Paying The Ransom - Again

The rich aren't like us - they get bigger tax cuts.

WE’VE BEEN FED the same message for twenty-five years. Over and over again it’s been stuffed down our throats: "The Rich aren't like us. They have different needs. They follow different rules. They require different incentives." And if we’re all feeling just a little bit queasy this morning, it’s because we’ve been forced to swallow that same bilious stew of self-serving lies all over again.

There were moments when I thought John Key was a different kind of National Prime Minister. Times when I actually believed that the combination of a childhood lived under the protection of the Welfare State, and an adulthood spent accumulating enough wealth to snap his fingers at National’s paymasters, had produced something new on the Right: a genuinely compassionate conservative.

But, no. Mr Key has proved himself to be just another shill for selfishness and greed: just another defender of privilege and plutocracy.

Earlier in the week he was urging us not to react jealously, or enviously, to a Budget which has poured millions of dollars into the pockets of the people who deserve it least, while raising the living costs of those families most in need of relief.

"We can be envious about these things", purred the Prime Minister, "but without those people in our economy all the rest of us will either have less people paying tax or fundamentally less services that they provide."

Thus does the Prime Minister pass on to us the contents of the ransom note delivered to him by this country’s wealthiest citizens.

Translated into plain English, it reads: "We’ve got your economic system under our control. Hand over hundreds of millions of dollars – or your helpless little economy will be made to suffer, and you’ll never see Prosperity again."

And last night, Bill English paid up – just as every other Finance Minister has been forced to pay up since the 1980s.

It was a bad move then and it’s still a bad move. Negotiating with economic terrorists is as craven and foolish as negotiating with any other kind. Because once they realise you’re willing to pay for their co-operation, they will hold your economy to ransom again, and again, and again.

Of course Mr Key has attempted to paint the primary beneficiaries of Mr English’s "tax package" as good, hard-working professionals: "Those who pay the top personal rate fit into some of the core critical categories for our economy. They include doctors, entrepreneurs often, scientists, engineers, lawyers, accountants, school principals, nurses".

Well, no, actually. While it’s true to say that a great many professional people are on or slightly above the top rate, they are not the tax package’s primary beneficiaries. At best, most of the people Mr Key cites will benefit from Mr English’s largesse to the tune of about $40 per week. Of that about $20 will be swallowed up by the increase in GST, leaving them just $20 per week better off. Subtract the increases in most people’s ACC levy and these hard-working professionals might end up with an extra $10-$15 per week. Wow.

But even "generosity" on this paltry scale must be paid for by someone. Our public health system is about to suffer the death of a thousand cuts. Our universities will be forced to turn away more and more young New Zealanders. Our prisons will become ever more squalid – and dangerous – repositories for the victims of an economic system which has, for the umpteenth time, been unfairly skewed in favour of the Rich.

Perhaps it would all be bearable if, in return for the extra $300-$500 per week we’re allowing them to keep, our captains of industry, financial wizards and heroic entrepreneurs would guarantee the "step-change" this country so desperately needs.

But if History is any guide, that’s not what we will get. If History’s any guide, we’ll just see more of our industries fall into the hands of foreigners; more "Mum & Dad" investors lose their life’s savings; more holes in the ground; more half-finished palaces; more angry denials of any and all social responsibility.

And why, in God’s name, would we expect anything else? The Rich did not get rich by giving – but by taking. It’s what they do. It’s all they’ve ever done.

And until we stop meeting their demands – they’ll go on doing it.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 21 May 2010.