Dear Mr English, I don't want a tax cut

[aprilia_RS250]

My research is going to have potential long term benefit to NZ and to NZ industry. From my research more money will be earnt in exports, more people will have jobs and the environment will be better off.


Haha I have a feeling you're writing a thesis that'll pitch for the export sector to pay more tax wont ya! Because those dairy farmers really do earn too much with all that land, livestock, milking machines etc. Then the tax money can be spent on buying tree seeds and get people to plant them! AWESOME.

[Winston001]

Guys guys, try not to personalise this topic. Governments of all colours are obliged to make broad-brush policies and there will always be individual anomalies. The way to look at the Budget changes is to think of how other people will be affected by them - not you personally.

To keep myself grounded I relate money to loaves of bread. $26/wk is about 9 loaves which interestingly our household would consume in a week. So its a significant sum. If you don't need it, fine, support a charity. Again $26/wk is about what I donate to charity by auto payments.

I think the Budget is too generous given that the govt is borrowing $250 million/wk just to fund govt expenditure. We have become too generous as a nation and need only look at Greece for the eventual results.

[Flatcap]

I think the Budget is too generous given that the govt is borrowing $250 million/wk just to fund govt expenditure. We have become too generous as a nation and need only look at Greece for the eventual results.

Generous? How is taking less of my money generous? I'm being generous giving as much PAYE as I do...

Or are you saying govt expenditure should be cut more? If so, I agree

[Tank]

Generous? How is taking less of my money generous? I'm being generous giving as much PAYE as I do...

Or are you saying govt expenditure should be cut more? If so, I agree

Indeed - lets start with cancelling unemployment benefit for anyone after 12 months unless they do say 30 hours community work per week.

[rainman]

Have you had your feelings hurt for being denied a more senior role??

Not at all. I've looked at those in more senior roles and decided I do not want to join them. That is not the way to enlightenment.
I have been fucked over by a business for quite unjust reasons, with a large amount of lying and cheating involved, but that's just the ethics of making money. A.k.a. none. No hard feelings, just how it works.


In all seriousness, given we were never going to see anything that showed political courage or economic imagination from the current pack of idiots (as opposed to the last pack of idiots), this budget is probably not bad on balance. Predictably it offers little that isn't formulaic and very predictable, and probably won't actually change much, but it was better than I expected.

A good summary. But then I had pretty low expectations.


And that ladies and gentlemen, is the mentality of the right.

I wouldn't generalise, necessarily. Tank is quite especially mental.


Interesting. I'm curious to know who would pay money for strategies from someone who sees no value in research or education and who so readily jumps to incorrect conclusions based on ingrained assumptions.

Not to mention the inherent short-term thinking underpinning his pronouncements.


I think the Budget is too generous given that the govt is borrowing $250 million/wk just to fund govt expenditure. We have become too generous as a nation and need only look at Greece for the eventual results.

These tax cuts are not neutral as was claimed, either - there will apparently be greater borrowing as a result, and the inflation forecasts sound a bit horrendous. Haven't drilled into the details of it yet though.


Indeed - lets start with cancelling unemployment benefit for anyone after 12 months unless they do say 30 hours community work per week.

Sure, 'cos you can feed the kids and pay the rent from community work. And there won't be any increase in crime or hardship, and besides, they're just filthy bennies...

BTW, how do you expect people to job seek when they are working for free for 30 hours a week?

Using community work to build skills and move people off benefits = good. (But it does need jobs to be there for them to move to. Many people lack the skills or capital to create these on their own).
Using it as a stick = stoopid.

Hope you don't charge too much for that strategic consulting....

[Tank]

I wouldn't generalise, necessarily. Tank is quite especially mental.


OK - I have to admit - that did make me laugh :yes: a nice Green Bling for you.



Sure, 'cos you can feed the kids and pay the rent from community work. And there won't be any increase in crime or hardship, and besides, they're just filthy bennies...

BTW, how do you expect people to job seek when they are working for free for 30 hours a week?

OK - that was a troll - we can drop that one - we can only argue so much :love:


Hope you don't charge too much for that strategic consulting....

Enough that my nice new tax break can buy me a new KTM. :Punk::Punk::Punk:

[aprilia_RS250]

BTW, how do you expect people to job seek when they are working for free for 30 hours a week?
Using community work to build skills and move people off benefits = good. (But it does need jobs to be there for them to move to. Many people lack the skills or capital to create these on their own).
Using it as a stick = stoopid.
Hope you don't charge too much for that strategic consulting....

Oh it's soooo hard, all these poor people that need to work for the money that the government dishes out them out. Where is the justice?

This type of left wing mentality really starts boiling my blood.
FFS you do community work for 30h a week and you can't find a job..... Ummmmmmmmmmmm you are awake for 16h a day, you have 80 free hours during your week, you allocate 30h to work then the rest for job hunting. It's not that hard you soft cocks.

Now the question of skill and capital... Boohooo. Newsflash! Everyone in NZ is entitled to free education, then for tertiary you take out a student loan. If I could come out of varsity with a loan and pay it off then anyone can.

If you're unable to find a job and can't expand your skills and you live like this for years and years then I don't want to give you my money via Tax and I won't have any sympathy for you.

[Eyegasm]

This has to be the best explaination of the way tax works blatantly stolen from Stuff.co.nz

Heres a good hypothetical to explain the tax system, for all of those unfamiliar with how it actually works. Enjoy!

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.

But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings). Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’
‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’

‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

[Delerium]

Watched an interesting mike more film last night. capitalism, the love affair. Raised some good points.

[Smifffy]

Oh it's soooo hard, all these poor people that need to work for the money that the government dishes out them out. Where is the justice?

This type of left wing mentality really starts boiling my blood.
FFS you do community work for 30h a week and you can't find a job..... Ummmmmmmmmmmm you are awake for 16h a day, you have 80 free hours during your week, you allocate 30h to work then the rest for job hunting. It's not that hard you soft cocks.

Now the question of skill and capital... Boohooo. Newsflash! Everyone in NZ is entitled to free education, then for tertiary you take out a student loan. If I could come out of varsity with a loan and pay it off then anyone can.

If you're unable to find a job and can't expand your skills and you live like this for years and years then I don't want to give you my money via Tax and I won't have any sympathy for you.

Personally I'd be happy if they did 15 hours a week, and it could be washing dishes at the meals on wheels, or boxing parcels at the foodbank, cleaning up graffiti, anything really. Quite a while back my wife was out of work, and not on a benefit, but she went to the SPCA shelter every single day - not for a full 8 hours, but she went. She would do whatever was required from selling raffle tickets, to cleaning cages/pens, doing adoptions etc. One day somebody came in and offered her a job. (It was a job that turned out to suck, but that's not the point lol)

[Coldrider]

Hey there Tank, I have set myself up in life and I pick and choose the contracts I accept to work for and how much I will charge out and the rate, and I work much less than 40 hours.
Want to tell me what to fuckin do?

[Tank]

Hey there Tank, I have set myself up in life and I pick and choose the contracts I accept to work for and how much I will charge out and the rate, and I work much less than 40 hours.
Want to tell me what to fuckin do?

Hey there Coldrider - Glad you have set yourself up. I dont give a fuck what you do - how many hours you work or what you charge. Unless you are a prossie - then just send me your rate card and any specials..

[Coldrider]

Hey there Coldrider - Glad you have set yourself up. I dont give a fuck what you do - how many hours you work or what you charge. Unless you are a prossie - then just send me your rate card and any specials..I told an IT contractor on Tuesday to go jump, it wasn't you was it?
You seem to an ill informed opinion of others in this thread in their situations, why not me?

[Tank]

I told an IT contractor on Tuesday to go jump, it wasn't you was it?
You seem to an ill informed opinion of others in this thread in their situations, why not me?

Nope - and Im not a IT contractor. (So much for ill informed opinion's huh). But good on you for telling him to go jump - he probably had it coming for one reason or another.

I'm entitled to my opinion's of people - as they are entitled to theirs - informed or not.

"why not (you)?" - basically because you are of no consequence to me and fall below my level of interest.

[Coldrider]

"why not (you)?" - basically because you are of no consequence to me and fall below my level of interest.No, it's because your opinions are weak founded and you have no balls.

[Tank]

No, it's because your opinions are weak founded and you have no balls.

Meh - I like my opinions and I reserve the right to base them on whatever I wish - weak or not. As for having no balls - sigh - great comeback.

[Coldrider]

Well that is one way of throwing the spade down

[Tank]

Well that is one way of throwing the spade down

Thats racist - your not allowed to call them that anymore.

[Coldrider]

Is that an opinion?

[Tank]

Is that an opinion?

I believe if you live in a all white suburb its call political correctness. If you live in a 'brown' surburb I believe its call common sense.

[Coldrider]

We may need the spades for all the cycleways we are supposed to be building, or are they cut from the budget too.

[Tank]

We may need the spades for all the cycleways we are supposed to be building, or are they cut from the budget too.

I have no idea (But - I have to agree with the cycle lanes being a silly idea)

[avgas]

Gotta love politicians and their PR companies - they can make people excited about getting ripped off.
I especially like the ones that tell me the unemployed have something to contribute.
Some even believe that we should pay them for this privileged.

I check its not me holding them back - must be god.

[sinned]

BTW - remind me, has anyone mentioned how this budget is a step in the right (correct) direction for NZ. Oh yes I like too and I will have no trouble deciding what to do with the extra cash which is now mine rather than the gummits.

[mashman]

BTW - remind me, has anyone mentioned how this budget is a step in the right (correct) direction for NZ. Oh yes I like too and I will have no trouble deciding what to do with the extra cash which is now mine rather than the gummits.

just don't go spending... just hope that cost of living doesn't go up... just hope that food prices, fuel, electricity, gas, cigarettes (doh!), booze or anything goes up in price for that matter...acc levies (double doh) etc... or you'll be giving it straight back lol...

[Brian d marge]

Yeah, and "equal shares for all, kill the rich" worked really well in Russia didn't it.

???????? Focus now , its NZ we are talking about . ( cant be arsed replying much more than this .suffice to say I suppose the trickle down theory is still alive and kicking

Sorrythats a bit harsh , From memory , if you look at the first few pages of the road to Serfdom by Heyak its a good read!

Stephen

[Coldrider]

tax cut will be gobbled up in inflation within 12 months, then its lose lose.

[Smifffy]

just don't go spending... just hope that cost of living doesn't go up... just hope that food prices, fuel, electricity, gas, cigarettes (doh!), booze or anything goes up in price for that matter...acc levies (double doh) etc... or you'll be giving it straight back lol...

FFS that was going to happen whether there were tax cuts or not. Are you suggesting that none of those things have risen in the last 8 years anyway?

Don't worry about it anyway, once the tories have pissed off enough chardonnay swilling liberal academics that think they know how the rest of should live our lives, then they'll get voted out and we will go back to being taxed into oblivion, but at least then the cost of living, food prices, fuel, electricity, gas, cigarettes (doh!), booze, ACC levies (double doh) or anything else will start to come back down thanks to the increase in tax eh?

[SPman]

OECD researchers have just declared that New Zealand already has one of the lowest tax burdens among OECD countries!

[Toaster]

Shame they couldn't just drop the bottom tax rate off so everyone got the same increase in net pay. That would have been more "fair".

GST and RWT are then collected off the resulting spending and saving anyway. Raising GST is just bollocks and will blow inflation up negating any benefit to the average kiwi earner. When people get tax cuts they spend or save and both are blimmin well taxed anyhoooooo.

[Toaster]

tax cut will be gobbled up in inflation within 12 months, then its lose lose.

Correct.... the interest rates will rise with the OCR and push up prices further as interest costs get passed on. The RB and major banks have already flagged this some time ago.

Being an average kiwi really is like waiting at the bottom of a sewer drain. They just keep dumping crap on you.

[Coldrider]

...... pissed off enough chardonnay swilling....There will always be those that have no class.

[mashman]

FFS that was going to happen whether there were tax cuts or not. Are you suggesting that none of those things have risen in the last 8 years anyway?

Don't worry about it anyway, once the tories have pissed off enough chardonnay swilling liberal academics that think they know how the rest of should live our lives, then they'll get voted out and we will go back to being taxed into oblivion, but at least then the cost of living, food prices, fuel, electricity, gas, cigarettes (doh!), booze, ACC levies (double doh) or anything else will start to come back down thanks to the increase in tax eh?

:rofl: there may have been a hint :shifty: of sarcasm in my post... I think someone mentioned inflation before... but i think that was a joke...

[aprilia_RS250]

tax cut will be gobbled up in inflation within 12 months, then its lose lose.

Yeah because wages will never go up again...

[Coldrider]

Yeah because wages will never go up again...you have no skills to trade?

[Coldrider]

So why is that tax is legislated for, and yet to get receipt of a benefit or allowance that is qualified for is not?

[Winston001]

So why is that tax is legislated for, and yet to get receipt of a benefit or allowance that is qualified for is not?

Yes it is, Social Security Act 1964

have a look here, knock your socks off :D http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1964/0136/latest/DLM359107.html?search=ts_act_social+security_resel&p=1

Oh yeah - you'll need the Regs too http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/results.aspx?search=ts_regulation_Social+Security_ resel&p=1

Enjoy!

[cowpoos]

ingrained assumptions.

Careful....You may regret that statement. Something Phill Goff knows alot about ;)

[Pussy]

Careful....You may regret that statement. Something Phill Goff knows alot about ;)

Bugger off, Poos.... he doesn't know that much about anything! :)

[cowpoos]

No, it's because your opinions are weak founded and you have no balls.

Well to be fair...Tanks Opinions may actually be at a level above your station...and they are pretty balanced.

So you probably don't understand them...Don't feel bad...I'm sure you have your ow merits!!

[Coldrider]

Well to be fair...Tanks Opinions may actually be at a level above your station...and they are pretty balanced.

So you probably don't understand them...Don't feel bad...I'm sure you have your ow merits!!I only read his trolling with Shrub, and thought it was bad taste. I am not interested in Tanks financial opinions or yours.

[cowpoos]

OECD researchers have just declared that New Zealand already has one of the lowest tax burdens among OECD countries!

errrrr......that staement without the backround facts and conclusions....not to mention how they calculated the ratings...is not very true.

[rainman]

OK - I have to admit - that did make me laugh :yes: a nice Green Bling for you.

Good on you for having a sense of humour!


FFS you do community work for 30h a week and you can't find a job..... Ummmmmmmmmmmm you are awake for 16h a day, you have 80 free hours during your week, you allocate 30h to work then the rest for job hunting. It's not that hard you soft cocks.

Um, Tank was trolling, but now that you mention it: I'm glad when people do community work. Be nice if more people did, tbh. I assume from your comments you do 30h a week? After all, you have 80 hours free, less 40 for working, 30 for community work, you'd still have 10h for telly and pissing around. No? Or are you a soft cock? :)


Now the question of skill and capital... Boohooo. Newsflash! Everyone in NZ is entitled to free education, then for tertiary you take out a student loan. If I could come out of varsity with a loan and pay it off then anyone can.

I was talking about starting and running a business, not getting an education.

I think you might be misunderstanding my view of welfare. In an ideal world I would like everyone to be in productive work. You may have heard of this as "full employment". Unfortunately it's not an ideal world, and:
- Some are completely incapable of working, through illness or disability (physical or mental)
- Some are not very motivated
- Some have diminished capacity, for example they are not able to do physical work due to an injury but could do light duties/admin
- There are varying levels of capability available and required - some are unskilled through lack of education or experience, some are just not very bright bulbs. Some people are good with "book learning", some are more practical. Some are very smart and highly talented, just not much practical use. Some are good with animals, some with engines, some with neither. This is just common sense.

Now, combine this with another dimension - the jobs available to be done, which also have a range of attributes. In the ideal world, the highly capable people have highly demanding jobs suiting their skills, the partially capable have jobs requiring what they are capable of, and everyone inbetween is also neatly matched to a job they can do. Hell, since it's an ideal world, make it a job they actually want to do. Assume everyone is rewarded commensurate with their effort (be careful, this may not mean what you think). Sounds like the paradise that is frequently called for here - everyone is pulling their weight, everyone is being rewarded, no-one is slacking. As people develop better skills they can climb up the ladder into better jobs and better reward. This is pretty much what can happen in the course of a single person's career, innit? Problem is a whole society does not work this way - you can't just scale it up.

For one thing the incapable and not very capable won't be able to support themselves - and sometimes the presently capable, through accident and illness, become the no-longer capable. Shit happens. Faced with a choice between "let the fuckers starve" and "let's give them a hand", the non-sociopaths among us opt for the latter. (Feel free to disagree here, but remember, we're all watching). Where this support cuts off is debatable, but it's pretty clear it's required.

For another, a modern economy measures success in money, rather than the well-being and capability of the citizens, so provision of employment and employees is largely left to market mechanisms. Now the market is reasonably effective at delivering ballpoint pens, or motorcycles, or takeaway curries, but it's not so hot at providing jobs and skilled people to do them. Reasons for this are complex and I hesitate to type yet another loooong post, but timing differences, domain complexity and sphere of influence/scoping issues are the main ones that spring to mind. And the fact that incentives along the supply chains are often decoupled. As a result, whereas we usually have about as many ballpoint pens in the right range of colours available to us, we usually have too many or too few skilled people, or the wrong set of skills, and often too few jobs. Like now. Those that are left out after the end of each round of musical chairs need support like the others, but to assume they are incapable themselves (or useless) is just illogical.

This mismatch is what makes us inefficient (apart from it making some people's lives really bloody miserable), and as it's been in place for a while we have built some entrenched positions, which often war with each other along predictable lines. Problem is no-one's actually trying to solve the real problem. This is a policy issue:
- Where people are incapable, but can be made capable, we should invest in developing them. (Although this is a piece of logic that escapes the average Kiwi manager, so I don't hold out much hope for the rest of us getting this).
- Likewise where people are unskilled, we should invest in upskilling them, so that they can contribute to the mission of the society.
- Where they are unmotivated, we should understand why and encourage them to change (carrot and stick)
- All of us are learn at different rates, and to different practical limits, so i may be that some will not grow as far as others. We should seek to provide meaningful jobs for people at a range of levels.
- Those who excel shoud gain reward, but we should not tolerate limitless and unseemly greed.
- All of this needs to be managed across time, dealing with changes caused by technology and other external factors

Not easy. But the alternative is just discarding people on the junkheap of society. Sink or swim. Unsurprisingly, this is not sustainable, and I'd say flatly unethical. Another reason why i think neo-lib hyperindividualism is just immature selfishness disguised as a political philosophy - it's not very evolved or skillful.

Of course, all of this assumes we have a common identity based around a nation-state, ideally with some sort of vision/social mission, with proper reporting and measuring - and that we haven't just become money-chasing corporate droids. Oops.

Alternatively, imagine it's like you are running a business (NZ Inc) where your staff can resign and leave if they want (and lots have been leaving to go work for a competitor), you can hire as many new ones as you want, but you can't fire anyone, or make people redundant. Anyone who leaves can come back later and you have to hire them again, at least at minimum wage. All the people who are not active for whatever reason must just go sit in the corner, and you still have to pay them minimum wage. And you are still under pressure to grow the bottom line so you can carry on running the operation and making payroll. Plus your share price will go down if you go into the red and have to borrow. You've already hocked off a lot of the furniture to pay the bills. What strategy would you follow in order to succeed?

[MisterD]

???????? Focus now , its NZ we are talking about .

You're the one that brought 1930's Germany into the discussion...

[mashman]

blah blah blah :not::not::2thumbsup

Brilliant post...

The policy is obvious, well to me it is... but the too hard basket still isn't full yet... NZ inc needs to change its business culture...

[Winston001]

Good on you for having a sense of humour!
Alternatively, imagine it's like you are running a business (NZ Inc) where your staff can resign and leave if they want (and lots have been leaving to go work for a competitor), you can hire as many new ones as you want, but you can't fire anyone, or make people redundant. Anyone who leaves can come back later and you have to hire them again, at least at minimum wage. All the people who are not active for whatever reason must just go sit in the corner, and you still have to pay them minimum wage. And you are still under pressure to grow the bottom line so you can carry on running the operation and making payroll. Plus your share price will go down if you go into the red and have to borrow. You've already hocked off a lot of the furniture to pay the bills. What strategy would you follow in order to succeed?

Nice post and I've only clipped this bit because full comment could take pages. :D

As a starting point I believe NZ Inc is in good shape, particularly if we include quality of life as a measure of success. NZ has a beautiful and compact, stunning landscape which I don't believe is echoed anywhere else. Long deserted sandy beaches, rugged bush covered hinterland, fertile plains, alpine mountains to rival Europe, and fast flowing clean rivers. We even have arid quasi-desert regions. Yes I know, water is the cause de jour and we can find pollution if we look hard enough but most of our rivers and streams are still sparkling. NZ wouldn't be a fishing mecca otherwise.

On top of that our food is fresh and plentiful. We have modern infrastructure and technology. No-one need starve or lack opportunity. And lastly - there are sod-all of us. Its hard to describe how unique this vacant space is. I've been to India where privacy, peace, and quiet is virtually impossible. There are people absolutely everywhere. Treasure our solitude because most of the world doesn't have it. Asian tourists find the vast silent spaces of the South Island frightening because it is literally alien to them.

The downside is we live half a world away from our dominant Western culture. We seek - and have, the wealthy lifestyle of Europe and the USA but keeping it is the trick. NZ survives only because of trade. We produce very little of what we take for granted - motorcycles, power generators, cell phones, trucks, etc are all purchased from other nations.

I would like to see some sort of national conversation where we all become aware of the realities of being isolated - both good and bad. It would take 10 years and ideally we'd coalesce as a people with common accepted goals. One reason for Irelands industrial success (yes I know they are having a tough time right now) is the homogeneous nature of the people. When the Irish govt proposed subsidies for international businesses, both employers and unions spoke as one and supported it. By contrast we fight each other and nastily too. You can't achieve much that way.

[rainman]

Nice post and I've only clipped this bit because full comment could take pages. :D

Sorry... Maybe I should start a blog.


I would like to see some sort of national conversation where we all become aware of the realities of being isolated - both good and bad. It would take 10 years and ideally we'd coalesce as a people with common accepted goals....By contrast we fight each other and nastily too. You can't achieve much that way.

Spot on. I was saying to someone the other day that it would be OK to have an honest conversation about the "tough stuff" we might have to face, as long as it was honest, non-ideological, and acknowledged past successes and failures... Pigs might fly, though.

Anyway, I've strayed way too far off the tax topic so maybe I should leave with a recent parting quote from Nouriel Roubini (who was predicting trouble in the US quite a while before it happened): "From here on I see things getting worse.... What needs to be done is clear. We need to raise taxes and cut spending. Otherwise we're going to get a fiscal train wreck," he said. "It's going to take years of sacrifices." Maybe worth a think.

[Brian d marge]

[QUOTE=Winston001;1129760111]Nice post and I've only clipped this bit because full comment could take pages. :D

As a starting point I believe NZ Inc is in good shape, particularly if we include quality of life as a measure of success. NZ has a beautiful and compact, stunning landscape which I don't believe is echoed anywhere else. Long deserted sandy beaches, rugged bush covered hinterland, fertile plains, alpine mountains to rival Europe, and fast flowing clean rivers. We even have arid quasi-desert regions. Yes I know, water is the cause de jour and we can find pollution if we look hard enough but most of our rivers and streams are still sparkling. NZ wouldn't be a fishing mecca otherwise.

