the time that they introduced GST. It was a bigger project than Y2K. The cost of implementing a database lookup with a bunch of complex rules on top is orders of magnitude more than "multiply by x rate". There's millions of person-hours involved in fixing every single place GST is calculated in every piece of code written in this country. The real winners from such an idea would be accountants and accountancy programmers.
Promoting healthy food is a good idea but fucking up the taxation system so so that every system developer responsible for every system existing in NZ has to take account of this pissly rule, whether they're involved in the food business or not, is insane. Far better would just be for the government to subsidize fresh food if that's what they want people to eat. Or even better, just give more money to the poor people who might buy less fresh when it's a couple of % dearer. Or something.
As for the existing exemptions on financial instruments, they mostly make sense when you get right down to them. The financial system doesn't really deal in goods and services (and where they do, those things are subject to GST). For example, if I put money in the bank, you could call that a transaction, it's loaning the bank money. So you could argue that the government should get 15% of that. On top of the income tax they've already charged before I even got the money, and the income tax they will charge on the interest I receive, there would be no incentive whatsoever to put money in a bank. Nor would there be much incentive to borrow money either if it came at an instant 15% loss (on top of the interest you already lose). So there would be no banks. That's a pretty big change, brave would be the Minister of Finance who suggested that. If 15% GST were charged across the board on financial exchanges in NZ, the economy would grind to a halt within a few hours of the idea even looking like it might pass to law.
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Another way of looking at it is (at the 2008 election): a vote for NZF was worth nothing (despite being over 4% of the party vote) while a 2% Maori Party vote got them to overhang/hang over the parliament.
I read that as that the Maori Party vote was also "worth nothing", but that was created by overhang and the threshold, rather than just the threshold. I expect a lot of Maori voters saw this and cast party votes to something they thought would not be a waste. If there was no overhang and/or no threshold, this kind of tactical voting would not seem like such a good idea, and the Maori Party might get a lot more of the party vote. I very much doubt that their real support is only 2%.
- Does that mean Maori voters are worth infinitely more than NZFP ones?
That's reductio ad absurdum on the idea that a vote that doesn't yield representation is a wasted vote. It's akin to the idea that voting for anyone but National or ACT was pointless in the last election because they won, so everyone else got no power. Every vote, including "no vote", has some worth, transmits some information, generates some mandate.
- Should Winston Peters campaign in Maori electorates only since that would have yielded seats instead of wilderness?
Good luck with that, Winston.
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Ah, you're one of those funny people who doesn't re-read books
I have gone that way recently. But even if I turn back, I'm thinking nowadays that they're still better off down at the library between my readings.
Definitely the library has helped with a few decisions on what books to get for the kids, though.
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You can buy 1% alcohol content liquid or up to 40% alcohol content liquid, you can also be sure that the preparation of that liquid has been legally hygenic. You have to be a certain age and you can't get publicly wasted.
You can also legally make up to 100% pure (although 95% seems more practically likely), but you can't sell it. Drink that and you stand a good chance of dying horribly. I even know someone who did make some of that, gave it to someone else who did have to have their stomach pumped (they were both under-age). I'm yet to hear of anyone having severe health consequences from a small quantity of home-grown dope.
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I tend to agree with Craig, that the Maori seats aren't actually a good idea. But of all the things that could be fixed in MMP that one is way down my list. The dangers of Maori political overrepresentation just don't seem that scary to me. I'd sooner that the 5% threshold was reduced (which could make removal of the Maori seats seem less scary to Maori). Then the Epsom debacle would be less of a problem. Sure, we'd have ACT, but we'd also have counter-ACT. In fact, I think that it might even be likely that there would be a faction of ACT I would actually like. We certainly wouldn't have the major parties strategically deciding which electorates to give away so as to pick and choose who the threshold applies to.
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But for the legal drug alcohol all the study in the world hasn't really helped as much as society needs.
I guess that depends on how you define that need. If society generally decides that alcohol should be used more responsibly, many steps could be taken, both through rules and education. But I'm not convinced that the hive mind thinks that way. I really think that most people see alcohol consumption as individual choice, and the buck stops there, and social damage is the cost of the right. The benefit is that everyone gets to have as much alcohol as they want, and that's actually a huge benefit to the millions of people who enjoy it.
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