Looking to Scandinavia for plan to fund projects
THE Government abandoning the proposed capital gains tax is good news. It is a divisive way of financing the projects we need the Government to run.
I cycled in Norway, Sweden and Denmark last year because I wanted to see if their reputation for consensus decisionmaking was still holding up. I am pleased to observe, as someone with a Danelaw Viking name, that it is. Their standards in all aspects are higher than ours.
The CGT would have led to more of our traditional contentious democracy and it is this, as an independent political advocate, I would like to see change.
Since 1984, I have advocated that we ditch all forms of taxation in favour of just one. A transaction tax, as money leaves every account — private, corporate, government, military, you name it, with no exceptions.
It would be totally fair if just one rate is applied to all. The same rate for the rich man on the hill and the little old lady down the road. By not taxing people or their wealth, the contention would begin to die out. Wealth does not divide us as a nation but usury does.
At present, the Government does not have enough income to meet all its needs. At a rate somewhere around just $3.50 for every $100 spent (3.5%), the Government would have enough for present activity.
GST has proved to be extremely unfair, favouring corporate enterprises. Every friend I know in business takes pride in what he or she can claw back from their GST payments, and only the poorest of our citizens pay 15% on all goods and services they get.
The real loss is in the large number of good minds that would be better deployed designing and building things we all need. By Scandinavian standards, our infrastructure (roading, in particular) is inadequate and causing unnecessarily high death tolls.
Accounting and valuation are professions that operate on past events. Those events have gone.
Let’s move on to funding the design (future event) and building (present event) of those projects we really need. Stan Lusby
Moeraki