Are they ? http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/3097651/Manawatu-River-among-worst-in-the-Wes ( I doubt the reasoning but no smoke without fire )

On top of that our food is fresh and plentiful. We have modern infrastructure and technology. No-one need starve or lack opportunity. And lastly - there are sod-all of us. Its hard to describe how unique this vacant space is. I've been to India where privacy, peace, and quiet is virtually impossible. There are people absolutely everywhere. Treasure our solitude because most of the world doesn't have it. Asian tourists find the vast silent spaces of the South Island frightening because it is literally alien to them.

Your food is too expensive ( Tokyo is cheaper trust me ) infrastructure yes you do have it , State highway one? the overlander ? metro linK ? Airports excluding fields with a hut , ala napier

People from Hokiado may want to disagree with you about those wide open spaces , though I myself do find the wide roads and high speeds a bit of getting used to , but then I dont know how the average Kiwi could cope with our roads try 50 km down your drive way for a idea

and i am sorry there is no way u have the life style of europe , Hungary is similar and trust me better

ON the SURFACE NZ is good , but sorry I wouldnt want to live there ( I dont, REDNECKS nows your chance ) it is a nice place , but sorry other places are equal if not better ,, and I have lived in a few countries

At the moment I have a new house with all the mod cons , only work 5 hours a day , a 2 year old car, education is good , health care is excellent , beer is , almost free , 3000 yen for all u can drink . whiskey is 20 bucks for a scotish single malt ..... should I go on?

Sorry but this godzone thing is a myth

75 % ( according to national radio ) is on around 40 000 , whats that about 700 a week? I reckon ( and of course I am not sure on this because I can only get from internet )
but u would need to be on 1000 to 1200 a week to have a reasonable standard of living ( 3 bedroom house , car, garden , utilities internet ( not dial up ) education food etc)

Someone correct me if I am wrong

Finally, snip ( The ESRI also suggested that: Our forecasts suggest that Ireland’s economy will contract by around 14 per cent over the three years 2008 to 2010. By historic and international standards this is a truly dramatic development.<sup id="cite_ref-61" class="reference">[62] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Tiger#cite_note-61))

and the rest </sup>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Tiger#Consequences

but this bit I really agree with, but this is a western trait of individualism , ie I am right sod u

s, both employers and unions spoke as one and supported it. By contrast we fight each other and nastily too. You can't achieve much that way


Stephen

ps I tried quickly to multi quote but it went pear shaped , and I have to run so soory for the format

[Brian d marge]

You're the one that brought 1930's Germany into the discussion...

working on a reply hang on

[Brian d marge]

Just a quick question it is related , what happened in the early 1990s that suddenly made tertiary education user pays ?

Stephen

[MikeL]

Just a quick question it is related , what happened in the early 1990s that suddenly made tertiary education user pays ?

Stephentwo things happened:
First, an ideologically driven shift in the perception of tertiary education, from what economists term a "public good" to a "private good". That is, the purpose and benefits of education were seen as mainly personal rather than societal. This is part of the swing away from the political approach of the 1930s to 1970s (in which social justice, equality and the role of the state were prominent) back to a more individualistic approach in which the role of the state is reduced and the emphasis is on private enterprise and private profits.
Second, the right question (How do we lift the overall standard of education of our people?) was given the wrong answer: send them all to university. The huge increase in numbers studying at teritiary level means that the tax-payer funded university education that I received, as part of a small minority in those days that thought, weirdly, that spending three or four years in an ivory tower learning useless things was actually not such a bad idea, became too expensive. The inevitable consequence of BAs and BComs for everyone is that the degrees are dumbed down and honest trades for which School Cert used to be adequate are now despised by everyone except those canny individuals who realise that they're better off than the misguided young men and women who delay their entry into the workforce by three or four years and then find that their qualification doesn't guarantee them a well-paying job but simply saddles them with a horrendous debt that will be a millstone around their necks for much of the rest of their lives.
Smart, eh?

[Robert Taylor]

Sorry... Maybe I should start a blog.



Spot on. I was saying to someone the other day that it would be OK to have an honest conversation about the "tough stuff" we might have to face, as long as it was honest, non-ideological, and acknowledged past successes and failures... Pigs might fly, though.

Anyway, I've strayed way too far off the tax topic so maybe I should leave with a recent parting quote from Nouriel Roubini (who was predicting trouble in the US quite a while before it happened): "From here on I see things getting worse.... What needs to be done is clear. We need to raise taxes and cut spending. Otherwise we're going to get a fiscal train wreck," he said. "It's going to take years of sacrifices." Maybe worth a think.


Ive got to say that both yourself and Winston 001 have hit the nail on the head.

Many nations need tough solutions but the politicians are loathe to spell it out honestly as they would then be unelectable. The recent UK elections being a case in point, that nation is a basklet case but no-one wants the pain to sort it out

Another point to ponder on....irrespective of what side of the political fence you are on we are all ( effectively ) hypocrites. We all want cheap goods such as the clothes we wear on our backs, that condones that they are made by sweatshop workers that work for rates and conditions we would personally not tolerate.

Personally I embrace capitalism allied with conservative politics, but with a sense of fair play. Also where it is doing something productive rather than brazenly speculative.

[MikeL]

Personally I embrace capitalism allied with conservative politics, but with a sense of fair play.

Since capitalism is the ultimate pyramid scheme, the concept of "capitalism with a sense of fair play" might strike some people as an oxymoron. Still, it's an interesting idea. Some country should try it one of these days.

[Ocean1]

two things happened:

Uncannily accurate!

Extract from your post doctoral thesis perchance?

[Winston001]

First, an ideologically driven shift in the perception of tertiary education, from what economists term a "public good" to a "private good". That is, the purpose and benefits of education were seen as mainly personal rather than societal.

Good post and I've trimmed it simply to highlight central issues. The basic reason university fees were introduced (but only to the extent of 25%) was that after the 1987 recession, suddenly a lot of students and their parents decided tertiary education was the best step to the future. The govt faced huge costs and ultimately 4 million people could not fund it.

Also, apprentices worked and paid their own way through studies, while tertiary students got a free ride. Hardly fair.


Second, the right question (How do we lift the overall standard of education of our people?) was given the wrong answer: send them all to university.

The huge increase in numbers studying at tertiary level meant that the tax-payer funded university education.....became too expensive. The inevitable consequence of BAs and BComs for everyone is that the degrees are dumbed down and honest trades for which School Cert used to be adequate are now despised....

Spot on.

Incidentally I am a firm believer in education for knowledge, not a meal ticket. When I was at varsity in the 70s people still thought that way. Doing a degree in Philosophy, Political Studies, Anthropology, Latin, or Phenomenology of Religion was an intellectual pursuit without any thought of needing a job at the end. Because usually a job of some type turned up, often secondary teaching.

We need widely educated people in our society. Thinkers. High minded thinking is so often absent from debate in NZ.

[Ocean1]

High minded thinking is so often absent from debate in NZ.

Oh no it's not!

[Robert Taylor]

The govt faced huge costs and ultimately 4 million people could not fund it.

Heck that not only applies to funding tertiary education. So many people expect the government to fund this and the government to fund that. But they forget where the money comes from in the first place and how we have such a disorted ratio of dependents to taxpayers.
More user pays.



Spot on.

Incidentally I am a firm believer in education for knowledge, not a meal ticket. When I was at varsity in the 70s people still thought that way. Doing a degree in Philosophy, Political Studies, Anthropology, Latin, or Phenomenology of Religion was an intellectual pursuit without any thought of needing a job at the end. Because usually a job of some type turned up, often secondary teaching.

We need widely educated people in our society. Thinkers. High minded thinking is so often absent from debate in NZ.[/QUOTE]

[Brian d marge]

Cant find evidence of the government of the late eighty faced with a large educational bill ( the way the reporting changed around that time )

I can find large restructurings, with people returning to education but numbers at polytec overall rose steadily from 79 to 84 with peaks of up to 100 000 and the way the government looked at the educational model but No sudden increase in 18 year olds suddenly wanting to go to uni
we have gone a little off topic , but it is related to the orginal question that is do we continue with this lasse faire user pays policy , which as I posted before has ( i think caused to many problems in NZ )

or do we return to the egalitarian society where (yes) you pay for the drop kick ( remembering that they are only a small part of society ) is it at all possible ?

I dont mind paying tax as long as it isnt spend on silk underpants , overseas trips and drop-kicks that really should be in institution

BTW where did they go, oh yes the police do it now

Stephen

sorry for half arsed reply I am in between things and can only grab a few min at a time

[avgas]

We need widely educated people in our society. Thinkers. High minded thinking is so often absent from debate in NZ.
Completely agree with this. 100%

[avgas]

Oh no it's not!
Ok, care to elaborate?
Or were you just one of those "NO!" children?

[Winston001]

oh no it's not!

Oh yes it is!

[mashman]

The govt faced huge costs and ultimately 4 million people could not fund it.

hardly surprising since the "workers" have been subsidising business for decades...

[Winston001]

Ok, care to elaborate?
Or were you just one of those "NO!" children?

It's Monty Python, from the Argument Clinic....:D

[Winston001]

hardly surprising since the "workers" have been subsidising business for decades...


??? :shit: If that's correct, surely the "workers" would all go into business themselves and get their hands on the subsidies. :yes:

[Brian d marge]

working on a reply hang on

Yes. Tiswas me who brought Germany into the conversation but not for the reasons which led to your reply

As I am on my way to a meeting and am on this train for awhile I will make my views clearer

The United States of walmart BP ltd is not interested in you or me or NZ but in making a profit or returning on investment

which means the decisions it makes tend to be Unsustainable in an environmentally humanistic way

example food

food and it's production is bordering on evil ( NZ is quite good but not perfect example, run off in to a large river in NZ has made it quite polluted,
Fish stocks near collapse ( blue-fin). All so we can get cheap cod and the japan here can get their sushi

just been talking to a friend of mind and she works in the investment industry and she was telling me the numbers that she invests their clients are from all over but she suspect a lot of it is oil money they are big and her company has teams of specialists looking for a return i doubt they look at the environmental issues when making the decisions

I don't think it's sustainable

how does this apply to NZ. From memory when the Chicago Market introduced a new method of trading caused money to move in and out of countries needed to be attractive towards investors or the money would flow out and was helped by the. Computer

NZ is doing very well in this respect , open government stable currency little red tape and a dependence on investment lessens the strength of the government and the power transfers to the investor

after all if the money stops what ever that money is funding stops to

and if the profit isn't attractive the investment is withdrawn

yes it's a two way street some larger NZ companies are investing overseas but is that money coming back to NZ. ( maybe but it's has't made a dent on our balance of payments)

On saying that I am not saying that foreign investment is bad but a 51% controlling interest tends not to have the local community in mind when money is involved

personally I make my coin overseas but I shop in NZ ( I know the communication is terrible but I feel the business is trust-able and the quality tends to be good

the reason I mentioned Germany is because NZ is being destroyed by these overseas interests and some people are not interested in protecting a valuable asset

I find it strange that Maori whose very culture involves the land is willing to let so much be foreign owned ( I am assuming controlling interest)

the younger generation just needs to say enough. NZ for NZ by NZ

the never had it so good generation is moving into retirement and will soon be gone, with that voting block gone people can start to rebuild to what it one was

Dont get me wrong this isn't an all or nothing winner takes all certainly some areas have to be trimmed and other expanded and successive government have done quite well

but the influences brought to bear on NZ have produced a society which I don't really want to be a part of ( yes Japan is similar but the higher standard of living and the culture is just more palatable )

Stephen

hope this is ok hard to do the answer justice

[mashman]

??? :shit: If that's correct, surely the "workers" would all go into business themselves and get their hands on the subsidies. :yes:

ok, maybe subsidy is the wrong terminology for the pricing of materials/items/services that are sold cheaper to businesses than they are to "workers" i.e. joe public... hence we subsidise the short fall of business deals/rates... matter of perspective perhaps?

[mashman]

Ok, a question: If we are borrowing approx 35 million bucks a day (based on 250 mill per week) and as a society we're covering the rest of NZ's "costs", that works out as $5/day per NZ citizen... and with the 10% paying 76% of tax etc... wouldn't upping the top tax level by 1%, on paper, have allowed us to pay off our debt earlier and have some left over to shore up the services that are being axed? I'm sure it's not as simple as that and with the breadth of knowledge on here i'm sure someone can enlighten me?

[Winston001]

... and with the 10% paying 76% of tax etc... wouldn't upping the top tax level by 1%, on paper, have allowed us to pay off our debt earlier and have some left over to shore up the services that are being axed?

You mean make GST 16%? Works for me. :Punk:

[mashman]

You mean make GST 16%? Works for me. :Punk:

The problem i have with the GST rise is it screws over the don't have's... I'm in the top tax bracket and much like shrub would accept a tax increase IF it could be used to lower NZ debt and allow services to run at the pre-election standard... if it is only $5 a day, then why the fuck aren't they doing it?

are you on the pills tonight? :)

[MikeL]

The mantra of "Lower taxes, lower taxes" has deceived us with its carefully worded justifications, behind which lie equally carefully unstated premises. These are:
* greed is good; it is better to have flourishing business activity than healthy, happy well-educated and well-adjusted citizens
* the wealthy deserve to keep more of their money because they contribute more to the economy; if we don't look after them, they will take their money elsewhere
* public services can always be trimmed back a little more
* the middle classes won't complain if they're told that the wealthy are already paying most of the tax
Add to this the fact that the business-friendly media will always favour stories overstating the role of tax rates in economic activity and will always downplay concerns about social equity, and you start to understand why the public has been duped.

[Winston001]

Are they ? http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/3097651/Manawatu-River-among-worst-in-the-Wes ( I doubt the reasoning but no smoke without fire )


Your food is too expensive ( Tokyo is cheaper trust me ) infrastructure yes you do have it , State highway one? the overlander ? metro linK ? Airports excluding fields with a hut , ala napier

People from Hokiado may want to disagree with you about those wide open spaces , though I myself do find the wide roads and high speeds a bit of getting used to....

and i am sorry there is no way u have the life style of europe , Hungary is similar and trust me better

ON the SURFACE NZ is good , but sorry I wouldnt want to live there.... it is a nice place, but sorry other places are equal if not better , and I have lived in a few countries

At the moment I have a new house with all the mod cons , only work 5 hours a day , a 2 year old car, education is good , health care is excellent , beer is , almost free , 3000 yen for all u can drink . whiskey is 20 bucks for a scotish single malt ..... should I go on?

Sorry but this godzone thing is a myth


Everyone has their personal point of view and it depends upon their core values as to what they like best. I'm impressed that you like Japanese culture, that's a good reason to be there. I also have no doubt that Japan is a high-wage economy and far outstrips NZ for material technology. If that is a priority for life, cool.

I don't think anyone pretends NZ has the same high-tech advantages which the densely populated OECD countries enjoy. What we do have nevertheless is a quality of life which makes up for low wages, ordinary roads, slow broadband etc. I've been in a few countries too and still think NZ is the best. We've had a lot of European immigrants over the past 10 years who agree.

As for Godzone, most Americans think they live there. It isn't original to us - but I kinda like it anyway.

[Tank]

. What we do have nevertheless is a quality of life which makes up for low wages, ordinary roads, slow broadband etc. I've been in a few countries too and still think NZ is the best. We've had a lot of European immigrants over the past 10 years who agree.

Agree 100% - a lot of people forget that - or need to travel a bit and see just how good we have it.

[aprilia_RS250]

Ok, a question: If we are borrowing approx 35 million bucks a day (based on 250 mill per week) and as a society we're covering the rest of NZ's "costs", that works out as $5/day per NZ citizen... and with the 10% paying 76% of tax etc... wouldn't upping the top tax level by 1%, on paper, have allowed us to pay off our debt earlier and have some left over to shore up the services that are being axed? I'm sure it's not as simple as that and with the breadth of knowledge on here i'm sure someone can enlighten me?

A country can borrow money from offshore for very long periods as long as it's economic growth is higher than the rate they're paying. Sovereign debt is not like a mortgage. It's seen as being less risky and a nation can deffer on its payments. A country that is growing requires a lot of immediate funding, (e.g. build better schools, hospitals roads etc), funding that could not be accessed directly from the population, so one way is take out debt. The NZ Govt decided to go into an expansionary fiscal policy stance during the recession and required debt to do that. Still does as its a growing economy. But Labour's moronic crew of ministers and advisers thought it was a wise thing to keep borrowing, while overtaxing and creating budget surpluses during the economic boom after 9/11. Idiots didn't realise that this wasn't good for investment growth hence NZ had one of the lowest growth rates of all oecd nations. This probably cost NZ 10 times more than any outstanding debt it currently has.

[Brian d marge]

Everyone has their personal point of view and it depends upon their core values as to what they like best. I'm impressed that you like Japanese culture, that's a good reason to be there. I also have no doubt that Japan is a high-wage economy and far outstrips NZ for material technology. If that is a priority for life, cool.

I don't think anyone pretends NZ has the same high-tech advantages which the densely populated OECD countries enjoy. What we do have nevertheless is a quality of life which makes up for low wages, ordinary roads, slow broadband etc. I've been in a few countries too and still think NZ is the best. We've had a lot of European immigrants over the past 10 years who agree.

As for Godzone, most Americans think they live there. It isn't original to us - but I kinda like it anyway.

Compared with London NZ is a paradise esp if you have kids , ( I have two of them and am staying here( Japan , 10 years) for that very reason , the services available to me are great ) but the quality of life in NZ I think depends on your income , which I liken to a trail along a ridge line , you fall off that ridge and its very hard to climb back on and as pretty as NZ is , you cant feed your family by looking at the scenery ,

IF I could guarantee a stable Job paying 8 to 1100 a week with reasonable health care ( ie I dont have to wait 5 hours or more , ie London ) or the ratio there of , ( as this is the life style I have at the moment )
I would move back

IMHO
Once you come off that little path of security, NZ is a BYATCH of a place to live. ( and it doesn't need to be ,and the reason I get so animated about things, Thanks america for nowt )

Stephen
PS ,, these are my IMHO and if you can make a go of it in NZ more power to you , ( my brother lives there in a little flat in CHCH, has lots of new toys and isnt married , he loves the place and wouldnt shift for the world , horses for courses I think)

coffee time

[Winston001]

are you on the pills tonight? :)

LOL must spread rep....etc :D



Add to this the fact that the business-friendly media will always favour stories overstating the role of tax rates in economic activity and will always downplay concerns about social equity......

You've got to be joking mate!! What business friendly media? They are virtually non-existent. Ok, Brian Fellow knows his stuff but most journalists are the fruit of arts degrees and have firmly-established leftish politics in their blood. In fact one of the common complaints regarding all branches of the media is how shallow and biased they are when it comes to economics.

[Bald Eagle]

( my brother lives there in a little flat in CHCH, has lots of new toys and isnt married , he loves the place and wouldnt shift for the world , horses for courses I think)

coffee time

Thats the trick then delete family add toys = happy as p in s

[Brian d marge]

Thats the trick then delete family add toys = happy as p in s

Some kind person made wife poisoning and child labour illegal


I could be retired in Florida now if they hadn't

Stephen

[Winston001]

IF I could guarantee a stable Job paying 8 to 1100 a week with reasonable health care ( ie I dont have to wait 5 hours or more , ie London ) or the ratio there of , ( as this is the life style I have at the moment )
I would move back


Once you come off that little path of security, NZ is a BYATCH of a place to live.

....these are my IMHO and if you can make a go of it in NZ more power to you...


You've described the income of a school teacher which is the largest professional occupational group in NZ. In other words, plenty earn $800+/wk. Add in Working For Families and you'd pay little or no tax here. The median household income for NZ in 2008 was $1271/wk and the average household income was $1490. All of which means a substantial number of our 4 million walk a pretty wide placid ridge. :D

Of course you don't want job uncertainty and are happy in Japan - hey, I'd do that too. I'm not sure why you think life is a biatch below the median so tell us more.

One observation: I've been fortunate enough to travel in my feckless youth and the kindest happiest people I met were also the poorest. Specifically the Sudanese. Followed by the Turks, Indians, and the Irish. Rural Mexicans are nice people too. Money is far from everything.

[Mudfart]

Ok, a question: If we are borrowing approx 35 million bucks a day (based on 250 mill per week) and as a society we're covering the rest of NZ's "costs", that works out as $5/day per NZ citizen... and with the 10% paying 76% of tax etc... wouldn't upping the top tax level by 1%, on paper, have allowed us to pay off our debt earlier and have some left over to shore up the services that are being axed? I'm sure it's not as simple as that and with the breadth of knowledge on here i'm sure someone can enlighten me?
the reason we keep owing more and more is because the mp's keep giving themselves such fucking massive pay increases.
Bill to make the workplace a smokefree environment= 15 years to pass thru parliament.
Bill to give themselves a payrise of 15%= 2 hours to pass thru parliament.

[Bald Eagle]

Money is far from everything.

But it can make your misery pretty comfortable as the saying goes.

[steve_t]

the reason we keep owing more and more is because the mp's keep giving themselves such fucking massive pay increases.
.

And that when we adopted MMP, 21 extra MP's got into parliament

[SPman]

LOL must spread rep....etc :D



You've got to be joking mate!! What business friendly media? They are virtually non-existent. Ok, Brian Fellow knows his stuff but most journalists are the fruit of arts degrees and have firmly-established leftish politics in their blood. In fact one of the common complaints regarding all branches of the media is how shallow and biased they are when it comes to economics.
The only thing the NZ media is left of, is Fox news!

[Winston001]

the reason we keep owing more and more is because the mp's keep giving themselves such fucking massive pay increases.
Bill to make the workplace a smokefree environment= 15 years to pass thru parliament.
Bill to give themselves a payrise of 15%= 2 hours to pass thru parliament.

I don't want to be unkind but this is the sort of ankle-deep thinking many kiwis suffer from. It springs from envy. Furthermore it personalises the issue introducing emotive reactions rather than rational discussion.

If our MPs were paid nothing it would not make a scrap of difference to NZs financial position. The govt needs to borrow $250 million per week.

[rainman]

* greed is good; it is better to have flourishing business activity than healthy, happy well-educated and well-adjusted citizens

Indeed, and radix malorum est cupiditas. All we get if we only chase money is strong corporations, and empty nation-states.


Agree 100% - a lot of people forget that - or need to travel a bit and see just how good we have it.

Is true - but with regard to the physical environment. But the economy ain't so hot, there isn't a diverse productive or high-tech sector, inequality is a problem (with its attendant social problems), and most of the good stuff is owned by people in other countries. And in the battle between our prisitine environment and polluting industry, industry seems to win rather regularly.


The NZ Govt decided to go into an expansionary fiscal policy stance during the recession and required debt to do that. Still does as its a growing economy.

We're not growing so strongly anyway. Wasn't Billy E just saying there might be 1% growth to 2017? Or was that just the bit magically attributed to the tax cuts?


the quality of life in NZ I think depends on your income , which I liken to a trail along a ridge line , you fall off that ridge and its very hard to climb back on and as pretty as NZ is , you cant feed your family by looking at the scenery...
Once you come off that little path of security, NZ is a BYATCH of a place to live. ( and it doesn't need to be ,and the reason I get so animated about things, Thanks america for nowt )

Very true. Which is why inequality and lost resilience (mostly through short term asset selling, and a too literal interpretation of Ricardo) is a big issue for us.


the reason we keep owing more and more is because the mp's keep giving themselves such fucking massive pay increases.

