Matt McCarten

Why a Robin Hood tax won’t work

The lunatic left all promote a ‘Robin Hood’ tax, aka a Tobin Tax or Financial Transactions Tax. Matt McCarten, himself a stranger to paying tax, even promoted it in the Herald on Sunday.

The problem with such a tax is that it doesn’t work, and it has been tried before with disastrous consequences..

James Tobin, a Nobel-prize-winning economist and disciple of Keynes, first proposed the idea of a global transactions tax—on foreign exchange—in 1972. This newspaper has regularly criticised it on two counts: it would be unworkable unless all governments signed up to it (and perhaps even if they did); and a levy would harm the liquidity of financial markets, making asset prices more volatile. Now there is a third, equally valid objection: that a Tobin tax is a poor solution to the problems in banking—too much leverage, too little care taken in assessing risks and banks that are deemed too big to fail.  Read more »

Cactus Kate improves Matt McCarten’s tax regime

Cactus Kate knows tax…especially how to pay as little as possible. She makes a few changes to tax cheat Matt McCarten’s tax regime:

Matt doesn’t like paying tax or dealing with the IRD so he is a poster-child for the changes suggested.

1. Abolish 15 per cent GST. Replace with 1 per cent financial transaction tax as recommended by the New Zealand Bankers Association. Same money.

2. Abolish PAYE on wages and salaries. Replace it with a wealth tax and a capital gains tax when shares, businesses, land and property are sold. People are taxed when they’re cashing up, not when they are making it.

3. 90 per cent Death Tax. You can’t take it with you. Grown-up kids should earn their own money anyway. And what a fabulous run on trust and estate planning this would be as well as retail spending.

4. Rent-to-buy Housing NZ homes underwritten by banks the state. Limiting children in current state funded homes to two a family and having a capital gains tax will keep welfareprices affordable.

5. State-created work schemes for all long-term jobless. Even if they dig a hole and fill it up again.

6. A living wage set at $20 an hour minimum. It would be a stimulus package. Especially when abolishing welfare for families and state housing.

7. No tax on all funds profits kept in a business or trusts.

8.Free public transport in Auckland major cities. That would get people out of their cars but not as much as congestion charging and tolls.

9. Victims get 100 per cent state compensation for loss or injury. Offenders will work it off if necessary.

10. Make KiwiSaver a state-owned fund and sell buy all the Government’s non-core commercial assets.

The shamelessness of Matt McCarten

Matt McCarten has a column in the Herald on Sunday where he claims his budget would do the trick. What would he know about budgets, he doesn’t even pay his taxes, or even file his tax returns.

There is a slight problem with Matt McCarten suggesting any sort of budget…he can’t even run his own union, stealing PAYE and Kiwisaver contributions which as far as I know he hasn’t yet paid back. If we all ran our households and businesses like Matt McCarten runs his union there wouldn’t be a cent in tax for him to spend in his budget.

A real game changer would be to get all tax cheats like Matt McCarten and lock them up in a debtors prison, until they cough up what is owed. Until he pays what is owed Matt McCarten should really shut the fuck up.

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“Hundreds” March – Asset Sales March Update

Oh dear. “Hundreds of Protestors”

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Radio Live/TV3

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Not thousands……hundreds.

Spies forwarded footage and Police reports of just 300 people tired old hacks marching.

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This matches Labour stooge Arena Williams’ glowing report via twitter. Wow 300 people!!  This woman is apparently a future Labour super-star.

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We know the numbers were that light because The Standard started the excuses early on.  They ran a mile from the debacle and silly comments from Ms Williams.  Old heads like Lynn Prentice know this was a cluster fuck of the highest order for the left.

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Rupert Murdoch on equality and the scourge of corporate welfare

At Quadrant Online, Gina Rinehart blogs about Rupert Murdoch’s speech to the Institute of Public Affairs:

I arrived in Melbourne in good time to neaten up for a dinner function celebrating the IPA’s 70 years. Although it seems a long way to fly from Tokyo for dinner, it was fantastic to see so many friendly and enthusiastic people. Thank you to all the friends and new friends who came to chat with me.

