Nationalising Savings

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Opposition superannuation spokesman Simon Upton reckons NZ Super payments will be dividends, not entitlements, under Labour's Prefunding Scheme.

Saturday, June 17th 2000, 12:00AM

by Philip Macalister

The most amazing - and sinister - insight into the Government's thinking is the way the Government views your taxes. The burgeoning tax take that a growing economy is generating is furnishing the government with big fiscal surpluses.

"Those surpluses represent increased national savings" Dr Cullen intoned. Increased savings? It's just other people's money that the Government has confiscated - money that they could have perfectly well saved and invested for themselves.

This is all part of Dr Cullen's grand superannuation fund which will see the Government become the principle investor in the economy (with all the skill and judgement that politically-run investment funds have shown in the past).

There is no sense anywhere that hard working kiwis made the dough the Minister is playing with. "The money we are spending is money we have raised" he said, as though he'd just floated a new venture. The money he's spending is money other people have earned and he has taken!

There are not many New Zealanders who regard taxes as a form of saving. The next step, no doubt, will be to describe benefits as dividends.

This is an extract from Upton-on-line, Simon Upton's regular newsletter. Upton is the opposition spokesman on superannuation.

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