Not really, there aren't that many of them. In 2008 there were 26,710 people earning over $150k from salary and wages. There are only a few hundred MPs. They are part of the problem, but would you rather they were badly paid? (I'd prefer fewer of them but wouldn't trust the Nats or Labour not to gerrymander to their own benefit if the system was redesigned).

I don't actually have an issue with the top chunk of earners getting a reasonable multiple of the bottom chunk's average income. But a very good structural incentive to stopping the very wealthy from completely fucking over the rest is to constrain (tax rate is the best option here) the multiple between the two. Not so much that you remove incentive, or envy, not so little that those at the bottom fall too far behind and get demotivated. Otherwise all you do is create an economic system that selects for sociopaths. Who really needs more than a few hundred 'k each year, after all?

[Headbanger]

I don't want to be unkind but this is the sort of ankle-deep thinking many kiwis suffer from. It springs from envy. Furthermore it personalises the issue introducing emotive reactions rather than rational discussion.

If our MPs were paid nothing it would not make a scrap of difference to NZs financial position. The govt needs to borrow $250 million per week.

True enough, paying them only what they are worth wouldn't save us much, But if you want efficiency then you need it right through an organisation, If its rotten at the top then its rotten all the way through.

Pay cuts, reducing the amount of MP's, and forcing them to face the consequences of their fuckups would vastly improve their performance and would dictate the same applied to their portfolios.







Maybe.

[Brian d marge]

2 x 700 = 1400

mine is a single salary and we both spend a lot of time with our kids ( ie don't work all hours ) Try living on a task force green wage , or being in your middle forties and being restuctured !. all it takes usually is one event ( ie sickness ) and the whole lot will go to custard, been there done that , no fun , will not happen again

no thank you

And I most certainly agree with the last statement , most certainly , but if you need money it can bring out the unsavory in people , which is does ( funnily enough , a great book , Five families a Mexican case study is about Mexico's efforts to try and break the poverty cycle )

Stephen

[Brian d marge]

Snip

Very true. Which is why inequality and lost resilience (mostly through short term asset selling, and a too literal interpretation of Ricardo) is a big issue for us.


Dont blame Ricardo , he made great Cylinder heads !!!

Stephen

[davereid]

Indeed, and radix malorum est cupiditas. All we get if we only chase money is strong corporations, and empty nation-states. But the economy ain't so hot, there isn't a diverse productive or high-tech sector, inequality is a problem (with its attendant social problems), and most of the good stuff is owned by people in other countries. And in the battle between our prisitine environment and polluting industry, industry seems to win rather regularly.

OK, one at a time.

(1) All we get if we only chase money is strong corporations, and empty nation-states

Demonstrateably rubbish. The ability to fund all of the social things we (seem) to crave is completely reliant on money. No amount of wishing, good will or socialism will allow the residents of the third world to get paid a $200 a week community wage. Only money can provide these things.

The mistake is to assume that money, and social responsibility are mutually exclusive.

(2) But the economy ain't so hot, there isn't a diverse productive or high-tech sector

Actually there is. NZ has only 2- 2.5 million working people. We manage high technology food production which is the envy of the world. Its a mistake to assume that because it happens in the country, not in a city based factory or lab, that it's not high tech. The economy might be more productive if it was not constantly harassed by government. Additionally, traditional "High Tech" companies abound in New Zealand, particularly in the electronics industry, where we punch well above our weight.

(3) inequality is a problem (with its attendant social problems),

No its not a problem. Harden up. Some people fail. Its OK. The BEST we need to do is ensure they have a safety net. But we don't need to save them. The POOREST New Zealanders live lives much longer, warmer and better fed than the RICHEST New Zealanders of 200 years ago. That's a massive achievement. If they are not starving, and have access to healthcare, a generation of capitalism has achieved more that the previous 10,000 years of evolution and the rule of Kings.

(3) most of the good stuff is owned by people in other countries

200 years ago, actually only 150 years ago, New Zealanders lived in complete poverty, ate one another, and died at 30 years of age. FOREIGN INVESTMENT, mostly from Britain changed that in only 150 years. The idea that "others own it so its lost " is crap. I own my place, I'm a kiwi, but it still lost to the rest of New Zealand. Ya still can't come here. No difference if I lived in London. The point is that MONEY IS UNLIMITED. When an englishman invested in my land, I grew potatoes. He made heaps. I employed locals, a local man fixes my tractor, I buy fuel at the local gas station and pay local taxes. We are ALL better off. The fact that I send a 200 million dollar cheque to Lloyds every year is irrelevant, as we grew the money.

(4) And in the battle between our pristine environment and polluting industry, industry seems to win rather regularly.

Being alive is NOT SUSTAINABLE. Humans beings have a right to be here to, and that will change our environment. In fact that's what people do. Exploitation of resources is how we manage, its an asset not a liability. Id swap every rare frog in existence in the entire world, to keep millions of people warm and well fed.

[MikeL]

Being alive is NOT SUSTAINABLE. Humans beings have a right to be here to, and that will change our environment. In fact that's what people do. Exploitation of resources is how we manage, its an asset not a liability. Id swap every rare frog in existence in the entire world, to keep millions of people warm and well fed.

Hmmm...
1. Being alive is not sustainable. Individual lives, or the human race? The human race is doomed to extinction. We will continue to use up all the resources of the world until the last man or woman dies of starvation or disease. The possibility of mankind using reason and common sense to stabilise growth and use resources sustainably does not exist.
2. Human beings have a right to be here. God has ordained it. Or the laws of evolution have sanctioned it. Either way, it trumps any moral argument over responsibility to the rest of nature or the intellectual argument about sensible management of the planet.
3. Exploitation ... is an asset, not a liability. In the great accounting book of the ages, man's balance sheet will show a brief entry, all on one side.
4. Rare frog ... millions of people alive Maintaining the human population takes priority over every environmental question.
When we run out of planet to exploit we die. It will happen sooner or later. Better sooner than later; at least we can have a party in the meantime.

[cowpoos]

hardly surprising since the "workers" have been subsidising business for decades...

errr....no mate....Business's supply jobs to workers. How is it they subsidising business's??? [lol...this will be good!!]

[mashman]

errr....no mate....Business's supply jobs to workers. How is it they subsidising business's??? [lol...this will be good!!]

cut and paste from a few posts after :) ok, maybe subsidy is the wrong terminology for the pricing of materials/items/services that are sold cheaper to businesses than they are to "workers" i.e. joe public... hence we subsidise the short fall of business deals/rates... matter of perspective perhaps?

[cowpoos]

cut and paste from a few posts after :) ok, maybe subsidy is the wrong terminology for the pricing of materials/items/services that are sold cheaper to businesses than they are to "workers" i.e. joe public... hence we subsidise the short fall of business deals/rates... matter of perspective perhaps?

Nah...Business size purchases provide volume...and that needs to be priced accordingly...bigger the volume...larger the discount. Its not a case of subsidising...its a case of if you not compeditive to a large customer...you do have a customer!!

[mashman]

Nah...Business size purchases provide volume...and that needs to be priced accordingly...bigger the volume...larger the discount. Its not a case of subsidising...its a case of if you not compeditive to a large customer...you do have a customer!!

I understand that "bulk" users get a discount as their business uses guaranteed quantities of product x and that it's a "loyalty" discount... but that's not my perspective :)...

[rainman]

(1) All we get if we only chase money is strong corporations, and empty nation-states
...

I can't answer these without going waaaaay off topic from the original post, but you have missed my point, provided a trivial or unrelated response/handwaving/strawmen, or are generally wrong (in my completely unhumble opinion, of course!) or all of these. I'll construct a proper response and post a blog or new thread, then link it here.

[MisterD]

The only thing the NZ media is left of, is Fox news!

Pull the other one, for verily it haveth bells on.

[Clockwork]

LOL must spread rep....etc :D



You've got to be joking mate!! What business friendly media? They are virtually non-existent. Ok, Brian Fellow knows his stuff but most journalists are the fruit of arts degrees and have firmly-established leftish politics in their blood. In fact one of the common complaints regarding all branches of the media is how shallow and biased they are when it comes to economics.


I'm afraid I can't agree. Case in point, the media's discussion of the impact of the GST hike, post budget. Every story they did was accompanied by images of and referances to consumer electronics and other similar household "discretionary" spending. I found myself thinking "It's not so bad, I can buy early, adhead of the raise, or just put off buying shit until I can better afford the new price" but then I realised that the true impact of the GST rise will be in all those expenses that I can't avoid. The power bill, the food bill, clothing, petrol, rates, vehicle maintainence, insurance etc... These are the expenses that you can't aviod and put off. All conveniantly ignored by the media.

[Brian d marge]

I'm afraid I can't agree. Case in point, the media's discussion of the impact of the GST hike, post budget. Every story they did was accompanied by images of and referances to consumer electronics and other similar household "discretionary" spending. I found myself thinking "It's not so bad, I can buy early, adhead of the raise, or just put off buying shit until I can better afford the new price" but then I realised that the true impact of the GST rise will be in all those expenses that I can't avoid. The power bill, the food bill, clothing, petrol, rates, vehicle maintainence, insurance etc... These are the expenses that you can't aviod and put off. All conveniantly ignored by the media.

good point , which evil basket puts a tax on basic food ( oh it would be too hard to administer ,???? one uncooked potatoe , no gst, just get a copy of Englands wartime ration book )


oh The sheriff of Nottingham ( and NZ governments )

Stephen

[MisterD]

good point , which evil basket puts a tax on basic food


One that understands that as soon as you create exceptions you're creating a channel for money into lawyers' pockets...

[MikeL]

Sighs again.

No GST on basic foods.
See other threads on this issue. I can't be bothered repeating the arguments, but it comes down to this:
Other countries do it. We don't.
We would prefer to make things easier for business than to help the poor.
We invent excuses such as arguments over whether a product is a cake or a biscuit. For the vast majority of products a simple definition would work easily.
If we had the political will to do it, we could.

As usual ask the question Cui bono? (Who benefits?) and you will start to understand how things get done (or not done) in this country.

[Brian d marge]

Sighs again.

No GST on basic foods.
See other threads on this issue. I can't be bothered repeating the arguments, but it comes down to this:
Other countries do it. We don't.
We would prefer to make things easier for business than to help the poor.
We invent excuses such as arguments over whether a product is a cake or a biscuit. For the vast majority of products a simple definition would work easily.
If we had the political will to do it, we could.

As usual ask the question Cui bono? (Who benefits?) and you will start to understand how things get done (or not done) in this country.

Must spread rep before blah blah ..

You know sometime I wonder just how hard IS it to run a country

Stephen

[Oscar]

the reason we keep owing more and more is because the mp's keep giving themselves such fucking massive pay increases.
Bill to make the workplace a smokefree environment= 15 years to pass thru parliament.
Bill to give themselves a payrise of 15%= 2 hours to pass thru parliament.

That's helpful.
We'll stop paying decent salaries to the guys charged with running the country and getting us out of this mess. That way we'll end up with worse than we've got now (worse than nandor or Dianne Yates - is that possible???)

The crappy pay for MP's is why we get so many seat warmers in the first place.

[Oscar]

Sighs again.

No GST on basic foods.
See other threads on this issue. I can't be bothered repeating the arguments, but it comes down to this:
Other countries do it. We don't.
We would prefer to make things easier for business than to help the poor.
We invent excuses such as arguments over whether a product is a cake or a biscuit. For the vast majority of products a simple definition would work easily.
If we had the political will to do it, we could.

As usual ask the question Cui bono? (Who benefits?) and you will start to understand how things get done (or not done) in this country.

So when we make the system even more complicated, who pays the addition compliance costs?

And as for the "invented argument" you refer to - how would you solve it?
Maybe you should show the Aussie and Brit Govt's your "simple definitions", because they can't solve the problem.

[Jonno.]

Sighs again.

No GST on basic foods.
See other threads on this issue. I can't be bothered repeating the arguments, but it comes down to this:
Other countries do it. We don't.
We would prefer to make things easier for business than to help the poor.
We invent excuses such as arguments over whether a product is a cake or a biscuit. For the vast majority of products a simple definition would work easily.
If we had the political will to do it, we could.

As usual ask the question Cui bono? (Who benefits?) and you will start to understand how things get done (or not done) in this country.

If we take away GST from food do you think the price will just drop 12.5%?
I've never seen a good arguement for taking the GST off food. All I see is

"Other countries do it"
"poor people are poor"
"waaah".

Do you realise that poor people use a lot of services which are tax funded?
Where do you think the loss of revenue will come or go from?

[MikeL]

So when we make the system even more complicated, who pays the addition compliance costs?

And as for the "invented argument" you refer to - how would you solve it?
Maybe you should show the Aussie and Brit Govt's your "simple definitions", because they can't solve the problem.

Yet another sigh. See what I mean?

Can you assure me that the additional compliance costs will outweigh the advantages? How do you know? You can quantify the compliance costs (and I will be very surprised if whatever figures business bandies about haven't been carefully selected) but that's not the issue. The fact is that the compliance costs apply to business and the benefits apply to people. It's not an accounting equation, it's a social policy decision. The countries you mention (and there are more) have clearly decided that there are benefits to their more complicated schemes. Are you saying that the U.K., Australia, France and a lot more civilised and progressive societies have got it wrong? Do you imagine that if their schemes were so terrible they wouldn't be changing them? Tell me which countries are actively debating changing from multiple rates to a single-rated GST/VAT?
You want me to suggest a solution that will introduce differential rates without making the system more complicated. You miss the point entirely. There's only a problem if you believe that lowering compliance costs is more valuable to society than a fairer tax system.

[davereid]

If we take away GST from food do you think the price will just drop 12.5%?
I've never seen a good arguement for taking the GST off food. All I see is

"Other countries do it"
"poor people are poor"
"waaah".

Do you realise that poor people use a lot of services which are tax funded?
Where do you think the loss of revenue will come or go from?


If you don't charge GST on food, do you allow the man who grew the food to claim GST ? He will pay GST on his fertiliser, his seeds, his rates, his insurance, his fuel, indeed everthing he inputs. If he can't charge GST why could he claim it ?

If he can claim it, how far does that go ? You may not charge GST on food. What about on transporting the food to market, or supermarket ? Who decides what is "basic" food and who pays for that ? If you don't charge it on fresh meat, vegetables and bread, how do you justify charging it on McDonalds ? Is it because its cooked ? So a roast chicken sandwich would have GST on as its cooked. But a smoked salmon one might not, as its smoked not cooked. Or maybe sushi would not be charged GST as its raw and cold.

[Oscar]

Yet another sigh. See what I mean?

Can you assure me that the additional compliance costs will outweigh the advantages? How do you know? You can quantify the compliance costs (and I will be very surprised if whatever figures business bandies about haven't been carefully selected) but that's not the issue. The fact is that the compliance costs apply to business and the benefits apply to people. It's not an accounting equation, it's a social policy decision. The countries you mention (and there are more) have clearly decided that there are benefits to their more complicated schemes. Are you saying that the U.K., Australia, France and a lot more civilised and progressive societies have got it wrong? Do you imagine that if their schemes were so terrible they wouldn't be changing them? Tell me which countries are actively debating changing from multiple rates to a single-rated GST/VAT?
You want me to suggest a solution that will introduce differential rates without making the system more complicated. You miss the point entirely. There's only a problem if you believe that lowering compliance costs is more valuable to society than a fairer tax system.

(sigh, another narrow focused lefty)

If you want to talk social equity, fine, but the type and application of consumption tax is only a small part of the equation. Bleating about how consumption tax is levied on essentials is a narrow and populist approach to the debate. You need to add in Income Tax, excise, duty and the type of services provided to the taxpayer by the Govt.

[Brian d marge]

any reduction in the basic food costs ( and basic utilities ) will be very welcome by a whole bunch of people

Doesn't matter how you justify it or not

Stephen

[MikeL]

(sigh, another narrow focused lefty)

If you want to talk social equity, fine, but the type and application of consumption tax is only a small part of the equation. Bleating about how consumption tax is levied on essentials is a narrow and populist approach to the debate. You need to add in Income Tax, excise, duty and the type of services provided to the taxpayer by the Govt.

Yes I do want to talk social equity because that's what the debate should be about. Have I said that removing GST from food is the only measure to take? Have I suggested that other forms of taxation should be left out of the debate? Do I have to lay out a complete, coherent programme of economic reform before you consider my opinion on GST worth taking seriously? (Better answer no to that last question because I might just do that and you'll have to read it all before you can dismiss it with a sneer and a "bleating lefty" label). Who's being narrow-minded?

BTW bleating is what sheep do. They're stupid creatures who can only follow what all the others are doing. They can't think for themselves. Their brains can only form simple ideas, like labels.

[MikeL]

If you don't charge GST on food, do you allow the man who grew the food to claim GST ? He will pay GST on his fertiliser, his seeds, his rates, his insurance, his fuel, indeed everthing he inputs. If he can't charge GST why could he claim it ?

If he can claim it, how far does that go ? You may not charge GST on food. What about on transporting the food to market, or supermarket ? Who decides what is "basic" food and who pays for that ? If you don't charge it on fresh meat, vegetables and bread, how do you justify charging it on McDonalds ? Is it because its cooked ? So a roast chicken sandwich would have GST on as its cooked. But a smoked salmon one might not, as its smoked not cooked. Or maybe sushi would not be charged GST as its raw and cold.

Have you actually read what I said? Do you understand it? Can you dispute what I wrote about other countries accepting greater complexity for the social equity benefits? Can you actually refute any of this, instead of simply following the party line on compliance costs?

[davereid]

Have you actually read what I said? Do you understand it? Can you dispute what I wrote about other countries accepting greater complexity for the social equity benefits? Can you actually refute any of this, instead of simply following the party line on compliance costs?

Should we charge carbon tax on food ? Rates on land used for food production ? Should producers of "basic food items" pay ACC or income tax ? should the state mandate maximum profit margins on food ?

[MikeL]

If we take away GST from food do you think the price will just drop 12.5%? I don't know. You tell me how much it will drop. But it will drop, and if GST is 15% not 12.5% the drop will be worthwhile.
I've never seen a good arguement for taking the GST off food. That's because you refuse to look, or rather to think deeply about it.
All I see is

"Other countries do it" Of course countries like the UK and Australia and France are so far behind good ol' NZ (leading the world in economic reform) that their experience can be safely dismissed
"poor people are poor" Perhaps poverty is a bad thing and should be reduced. Unless of course you think it' all their own fault
"waaah". Sounds like a bleat to me. You've been talking to too many sheep.

Do you realise that poor people use a lot of services which are tax funded? Yes, surprisingly, I was aware of that. And that you resent any of your hard-earned cash being spent on people less deserving than yourself
Where do you think the loss of revenue will come or go from? You tell me what you would do. Some suggestions: capital gains tax, fairer income tax rates, higher inheritance taxes, savings from eliminating tax loop-holes... Or if you can't stomach the thought of any higher taxes, you could cut expenditure. I'm sure private health insurance and private school fees and bigger student loans and all the other private costs won't matter to you, because you can afford them and you'll probably still be better off than paying all those taxes for benefits and services squandered on the poor.


Sooner or later people are going to have to stop deluding themselves that the current economic orthodoxy is the only possible one and that it only needs some fine-tuning...

[MikeL]

Should we charge carbon tax on food ? Rates on land used for food production ? Should producers of "basic food items" pay ACC or income tax ? should the state mandate maximum profit margins on food ?
Yes, yes, I'm sure you can go on ad infinitum (or ad nauseam) thinking up reasons why it's too hard. Let me think of some other things that should have been left in the too-hard basket:

* rules and regulations and exceptions and exemptions for immigration. Just let anybody in who wants to come. Or let nobody in.
* different punishments for different crimes. Either chop everyone's head off, or fine them 10 bucks, no matter what.
* IRD regulations. Remove all provisions for credits, rebates, expenses, etc. Just charge a flat rate (say 15% of turnover). Or abolish the IRD rules altogether. Let businesses decide how much tax they want to pay.

Perhaps at some point you could consider addressing the points I originally raised??

[Jonno.]

"Other countries do it" Of course countries like the UK and Australia and France are so far behind good ol' NZ (leading the world in economic reform) that their experience can be safely dismissed

"poor people are poor" Perhaps poverty is a bad thing and should be reduced. Unless of course you think it' all their own fault

"waaah". Sounds like a bleat to me. You've been talking to too many sheep.

None of that is a reason to drop gst on food. Look up how a subsidy works.

[Jonno.]

You seem to think removing GST on food is a silver bullet to end poverty, help middle class families and stick it to the rich man but what you fail to realise is that supermarkets have little or no incentive to reduce the price of food and even if they did initially they did initially it would be short lived.
You think food prices would drop 15%? Anything even close to that?
What would keeping the price of food 15% below what the food would be without the gst drop?

[Oscar]

Yes I do want to talk social equity because that's what the debate should be about. Have I said that removing GST from food is the only measure to take? Have I suggested that other forms of taxation should be left out of the debate? Do I have to lay out a complete, coherent programme of economic reform before you consider my opinion on GST worth taking seriously? (Better answer no to that last question because I might just do that and you'll have to read it all before you can dismiss it with a sneer and a "bleating lefty" label). Who's being narrow-minded?

BTW bleating is what sheep do. They're stupid creatures who can only follow what all the others are doing. They can't think for themselves. Their brains can only form simple ideas, like labels.

(sigh) It must be real tough, just knowing that you're so much smarter and so much righter than everyone else (sigh)

(sigh) However, I suggest that before you complain about wider debates and being taken seriously you might want to drop the condescending tone of your posts (sigh).

[Oscar]

Have you actually read what I said? Do you understand it? Can you dispute what I wrote about other countries accepting greater complexity for the social equity benefits? Can you actually refute any of this, instead of simply following the party line on compliance costs?


If you use the phrase "social equity" enough, someone might believe you.
However at the risk of engaging you in a wider debate,, complaining about differential rates of consumption tax without taking into account other taxes is pretty meaningless.

For example, Australia may not levy GST on food staples, but does it have anything like Working for Families?
Does the UK subsidise any foods?

[mashman]

Sooner or later people are going to have to stop deluding themselves that the current economic orthodoxy is the only possible one and that it only needs some fine-tuning...

surely not... people gotta make a profit ya know... gotta look after their own... fuck everyone else... why should i pay for someone that isn't up to the highest levels of intelligence... they're simply not trying hard enough... there's plenty of jobs... that's just a fuckin excuse... why don't they just get off their arses and improve themselves... go get an education like the rest of us... the government know what they're doing... the left is right and the right is correct... gotta fiddle with the finances to make it all work... imagine the utter chaos if there was no order... ad nauseam

[mashman]

(sigh) It must be real tough, just knowing that you're so much smarter and so much righter than everyone else (sigh)

(sigh) However, I suggest that before you complain about wider debates and being taken seriously you might want to drop the condescending tone of your posts (sigh).

He's certainly wiser than the majority (baa), most likely smarter too... given that he can actually conceptualise where this country is heading given the current way NZ carries out its business :)...