I spoke briefly, but it was the other speeches that made the night so worthwhile, including the address by IPA award winner Rupert Murdoch. He said the sort of things Baroness Thatcher would have appreciated because, like him, she strongly believed free societies are moral and socialism is not.

The speech she was talking about said this in main:

How often have you elected political leaders to fight against some horrible regulation or tax, only to watch as they basically agree to a watered down version of what their opponents are arguing?

Placating a nation is not leading a nation.

So long as we allow the debate to be framed by people who think the market is efficient because it is based on a human failing, we are going to lose every argument.

The only way to uphold market freedom is to show people that the market doesn’t succeed because of greed. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

The market succeeds because it gives people incentives to put their own wants and needs aside to address the wants and needs of others. To succeed, you have to produce something that other people are willing to pay for.

Of course the socialists would have you believe otherwise.

Matt Ridley is a British author who has given great thought to these issues. He wrote a famous book called The Rational Optimistthat many of you must know. He points out a few simple facts:

First, that today by almost any measure you can think of, people on this planet are better fed, better sheltered, and better protected than they’ve ever been – and that prosperity has really accelerated in the last 100 years. lndeed, that the average person’s standard of living has improved ten fold – yes, ten fold – in the last century.

Second, he says that the key is simply trade, or the interchange of goods, services, and ideas among people.

Let’s put this in human terms. Recently the World Bank reported that in 1981, 42% of people in the developing world had to live on less than a dollar a day. That is one-and-a-half billion people in poverty or starvation.

Thirty years later, the percentage has been reduced to 14%, a huge change in a relatively short period of time. What could be more moral than that?

This is unparalleled in history.  Read more »

Woodhouse gives Matt McCarten his beans

Michael Woodhouse has given Matt McCarten a good kick in the slats on Facebook.

woodhouse Read more »

Is Matt McCarten the new Shakespeare?

No, I don’t mean that Matt is crafty with the English Language, nor that his posts and columns are required reading.

More like he’s a tax dodger:

We don’t usually think of William Shakespeare as a hoarder, moneylender or tax dodger, but academics in the United Kingdom say we should.

Researchers from Abersystwyth University in Wales say the Bard was a ruthless businessman who grew wealthy dealing in grain during a time of famine.

In a paper due to be delivered at the Hay literary festival in Wales in May, they argue we can’t fully understand Shakespeare unless we study his often-overlooked business savvy.

They say Shakespeare the grain-hoarder has been redacted from history so that Shakespeare the creative genius could be born.

Ah yeah.  Rewriting of history.  Glad that doesn’t happen these days.

Matt will be a saviour of PAYE payers everywhere if we wait long enough.

Matt McCarten on Gay Marriage

Matt McCarten writes in the Herald on Sunday about marriage equality:

Inflicting marriage on gay couples is a foregone conclusion in this country and in other civilised secular countries.

Heh, everyone deserves a mother in law.

In the United States, 63 per cent of people now support same-sex marriages. Even the Mormon Church, which has funded large anti-gay marriage campaigns, has quietly given up its fight.

New Zealanders have always been more liberal than people in other countries. So it was a shock that two recent polls showed support for marriage equality was decreasing.

Supporters of MP Louisa Wall’s campaign for a law change blame the latest numbers on a late misinformation campaign organised by churches.

It won’t matter, it’s a done deal.  Read more »

Good point you raise there Winston, now take your own advice

I’m not sure Winston Peters is the right person demanding that people pay things back when his party still owes the taxpayer around $158,000 in rorted funds.

Winston hypocrisy Read more »

Radio Live at 1400

I am on Radio live with Willie, JT and Matt McCarten today at 1400.

Replacing Corporate Whore Matthew Hooton.

Tune in, or better yet call in.

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