I passed Socialist Aotearoa by thinking its just the extremists talking, the moderate left surely have grown up a bit, or at least invented some new tactics, but alas... see The Standard's latest offering in Nats step to the right with ACT, particularly check out this propaganda-pearler:"take the battle to Key and Hide"
"massive attacks on our rights and conditions as NAT-ACT implement the Shock Doctrine"
"JOIN THE FIGHTBACK." [Emphasis NOT mine]
Flatter tax. That means any future tax cuts will go exclusively to the wealthy. Most people will get nothing. [Emphasis mine]Really? Setting aside the fact that tax cuts to the top earners still potentially benefit everyone (as in let's pretend they do not) lets take a look at the confidence and supply agreement between National and ACT:
... National and ACT note that United Future favours reducing and aligning personal, trust and company taxes at a maximum rate of 30%. They agree that such a tax structure is a desirable medium-term goal.Yes there is stuff in the agreement about long term goals but the only thing all the parties are agreeing on right now is to aim for a maximum rate of 30%.
So now, lets take a look at the individual income tax rates:
Ok, so that's a crap picture but if you squint or go here, you will see that reducing the individual tax rate to 30% will impact everyone who earns more than $40,001 per year.
So according to The Standard, if you earn $40k + $1 you are wealthy. What planet do they live on that makes them think $40k is wealthy? Try living in a main centre with a family on that income, you might be able to get by if you are frugal but there is no way you could be called wealthy.
I suppose if you are a single, state-servant and can tap into state sector fringe benefits $40k might keep you in chardonnay.
Madeline. Have a look at our About. Since you are so hot of the 'facts', have a look at who pays for The Standard.
ReplyDeleteNow what raving group pays for this site? Are they from a US missionary group? Or is it one of the two M's.
Perhaps you'd check your facts before making an idiot of yourself and believing a fool like Whale
Gay NZ has some colourful ideas about our sponsors specifically advanced by members of the Labour Movement...
ReplyDeleteI looked at the link you provided and I think I understand Whale's confusion; under the heading Who Pays for This? "..in the spirit of a collective endeavour we get help from time to time from a range of people from the labour movement whose technical skills we couldn’t do without."
There is checking the facts and there is taking the word written on a website run by the labour movement. Not the same.
Nonetheless I am sorry if I got it wrong.
I notice, however, that this your only criticism of my post and you ignore my substantive points.
Do you stand by the claim that $40k per year makes you wealthy?
$41k? That's absolutely nothing - some posters have suggested that having a cellphone, staying at home in the evenings and enough change to participate in a text poll makes you loaded!
ReplyDeletehttp://halfdone.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/those-durn-rich-people-theyre-everywhere/
M: I was putting in the needle about your sites, by reciprocating your daft remarks about mine. It was me being ironic because it also is such an obvious smear.
ReplyDeleteI afraid that I tend not to actually read posts that link across. It is only if they say something interesting that I actually read them. In this case I've been picking up the argument while doing moderation scanning of comments at TS.
I scan linking posts in much the same way. You should try reading the number of comments or link posts that TS gets every day. I just scan for behavior and rarely for content (has to be a topic I'm interested in). Content is usually the preserve of the commentators to pick at.
When you read the About, you obviously did the same thing. You read the first para, but missed the paragraph about who actually pays for The Standard. If you look at the links in that paragraph, you'll find a copy of this months invoice.
The other day I had the pleasant surprise of having a number of right and left-leaners who comment on the site worried enough about the viability of the site (post election) to offer to help out financially. Apparently they believed some of the drek that Whale substitutes for facts. So I posted a copy of the invoice to show them that it wasn't a major issue to my wallet. It is paid for mostly out of my saving from not smoking.
I've had 10 months of people describing their own theories about TS without bothering to ask for information from one of the few people that actually know. Where they have asked, they've preferred not to believe. It has been an interesting exercise on observing people displaying a preference to believing what they wished to believe, rather than what people said.
It has become apparent to me that a lot of the people on the right have an issue about people doing things because they just felt like doing it (and not getting paid). A very sad viewpoint on life.
Anyway, back to the daily grind.
As it turns out, SP has a post lined up on the issue - should be up around 7am tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteOk Lynn, I have been on the end of enough smear campaigns to not want to participate in this one.
ReplyDeleteConsider my comments withdrawn, I too was just needling and I shouldn't have.
In the spirit of goodwill how about a link exchange? You link to right-wing bloggers anyway and you could be our first link to a left blog.
Links: I'll probably get around to it this weekend. I have a sweep planned to clean out the dead blogs (unless they have interesting back-content). Then a sweep of the blogs discovered recently that haven't made it into the roll.
ReplyDeleteI have to do it every few months *sigh* because of the nature of the medium. Right now of course there are a pile of blogs going to pasture. It is a reasonably major exercise that gives me bulging eyes for a few hours.
The new blogs do tend to get added when the authors are reading them.
I will need to run through ours too, we should be linking to a lot more than we are and of course we are finding the same thing with people hanging up their keyboards or changing addresses.
ReplyDeleteI am always fiddling with the blog, so much I want to do but finding the time...
Linked...
ReplyDeleteYou should try keeping up with the TS. We got the expected fallback last week to two weeks election. This week it looks like it starting to rise again.
Now the list of left blogs...
Thanks Lynn, I will update our links when I get home from work today.
ReplyDeleteI am keen to keep up with The Standard but it takes a lot more energy to post there than it does, to say, post on Kiwiblog where most people agree with me LOL!
Still, I really enjoy people coming to MandM and posting thoughtful critiques of our thoughts and the ensueing debate.
I think considered disagreement and the process of arguing it out really helps one to crystalise what one thinks on the issue and I especially like discovering areas where I was wrong - I like to be very clear about why I believe what I believe and very sure that I am right, as does Matt. We want to hold the best position on an issue, so as such we are not ideologically attached to the stances we lay out - we have no sacred cows. Present a sound, reasoned, rebuttal that can withstand our critique and we will concede.
I also think that there is a benefit in doing that publicly with a worthy opponent for the 90% of visitors who do not post but who just read but who are also interested in grappling with the arguments and forming a reasoned opinion.
So please pass on to The Standard's writers that they are welcome here anytime too.