Ditch GST and add more income tax bands directly proportionate to the amount of money that you earn (or declare)... leave the loopholes where they are and jail anyone that uses them... after all someone up there knows what they are... capital gains tax, was it $3 billion of revenue that was reported or $9 billion? could be raised... but it didn't happen. Why? vote loser... no more no less... pathetic

[MikeL]

(sigh) It must be real tough, just knowing that you're so much smarter and so much righter than everyone else (sigh)

(sigh)

Well at least you've got one thing right. It is tough being smarter (I don't claim to be "righter"), when you try to get people to debate specific questions and challenge them to think about things in a new or different way, and they simply refuse to engage in that debate, but continue to repeat a tired old mantra. Case in point: I have repeatedly said that the decision to stick with a single-rate GST is a policy decision that puts the convenience of business ahead of the needs of the people. Has anyone debated/refuted that proposition? All I get is endless examples of why it would make our GST scheme more complicated to have exemptions or differential rates (I've never denied that). My suggestion that the more complicated schemes adopted by other countries such as France serve a useful purpose despite their higher compliance costs is ignored.
As for being condescending - yes, I admit I don't suffer fools gladly. Nor do I subscribe to the current view that all opinions are valid. If you can't or won't think logically, analytically and deeply about something you shouldn't expect to be treated as an equal by those who do.

[MisterD]

Case in point: I have repeatedly said that the decision to stick with a single-rate GST is a policy decision that puts the convenience of business ahead of the needs of the people.

Comprehension fail. The point about the tax system is that it costs money to run it. Creating exceptions to GST will significantly increase those costs because you'll create a whole bunch of enforcement activity. It's much more sensible just to leave money in lower income earners pockets in the first place.

[Oscar]

Well at least you've got one thing right. It is tough being smarter (I don't claim to be "righter"), when you try to get people to debate specific questions and challenge them to think about things in a new or different way, and they simply refuse to engage in that debate, but continue to repeat a tired old mantra. Case in point: I have repeatedly said that the decision to stick with a single-rate GST is a policy decision that puts the convenience of business ahead of the needs of the people. Has anyone debated/refuted that proposition? All I get is endless examples of why it would make our GST scheme more complicated to have exemptions or differential rates (I've never denied that). My suggestion that the more complicated schemes adopted by other countries such as France serve a useful purpose despite their higher compliance costs is ignored.
As for being condescending - yes, I admit I don't suffer fools gladly. Nor do I subscribe to the current view that all opinions are valid. If you can't or won't think logically, analytically and deeply about something you shouldn't expect to be treated as an equal by those who do.

Constantly repeating the same thing does not make you logical or analytical.

For example why is the scheme in France superior?
Have you any evidence that the French are better off?
What is their definition of a basic food item? IIRC this is the problem in both Australia and the UK - defining what is zero rated in the first place.

As for debate, I've already asked you several questions about countries with differential consumption taxes, but you've ignored them.

Making basic foodstuffs exempt from GST is a bit hollow if the local tax rates mean that you can't afford them in the first place.
If you exempt food, what about other essentials?
In Britain and France how is heating oil rated? Cheaper food don't help if you're dead from lack of heating (a real problem in both countries).
In Britain, petrol/oil is taxed even higher than in NZ. Isn't this part of the overall picture? What's the point of exempt foodstuffs if you're paying heaps extra in transport costs?

[Oscar]

Comprehension fail. The point about the tax system is that it costs money to run it. Creating exceptions to GST will significantly increase those costs because you'll create a whole bunch of enforcement activity. It's much more sensible just to leave money in lower income earners pockets in the first place.

I think it was Rodney Hide that made a comment about why we should be grateful that the Govt. is giving us back our own money...

[davereid]

What is their definition of a basic food item? IIRC this is the problem in both Australia and the UK - defining what is zero rated in the first place.
Making basic foodstuffs exempt from GST is a bit hollow if the local tax rates mean that you can't afford them in the first place. If you exempt food, what about other essentials?
In Britain and France how is heating oil rated? Cheaper food don't help if you're dead from lack of heating (a real problem in both countries).
In Britain, petrol/oil is taxed even higher than in NZ. Isn't this part of the overall picture? What's the point of exempt foodstuffs if you're paying heaps extra in transport costs?

All good points. Any scheme that needs managing, will require a clever bastard to manage it. He will want paying well, as he is a clever bastard. He will need staff, an office, a car, and that will all have to paid for somehow, by the community. And assuming that the government spends the same, the tax will still need collecting, possibly from a GST increase.

Your points are all valid about other essentials. A fridge full of food is of little value if the power is off.

Its hard to buy GST free electricity, LPG, or heating oil, but a trip to any farmers market will provide plentiful GST free produce. I'd also suggest that "basic foods" comprise only a small part of the poor mans supermarket trolley. Plenty of poor people in Levin, but they all seem to eat chippies, Dolmio, and beer. Its the well dressed woman with the new car I see at the vege stall.

[Winston001]

Sighs again.

No GST on basic foods.
See other threads on this issue. I can't be bothered repeating the arguments, but it comes down to this:
Other countries do it. We don't.
We would prefer to make things easier for business than to help the poor.
We invent excuses such as arguments over whether a product is a cake or a biscuit. For the vast majority of products a simple definition would work easily.


Haven't had time to read the replies above so just a quick note.

The treasurers of other countries quietly envy NZ because of its very clean and simple value added tax scheme. No exemptions.

See here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8060204.stm for a report on a lengthy and expensive example of how a large company attempted to rort VAT. If one big company is doing it, how many thousands of small businesses are also trying to create exemptions so they have an advantage over rivals.

I guess you have to be in business to understand the practical day-to-day recording of GST. It's been on food since 1987 - 23 years and we do not have people dying from starvation in the street.

I certainly understand the call for food etc exemptions but if you examine the results, it is not a rational or effective step. Plus we have 23 years of experience to look at and the current all-in GST regime works.

[Swoop]

The crappy pay for MP's is why we get so many seat warmers in the first place.
??
Surely the above average wages are the drawcard? Who else would employ Nandor or Sue Badford, especially on an MP's wage?

[Oscar]

??
Surely the above average wages are the drawcard? Who else would employ Nandor or Sue Badford, especially on an MP's wage?

The wages aren't above average for the type of people we need in the job.
We pay peanuts and get Nandor.

[SPman]

I think it was Rodney Hide that made a comment about why we should be grateful that the Govt. is giving us back our own money...
Giving it back in the same way "Mr Perksbuster" is being squeaky clean, honest and above board?

The wages aren't above average for the type of people we need in the job.
We pay peanuts and get Nandor.
Nandor was actually a far more competent and effective MP than most of you shrills gave him credit for - but - you prefer MP's of the competence of Paula Bennet, Judith Collins, Nick Smith, David Garrett, Bill English, etc.. They are obviously far more moral, intelligent, concerned for the well being of the population of the country as a whole, both rich and poor .......

[Oscar]

Giving it back in the same way "Mr Perksbuster" is being squeaky clean, honest and above board?

Nandor was actually a far more competent and effective MP than most of you shrills gave him credit for - but - you prefer MP's of the competence of Paula Bennet, Judith Collins, Nick Smith, David Garrett, Bill English, etc.. They are obviously far more moral, intelligent, concerned for the well being of the population of the country as a whole, both rich and poor .......

Shrills?
I've been called many things but not shrill.
Bit grumpy today aren't you? Perhaps you should check your vagina for sand.

Firstly I was already saying that most of the current crop are useless.
Notwithstanding that, what did Nandor ever do?
Apart from advocating ganja lifestyle and being banned from every School in NZ?

As far as Mr. Hide is concerned, all I said was I liked the quote - shit Jim Anderton could have said it and I still would have applauded.

[Jonno.]

Well at least you've got one thing right. It is tough being smarter (I don't claim to be "righter"), when you try to get people to debate specific questions and challenge them to think about things in a new or different way, and they simply refuse to engage in that debate, but continue to repeat a tired old mantra. Case in point: I have repeatedly said that the decision to stick with a single-rate GST is a policy decision that puts the convenience of business ahead of the needs of the people. Has anyone debated/refuted that proposition? All I get is endless examples of why it would make our GST scheme more complicated to have exemptions or differential rates (I've never denied that). My suggestion that the more complicated schemes adopted by other countries such as France serve a useful purpose despite their higher compliance costs is ignored.
As for being condescending - yes, I admit I don't suffer fools gladly. Nor do I subscribe to the current view that all opinions are valid. If you can't or won't think logically, analytically and deeply about something you shouldn't expect to be treated as an equal by those who do.

You'll have no difficulty answering me then.

[Jonno.]

Giving it back in the same way "Mr Perksbuster" is being squeaky clean, honest and above board?

Nandor was actually a far more competent and effective MP than most of you shrills gave him credit for - but - you prefer MP's of the competence of Paula Bennet, Judith Collins, Nick Smith, David Garrett, Bill English, etc.. They are obviously far more moral, intelligent, concerned for the well being of the population of the country as a whole, both rich and poor .......

Nandor and 90% of the Green party couldn't get a job outside of parliment much less one that payed anything close to parlimentary salary + perks.

[davereid]

Nandor and 90% of the Green party couldn't get a job outside of parliment much less one that payed anything close to parlimentary salary + perks.

They arent that silly... they all hang around for long enough to qualify for the M.P.s gold plated superannuation scheme and travel perks before they resign.

[Winston001]

I have repeatedly said that the decision to stick with a single-rate GST is a policy decision that puts the convenience of business ahead of the needs of the people. Has anyone debated/refuted that proposition? All I get is endless examples of why it would make our GST scheme more complicated to have exemptions or differential rates (I've never denied that).

My suggestion that the more complicated schemes adopted by other countries such as France serve a useful purpose despite their higher compliance costs is ignored.

Ooer Ah loves a challenge. :D

But first, please paragraph your posts. Effective communication in a news-bite world requires ideas to be expressed in clear quanta. Saying 2 or 3 things in one paragraph loses the reader and many people won't even bother when confronted with a slab of text. One idea at a time.

Now - you believe the simplicity of our GST system is driven by a govt agenda to reduce business costs. In part, you are right. Businesses are people. They are not some amorphous machine or dark satanic mill where we each grind away in servitude. Most NZ businesses are mum and dad, plus a handful of employees if they are lucky. So reducing administrative burdens for all of those people is beneficial to society. Its non-productive work.

There isn't a scintilla of evidence that any govt - remember GST was introduced by Labour - wants to harm the average person in order to favour a business owner. Indeed the growth of state impositions on business over the past 25 years shows the very opposite (OSH, complex holiday rules, Kiwisaver etc)

I don't mind your forth-right position but you descend to ad hominen attacks which obscure the issue. Furthermore, is it just possible that the "tired old cliche" counter-arguments might be correct?? This GST on/not for food has been argued for decades by greater minds than ours.

[MikeL]

I don't mind your forth-right position but you descend to ad hominen attacks which obscure the issue. Furthermore, is it just possible that the "tired old cliche" counter-arguments might be correct?? This GST on/not for food has been argued for decades by greater minds than ours.

I accept that my comments about sheep were perhaps a bit below the belt. But you might see there a hint of the frustration I feel when people consistently fail to see my point.

I would still like to see an intelligent reply to my question about the benefits and disadvantages of differential GST rates. I fully acknowledge the points you make about business costs; FWIW my wife and I ran a small business until very recently, doing 2-monthly GST returns. When GST was introduced we were at first annoyed that we had to do the IRD's work for them, but I now accept that, just as I accept the need for the government to keep more of "my" money than some people think right.

To rephrase the basic question (as a sound-bite): Do you accept that in principle it might be better to accept higher compliance costs if there is a demonstrable social advantage?

[davereid]

Do you accept that in principle it might be better to accept higher compliance costs if there is a demonstrable social advantage?

No. In fact, I don't think social policy is a justification for any tax.

Capitalism may result in the unjust use of force. But its not an inherent part of the system, its more related to individual human greed.

Basic capitalism offers willing buyer, willing seller, no use of force required.

But socialism is based on violence. It cant exist without it, as if you give people the choice as to who they give their money to, you have capitalism.

There is a man begging for money at the side of the road.

The capitalist speaks to him, and if convinced of the genuineness of the man's plight will give him some of his own money.
The socialist speaks to him and if convinced of the genuineness of the man's plight will steal money off other people and give it to him.
The communist is the man begging.

Like all socialists, you love to talk of social justice, equality etc etc. Yet, socialisim is just violence. Thats how it works. You use force, to take money and resources off people who dont want to contribute it, and justify it by saying "but we are doing good things with it !"

So no, I don't accept that "social justice" can be achieved by force. I don't accept that "increased compliance costs" might make the theft of money more acceptable, and I dont accept that "social advantage" is a reason to steal.

[Jonno.]

I accept that my comments about sheep were perhaps a bit below the belt. But you might see there a hint of the frustration I feel when people consistently fail to see my point.

I would still like to see an intelligent reply to my question about the benefits and disadvantages of differential GST rates. I fully acknowledge the points you make about business costs; FWIW my wife and I ran a small business until very recently, doing 2-monthly GST returns. When GST was introduced we were at first annoyed that we had to do the IRD's work for them, but I now accept that, just as I accept the need for the government to keep more of "my" money than some people think right.

To rephrase the basic question (as a sound-bite): Do you accept that in principle it might be better to accept higher compliance costs if there is a demonstrable social advantage?

Read my post.

Until you can understand that
1) removing the GST on food would cost shitloads and have to come from somewhere.
2) We're borrowing shit loads of money.
3) Businesses employ people.
4) Removing GST would would be negative as the supermarkets would absorb it into their profit and the govt would be out of pocket.
5) The labour party didn't introduce it either.

It's funny, everytime I come into this thread I see MikeL viewing but he hasn't responded.

[mashman]

No. In fact, I don't think social policy is a justification for any tax.

Capitalism may result in the unjust use of force. But its not an inherent part of the system, its more related to individual human greed.

Basic capitalism offers willing buyer, willing seller, no use of force required.

But socialism is based on violence. It cant exist without it, as if you give people the choice as to who they give their money to, you have capitalism.

There is a man begging for money at the side of the road.

The capitalist speaks to him, and if convinced of the genuineness of the man's plight will give him some of his own money.
The socialist speaks to him and if convinced of the genuineness of the man's plight will steal money off other people and give it to him.
The communist is the man begging.

Like all socialists, you love to talk of social justice, equality etc etc. Yet, socialisim is just violence. Thats how it works. You use force, to take money and resources off people who dont want to contribute it, and justify it by saying "but we are doing good things with it !"

So no, I don't accept that "social justice" can be achieved by force. I don't accept that "increased compliance costs" might make the theft of money more acceptable, and I dont accept that "social advantage" is a reason to steal.

Ok, so from my perspective...

Social policy is THE justification for every tax... otherwise why do we pay taxes? if not to pay for services that help us all (as well as subsidising those industries that can't afford to run themselves (to the tune of millions(billions???), free loading bludgers)

Capitalism always results in the use of unjust force. Trade is not a social "activity" anymore, it's a bullying tactic using a moral and financial value system as a weapon... i'll give you this, for that, or you won't get it... who cares if you need it to survive (a big capitalist FUCK YOU)... meet the price!!!!

Basic Capitalism ignores those that can't buy because they don't have the correct "currency"... you say that socialism results in violence... what do you expect when capitalisms tactics are used to rule... that violence, I call it crime... money the object of all needs...

Socialism ends in violence, it's not part of the journey, because we live in a capitalist society and the capitalists don't like having their "authority" and rules challenged... and defend it using the policing force...


This morning my Daughter in the car

The capitalist, daughter, says that she won't give her friend her party bag, because 3 weeks ago the friend didn't give her a present for her birthday.
The socialist, me for the purposes, speaks to the capitalist and explains that not everyone can afford to give presents to every friend for their birthdays (20 a season), potentially because they can't afford it, and that it would be a nice gesture to give the party bag for free... after all they are supposed to be friends.
There isn't a communist in sight, just some kid who can't AFFORD to buy her friend a present... just like the man who has to beg form money, otherwise he's bin raiding etc...

My daughter won't budge, still holding the party bag ransom... and that's a 7 year old kid... Now imagine her generation in 15 years...
I'm fucking disgusted and fully intend to have a serious chat with my daughter in regards to her shitty attitude... she's 7 and needs to understand why these things happen...
The friend is heartbroken because she's been singled out for not brining a present and therefore hasn't got the party bag that everyone else did... and may have lost a friend, injustly, because of it.

Like all capitalists, you love to talk about money fixing things etc... etc... Yet Capitalism is just violence... Thats how it works. You use force, to take money and resources off people who who dont want to contribute theor fair share, and justify it by saying "but we are doing good things with it !"

So yes, I do accept that "social justice" can be achieved by force (because capitalists use it every day to brow beat the sheople). I do accept that "increased compliance costs" might make the theft of money more acceptable, and I don't accept that "social advantage" is a reason to steal (again, capitalists do this every day).

IMHO

[davereid]

Your daughter is just selfish, not capitalist.

Its not correct to assume that capitalists wont support the poor or needy. The selfish ones may not, but there are plenty of capitalists who generously share their money.

The same occurs in any system - plenty of people are starving in North Korea, just a few miles from the "peoples palace". Thats an issue of greed, and is not unique to capitalist systems.

Capitalism can survive without violence, its a world of willing buyer, willing seller and freely negotiated price. It will need rules to ensure the larger players don't play the game unfairly, but it can be done.

Socialisim on the other hand requires violence. It doesnt end in violence or just use it as part of the journey, socialism by its very nature is about violence.

Two of the three kids in the playground vote for socialism. They beat the third boy up, and take his lunch (democratically).

The boy in charge eats the sandwich, sharing the crust with the boy who voted for him, and the boy they stole it off.

Thats socialism, thats how it works.

But you are right. The third boy may have chosen to eat his lunch and not share it.

Socialists think that justifies stealing it. I don't.

[SPman]

They arent that silly... they all hang around for long enough to qualify for the M.P.s gold plated superannuation scheme and travel perks before they resign.
Not so - Nandor deliberately resigned and left parliament before he qualified for all the perks. Unlike most in there, he does have some moral scruples......


Your daughter is just selfish, not capitalist. Is that not the way of the world though! Show me a big time capitalist who isn't selfish! You talk about capitalism as a pure theory in a perfect world, yet rankle at "impure" socialism - which in a perfect world, is also not violent - in the real world each appears to be equally violent depending on who stands to gain the most from them. Capitalism appeals more to the selfish among us by it's very nature.

God help us from those who try to implement "pure" theory, capitalist, socialist or religious - amongst that lot, pure socialism (not despotic communism, as many like to equate it with) is more beneficial to the population at large!

Thats socialism, thats how it works.see above. It could equally be applied to capitalism!

[mashman]

Your daughter is just selfish, not capitalist.

Its not correct to assume that capitalists wont support the poor or needy. The selfish ones may not, but there are plenty of capitalists who generously share their money.

The same occurs in any system - plenty of people are starving in North Korea, just a few miles from the "peoples palace". Thats an issue of greed, and is not unique to capitalist systems.

Capitalism can survive without violence, its a world of willing buyer, willing seller and freely negotiated price. It will need rules to ensure the larger players don't play the game unfairly, but it can be done.

Socialisim on the other hand requires violence. It doesnt end in violence or just use it as part of the journey, socialism by its very nature is about violence.

Two of the three kids in the playground vote for socialism. They beat the third boy up, and take his lunch (democratically).

The boy in charge eats the sandwich, sharing the crust with the boy who voted for him, and the boy they stole it off.

Thats socialism, thats how it works.

But you are right. The third boy may have chosen to eat his lunch and not share it.

Socialists think that justifies stealing it. I don't.


I wouldn't say selfish, but certainly expects the "norm" to be adhered to... and is penalising someone because of it... time for an education from the hippy side man...

All capitalists, are by definition (in my book), inherently selfish... after all the whole point behind capitalism is the accumulation of wealth to sustain yourself and your family...

True, there are capitalists that share their money... some even do it for a tax break...

Plenty of people are starving around the globe, but that's the fault of their respective governments, not the people themselves... missiles don't pay for themselves ya know...

Willing buyer, willing seller, but at a price dictated by the capitalist market (not all prices are negotiable)... hardly fair to those who don't have, becuase the greedy do haves (those with the POWER) won't share becuase they earned it... pathetic. Rules... ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa... why after all of these thousands of years aren't these rules in place? Because you'd kill the capitalism that the have's revere so much. Capitalism is doomed to fail quite dramatically in any number of ways, we can all see it and theres no money to throw at it because the markets need to be controlled. It certainly can't be done, else they would have done it by now. It's just a series of short term strategies to make some more money...

As for the violence. Socialism doesn't require it at all. Neither does capitalism... but if i put them both in a room and saw what each did to the people of the planet, i know which would be more likely to explode violently... and it ain't socialism... why do you think that socialism is inherently violent? Just curious


Two of the three kids in the playground vote for capitalism. First they offer to buy the lunch with money borrowed from another student, offering the other student a part of the lunch. The boy still says no, he earned the lunch. The boys then use the money to bribe the school bullies to get the lunch. Lunch obtained, lunch divided into parts according to effort imparted in the lunch "acquisition"... the new boy gets the crusts, but has to pay for them, again, because the original money that he could have used to buy his lunch with, was used to pay someone else for the lunch...

Capitalism, thats how it works.

Capitalists think that justifies stealing it (and then ask for more). I don't.

there's no such thing as a free lunch :) or is there...

Socialist girl comes over the following day and gives the boy a kiss because he's sad and injured... he shares his lunch with the girl because the bullies have stolen hers...

[Swoop]

4) Removing GST would would be negative as the supermarkets would absorb it into their profit and the govt would be out of pocket.
5) The labour party didn't introduce it either.
They introduced 2.5% of GST though.

[davereid]

Looking at your points one by one

All capitalists, are by definition (in my book), inherently selfish... after all the whole point behind capitalism is the accumulation of wealth to sustain yourself and your family...

Yes, thats the motivation for just about everything anyone does. It doesnt make you selfish though. If you dont do it and you expect others to sustain you and your family that would certainly be selfish.

Willing buyer, willing seller, but at a price dictated by the capitalist market (not all prices are negotiable)... hardly fair to those who don't have, becuase the greedy do haves (those with the POWER) won't share becuase they earned it... pathetic. Rules... ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa... why after all of these thousands of years aren't these rules in place? Because you'd kill the capitalism that the have's revere so much.

I made the point that the market requires rules to ensure competion exists. If competition exists, the sellers are price takers not price setters, as pricing the product or service is entirely reliant on having a customer willing to purchase.

Capitalism is doomed to fail quite dramatically in any number of ways, we can all see it and theres no money to throw at it because the markets need to be controlled. It certainly can't be done, else they would have done it by now. It's just a series of short term strategies to make some more money...

On the contrary.. banking may collapse, governments may fall, chaos may reign. But human beings will always want to trade, to exchange the surplus of their labour for the surplus of yours. Even if a totalitarian goverment was to control everything, all land, all productivity, all the money supply, you would still find people who would find products and services to trade.

As for the violence. Socialism doesn't require it at all. Neither does capitalism... but if i put them both in a room and saw what each did to the people of the planet, i know which would be more likely to explode violently... and it ain't socialism... why do you think that socialism is inherently violent? Just curious

I don't think I have the right to take your property, your food, anything off you by force. Nor do you have the right to take from me by force. Kings, Conquerors, governments and tyrants of all flavours have used force since the beginning of time, to take land, food, money people, whatever they want. Socialists have to continue to do this - if they made tax voluntary, and were not prepared to use force to obtain it, they could not operate. The entire socialist system is funded by the extraction of money and resources from individuals who may not wish to participate, but are forced to comply.

Two of the three kids in the playground vote for capitalism. First they offer to buy the lunch with money borrowed from another student, offering the other student a part of the lunch. The boy still says no, he earned the lunch. The boys then use the money to bribe the school bullies to get the lunch. Lunch obtained, lunch divided into parts according to effort imparted in the lunch "acquisition"... the new boy gets the crusts, but has to pay for them, again, because the original money that he could have used to buy his lunch with, was used to pay someone else for the lunch...Capitalism, thats how it works. Capitalists think that justifies stealing it (and then ask for more). I don't.

