this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Yeah I like your ideas. I'm pretty sure the average voter thinks raising taxes means less money for them, so will vote against it.
It's hard to convince people of long term societal improvement when they are short term worrying about how to pay their mortgage.
For sure; though I also favour progressive taxation so would be targetting people significantly wealthier than the average voter for the most noticeable rises and new taxes (CGT). I also find simplifying the system by adopting a UBI to replace all the various forms of rebates, benefits etc sounds like it could be a good idea too.
Yes I'm a huge favour of establishing a UBI. But sometimes I have to ask myself if it's because I like people or if it's just because I hate WINZ (in my plan IRD will run UBI and WINZ will be a shell of it's former self).
It can be both!
It massively simplifies the whole system; and basically takes away a huge amount of work that is essentially stupid and/or punitive in nature and would hopefully then free up what is left over to focus on the social and health services side of what they're supposedly responsible for.
Imagine if a visit to WINZ wasn't about filling in a form and checking a box to confirm that yet, you did look for work, but no there still isn't any work that you can do (or whatever); and instead it was about them coming to you with help - how are you coping with your heating budget, here's some support to help you get more nutritious food without spending as much money.
I doubt WINZ could pull off the "helpful" angle. You'd need to build a new ministry from the ground up to make it effective.