Absolutely great read from Bernard Hickey on Hipkins’ wealth tax announcement and the treasury report released yesterday:
That’s it. It will now be almost impossible for a wealth or capital gains tax to be implemented within the next decade or two.
The future of Aotearoa’s political economy will now remain frozen in its stagnant, unequal, unjust, unproductive and unhealthy state for the forseeable future. That’s what our leaders, and ultimately the only voters that matter, have decided. Those hoping to change that frozen landscape should now look after themselves and their families, and/or hope and work for an electoral miracle that gives parties who want such taxes dominant positions in any post-election negotiation.
I think they are. Remembering how they were between 2008 and 2017, at least. It was mostly luck that a constitutional clause let Ardern rapidly be elected leader because it was so close to the election. Before that Labour’s image was endless infighting, and the inability to present a cohesive unit really hampered credibility of the messaging.
To me, at least, it seems the main way out of this would be if Labour lost the upcoming election, then somehow got its act together super quick to go back to arguing for a wealth tax, then National+ACT had a really difficult time working together so as to cause their collective popularity to drop horrendously in a short time.
Labour hasn’t made a secret of the fact that it would like a wealth tax. It’s just repeatedly committed not to do it, because it thinks that’s the best way to win over the small number of swing voters it needs which National and ACT are also obsessively targeting with fears about what to expect from a Labour+Green+TPM tax policy.
Yeah, this is interesting, eh - I guess labour are aware that Greens & Te Pāti Māori are picking up a lot of their votes on the left and are trying to court the centre voters National and Act are picking up - which makes some sense, but boy is it not working in their favour huh