Rodney Hide has written a much better columns for the NBR than the silly one in the Herald about trains. He begins with the prescription for ending poverty:
Ending poverty is easy: abolish income tax, remove all controls on foreign investment, eliminate welfare, get rid of the minimum wage and make employing someone simple contract law, i.e. no employment legislation, no Employment Court and no personal grievances.
The country would boom and there would be jobs for Africa.
Productivity would go through the roof.
Wages would skyrocket.
The majority of Parliamentarians know that’s true.
But they don’t do anything positive to assist the poor or to reverse New Zealand’s relative economic decline. Aaah, they explain, politics.
I could never figure out what that meant. I was missing something. And I spent a great deal of time finding out what it was.
It’s this: there’s no cause-and-effect thinking in politics.
Deducing policy consequences requires a chain of reasoning that political reporters and most voters can’t be bothered with. It’s requires thought and it’s hard. I forgive the voters. Their vote won’t make a difference to the world. So why waste time thinking about policy impacts?