Thats not Capitalism at all, thats tyranny. It may be practised by anyone of any political flavour, but only capitalists can demonstrate a methodology by which it does not need to happen.

[rainman]

All capitalists, are by definition (in my book), inherently selfish... after all the whole point behind capitalism is the accumulation of wealth to sustain yourself and your family...

Yes, thats the motivation for just about everything anyone does. It doesnt make you selfish though. If you dont do it and you expect others to sustain you and your family that would certainly be selfish.

Would that life were so simple and monochrome.

The legitimacy of self-interested "invisible hand' capitalism is measured by the overall social gains it delivers - not by instances of individual benefit - and whether it overall creates a positive sum game for all of society (or given globalisation, the world). If it (structurally) does not, it has no point - one may as well then have something closer to anarcho-capitalism. Unfortunately this is not found outside of the wet dreams of certain neolib thinkers, and a small selection of rather idealistic novels. Certainly not in the real world. (Ancient Iceland doesn't count; the cold made them go mad - and who wants a life like the Ol' Wild West?)

If capitalism could deliver the above positive-sum setup but does not do so sustainably (as I would assert is the case), then it is broken and needs reform. What shape that reform takes is debatable, of course, but the need is undeniable. There is no realistic future scenario where business-as-usual delivers us a utopian future for most, let alone all.

By the way, lest I be thought of as a selfish socialist bludger and the enemy of the Atlases who walk among us as gods, I too support full employment and everyone pulling their weight, doing their share, sustaining themselves, etc - as I explained earlier. Perhaps consider me an anarcho-syndicalist, or even a libertarian socialist. But those are as much of a myth in today's world as the nutty right wing versions above. (Although the Spaniards made a go of it for a few years - perhaps that was the heat?)


I don't think I have the right to take your property, your food, anything off you by force. Nor do you have the right to take from me by force. Kings, Conquerors, governments and tyrants of all flavours have used force since the beginning of time, to take land, food, money people, whatever they want. Socialists have to continue to do this - if they made tax voluntary, and were not prepared to use force to obtain it, they could not operate.

Property is theft, comrade... :)

Well, so much for the oft-presented myth that charity is a viable alternative to welfare. (I think you just shot the classical right-wing argument in the foot a little, there). How about the obvious alternative to your thesis, that "socialists" are simply those mature enough to conceive of being part of a society (from which they derive diverse benefits, btw), rather than limiting their sphere of self-interest to their nukular family, their view of others to being simply consumers, and of society as only a market?

[MikeL]

Read my post.

Until you can understand that
1) removing the GST on food would cost shitloads and have to come from somewhere.Just like reducing income tax rates
2) We're borrowing shit loads of money. Your point being? That we can't lower GST but we can lower marginal tax rates on incomes because of our enormous overseas debt??
3) Businesses employ people. And?? People exist for business? Businesses exist for people?
4) ... would absorb it into their profit and the govt would be out of pocket. The whole 15%?? What evidence have you got for this?
5) The labour party didn't introduce it either. So? The Labour Party doesn't get everything right. Especially a Labour Party that has been so business-friendly as the last government.

It's funny, everytime I come into this thread I see MikeL viewing but he hasn't responded.

Sorry to have kept you waiting. I prefer to read everyone's views and consider my reply before rushing to post.

[MikeL]

I don't think I have the right to take your property, your food, anything off you by force. Nor do you have the right to take from me by force. Kings, Conquerors, governments and tyrants of all flavours have used force since the beginning of time, to take land, food, money people, whatever they want. Socialists have to continue to do this - if they made tax voluntary, and were not prepared to use force to obtain it, they could not operate. The entire socialist system is funded by the extraction of money and resources from individuals who may not wish to participate, but are forced to comply.

I have rarely seen socialism misinterpreted so outrageously. You're not talking about ownership of the means of production, or the roles of workers and the state, or social equity or anything which is normally debated in the comparison between capitalism and socialism. You simply say that socialism steals your money. How helpful is that? Isn't Mr Key stealing your money with his wicked IRD? Or as a capitalist do you indeed have a choice about how much, if any, you will pay?

[Ixion]

In a truely socialist state, where the people own the means of production, finance etc etc , there is no need for extraction of money or resources. It would be illogical. Just transferring money form one pocket to another. Since "extraction of money or resources" is, by definition, taxation, it is an inherent necessity in a capitalist system, not a socialist one. In a pure capitalist system, the state has no means other than "extraction of money or resources" to fund such state expenditures as defence.

However, although in most matters I am somewhat to the left of Stalin, in respect of GST I think the present x% on everything is best.

Whilst it is true that a zero or reduced rate on basic necessities would be beneficial to the poor, the complexities and arguments are so great that any advantage overall becomes nugatory.

For instance, is bread a "basic food" ? No, it's not , it's actually highly processed. So if bread , a highly processed food is exempt, what about meat pies? OK, how about beef wellingtons. What if I buy my meat pie in a takeaway not a supermarket. OK, how about if I sit down and eat it in the takeaway> OK, so what's the difference to ordering beef wellington in an expensive restaurant? And all the other "what abouts". In reality, nowadays the "poor" spend very little on basic foodstuffs. A zero rate on true basic food would save them only $2 or $3 a week. And if basic be extended to "not really basic but gives us warm fuzzies" then the definatory arguments are never ending.

It is argued that "other countries do it". Yes, they do, and "other countries" have no end of problems and hassles doing it. And any benefit to the "poor" in "other countries" is very hard to identify.

If we wish to temper the wind of taxation to the shorn lambs it would be better to focus on targets more easily definable and more universally consumed in a "raw" state - eg water, or electricity, for domestic consumption. This is easier to identify, less easy to rort (though someone surely will) , and would benefit the "poor" a lot more.

But, arguments about "reduce GST for the benefit of the poor" miss the target completely, really. In a decent society everyone (everyone willing to do an honest days work, anyway. The others are either genuinely disabled, or in labour camps ) should have an income sufficient to enable them to buy the basic needs of life, regardless of any taxation rate. If people need a GST cut to enable them to provide for themselves, then the fundmantal rate of wages is too low. Too much of the productive benefit is being syphoned off into the pockets of rich overseas corporations (capitalists, by definition). Extract that monsey back out of the pockets of the capitalists, and put it into the pockets of the workers, and the latter don't need GST reductions. And we are all better off (except the overseas sorporates, and I don't give a stuff about them)

[mashman]

Looking at your points one by one

Yes, thats the motivation for just about everything anyone does. It doesnt make you selfish though. If you dont do it and you expect others to sustain you and your family that would certainly be selfish.

Ohhhhhhh yes it does (make people selfish that is)... you're valuing your worth... which whilst very much the name of the game these days, doesn't actually take into account those who's shares you are actually taking a bite out of... what makes your effort much more valuable for someone elses?

I made the point that the market requires rules to ensure competion exists. If competition exists, the sellers are price takers not price setters, as pricing the product or service is entirely reliant on having a customer willing to purchase.

Yes you did... but how old is capitalism? how many rules have been changed whilst trying to get it right (tui)? Competition will still exist... those who excel will move to the forefront of their field and given the resources to exceed their own expectations... something a financial incentive can bias, cause false results etc... If competition, by definition, was to strive for perfection, without a financial incentive, there would be less reasons to post knowingly incorrect results... we're driven to a margin... that's NOT the way to move forwards. Capitalism has turned competition into a dishonest pastime... therefore forcing those who can pay, to overpay (imho) for the goods they desire... the necessities aren't too far behind (milk going up again due to bumper payout by Fonterra??????? BULLSHIT, why is it going up?)

On the contrary.. banking may collapse, governments may fall, chaos may reign. But human beings will always want to trade, to exchange the surplus of their labour for the surplus of yours. Even if a totalitarian goverment was to control everything, all land, all productivity, all the money supply, you would still find people who would find products and services to trade.

we may not always want to trade or exchange, we may want to ask the world who needs our excess and give it away FREE... we don't need it, someone else might... pretty fuckin simple really, no need to trade or exchange anything... just give your excess away... Hence why I say capitalism will end pretty horrendously... because we can't grasp simple concepts like giving stuff away... I fight with my wife over the stuff we sell on tm... i wanna leave it a $1 reserve, she puts a "reasonable" price on it... essentially i'd give it away happily... she, and rightly so in this day and age, wants a fair market price for it...

I don't think I have the right to take your property, your food, anything off you by force. Nor do you have the right to take from me by force. Kings, Conquerors, governments and tyrants of all flavours have used force since the beginning of time, to take land, food, money people, whatever they want. Socialists have to continue to do this - if they made tax voluntary, and were not prepared to use force to obtain it, they could not operate. The entire socialist system is funded by the extraction of money and resources from individuals who may not wish to participate, but are forced to comply.

Anyone who takes anything is a thief and depending on how they take is either a bully or a slimey bastard... it's just that the kings etc... legalised it for themselves and their friends during their accumulation of wealth. You can level that at any "ism" that isn't advocating one for all...

Thats not Capitalism at all, thats tyranny. It may be practised by anyone of any political flavour, but only capitalists can demonstrate a methodology by which it does not need to happen.

A rose by any other name :yes: a methodology ahahahahaaaaaaa... make excuses for getting everything wrong, AGAIN, you mean... there's no methodology going on here, there's just capitalism and its associated greed...

[davereid]

I have rarely seen socialism misinterpreted so outrageously. You're not talking about ownership of the means of production, or the roles of workers and the state, or social equity or anything which is normally debated in the comparison between capitalism and socialism. You simply say that socialism steals your money. How helpful is that? Isn't Mr Key stealing your money with his wicked IRD? Or as a capitalist do you indeed have a choice about how much, if any, you will pay?

The ownership of the means of production... the peoples tractor factory with the profits used to run the peoples school and the peoples hospital ! As Ixion points out, its perfection, with no need for taxation, a job for everyone, and the cleaner able to earn as much as the tractor designer.

As long as no one cleverer than the tractor designer makes a new better tractor you have utopia, and as you can simply ban the better tractor designer from making a better tractor it will never be a problem. As long as you like the old tractor.

Is Mr. Key stealing my money ? Yes of course. Taxation is theft. Fortunately Mr Key steals money primarily for Socialist goals.

The few things a Government would have to fund if it was not funding these things would possibly be democracy itself, justice and defence. These could be easily funded from non-taxation revenues from things to which the government has a natural monopoly.

For instance I can see no problem with tax on "entities without souls."

While I think it is theft to tax an individual, it is not theft to tax credit or the creation of credit. Credit exists, only because we create it, as does our fiat currency, the production of which, once again is entirely suitable as a revenue source for (small) government.

The peoples tractor factory - There is nothing to stop the people, if they so desire purchasing shares in the tractor factory. And there is nothing to stop the government doing it either if it wishes to find money for schools or hospitals.

It doesnt need to be done with a gun.

[MisterD]

or even a libertarian socialist.

That's a theoretical as well as practical nonsense. You're either Libertarian, as I am and as it appears davereid is, or not. If you're a socialist, you emphatically don't believe in economic freedom, so you can't be libertarian...you're deciding what level of liberty is allowed.

[MOTOXXX]

Yea i earn in the top tax bracket, im not rich, i have a mortgage and bills like everyone else. i dont dodge tax or have ways of paying less tax.
JK is the man, i think he is somewhat on the right track.

i pay my tax and work hard like any other kiwi. People bitch and moan about all the "rich people" dodging tax or trying to screw the system to pay less tax. At least they are paying tax, infact more than everyone else does.

it cracks me up "oh the top 3% of the country are paying less tax than they should" not all of them.

What about all the fucken loosers screwing us over with on fake claims on benifits, housing allowences, acc etc etc.

ive done lots of work in porirua where people in state houses have massive fucken tv's and stereos and cars n shit. how does that work? oh please dont put GST up or i will have to tick up more money to buy my awesome TV that i cant afford.


how about the taxi driver i talked to the other day
he drives taxi's during the day while his wife looks after 10 familys kids during the day (for cash . i bet they dont fill out any ird forms)
oh yea then she drives taxis at night while he looks after the kids at night.

So yea i dont mind paying more GST, i dont really care about the extra money ill be better off by.

[rainman]

In a truely socialist state, where the people own the means of production, finance etc etc , there is no need for extraction of money or resources. It would be illogical. Just transferring money form one pocket to another.
...
In a decent society everyone (everyone willing to do an honest days work, anyway. The others are either genuinely disabled, or in labour camps ) should have an income sufficient to enable them to buy the basic needs of life, regardless of any taxation rate.

Brilliant work, as ever. You should be PM :)


That's a theoretical as well as practical nonsense. You're either Libertarian, as I am and as it appears davereid is, or not. If you're a socialist, you emphatically don't believe in economic freedom, so you can't be libertarian...you're deciding what level of liberty is allowed.

Only proving you don't understand either concept.

Not all libertarians are Hayekian, and not all socialists are state socialists. The first people to use the term libertarian were Dejacque and Proudhon, neither of whom I suspect you would have much in common with. You should perhaps read their work, it might broaden your horizons somewhat.

[avgas]

