The way election chatter tends to go is this: Some commentator has an original thought. They offer it as a reckon. 100 other commentators, for whom an original thought is really just too much to ask, then nod their heads like a bobbing dog in a car window as they say:
Yes, that. What he said. I reckon that.
Thus do we get 100 people all saying:
Tax will be the defining issue of this election
The campaign teams at National and ACT have been doubtless delighted to see it being framed in this way, wallowing as they are in online advertising funded by wealthy tax-haters, that says: tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax don't vote for them, vote for another three years of this absolute farago, this clusterfuck without peer, this three-headed atrocity born of a man who could not negotiate his way out of a paper bag and could not lead a Labrador with a bag of sausages.
Here's something I offer as a fresh thought. Imagine a continuum. It runs along a line that begins at 'In this country you pay hardly any tax all' and runs all the way to 'In this country you pay a decent chunk of tax'.
Now let's map some actual countries to this line.
At the no tax end we see:
Guatemala, Bangladesh, Haiti, South Sudan, DR Congo
At the other end, we see:
Denmark, Sweden, and Norway
What do you say customers?? Where would you prefer to live?
What's so frustrating about this election and about this clown Prime Minister is the unrelenting drumbeat of certain assertions that are just completely wrong and completely false and completely without foundation.
For example the stuff about how they inherited a train wreck. He knows a decent chunk of the audience will just accept this as certain fact and assume it to be true.
Likewise his framing that tax is bad and tax is wrong and the lower we get the tax the happier we all will be.
Well, here's another way to frame what he's saying.
What he and his ads are telling you is:
Hey do you guys hate tax as much as our crap plastic toy billionaire donors do? Which way do you want us to move the slider, everybody?
Away from Sweden and nearer to South Sudan?
Yeah good, that's what we'll do.
In other words, Kiwi Mums and Dads going forwards: Don't just assume that what he's telling you is true. Don't just assume it's right.
For what it's worth I'm going to try to put stuff into the conversation that helps clarify things.
And to supplement what I posted on Sunday, I've made a little quiz.
Click right here for the Trainwreck Debt Quiz and feel free to share.
