Lindy, there's more to the NZ situation than market reforms. For a start the labour market is not free. It is highly regulated with employees "owning" jobs. People don't hire others because they then have employment law hassles.
Then there's the welfare industry, which is vast. About 30% of children now live on welfare. There are swarms of sickness beneficiaries [includes dope-smoking losers], Accident Compensation Corporation wards of the state [complaining of a sore back], Maori beneficiaries [taxpayer funded via Treaty of Waitangi racist rorts], unemployed [don't want to work for the money they can get at the jobs they can get], Domestic Purposes Beneficiaries [women for whom it's easier to have children and have the taxpayer pay than to get and keep a willing husband and father who will actually PAY for the result of his rooting], old people [I think they are underpaid since it's they who actually built the country - most of them anyway], thousands of criminals with excellent prison conditions [Sky TV and so on].
Then there are legions of government workers [who more or less work, sort of, at things which it would be better they don't do]. Teachers, medical industry, bureaucrats, meddlers, resource management act trouble makers by the thousand, local authority empires galore - layer on layer of them.
Over half the money spent in the country is spent by government people. It's about 60% or maybe 70%.
Income tax is 33% or 39%. Then there's GST at 12.5%, so immediately, before passing GO, we are up to 50%. Then, there's petrol duty [over half the cost of petrol/gasoline]. Tobacco [80% of so]. Alcohol [a lot]. Then there's local government rates [taxes] $2000 a year on incomes of perhaps $50,000. Permit fees for everything. Passport charges. You name it, if it moves, or doesn't, there's a government fee, inspection charge, impost or duty.
The water supply is a government department. So is electricity [more or less]. Telecom is a government established monopoly which charges a fortune for ADSL so there's not much broadband in NZ. I want to buy spectrum but it's all been given to Telecom decades ago and they don't want competition.
Reforms were half-baked at best. The government sector and control is huge and suffocating. I support act.org.nz But most people must like it as it is [though they moan they go on voting for more of it, like turkeys voting for an early Xmas]
Mqurice |