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing-you who dread knowledge-I am the man who will now tell you.” The chief engineer was the only one able to move; he ran to a television set and struggled frantically with its dials. But the screen remained empty; the speaker had not chosen to be seen. Only his voice filled the airways of the country-of the world, thought the chief engineer-sounding as if he were speaking here, in this room, not to a group, but to one man; it was not the tone of addressing a meeting, but the tone of addressing a mind.
“You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You have said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster. In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.
“You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I-I am the man who has granted you your wish.
“Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your world of man’s mind.
“Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose mind isn’t. There are values higher than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren’t.
“While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem-I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality-mine. It is mine that they chose to follow.
“All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. We do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.
“We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.
“There is a difference between our strike and all those you’ve practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, according to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality-the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind.
“We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it. We have no demands to present to you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.
“Are you now crying: No, this was not what you wanted? A mindless world of ruins was not your goal? You did not want us to leave you? You moral cannibals, I know that you’ve always known what it was that you wanted. But your game is up, because now we know it, too.
“Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as reward for their martyrdom-while you went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good?-by what standard?
“You wanted to know John Galt’s identity. I am the man who has asked that question.
“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality-you who have never known any-but to discover it.
“You have heard no concepts of morality but the mystical or the social. You have been taught that morality is a code of behavior imposed on you by whim, the whim of a supernatural power or the whim of society, to serve God’s purpose or your neighbor’s welfare, to please an authority beyond the grave or else next door-but not to serve your life or pleasure. Your pleasure, you have been taught, is to be found in immorality, your interests would best be served by evil, and any moral code must be designed not for you, but against you, not to further your life, but to drain it.
“For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors-between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.
“Both sides agreed that morality demands the surrender of your self-interest and of your mind, that the moral and the practical are opposites, that morality is not the province of reason, but the province of faith and force. Both sides agreed that no rational morality is possible, that there is no right or wrong in reason-that in reason there’s no reason to be moral.
“Whatever else they fought about, it was against man’s mind that all your moralists have stood united. It was man’s mind that all their schemes and systems were intended to despoil and destroy. Now choose to perish or to learn that the anti-mind is the anti-life.
“Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch-or build a cyclotron-without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.
“But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival-so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question ‘to’ think or not to think.’
“A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. ‘Value’ is that which one acts to gain and keep, ‘virtue’ is the action by which one gains and keeps it. ‘Value’ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? ‘Value’ presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.
“There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence-and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not; it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and-self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it does; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.
“A plant must feed itself in order to live; the sunlight, the water, the chemicals it needs are the values its nature has set it to pursue; its life is the standard of value directing its actions. But a plant has no choice of action; there are alternatives in the conditions it encounters, but there is no alternative in its function: it acts automatically to further its life, it cannot act for its own destruction.
“An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil. It has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In conditions where its knowledge proves inadequate, it dies. But so long as it lives, it acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and no power of choice, it is unable to ignore its own good, unable to decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.
“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An ‘instinct’ is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man’s desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him t9 perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer-and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
“A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and to destroy his mind.
“Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice-and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice: he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice.
“A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
“Whoever you are, you who are hearing me now, I am speaking to whatever living remnant is left uncorrupted within you, to the remnant of the human, to your mind, and I say: There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man’s Life is its standard of value.
“All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.
“Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being-not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement-not survival at any price, since there’s only one price that pays for man’s survival: reason.
“Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man-for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.
“Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death. Such a being is a metaphysical monstrosity, struggling to oppose, negate and contradict the fact of his own existence, running blindly amuck on a trail of destruction, capable of nothing but pain.
“Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness-to value the failure of your values-is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man-every man-is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.
“But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
“Sweep aside those parasites of subsidized classrooms, who live on the profits of the mind of others and proclaim that man needs no morality, no values, no code of behavior. They, who pose as scientists and claim that man is only an animal, do not grant him inclusion in the law of existence they have granted to the lowest of insects. They recognize that every living species has a way of survival demanded by its nature, they do not claim that a fish can live out of water or that a dog can live without its sense of smell-but man, they claim, the most complex of beings, man can survive in any way whatever, man has no identity, no nature, and there’s no practical reason why he cannot live with his means of survival destroyed, with his mind throttled and placed at the disposal of any orders they might care to issue.
“Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man’s instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live.
“No, you do not have to live; it is your basic act of choice; but if you choose to live,. you must live as a man-by the work and the judgment of your mind.
“No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything else-and the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you, the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.
“No, you do not have to think; it is an act of moral choice. But someone had to think to keep you alive; if you choose to default, you default on existence and you pass the deficit to some moral man, expecting him to sacrifice his good for the sake of letting you survive by your evil.
“No, you do not have to be a man; but today those who are, are not there any longer. I have removed your means of survival-your victims.
“If you wish to know how I have done it and what I told them to make them quit, you are hearing it now. I told them, in essence, the statement I am making tonight. They were men who had lived by my code, but had not known how great a virtue it represented. I made them see it. I brought them, not a re-evaluation, but only an identification of their values.
“We, the men of the mind, are now on strike against you in the name of a single axiom, which is the root of our moral code, just as the root of yours is the wish to escape it: the axiom that existence exists.
“Existence exists-and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.
“If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.
“Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two-existence and consciousness-are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it.
“To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was-no matter what his errors-the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
“Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
“Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose of those who taught you to evade it, was to make you forget that Man is Man.
“Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.
“All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
“Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.
“The most depraved sentence you can now utter is to ask: Whose reason? The answer is: Yours. No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth-and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man’s mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.
“You who speak of a ‘moral instinct’ as if it were some separate endowment opposed to reason-man’s reason is his moral faculty. A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False?-Right or Wrong? Is a seed to be planted in soil in order to grow-right or wrong? Is a man’s wound to be disinfected in order to save his life-right or wrong? Does the nature of atmospheric electricity permit it to be converted into kinetic power-right or wrong? It is the answers to such questions that gave you everything you have-and the answers came from a man’s mind, a mind of intransigent devotion to that which is right.
“A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest-but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
“That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call ‘free will’ is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think-not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment-on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.’ Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say ‘It is,’ you are refusing to say ‘I am.’ By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’-he is declaring: ‘Who am I to live?’
“This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.
“To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.
“You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island-it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today-and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
“If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a ‘moral commandment’ is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
“My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists-and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason-Purpose-Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge-Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve-Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.
“Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking-that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action-that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise-that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality-that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind-that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.
“Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it-that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life-that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.
“Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence-that man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions-that, like a judge impervious to public opinion, he may not sacrifice his convictions to the wishes of others, be it the whole of mankind shouting pleas or threats against him-that courage and confidence are practical necessities, that courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to one’s own consciousness.
“Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud-that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee-that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling-that honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.
“Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification-that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a totter above a hero-that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions-that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement-that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit-and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.
“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live-that productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values-that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others- that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human-that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind’s full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay-that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live-that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road-that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up-that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.
“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned-that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character-that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind-that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining-that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul-that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice-that the first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself-and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul’s shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others.
“Are you beginning to see who is John Galt? I am the man who has earned the thing you did not fight for, the thing you have renounced, betrayed, corrupted, yet were unable fully to destroy and are now hiding as your guilty secret, spending your life in apologies to every professional cannibal, lest it be discovered that somewhere within you, you still long to say what I am now saying to the hearing of the whole of mankind: I am proud of my own value and of the fact that I wish to live.
“This wish-which you share, yet submerge as an evil-is the only remnant of the good within you, but it is a wish one must learn to deserve. His own happiness is man’s only moral purpose, but only his own virtue can achieve it. Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.
“Just as your body has two fundamental sensations, pleasure and pain, as signs of its welfare or injury, as a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death, so your consciousness has two fundamental emotions, joy and suffering, in answer to the same alternative. Your emotions are estimates of that which furthers your life or threatens it, lightning calculators giving you a sum of your profit or loss. You have no choice about your capacity to feel that something is good for you or evil, but what you will consider good or evil, what will give you joy or pain, what you will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on your standard of value. Emotions are inherent in your nature, but their content is dictated by your mind. Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.
“If you hold the irrational as your standard of value and the impossible as your concept of the good, if you long for rewards you have not earned, for a fortune, or a love you don’t deserve, for a loophole in the law of causality, for an A that becomes non-A at your whim, if you desire the opposite of existence-you will reach it. Do not cry, when you reach it, that life is frustration and that happiness is impossible to man; check your fuel: it brought you where you wanted to go.
“Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy-a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
“Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires-so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal’s lust, men who neither make sacrifice nor accept them.
“The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his body as fodder or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit-his love, his friendship, his esteem-except in payment and in trade for human virtues, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held them in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is the entity they dread-a man of justice.
“Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None-except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and their demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice. It is only with their mind that I can deal and only for my own self-interest, when they see that my interest coincides with theirs. When they don’t, I enter no relationship; I let dissenters go their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs. I have nothing to gain from fools or cowards; I have no benefits to seek from human vices: from stupidity, dishonesty or fear. The only value men can offer me is the work of their mind. When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.
“Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate-do you hear me? no man may start-the use of physical force against others.
“To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force-him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.
“Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason-as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no ‘right’ to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
“To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument-is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment: you threaten him with death if he does. You place him into a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life-and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.
“Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: ‘Your money or your life,’ or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: ‘Your children’s education or your life,’ the meaning of that ultimatum is: ‘Your mind or your life’-and neither is possible to man without the other.
“If there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is the more contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of others or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to force his mind. That is the moral absolute one does not leave open to debate. I do not grant the terms of reason to men who propose to deprive me of reason. I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think. I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer’s wish to kill me. When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him-by force.
“It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own. He uses force to seize a value; I use it only to destroy destruction. A holdup man seeks to gain wealth by killing me; I do not grow richer by killing a holdup man. I seek no values by means of evil, nor do I surrender my values to evil.
“In the name of all the producers who had kept you alive and received your death ultimatums in payment, I now answer you with a single ultimatum of our own: Our work or your guns. You can choose either; you can’t have both. We do not initiate the use of force against others or submit to force at their hands. If you desire ever again to live in an industrial society, it Will be on our moral terms. Our terms and our motive power are the antithesis of yours. You have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringing death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer him life as his reward for accepting ours.
“You who are worshippers of the zero-you have never discovered that achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not ‘the absence of pain,’ intelligence is not ‘the absence of stupidity,’ light is not ‘the absence of darkness,’ an entity is not ‘the absence of a nonentity.’ Building is not done by abstaining from demolition; centuries of sitting and waiting in such abstinence will not raise one single girder for you to abstain from demolishing-and now you can no longer say to me, the builder: ‘Produce, and feed us in exchange for our not destroying your production.’ I am answering in the name of all your victims: Perish with and in your own void. Existence is not a negation of negatives. Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us. Perish, because we have learned that a zero cannot hold a mortgage over life.
“You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.
“You, who have lost the concept of the difference, you who claim that fear and joy are incentives of equal power-and secretly add that fear is the more ‘practical’-you do not wish to live, and only fear of death still holds you to the existence you have damned. You dart in panic through the trap of your days, looking for the exit you have closed, running from a pursuer you dare not name to a terror you dare not acknowledge, and the greater your terror the greater your dread of the only act that could save you: thinking. The purpose of your struggle is not to know, not to grasp or name or hear the thing. I shall now state to your hearing: that yours is the Morality of Death.
“Death is the standard of your values, death is your chosen goal, and you have to keep running, since there is no escape from the pursuer who is out to destroy you or from the knowledge that that pursuer is yourself. Stop running, for once-there is no place to run-stand naked, as you dread to stand, but as I see you, and take a look at what you dared to call a moral code.
“Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction is its purpose, means and end. Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.
“It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him-it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.
“The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.
“A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.
“Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a ‘tendency’ to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.
“What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge-he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil-he became a mortal being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor-he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire-he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness; joy-all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was-that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love-he was not man.
“Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.
“They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man. No, they say, they do not preach that man is evil, the evil is only that alien object: his body. No, they say, they do not wish to kill him, they only wish to make him lose his body. They seek to help him, they say, against his pain-and they point at the torture rack to which they’ve tied him, the rack with two wheels that pull him in opposite directions, the rack of the doctrine that splits his soul and body.
“They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth-and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that gorgeous jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave.
“They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost-yet such is their image of man’s nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is nonexistent, that only the unknowable exists.
“Do you observe what human faculty that’ doctrine was designed to ignore? It was man’s mind that had to be negated in order to make him fall apart. Once he surrendered reason, he was left at the mercy of two monsters whom he could not fathom or control: of a body moved by unaccountable instincts and of a soul moved by mystic revelations-he was left as the passively ravaged victim of a battle between a robot and a dictaphone.
“And as he now crawls through the wreckage, groping blindly for a way to live, your teachers offer him the help of a morality that proclaims that he’ll find no solution and must seek no fulfillment on earth. Real existence, they tell him, is that which he cannot perceive, true consciousness is the faculty of perceiving the non-existent-and if he is unable to understand it, that is the proof that his existence is evil and his consciousness impotent.
“As products of the split between man’s soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelation, the other to their reflexes. No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of irreconcilable antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims: in matter-the enslavement of man’s body, in spirit-the destruction of his mind.
“The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive-a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society-a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself. Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God. Man’s mind, say the mystics of muscle, must be subordinated to the will of Society. Man’s standard of value say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure 0f God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of muscle, is the pleasure of Society, whose standards are beyond man’s right of judgment and must be obeyed as a primary absolute. The purpose of man’s life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. His reward, say the mystics of spirit, will be given to him beyond the grave. His reward, say the mystics of muscle, will be given on earth-to his great-grandchildren.
“Selfishness-say both-is man’s evil. Man’s good-say both-is to give up his personal desires, to deny himself, renounce himself, surrender; man’s good is to negate the life he lives. Sacrifice-cry both-is the essence of morality, the highest virtue within man’s reach.
“Whoever is now within reach of my voice, whoever is man the victim, not man the killer, I am speaking at the deathbed of your mind, at the brink of that darkness in which you’re drowning, and if there still remains within you the power to struggle to hold on to those fading sparks which had been yourself-use it now. The word that has destroyed you is ’sacrifice.’ Use the last of your strength to understand its meaning. You’re still alive. You have a chance.
“‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious. ‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. ‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.
“If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice; if you exchange a dollar for a penny, it is. If you achieve the career you wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice; if you then renounce it for the sake of a rival, it is. If you own a bottle of milk and gave it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor’s child and let your own die, it is.
“If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to a worthless stranger, it is. If you give your friend a sum you can afford, it is not a sacrifice; if you give him money at the cost of your own discomfort, it is only a partial virtue, according to this sort of moral standard; if you give him money at the cost of disaster to yourself that is the virtue of sacrifice in full.
“If you renounce all personal desire and dedicate your life to those you love, you do not achieve full virtue: you still retain a value of your own, which is your love. If you devote your life to random strangers, it is an act of greater virtue. If you devote your life to serving men you hate-that is the greatest of the virtues you can practice.
“A sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surrender of all values. If you wish to achieve full virtue, you must seek no gratitude in return for your sacrifice, no praise, no love, no admiration, no self-esteem, not even the pride of being virtuous; the faintest trace of any gain dilutes your virtue. If you pursue a course of action that does not taint your life by any joy, that brings you no value in matter, no value in spirit, no gain, no profit, no reward-if you achieve this state of total zero, you have achieved the ideal of moral perfection.
“You are told that moral perfection is impossible to man-and, by this standard, it is. You cannot achieve it so long as you live, but the value of your life and of your person is gauged by how closely you succeed in approaching that ideal zero which is death.
“If you start, however, as a passionless blank, as a vegetable seeking to be eaten, with no values to reject and no wishes to renounce, you will not win the crown of sacrifice. It is not a sacrifice to renounce the unwanted. It is not a sacrifice. It is not a sacrifice to give your life for others, if death is your personal desire. To achieve the virtue of sacrifice, you must want to live, you must love it, you must burn with passion for this earth and for all the splendor it can give you-you must feel the twist of every knife as it slashes your desires away from your reach and drains your love out of your body, It is not mere death that the morality of sacrifice holds out to you as an ideal, but death by slow torture.
“Do not remind me that it pertains only to this life on earth. I am concerned with no other. Neither are you.
“If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a ’sacrifice’: that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty. If a man dies fighting for his own freedom, it is not a sacrifice: he is not willing to live as a slave; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of man who’s willing. If a man refuses to sell his convictions, it is not a sacrifice, unless he is the sort of man who has no convictions.
“Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to sacrifice-no values, no standards, no judgment-those whose desires are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered. For a man of moral stature, whose desires are born of rational values, sacrifice is the surrender of the right to the wrong, of the good to the evil.
“The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral-a morality that declares its own bankruptcy by confessing that it can’t impart to men any personal stake in virtues or value, and that their souls are sewers of depravity, which they must be taught to sacrifice. By his own confession, it is impotent to teach men to be good and can only subject them to constant punishment.
“Are you thinking, in some foggy stupor, that it’s only material values that your morality requires you to sacrifice? And what do you think are material values? Matter has no value except as a means for the satisfaction of human desires. Matter is only a tool of human values. To what service are you asked to give the material tools your virtue has produced? To the service of that which you regard as evil: to a principle you do not share, to a person you do not respect, to the achievement of a purpose opposed to your own-else your gift is not a sacrifice.
“Your morality tells you to renounce the material world and to divorce your values from matter. A man whose values are given no expression in material form, whose existence is unrelated to his ideals, whose actions contradict his convictions, is a cheap little hypocrite-yet that is the man who obeys your morality and divorces his values from matter. The man who loves one woman, but sleeps with another-the man who admires the talent of a worker, but hires another-the man who considers one cause to be just, but donates his money to the support of another-the man who holds high standards of craftsmanship, but devotes his effort to the production of trash-these are the men who have renounced matter, the men who believe that the values of their spirit cannot be brought into material reality.
“Do you say it is the spirit that such men have renounced? Yes, of course. You cannot have one without the other. You are an indivisible entity of matter and consciousness. Renounce your consciousness and you become a brute. Renounce your body and you become a fake. Renounce the material world and you surrender it to evil.
“And that is precisely the goal of your morality, the duty that your code demands of you. Give to that which you do not enjoy, serve that which you do not admire, submit to that which you consider evil-surrender the world to the values of others, deny, reject, renounce your self. Your self is your mind; renounce it and you become a chunk of meat ready for any cannibal to swallow.
“It is your mind that they want you to surrender-all those who preach the creed of sacrifice, whatever their tags or their motives, whether they demand it for the sake of your soul or of your body, whether they promise you another life in heaven or a full stomach on this earth. Those who start by saying: ‘It is selfish to pursue your own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others’-end up by saying: ‘It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacrifice them to the convictions of others.
“This much is true: the most selfish of all things is the independent mind that recognizes no authority higher than its own and no value higher than its judgment of truth. You are asked to sacrifice your intellectual integrity, your logic, your reason, your standard of truth-in favor of becoming a prostitute whose standard is the greatest good for the greatest number.
“If you search your code for guidance, for an answer to the question: ‘What is the good?’-the only answer you will find is ‘The good of others.’ The good is whatever others wish, whatever you feel they feel they wish, or whatever you feel they ought to feel. ‘The good of others’ is a magic formula that transforms anything into gold, a formula to be recited as a guarantee of moral glory and as a fumigator for any action, even the slaughter of a continent. Your standard of virtue is not an object, not an act, not a principle, but an intention. You need no proof, no reasons, no success, you need not achieve in fact the good of others-all you need to know is that your motive was the good of others, not your own. Your only definition of the good is a negation: the good is the ‘non-good for me.’
“Your code-which boasts that it upholds eternal, absolute, objective moral values and scorns the conditional, the relative and the subjective-your code hands out, as its version of the absolute, the following rule of moral conduct: If you wish it, it’s evil; if others wish it, it’s good; if the motive of your action is your welfare, don’t do it; if the motive is the welfare of others, then anything goes.
“As this double-jointed, double-standard morality splits you in half, so it splits mankind into two enemy camps: one is you, the other is all the rest of humanity. You are the only outcast who has no right to wish to live. You are the only servant, the rest are the masters, you are the only giver, the rest are the takers, you are the eternal debtor, the rest are the creditors never to be paid off. You must not question their right to your sacrifice, or the nature of their wishes and their needs: their right is conferred upon them by a negative, by the fact that they are ‘non-you.’
“For those of you who might ask questions, your code provides a consolation prize and booby-trap: it is for your own happiness, it says, that you must serve the happiness of others, the only way to achieve your joy is to give it up to others, the only way to achieve your prosperity is to surrender your wealth to others, the only way to protect your life is to protect all men except yourself-and if you find no joy in this procedure, it is your own fault and the proof of your evil; if you were good, you would find your happiness in providing a banquet for others, and your dignity in existing on such crumbs as they might care to toss you.
“You who have no standard of self-esteem, accept the guilt and dare not ask the questions. But you know the unadmitted answer, refusing to acknowledge what you see, what hidden premise moves your world. You know it, not in honest statement, but as a dark uneasiness within you, while you flounder between guilty cheating and grudgingly practicing a principle too vicious to name.
“I, who do not accept the unearned, neither in values nor in guilt, am here to ask the questions you evaded. Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others? Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?
“The answer you evade, the monstrous answer is: No, the takers are not evil, provided they did not earn the value you gave them. It is not immoral for them to accept it, provided they are unable to produce it, unable to deserve it, unable to give you any value in return. It is not immoral for them to enjoy it, provided they do not obtain it by right.
“Such is the secret core of your creed, the other half of your double standard: it is immoral to live by your own effort, but moral to live by the effort of others-it is immoral to consume your own product, but moral to consume the products of others-it is immoral to earn, but moral to mooch-it is the parasites who are the moral justification for the existence of the producers, but the existence of the parasites is an end in itself-it is evil to profit by achievement, but good to profit by sacrifice-it is evil to create your own happiness, but good to enjoy it at the price of the blood of others.
“Your code divides mankind into two castes and commands them to live by opposite rules: those who may desire anything and those who may desire nothing, the chosen and the demand, the riders and the carriers, the eaters and the eaten. What standard determines your caste? What passkey admits you to the moral elite? The passkey is lack of value.
“Whatever the value involved, it is your lack of it that gives you a claim upon those who don’t lack it. It is your need that gives you a claim to rewards. If you are able to satisfy your need, your ability annuls your right to satisfy it. But a need you are unable to satisfy gives you first right to the lives of mankind.
“If you succeed, any man who fails is your master; if you fail, any man who succeeds is your serf. Whether your failure is just or not, whether your wishes are rational or not, whether your misfortune is undeserved or the result of your vices, it is misfortune that gives you a right to rewards. It is pain, regardless of its nature or cause, pain as a primary absolute, that gives you a mortgage on all of existence.
“If you heal your pain by your own effort, you receive no moral credit: your code regards it scornfully as an act of self-interest. Whatever value you seek to acquire, be it wealth or food or love or rights, if you acquire it by means of your Virtue, your code does not regard it as a moral acquisition: you occasion no loss to anyone, it is a trade, not alms; a payment, not a sacrifice. The deserved belongs in the selfish, commercial realm of mutual profit; it is only the undeserved that calls for that moral transaction which consists of profit to one at the price of disaster to the other. To demand rewards for your virtue is selfish and immoral; it is your lack of virtue that transforms your demand into a moral right.
“A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness-non-existence-as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defeat: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw-the zero.
“Who provides the account to pay these claims? Those who are cursed for being non-zeros, each to the extent of his distance from that ideal. Since all values are the product of virtues, the degree of your virtue is used as the measure of your penalty; the degree of your faults is used as the measure of your gain. Your code declares that the rational man must sacrifice himself to the irrational, the independent man to parasites, the honest man to the dishonest, the man of justice to the unjust, the productive man to thieving loafers, the man of integrity to compromising knaves, the man of self-esteem to sniveling neurotics. Do you wonder at the meanness of soul in those you see around you? The man who achieves these virtues will not accept your moral code; the man who accepts your moral code will not achieve these virtues.
“Under a morality of sacrifice, the first value you sacrifice is morality; the next is self-esteem. When need is the standard, every man is both victim and parasite. As a victim, he must labor to fill the needs of others, leaving himself in the position of a parasite whose needs must be filled by others. He cannot approach his fellow men except in one of two disgraceful roles: he is both a beggar and a sucker.
“You fear the man who has a dollar less than you, that dollar is rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder. You hate the man who has a dollar more than you, that dollar is rightfully yours, he makes you feel that you are morally defrauded. The man below is a source of, your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration. You do not know what to surrender or demand, when to give and when to grab, what pleasure in life is rightfully yours and what debt is still unpaid to others-you struggle to evade, as ‘theory,’ the knowledge that by the moral standard you’ve accepted you are guilty every moment of your life, there is no mouthful of food you swallow that is not needed by someone somewhere on earth-and you give up the problem in blind resentment, you conclude that moral perfection is not to be achieved or desired, that you will muddle through by snatching as snatch can and by avoiding the eyes of the young, of those who look at you as if self-esteem were possible and they expected you to have it. Guilt is all that you retain within your soul-and so does every other man, as he goes past, avoiding your eyes. Do you wonder why your morality has not achieved brotherhood on earth or the good will of man to man?
“The justification of sacrifice, that your morality propounds, is more corrupt than the corruption it purports to justify. The motive of your sacrifice, it tells you, should be love-the love you ought to feel for every man. A morality that professes the belief that the values of the spirit are more precious than matter, a morality that teaches you to scorn a whore who gives her body indiscriminately to all men-this same morality demands that you surrender your soul to promiscuous love for all comers.
“As there can be no causeless wealth, so there can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a face of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards. To love is to value. The man who tells you that it is possible to value without values, to love those whom you appraise as worthless, is the man who tells you that it is possible to grow rich by consuming without producing and that paper money is as valuable as gold.
“Observe that he does not expect you to feel a causeless fear. When his kind get into power, they are expert at contriving means of terror, at giving you ample cause to feel the fear by which they desire to rule you. But when it comes to love, the highest of emotions, you permit them to shriek at you accusingly that you are a moral delinquent if you’re incapable of feeling causeless love. When a man feels fear without reason, you call him to the attention of a psychiatrist; you are not so careful to protect the meaning, the nature and the dignity of love.
“Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another. Your morality demands that you divorce your love from values and hand it down to any vagrant, not as response to his worth, but as response to his need, not as reward, but as alms, not as a payment for virtues, but as a blank check on vices. Your morality tells you that the purpose of love is to set you free of the bonds of morality, that love is superior to moral judgment, that true love transcends, forgives and survives every manner of evil in its object, and the greater the love the greater the depravity it permits to the loved. To love a man for his virtues is paltry and human, it tells you; to love him for his flaws is divine. To love those who are worthy of it is self-interest; to love the unworthy is sacrifice. You owe your love to those who don’t deserve it, and the less they deserve it, the more love you owe them-the more loathsome the object, the nobler your love-the more unfastidious your love, the greater the virtue-and if you can bring your soul to the state of a dump heap that welcomes anything on equal terms, if you can cease to value moral values, you have achieved the state of moral perfection.
“Such is your morality of sacrifice and such are the twin ideals it offers: to refashion the life of your body in the image of a human stockyard, and the life of your spirit in the image of a dump.
“Such was your goal-and you’ve reached it. Why do you now moan complaints about man’s impotence and the futility of human aspirations? Because you were unable to prosper by seeking destruction? Because you were unable to find joy by worshipping pain? Because you were unable to live by holding death as your standard of value?
“The degree of your ability to live was the degree to which you broke your moral code, yet you believe that those who preach it are friends of humanity, you damn yourself and dare not question their motives or their goals. Take a look at them now, when you face your last choice-and if you choose to perish, do so with full knowledge of how cheaply so small an enemy has claimed your life.
“The mystics of both schools, who preach the creed of sacrifice, are germs that attack you through a single sore: your fear of relying on your mind. They tell you that they possess a means of knowledge higher than the mind, a mode of consciousness superior to reason-like a special pull with some bureaucrat of the universe who gives them secret tips withheld from others. The mystics of spirit declare that they possess an extra sense you lack: this special sixth sense consists of contradicting the whole of the knowledge of your five. The mystics of muscle do not bother to assert any claim to extrasensory perception: they merely declare that your senses are not valid, and that their wisdom consists of perceiving your blindness by some manner of unspecified means. Both kinds demand that you invalidate your own consciousness and surrender yourself into their power. They offer you, as proof of their superior knowledge, the fact that they assert the opposite of everything you know, and as proof of their superior ability to deal with existence, the fact that they lead you to misery, self-sacrifice, starvation, destruction.
“They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it ‘another dimension,’ which consists of denying dimensions. The mystics of muscle call it ‘the future,’ which consists of denying the present. To exist is to possess identity. What identity are they able to give to their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say-and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge-God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue ‘is non-profit, A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out.
“It is only the metaphysics of a leech that would cling to the idea of a universe where a zero is a standard of identification. A leech would want to seek escape from the necessity to name its own nature-escape from the necessity to know that the substance on which it builds its private universe is blood.
“What is the nature of that superior world to which they sacrifice the world that exists? The mystics of spirit curse matter, the mystics of muscle curse profit the first wish men to profit by renouncing the earth, the second wish men to inherit the earth by renouncing all profit. Their non-material, non-profit worlds are realms where rivers run with milk and coffee, where wine spurts from rocks at their command, where pastry drops on them from clouds at the price of opening their mouth. On this material, profit-chasing earth, an enormous investment of virtue-of intelligence, integrity, energy, skill-is required to construct a railroad to carry them the distance of one mile; in their non-material, non-profit world, they travel from planet to planet at the cost of a wish. If an honest person asks them: ‘How?’-they answer with righteous scorn that a ‘how’ is the concept of vulgar realists; the concept of superior spirits is ‘Somehow.’ On this earth restricted by matter and profit, rewards are achieved by thought; in a world set free of such restrictions, rewards are achieved by wishing.
“And that is the whole of their shabby secret. The secret of all their esoteric philosophies, of all their dialectics and super-senses, of their evasive eyes and snarling words, the secret for which they destroy civilization, language, industries and lives, the secret for which they pierce their own eyes and eardrums, grind out their senses, blank out their minds, the purpose for which they dissolve the absolutes of reason, logic, matter, existence, reality-is to erect upon that plastic fog a single holy absolute: their Wish.
“The restriction they seek to escape is the law of identity. The freedom they seek is freedom from the fact that an A will remain an A, no matter what their tears or tantrums-that a river will not bring them milk, no matter what their hunger-that water will not run uphill, no matter what comforts they could gain if it did, and if they want to lift it to the roof of a skyscraper, they must do it by a process of thought and labor, in which the nature of an inch of pipe line counts, but their feelings do not-that their feelings are impotent to alter the course of a single speck of dust in space or the nature of any action they have committed.
“Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. ‘Things as they are’ are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become ‘things as perceived by your wishes.’
“There is no honest revolt against reason-and when you accept any part of their creed, your motive is to get away with something your reason would not permit you to attempt. The freedom you seek is freedom from the fact that if you stole your wealth, you are a scoundrel, no matter how much you give to charity or how many prayers you recite-that if you sleep with sluts, you’re not a worthy husband, no matter how anxiously you feel that you love our wife next morning-that you are an entity, not a series of random pieces scattered through a universe where nothing sticks and nothing commits you to anything, the universe of a child’s nightmare where identities switch and swim, where the rotter and the hero are interchangeable parts arbitrarily assumed at will-that you are a man-that you are an entity-that you are.
“No matter how eagerly you claim that the goal of your mystic wishing is a higher mode of life, the rebellion against identity is the wish for non-existence. The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.
“Your teachers, the mystics of both schools, have reversed causality in their consciousness, then strive to reverse it in existence. They take their emotions as a cause, and their mind as a passive effect. They make their emotions their tool for perceiving reality. They hold their desires as an irreducible primary, as a fact superseding all facts. An honest man does not desire until he has identified the object of his desire. He says: ‘It is, therefore I want it.’ They say: ‘I want it, therefore it is.’
“They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness-they want to be that God they created in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want an omnipotent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of the consciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown.
“Those irrational wishes that draw you to their creed, those emotions you worship as an idol, on whose altar you sacrifice the earth, that dark, incoherent passion within you, which you take as the voice of God or of your glands, is nothing more than the corpse of your mind. An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise.
“Whenever you committed the evil of refusing to think and to see, of exempting from the absolute of reality some one small wish of yours, whenever you chose to say: Let me withdraw from the judgment of reason the cookies I stole, or the existence of God, let me have my one irrational whim and I will be a man of reason about all else-that was the act of subverting your consciousness, the act of corrupting your mind. Your mind then became a fixed jury who takes orders from a secret underworld, whose verdict distorts the evidence to fit an absolute it dares not touch-and a censored reality is the result, a splintered reality where the bits you chose to see are floating among the chasms of those you didn’t, held together by that embalming fluid of the mind which is an emotion exempted from thought.
“The links you strive to drown are casual connections. The enemy you seek to defeat is the law of causality: it permits you no miracles. The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature. An action not caused by an entity would be caused by a zero, which would mean a zero controlling a thing, a non-entity controlling an entity, the non-existent ruling the existent-which is the universe of your teachers’ desire, the cause of their doctrines of causeless action, the reason of their revolt against reason, the goal of their morality, their politics, their economics, the ideal they strive for: the reign of the zero.
“The law of identity does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake before you have it. But if you drown both laws in the blanks of your mind, if you pretend to yourself and to others that you don’t see-then you can try to proclaim your right to eat your cake today and mine tomorrow, you can preach that the way to have a cake is to eat it first, before you bake it, that the way to produce is to start by consuming, that all wishers have an equal claim to all things, since nothing is caused by anything. The corollary of the causeless in matter is the unearned in spirit.
“Whenever you rebel against causality, your motive is the fraudulent desire, not to escape it, but worse: to reverse it. You want unearned love, as if love, the effect, could give you personal value, the cause-you want unearned admiration, as if admiration, the effect, could give you virtue, the cause-you want unearned wealth, as if wealth, the effect, could give you ability, the cause-you plead for mercy, mercy, not justice, as if an unearned forgiveness could wipe out the cause of your plea. And to indulge your ugly little shams, you support the doctrines of your teachers, while they run hog-wild proclaiming that spending, the effect, creates riches, the cause, that machinery, the effect, creates intelligence, the cause, that your sexual desires, the effect, create your philosophical values, the cause.
“Who pays for the orgy? Who causes the causeless? Who are the victims, condemned to remain unacknowledged and to perish in silence, lest their agony disturb your pretense that they do not exist? We are, we, the men of the mind.
“We are the cause of all the values that you covet, we who perform the process of thinking, which is the process of defining identity and discovering causal connections. We taught you to know, to speak, to produce, to desire, to love. You who abandon reason-were it not for us who preserve it, you would not be able to fulfill or even to conceive your wishes. You would not be able to desire the clothes that had not been made, the automobile that had not been invented, the money that had not been devised, as exchange for goods that did not exist, the admiration that had not been experienced for men who had achieved nothing, the love that belongs and pertains only to those who preserve their capacity to think, to choose, to value.
“You-who leap like a savage out of the jungle of your feelings to the Fifth Avenue of our New York and proclaim that you want to keep the electric lights, but to destroy the generators-it is our wealth that you use while destroying us, it is our values that you use while damning us, it is our language that you use while denying the mind.
“Just as your mystics of spirit invented their heaven in the image of our earth, omitting our existence, and promised you rewards created by miracle out of non-matter-so your modern mystics of muscle omit our existence and promise you a heaven where matter shapes itself of its own causeless will into all the rewards desired by your non-mind.
“For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket-by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners. We, the men of the mind, were the unnamed victims of their creed, we who were willing to break their moral code and to bear damnation for the sin of reason-we who thought and acted, while they wished and prayed-we who were moral outcasts, we who were bootleggers of life when life was held to be a crime-while they basked in moral glory for the virtue of surpassing material greed and of distributing in selfless charity the material goods produced by-blank-out.
“Now we are chained and commanded to produce by savages who do not grant us even the identification of sinners-by savages who proclaim that we do not exist, then threaten to deprive us of the life we don’t possess, if we fail to provide them with the goods we don’t produce. Now we are expected to continue running railroads and to know the minute when a train will arrive after crossing the span of a continent, we are expected to continue running steel mills and to know the molecular structure of every drop of metal in the cables of your bridges and in the body of the airplanes that support you in mid-air-while the tribes of your grotesque little mystics of muscle fight over the carcass of our world, gibbering in sounds of non-language that there are no principles, no absolutes, no knowledge, no mind.
“Dropping below the level of a savage, who believes that the magic words he utters have the power to alter reality, they believe that reality can be altered by the power of the words they do not utter-and their magic tool is the blank-out, the pretense that nothing can come into existence past the voodoo of their refusal to identify it.
“As they feed on stolen wealth in body, so they feed on stolen concepts in mind, and proclaim that honesty consists of refusing to know that one is stealing. As they use effects while denying causes, so they use our concepts while denying the roots and the existence of the concepts they are using. As they seek, not to build, but to take over industrial plants, so they seek, not to think, but to take over human thinking.
“As they proclaim that the only requirement for running a factory is the ability to turn the cranks of the machines, and blank out the question of who created the factory-so they proclaim that there are no entities, that nothing exists but motion, and blank out the fact that motion presupposes the thing which moves, that without the concept of entity, there can be no such concept as ‘motion.’ As they proclaim their right to consume the unearned, and blank out the question of who’s to produce it-so they proclaim that there is no law of identity, that nothing exists but change, and blank out the fact that change presupposes the concepts of what changes, from what and to what, that, without the law of identity no such concept as ‘change’ is possible. As they rob an industrialist while denying his value, so they seek to seize power over all of existence while denying that existence exists.
“‘We know that we know nothing,’ they chatter, blanking out the fact that they are claiming knowledge-’There are not absolutes,’ they chatter, blanking out the fact that they are uttering an absolute-’You cannot prove that you exist or that you’re conscious,’ they chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence, consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of something to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a knowledge that has learned to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the unproved.
“When a savage who has not learned to speak declares that existence must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of non-existence-when he declares that your consciousness must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of unconsciousness-he is asking you to step into a void outside of existence and consciousness to give him proof of both-he is asking you to become a zero gaining knowledge about a zero.
“When he declares that an axiom is a matter of arbitrary choice and he doesn’t choose to accept the axiom that he exists, he blanks out the fact that he has accepted it by uttering that sentence, that the only way to reject it is to shut one’s mouth, expound no theories and die.
“An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. Let the caveman who does not choose to accept the axiom of identity, try to present his theory without using the concept of identity or any concept derived from it-let the anthropoid who does not choose to accept the existence of nouns, try to devise a language without nouns, adjectives or verbs-let the witch-doctor who does not choose to accept the validity of sensory perception, try to prove it without using the data he obtained by sensory perception-let the head-hunter who does not choose to accept the validity of logic, try to prove it without using logic-let the pigmy who proclaims that a skyscraper needs no foundation after it reaches its fiftieth story, yank the base from under his building, not yours-let the cannibal who snarls that the freedom of man’s mind was needed to create an industrial civilization, but is not needed to maintain it, be given an arrowhead and bearskin, not a university chair of economics.
“Do you think they are taking you back to dark ages? They are taking you back to darker ages than any your history has known. Their goal is not the era of pre-science, but the era of pre-language. Their purpose is to deprive you of the concept on which man’s mind, his life and his culture depend: the concept of an objective reality. Identify the development of a human consciousness-and you will know the purpose of their creed.
“A savage is a being who has not grasped that A is A and that reality is real. He has arrested his mind at the level of a baby’s, at the state when a consciousness acquires its initial sensory perception and has not learned to distinguish solid objects. It is to a baby that the world appears as a blur of motion, without things that move-and the birth of his mind is the day when he grasps that the streak that keeps flickering past him is his mother and the whirl beyond her is a curtain, that the two are solid entities and neither can turn into the other, that they are what they are, that they exist. The day when he grasps that matter has no volition is the day when he grasps that he has-and this is his birth as a human being. The day when he grasps that the reflection he sees in a mirror is not a delusion, that it is real, but it is not himself, that the mirage he sees in a desert is not a delusion, that the air and the light rays that cause it are real, but it is not a city, it is a city’s reflection-the day when he grasps that he is not a passive recipient of the sensations of any given moment, that his senses do not provide him with automatic knowledge in separate snatches independent of context, but only with the material of knowledge, which his mind must learn to integrate-the day when he grasps that his senses cannot deceive him, that physical objects cannot act without causes, that his organs of perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or to distort, that the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his mind must learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full context of his sensory material, his mind must identify the things that he perceives-that is the day of his birth as a thinker and scientist.
“We are the men who reach that day; you are the men who choose to reach it partly; a savage is a man who never does.
“To a savage, the world is a place of unintelligible miracles where anything is possible to inanimate matter and nothing is possible to him. His world is not the unknown, but that irrational horror: the unknowable. He believes that physical objects are endowed with a mysterious volition, moved by causeless, unpredictable whims, while he is a helpless pawn at the mercy of forces beyond his control. He believes that nature is ruled by demons who possess an omnipotent power and that reality is their fluid plaything, where they can turn his bowl of meal into a snake and his wife into a beetle at any moment, where the A he has never discovered can be any non-A they choose, where the only knowledge he possesses is that he must not attempt to know. He can count on nothing, he can only wish, and he spends his life on wishing, on begging his demons to grant him his wishes by the arbitrary power of their will, giving them credit when they do, taking the blame when they don’t, offering them sacrifices in token of his gratitude and sacrifices in token of his guilt, crawling on his belly in fear and worship of sun and moon and wind and rain and of any thug who announces himself as their spokesman, provided his words are unintelligible and his mask sufficiently frightening-he wishes, begs and crawls, and dies, leaving you, as a record of his view of existence, the distorted monstrosities of his idols, part-man, part-animal, part-spider, the embodiments of the world of non-A.
“His is the intellectual state of your modern teachers and his is the world to which they want to bring you.
“If you wonder by what means they propose to do it, walk into any college classroom and you will hear your professors teaching your children that man can be certain of nothing, that his consciousness has no validity whatever, that he can learn no facts and no laws of existence, that he’s incapable of knowing an objective reality. What, then, is his standard of knowledge and truth? Whatever others believe, is their answer. There is no knowledge, they teach, there’s only faith: your belief that you exist is an act of faith, no more valid than another’s faith in his right to kill you; the axioms of science are an act of faith, no more valid than a mystic’s faith in revelations; the belief that electric light can be produced by ‘a generator is an act of faith, no more valid than the belief that it can be produced by a rabbit’s foot kissed under a stepladder on the first of the moon-truth is whatever people want it to be, and people are everyone except yourself; reality is whatever people choose to say it is, there are no objective facts, there are only people’s arbitrary wishes-a man who seeks knowledge in a laboratory by means of test tubes and logic is an old-fashioned, superstitious fool; a true scientist is a man who goes around taking public polls-and if it weren’t for the selfish greed of the manufacturers of steel girders, who have a vested interest in obstructing the progress of science, you would learn that New York City does not exist, because a poll of the entire population of the world would tell you by a landslide majority that their beliefs forbid its existence.
“For centuries, the mystics of spirit have proclaimed that faith is superior to reason, but have not dared deny the existence of reason. Their heirs and products, the mystics of muscle, have completed their job and achieved their dream: they proclaim that everything is faith, and call it a revolt against believing. As revolt against unproved assertions, they proclaim that nothing can be proved; as revolt against supernatural knowledge, they proclaim that no knowledge is possible; as-revolt against the enemies of science, they proclaim that science is superstition; as revolt against the enslavement of the mind, they proclaim that there is no mind.
“If you surrender your power to perceive, if you accept the switch of your standard from the objective to the collective and wait for mankind to tell you what to think, you will find another switch taking place before the eyes you have renounced: you will find that your teachers become the rulers of the collective, and if you then refuse to obey them, protesting that they are not the whole of mankind, they will answer: ‘By what means do you know that we are not? Are, brother? Where did you get that old-fashioned term?’
“If you doubt that such is their purpose, observe with what passionate consistency the mystics of muscle are striving to make you forget that a concept such as ‘Mind’ has ever existed. Observe the twists of undefined verbiage, the words with rubber meanings, the terms left floating in midstream, by means of which they try to get around the recognition of the concept of ‘thinking.’ Your consciousness, they tell you, consists of ‘reflexes,’ ‘reactions,’ ‘experiences,’ ‘urges,’ and ‘drives’-and refuse to identify the means by which they acquired that knowledge, to identify the act they are performing when they tell it or the act you are performing when you listen. Words have the power to ‘consider’ you, they say and refuse to identify the reason why words have the power to change your-blank-out. A student reading a book understands it through a process of-blank-out. A scientist working on an invention is engaged in the activity of-blank-out. A psychologist helping a neurotic to solve a problem and untangle a conflict, does it by means of-blank-out. An industrialist-blank-out-there is no such person. A factory is a ‘natural resource,’ like a tree, a rock or a mud puddle.
“The problem of production, they tell you, has been solved and deserves no study or concern; the only problem left for your ‘reflexes’ to solve is now the problem of distribution. Who solved the problem of production? Humanity, they answer. What was the solution? The goods are here. How did they get here? Somehow. What caused it? Nothing has causes.
“They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his ‘minimum sustenance’-his food, his clothes, his shelter-with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it-from whom? Blank-out. Every man, they announce, owns an equal share of the technological benefits created in the world. Created-by whom? Blank-out. Frantic cowards who posture as defenders of industrialists now define the purpose of economics as ‘an adjustment between the unlimited desires of men and the goods supplied in limited quantity.’ Supplied-by whom? Blank-out. Intellectual hoodlums who pose as professors, shrug away the thinkers of the past by declaring that their social theories were based on the impractical assumption that man was a rational being-but since men are not rational, they declare, there ought to be established a system that will make it possible for them to exist while being irrational, which means: while defying reality. Who will make it possible? Blank-out. Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind-and whoever agrees or disagrees with his statistics, no one questions his right to enforce his plans by means of a gun. Enforce-on whom? Blank-out. Random females with causeless incomes titter on trips around the globe and return to deliver the message that the backward peoples of the world demand a higher standard of living. Demand-of whom? Blank-out.
“And to forestall any inquiry into the cause of the difference between a jungle village and New York City, they resort to the ultimate obscenity of explaining man’s industrial progress-skyscrapers, cable bridges, power motors, railroad trains-by declaring that man is an animal who possesses an ‘instinct of tool-making.’
“Did you wonder what is wrong with the world? You are now seeing the climax of the creed of the uncaused and unearned. All your gangs of mystics, of spirit or muscle, are fighting one another for power to rule you, snarling that love is the solution for all the problems of your spirit and that a whip is the solution for all the problems of your body-you who have agreed to have no mind. Granting man less dignity than they grant to cattle, ignoring what an animal trainer could tell them-that no animal can be trained by fear, that a tortured elephant will trample its torturer, but will not work for him or carry his burdens-they expect man to continue to produce electronic tubes, supersonic airplanes, atom-smashing engines and interstellar telescopes, with his ration of meat for reward and a lash on his back for incentive.
“Make no mistake about the character of mystics. To undercut your consciousness has always been their only purpose throughout the ages-and power, the power to rule you by force, has always been their only lust.
“From the rites of the jungle witch-doctors, which distorted reality into grotesque absurdities, stunted the minds of their victims and kept them in terror of the supernatural for stagnant stretches of centuries-to the supernatural doctrines of the Middle Ages, which kept men huddling on the mud floors of their-hovels, in terror that the devil might steal the soup they had worked eighteen hours to earn-to the seedy little smiling professor who assures you that your brain has no capacity to think, that you have no means of perception and must blindly obey the omnipotent will of that supernatural force: Society-all of it is the same performance for the same and only purpose: to reduce you to the kind of pulp that has surrendered the validity of its consciousness.
“But it cannot be done to you without your consent. If you permit it to be done, you deserve it.
“When you listen to a mystic’s harangue on the impotence of the human mind and begin to doubt your consciousness, not his, when you permit your precariously semi-rational state to be shaken by any assertion and decide it is safer to trust his superior certainty and knowledge, the joke is on both of you: your sanction is the only source of certainty he has. The supernatural power that a mystic dreads, the unknowable spirit he worships, the consciousness he considers omnipotent is-yours.
“A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with the minds of others. Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the crossroads of the choice between ‘I know’ and ‘They say,’ he chose the authority of others, he chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think. Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others. His surrender took the form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of understanding, that others possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever they want it to be, through some means forever denied to him.
“From then on, afraid to think, he is left at the mercy of unidentified feelings. His feelings become his only guide, his only remnant of personal identity, he clings to them with ferocious possessiveness-and whatever thinking he does is devoted to the struggle of hiding from himself that the nature of his feelings is terror.
“When a mystic declares that he feels the existence of a power superior to reason, he feels it all right, but that power is not an omniscient super-spirit of the universe, it is the consciousness of any passer-by to whom he has surrendered his own. A mystic is driven by the urge to impress, to cheat, to flatter, to deceive, to force that omnipotent consciousness of others. ‘They’ are his only key to reality, he feels that he cannot exist save by harnessing their mysterious power and extorting their unaccountable consent. ‘They’ are his only means of perception and, like a blind man who depends on the sight of a dog, he feels he must leash them in order to live. To control the consciousness of others becomes his only passion; power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
“Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims-as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force-he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious: reason, to him, is a means of deception, he feels that men possess some power more potent than reason-and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and press on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men’s means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.
“Just as the mystic is a parasite in matter, who expropriates the wealth created by others-just as he is a parasite in spirit, who plunders the ideas created by others-so he falls below the level of a lunatic who creates his own distortion of reality, to the level of a parasite of lunacy who seeks a distortion created by others.
“There is only one state that fulfills the mystic’s longing for infinity, non-causality, non-identity: death. No matter what unintelligible causes he ascribes to his incommunicable feelings, whoever rejects reality rejects existence-and the feelings that move him from then on are hatred for all the values of man’s life, and lust for all the evils that destroy it. A mystic relishes the spectacle of suffering, of poverty, subservience and terror; these give him a feeling of triumph, a proof of the defeat of rational reality. But no other reality exists.
“No matter whose welfare he professes to serve, be it the welfare of God or of that disembodied gargoyle he describes as ‘The People,’ no matter what ideal he proclaims in terms of some supernatural dimension-in fact, in reality, on earth, his ideal is death, his craving is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture.
“Destruction is the only end that the mystics’ creed has ever achieved, as it is the only end that, you see them achieving today, and if the ravages wrought by their acts have not made them question their doctrines, if they profess to be moved by love, yet are not deterred by piles of human corpses, it is because the truth about their souls is worse than the obscene excuse you have allowed them, the excuse that the end justifies the means and that the horrors they practice are means to nobler ends. The truth is that those horrors are their ends.
“You who’re depraved enough to believe that you could adjust yourself to a mystic’s dictatorship and could please him by obeying his orders-there is no way to please him; when you obey, he will reverse his orders; he seeks obedience for the sake of obedience and destruction for the sake of destruction. You who are craven enough to believe that you can make terms with a mystic by giving in to his extortions-there is no way to buy him off, the bribe he wants is your life, as slowly or as fast as you are willing to give it in-and the monster he seeks to bribe is the hidden blank-out in his mind, which drives him to kill in order not to learn that the death he desires is his own.
“You who are innocent enough to believe that the forces let loose in your world today are moved by greed for material plunder-the mystics’ scramble for spoils is only a screen to conceal from their mind the nature of their motive. Wealth is a means of human life, and they clamor for wealth in imitation of living beings, to pretend to themselves that they desire to live, but their swinish indulgence in plundered luxury is not enjoyment, it is escape. They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself.
“You who’ve never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe them as ‘misguided idealists’-may the God you invented forgive you!-they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.
“It is a conspiracy without leader or direction, and the random little thugs of the moment who cash in on the agony of one land or another are chance scum riding the torrent from the broken dam of the sewer of centuries, from the reservoir of hatred for reason, for logic, for ability, for achievement, for joy, stored by every whining anti-human who ever preached the superiority of the ‘heart’ over the mind.
“It is a conspiracy of all those who seek, not to live, but to get away with living, those who seek to cut just one small corner of reality and are drawn, by feeling, to all the others who are busy cutting other corners-a conspiracy that unites by links of evasion all those who pursue a zero as a value: the professor who, unable to think, takes pleasure in crippling the mind of his students, the businessman who, to protect his stagnation, takes pleasure in chaining the ability of competitors, the neurotic who, to defend his self-loathing, takes pleasure in breaking men of self-esteem, the incompetent who takes pleasure in defeating achievement, the mediocrity who takes pleasure in demolishing greatness, the eunuch who takes pleasure in the castration of all pleasure-and all their intellectual munition-makers, all those who preach that the immolation of virtue will transform vices into virtue. Death is the premise at the root of their theories, death is the goal of their actions in practice-and you are the last of their victims.
“We, who are the living buffers between you and the nature of your creed, are no longer there to save you from the effects of your chosen beliefs. We are no longer willing to pay with our lives the debts you incurred in yours or the moral deficit piled up by all the generations behind you. You had been living on borrowed time-and I am the man who has called in the loan.
“I am the man whose existence your blank-outs were intended to permit you to ignore. I am the man whom you did not want either to live or to die. You did not want me to live, because you were afraid of knowing that I carried the responsibility you dropped and that your lives depended upon me; you did not want me to die, because you knew it.
“Twelve years ago, when I worked in your world, I was an inventor. I was one of a profession that came last in human history and will be first to vanish on the way back to the sub-human. An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
“Like the man who discovered the use of steam or the man who discovered the use oil, I discovered a source of energy which was available since the birth of the globe, but which men had not known how to use except as an object of worship, of terror and of legends without a thundering god. I completed the experimental model of a motor that would have made a fortune for me and for those who had hired me, a motor that would have raised the efficiency of every human installation using power and would have added the gift of higher productivity to every hour you spend at earning your living.
“Then, one night at a factory meeting, I heard myself sentenced to death by reason of my achievement. I heard three parasites assert that my brain and my life were their property, that my right to exist was conditional and depended on the satisfaction of their desires. The purpose of my ability, they said, was to serve the needs of those who were less able. I had no right to live, they said, by reason of my competence for living: their right to live was unconditional, by reason of their incompetence.
“Then I saw what was wrong with the world, I saw what destroyed men and nations, and where the battle for life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality-and that my sanction was its only power. I saw that evil was impotent-that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real-and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan-so throughout the world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collective countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values-the impotence of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’
“I quit that factory. I quit your world, I made it my job to warn your victims and to give them the method and the weapon to fight you. The method was to refuse to deflect retribution. The weapon was justice.
“If you want to know what you lost when I quit and when my strikers deserted your world-stand on an empty stretch of soil in a wilderness unexplored by men and ask yourself what manner of survival you would achieve and how long you would last if you refused to think, with no one around to teach you the motions, or, if you chose to think, how much your mind would be able to discover-ask yourself how many independent conclusions you have reached in the course of your life and how much of your time was spent on performing the actions you learned from others-ask yourself whether you would be able to discover how to till the soil and grow your food, whether you would be able to invent a wheel, a lever, an induction coil, a generator, an electronic tube-then decide whether men of ability are exploiters who live by the fruit of your labor and rob you of the wealth that you produce, and whether you dare to believe that you possess the power to enslave them. Let your women take a look at a jungle female with her shriveled face and pendulous breasts, as she sits grinding meal in a bowl, hour after hour, century by century-then let them ask themselves whether their ‘instinct of tool-making’ will provide them with their electric refrigerators, their washing machines and vacuum cleaners, and, if not, whether they care to destroy those who provided it all, but not ‘by instinct.’
“Take a look around you, you savages who stutter that ideas are created by men’s means of production, that a machine is not the product of human thought, but a mystical power that produces human thinking. You have never discovered the industrial age-and you cling to the morality of the barbarian eras when a miserable form of human subsistence was produced by the muscular labor of slaves. Every mystic had always longed for slaves, to protect him from the material reality he dreaded. But you, you grotesque little atavists, stare blindly at the skyscrapers and smokestacks around you and dream of enslaving the material providers who are scientists, inventors, industrialists. When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind. I have taught my strikers that the answer you deserve is only: ‘Try and get it.’
“You proclaim yourself unable to harness the forces of inanimate matter, yet propose to harness the minds of men who are able to achieve the feats you cannot equal. You proclaim that you cannot survive without us, yet propose to dictate the terms of our survival. You proclaim that you need us, yet indulge the impertinence of asserting your right to rule us by force-and expect that we, who are not afraid of that physical nature which fills you with terror, will cower at the sight of any lout who has talked you into voting him a chance to command us.
“You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you’re incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others-that you’re unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler-that you’re unable to earn your living by the use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where you, by your own definition of your capacity, would be unable successfully to fill the job of assistant greaser.
“This idol of your cult of zero-worship, this symbol of impotence-the congenital dependent-is your image of man and your standard of value, in whose likeness you strive to refashion your soul. ‘It’s only human,’ you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept ‘human’ mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure-as if ‘to feel’ were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not-as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not.
“In order to deprive us of honor, that you may then deprive us of our wealth, you have always regarded us as slaves who deserve no moral recognition. You praise any venture that claims to be non-profit, and damn the men who made the profits that make the venture possible. You regard as ‘in the public interest’ any project serving those who do not pay; it is not in the public interest to provide any services for those who do the paying. ‘Public benefit’ is anything given as alms; to engage in trade is to injure the public. ‘Public welfare’ is the welfare of those who do not earn it; those who do, are entitled to no welfare. ‘The public,’ to you, is whoever has failed to achieve any virtue or value; whoever achieves it, whoever provides the goods you require for survival, ceases to be regarded as part of the public or as part of the human race.
“What blank-out permitted you to hope that you could get away with this muck of contradictions and to plan it as an ideal society, when the ‘No’ of your victims was sufficient to demolish the whole of your structure? What permits any insolent beggar to wave his sores in the face of his betters and to plead for help in the tone of a threat? You cry, as he does, that you are counting on our pity, but your secret hope is the moral code that has taught you to count on our guilt. You expect us to feel guilty of our virtues in the presence of your vices, wounds and failures-guilty of succeeding at existence, guilty of enjoying the life that you damn, yet beg us to help you to live.
“Did you want to know who is John Galt? I am the first man of ability who refused to regard it as guilt. I am the first man who would not do penance for my virtues or let them be used as the tools of my destruction. I am the first man who would not suffer martyrdom at the hands of those who wished me to perish for the privilege of keeping them alive. I am the first man who told them that I did not need them, and until they learned to deal with me as traders, giving value for value, they would have to exist without me, as I would exist without them; then I would let them learn whose is the need and whose the ability-and if human survival is the standard, whose terms would set the way to survive.
“I have done by plan and intention what has been done throughout history by silent default. There have always been men of intelligence who went on strike, in protest and despair, but they did not know the meaning of their action. The man who retires from public life, to think, but not to share his thoughts-the man who chooses to spend his years in the obscurity of menial employment, keeping to himself the fire of his mind, never giving it form, expression or reality, refusing to bring it into a world he despises-the man who is defeated by revulsion, the man who renounces before he has started, the man who gives up rather than give in, the man who functions at a fraction of his capacity, disarmed by his longing for an ideal he has not found-they are on strike, on strike against unreason, on strike against your world and your values. But not knowing any values of their own, they abandon the quest to know-in the darkness of their hopeless indignation, which is righteous without knowledge of the fight, and passionate without knowledge of desire, they concede to you the power of reality and surrender the incentives of their mind-and they perish in bitter futility, as rebels who never learned the object of their rebellion, as lovers who never discovered their love.
“The infamous times you call the Dark Ages were an era of intelligence on strike, when men of ability went underground and lived undiscovered, studying in secret, and died; destroying the works of their mind, when only a few of the bravest of martyrs remained to keep the human race alive. Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence, working for less than their barest survival, leaving nothing but scraps for their rulers to loot, refusing to think, to venture, to produce, when the ultimate collector of their profits and the final authority on truth or error was the whim of some gilded degenerate sanctioned as superior to reason by divine right and by grace of a club. The road of human history was a string of blank-outs over sterile stretches eroded by faith and force, with only a few brief bursts of sunlight, when the released energy of the men of the mind performed the wonders you gaped at, admired and promptly extinguished again.
“But there will be no extinction, this time. The game of the mystics is up. You will perish in and by your own unreality. We, the men of reason, will survive.
“I have called out on strike the kind of martyrs who had never deserted you before. I have given them the weapon they had lacked: the knowledge of their own moral value. I have taught them that the world is ours, whenever we choose to claim it, by virtue and grace of the fact that ours is the Morality of Life. They, the great victims who had produced all the wonders of humanity’s brief summer, they, the industrialists, the conquerors of matter, had not discovered the nature of their right. They had known that theirs was the power. I taught them that theirs was the glory.
“You, who dare to regard us as the moral inferiors of any mystic who claims supernatural visions-you, who scramble like vultures for plundered pennies, yet honor a fortune-teller above a fortune-maker-you, who scorn a businessman as ignoble, but esteem any posturing artist as exalted-the root of your standards is that mystic miasma which comes from primordial swamps, that cult of death, which pronounces a businessman immoral by reason of the fact that he keeps you alive. You, who claim that you long to rise above the crude concerns of the body, above the drudgery of serving mere physical needs-who is enslaved by physical needs: the Hindu who labors from sunrise to sunset at the shafts of a hand-plow for a bowl of rice, or the American who is driving a tractor? Who is the conqueror of physical reality: the man who sleeps on a bed of nails or the man who sleeps on an inner-spring mattress? Which is the monument to the triumph of the human spirit over matter: the germ-eaten hovels on the shorelines of the Ganges or the Atlantic skyline of New York?
“Unless you learn the answers to these questions-and learn to stand at reverent attention when you face the achievements of man’s mind-you will not stay much longer on this earth, which we love and will not permit you to damn. You will not sneak by with the rest of your lifespan. I have foreshortened the usual course of history and have let you discover the nature of the payment you had hoped to switch to the shoulders of others. It is the last of your own living power that will now be drained to provide the unearned for the worshippers and carriers of Death. Do not pretend that a malevolent reality defeated you-you were defeated by your own evasions. Do not pretend that you will perish for a noble ideal-you will perish as fodder for the haters of man.
“But to those of you who still retain a remnant of the dignity and will to love one’s life, I am offering the chance to make a choice. Choose whether you wish to perish for a morality you have never believed or practiced. Pause on the brink of self-destruction and examine your values and your life. You had known how to take an inventory of your wealth. Now take an inventory of your mind.
“Since childhood, you have been hiding the guilty secret that you feel no desire to be moral, no desire to seek self-immolation, that you dread and hate your code, but dare not say it even to yourself, that you’re devoid of those moral ‘instincts’ which others profess to feel. The less you felt, the louder you proclaimed your selfless love and servitude to others, in dread of ever letting them discover your own self, the self that you betrayed, the self that you kept in concealment, like a skeleton in the closet of your body. And they, who were at once your dupes and your deceivers, they listened and voiced their loud approval, in dread of ever letting you discover that they were harboring the same unspoken secret. Existence among you is a giant pretense, an act you all perform for one another, each feeling that he is the only guilty freak, each placing his moral authority in the unknowable known only to others, each faking the reality he feels they expect him to fake, some having the courage to break the vicious circle.
“No matter what dishonorable compromise you’ve made with your impracticable creed, no matter what miserable balance, half-cynicism, half-superstition, you now manage to maintain, you still preserve the root, the lethal tenet: the belief that the moral and the practical are opposites. Since childhood, you have been running from the terror of a choice you have never dared fully to identify: If the practical, whatever you must practice to exist, whatever works, succeeds, achieves your purpose, whatever brings you food and joy, whatever profits you, is evil-and if the good, the moral, is the impractical, whatever fails, destroys, frustrates, whatever injures you and brings you loss or pain-then your choice is to be moral or to live.
“The sole result of that murderous doctrine was to remove morality from life. You grew up to believe that moral laws bear no relation to the job of living, except as an impediment and threat, that man’s existence is an amoral jungle where anything goes and anything works. And in that fog of switching definitions which descends upon a frozen mind, you have forgotten that the evils damned by your creed were the virtues required for living, and you have come to believe that actual evils are the practical means of existence. Forgetting that the impractical ‘good’ was self-sacrifice, you believe that self-esteem is impractical; forgetting that the practical ‘evil’ was production, you believe that robbery is practical.
“Swinging like a helpless branch in the wind of an uncharted moral wilderness, you dare not fully to be evil or fully to live. When you are honest, you feel the resentment of a sucker; when you cheat, you feel terror and shame, your pain is augmented by the feeling that pain is your natural state. You pity the men you admire, you believe they are doomed to fail; you envy the men you hate, you believe they are the masters of existence. You feel disarmed when you come up against a scoundrel: you believe that evil is bound to win, since the moral is the impotent, the impractical.
“Morality, to you, is a phantom scarecrow made of duty, of boredom, of punishment, of pain, a cross-breed between the first schoolteacher of your past and the tax collector of your present, a scarecrow standing in a barren field, waving a stick to chase away your pleasures-and pleasure, to you, is a liquor-soggy brain, a mindless slut, the stupor of a moron who stakes his cash on some animal’s race, since pleasure cannot be moral.
“If you identify your actual belief, you will find a triple damnation-of yourself, of life, of virtue-in the grotesque conclusion you have reached: you believe that morality is a necessary evil.
“Do you wonder why you live without dignity, love without fire and die without resistance? Do you wonder why, wherever you look, you see nothing but unanswerable questions, why your life is tom by impossible conflicts, why you spend it straddling irrational fences to evade artificial choices, such as soul or body, mind or heart, security or freedom, private profit or public good?
“Do you cry that you find no answers? By what means did you hope to find them? You reject your tool of perception-your mind-then complain that the universe is a mystery. You discard your key, then wail that all doors are locked against you. You start out in pursuit of the irrational, then damn existence for making no sense.
“The fence you have been straddling for two hours-while hearing my words and seeking to escape them-is the coward’s formula contained in the sentence: ‘But we don’t have to go to extremes!’ The extreme you have always struggled to avoid is the recognition that reality is final, that A is A and that the truth is true. A moral code impossible to practice, a code that demands imperfection or death, has taught you to dissolve all ideas in fog, to permit no firm definitions, to regard any concept as approximate and any rule of conduct as elastic, to hedge on any principle, to compromise on any value, to take the middle of any road. By extorting your acceptance of supernatural absolutes, it has forced you to reject the absolute of nature. By making moral judgments impossible, it has made you incapable of rational judgment. A code that forbids you to cast the first stone, has forbidden you to admit the identity of stones and to know when or if you’re being stoned.
“The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your break or see it vanish into a looter’s stomach, is an absolute.
“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who shoves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube.
“You, who are half-rational, half-coward, have been playing a con game with reality, but the victim you have conned is yourself. When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels-and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil. As you surrendered to the mystics of muscle when they told you that ignorance consists of claiming knowledge, so now you surrender to them when they shriek that immorality consists of pronouncing moral judgment. When they yell that it is selfish to be certain that you are right, you hasten to assure them that you’re certain of nothing. When they shout that it’s immoral to stand on your convictions, you assure them that you have no convictions whatever. When the thugs of Europe’s People’s States snarl that you are guilty of intolerance, because you don’t treat your desire to live and their desire to kill you as a difference of opinion-you cringe and hasten to assure them that you are not intolerant of any horror. When some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia yells at you: How dare you be rich-you apologize and beg him to be patient and promise him you’ll give it all away.
“You have reached the blind alley of the treason you committed when you agreed that you had no right to exist. Once, you believed it was ‘only a compromise’: you conceded it was evil to live for yourself, but moral to live for the sake of your children. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your children, but moral to live for your community. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your community, but moral to live for your country. Now, you are letting this greatest of countries be devoured by any scum from any corner of the earth, while you concede that it is selfish to live for your country and that your moral duty is to live for the globe. A man who has no right to life, has no right to values and will not keep them.
“At the end of your road of successive betrayals, stripped of weapons, of certainty, of honor, you commit your final act of treason and sign your petition of intellectual bankruptcy: while the muscle-mystics of the People’s States proclaim that they’re the champions of reason and science, you agree and hasten to proclaim that faith is your cardinal principle, that reason is on the side of your destroyers, but yours is the side of faith. To the struggling remnants of rational honesty in the twisted, bewildered minds of your children, you declare that you can offer no rational argument to support the ideas that created this country, that there is no rational justification for freedom, for property, for justice, for rights, that they rest on a mystical insight and can be accepted only on faith, that in reason and logic the enemy is right, but faith is superior to reason. You declare to your children that it is rational to loot, to torture, to enslave, to expropriate, to murder, but that they must resist the temptations of logic and stick to the discipline of remaining irrational-that skyscrapers, factories, radios, airplanes were the products of faith and mystic intuition, while famines, concentration camps, and firing squads are the products of a reasonable manner of existence-that the industrial revolution was the revolt of the men of faith against that era of reason and logic which is known as the Middle Ages. Simultaneously, in the same breath, to the same child, you declare that the looters who rule the People’s States will surpass this country in material production, since they are the representatives of science, but that it’s evil to be concerned with physical wealth and that one must renounce material prosperity-you declare that the looters’ ideal are noble, but they do not mean them, while you do; that your purpose in fighting the looters is only to accomplish their aims, which they cannot accomplish, but you can; and that the way to fight them is to beat them to it and give one’s wealth away. Then you wonder why your children join the People’s thugs or become half-crazed delinquents, you wonder why the looters’ conquests keep creeping closer to your doors-and you blame it on human stupidity, declaring that the masses are impervious to reason.
“You blank out the open, public spectacle of the looters’ fight against the mind, and the fact that their bloodiest horrors are unleashed to punish the crime of thinking. You blank out the fact that most mystics of muscle started out as mystics of spirit, that they keep switching from one to the other, that the men you call materialists and spiritualists are only two halves of the same dissected human, forever seeking completion, but seeking it by swinging from the destruction of the flesh to the destruction of the soul and vice versa-that they keep running from your colleges to the slave pens of Europe to an open collapse into the mystic muck of India, seeking any refuge against reality, any form of escape from the mind.
“You blank it out and cling to your hypocrisy of ‘faith’ in order to blank out the knowledge that the looters have a stranglehold upon you, which consists of your moral code-that the looters are the final and consistent practitioners of the morality you’re half-obeying, half-evading-that they practice it the only way it can be practiced: by turning the earth into a sacrificial furnace-that your morality forbids you to oppose them in the only way they can be opposed: by refusing to become a sacrificial animal and proudly asserting your right to exist-that in order to fight them to the finish and with full rectitude, it is your morality that you have to reject.
“You blank’ it out, because your self-esteem is tied to ‘that mystic ‘unselfishness’ which you’ve never possessed or practiced, but spent so many years pretending to possess that the thought of denouncing it fills you with terror. No value is higher than self-esteem, but you’ve invested it in counterfeit securities-and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The grim joke is on you: that need of self-esteem, which you’re unable to explain or to define, belongs to my morality, not yours; it’s the objective token of my code, it is my proof within your own soul.
“By a feeling he has not learned to identify, but has derived from his first awareness of existence, from his discovery that he has to make choices, man knows that his desperate need of self-esteem is a matter of life or death. As a being of volitional consciousness, he knows that he must know his own value in order to maintain his own life. He knows that he has to be right; to be wrong in action means danger to his life; to be wrong in person, to be evil, means to be unfit for existence.
“Every act of man’s life has to be willed; the mere act of obtaining or eating his food implies that the person he preserves is worthy of being preserved; every pleasure he seeks to enjoy implies that the person who seeks it is worthy of finding enjoyment. He has no choice about his need of self-esteem, his only choice is the standard by which to gauge it. And he makes his fatal error when he switches this gauge protecting his life into the service of his own destruction, when he chooses a standard contradicting existence and sets his self-esteem against reality.
“Every form of causeless self-doubt, every feeling of inferiority and secret unworthiness is, in fact, man’s hidden dread of his inability to deal with existence. But the greater his terror, the more fiercely he clings to the murderous doctrines that choke him. No man can survive the moment of pronouncing himself irredeemably evil; should he do it, his next moment is insanity or suicide. To escape it-if he’s chosen an irrational Standard-he will fake, evade, blank out; he will cheat himself of reality, of existence, of happiness, of mind; and he will ultimately cheat himself of self-esteem by struggling to preserve its illusion rather than to risk discovering its lack. To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.
“It is not any crime you have committed that infects your soul with permanent guilt, it is none of your failures, errors or flaws, but theblank-out by which you attempt to evade them-it is not any sort of Original Sin or unknown prenatal deficiency, but the knowledge and fact of your basic default, of suspending your mind, of refusing to think. Fear and guilt are your chronic emotions, they are real and you do deserve them, but they don’t come from the superficial reasons you invent to disguise their cause, not from your ’selfishness,’ weakness or ignorance, but from a real and basic threat to your existence; fear, because you have abandoned your weapon of survival, guilt, because you know you have done it volitionally.
“The self you have betrayed is your mind; self-esteem is reliance on one’s power to think. The ego you seek, that essential ‘you’ which you cannot express or define, is not your emotions or inarticulate dreams, but your intellect, that judge of your supreme tribunal whom you’ve impeached in order to drift at the mercy of any stray shyster you describe as your ‘feeling.’ Then you drag yourself through a self-made night, in a desperate quest for a nameless fire, moved by some fading vision of a dawn you had seen and lost.
“Observe the persistence, in mankind’s mythologies, of the legend about a paradise that men had once possessed, the city of Atlantis or the Garden of Eden or some kingdom of perfection, always behind us. The root of that legend exists, not in the past of the race, but in the past of every man. You still retain a sense-not as firm as a memory, but diffused like the pain of hopeless longing-that somewhere in the starting years of your childhood, before you had learned to submit, to absorb the terror of unreason and to doubt the value of your mind, you had known a radiant state of existence, you had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an open universe. That is the paradise which you have lost, which you seek-which is yours for the taking.
“Some of you will never know who is John Galt. But those of you who have known a single moment of love for existence and of pride in being its worthy lover, a moment of looking at this earth and letting your glance be its sanction, have known the state of being a man, and I-I am only the man who knew that that state is not to be betrayed. I am the man who knew what made it possible and who chose consistently to practice and to be what you had practiced and been in that one moment.
“That choice is yours to make. That choice-the dedication to one’s highest potential-is made by accepting the fact that the noblest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four.
“Whoever you are-you who are alone with my words in this moment, with nothing but your honesty to help you understand-the choice is still open to be a human being, but the price is to start from scratch, to stand naked in the face of reality and, reversing a costly historical error, to declare: ‘I am, therefore I’ll think.’
“Accept the irrevocable fact that your life depends upon your mind. Admit that the whole of your struggle, your doubts, your fakes, your evasions, was a desperate quest for escape from the responsibility of a volitional consciousness-a quest for automatic knowledge, for instinctive action, for intuitive certainty-and while you called it a longing for the state of an angel, what you were seeking was the state of an animal. Accept, as your moral ideal, the task of becoming a man.
“Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience-that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible-that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. In place of your dream of an omniscient automation, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.
“Discard that unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming that man is imperfect. By what standard do you damn him when you claim it? Accept the fact that in the realm of morality nothing less than perfection will do. But perfection is not to be gauged by mystic commandments to practice the impossible, and your moral stature is not to be gauged by matters not open to your choice. Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
“Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of knowledge; do not forgive or accept any breach of morality. Give the benefit of the doubt to those who seek to know; but treat as potential killers those specimens of insolent depravity who make demands upon you, announcing that they have and seek no reasons, proclaiming, as a license, that they ‘just feel it’-or those who reject an irrefutable argument by saying: ‘It’s only logic,’ which means: ‘It’s only reality.’ The only realm opposed to reality is the realm and premise of death.
“Accept the fact that the achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness-not pain or mindless self-indulgence-is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. Happiness was the responsibility you dreaded, it required the kind of rational discipline you did not value yourself enough to assume-and the anxious staleness of your day is the monument to your evasion of the knowledge that there is no moral substitute for happiness, that there is no more despicable coward than the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue: humility-learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness-and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.
“As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property-and loathsome as such claim might be, there’s something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it’s ever proper to help another man? No-if he claims it as his right or as a moral duty that you owe him. Yes-if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle. Suffering as such is not a value; only man’s fight against suffering, is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his right to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still a trade, and his virtue is the payment for your help. Be to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim-is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values. A man who has no virtues is a hater of existence who acts on the premise of death; to help him is to sanction his evil and to support his career of destruction. Be it only a penny you will not miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to a zero is treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it. It is of such pennies and smiles that the desolation of your world was made.
“Do not say that my morality is too hard for you to practice and that you fear it as you fear the unknown. Whatever living moments you have known, were lived by the values of my code. But you stifled, negated, betrayed it. You kept sacrificing your virtues to your vices, and the best among men to the worst. Look around you: what you have done to society, you have done it first within your soul; one is the image of the other. This dismal wreckage, which is now your world, is the physical form of the treason you committed to your values, to your friends, to your defenders, to your future, to your country, to yourself.
“We-whom you are now calling, but who will not answer any longer-we have lived among you, but you failed to know us, you refused to think and to see what we were. You failed to recognize the motor I invented-and it became, in your world, a pile of dead scrap. You failed to recognize the hero in your soul-and you failed to know me when I passed you in the street. When you cried in despair for the unattainable spirit which you felt had deserted your world, you gave it my name, but what you were calling was your own betrayed self-esteem. You will not recover one without the other.
“When you failed to give recognition to man’s mind and attempted to rule human beings by force-those who submitted had no mind to surrender; those who had, were men who don’t submit. Thus the man of productive genius assumed in your world the disguise of a playboy and became a destroyer of wealth, choosing to annihilate his fortune rather than surrender it to guns. Thus the thinker, the man of reason, assumed in your world the role of a pirate, to defend his values by force against your force, rather than submit to the rule of brutality. Do you hear me, Francisco d’Anconia and Ragnar Danneskjöld, my first friends, my fellow fighters, my fellow outcasts, in whose name and honor I speak?
“It was the three of us who started what I am now completing. It was the three of us who resolved to avenge this country and to release its imprisoned soul. This greatest of countries was built on my morality-on the inviolate supremacy of man’s right to exist-but you dreaded to admit it and live up to it. You stared at an achievement unequaled in history, and looted its effects and blanked out its cause. In the presence of that monument to human morality, which is a factory, a highway or a bridge-you kept damning this country as immoral and its progress as ‘material greed,’ you kept offering apologies for this country’s greatness to the idol of primordial starvation, to decaying Europe’s idol of a leprous, mystic bum.
“This country-the product of reason-could not survive on the morality of sacrifice. It was not built by men who sought self-immolation or by men who sought handouts. It could not stand on the mystic split that divorced man’s soul from his body. It could not live by the mystic doctrine that damned this earth as evil and those who succeeded on earth as depraved. From its start, this country was a threat to the ancient rule of mystics. In the brilliant rocket-explosion of its youth, this country displayed to an incredulous world what greatness was possible to man, what happiness was possible on earth. It was one or the other: America or mystics. The mystics knew it; you didn’t. You let them infect you with the worship of need-and this country became a giant in body with a mooching midget in place of its soul, while its living soul was driven underground to labor and feed you in silence, unnamed, unhonored, negated, its soul and hero: the industrialist. Do you hear me now, Hank Rearden, the greatest of the victims I have avenged?
“Neither he nor the rest of us will return until the road is clear to rebuild this country-until the wreckage of the morality of sacrifice has been wiped out of our way. A country’s political system is based on its code of morality. We will rebuild America’s system on the moral premise which had been its foundation, but which you treated as a guilty underground, in your frantic evasion of the conflict between that premise and your mystic morality: the premise that man is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others, that man’s life, his freedom, his happiness are his by inalienable right.
“You who’ve lost the concept of a right, you who swing in impotent evasiveness between the claim that rights are a gift of God, a supernatural gift to be taken on faith, or the claim that rights are a gift of society, to be broken at its arbitrary whim-the source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A-and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, his right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.
“Rights are a moral concept-and morality is a matter of choice. Men are free not to choose man’s survival as the standard of their morals and their laws, but not free to escape from the fact that the alternative is a cannibal society, which exists for a while by devouring its best and collapses like a cancerous body, when the healthy have been eaten by the diseased, when the rational have been consumed by the irrational. Such has been the fate of your societies in history, but you’ve evaded the knowledge of the cause. I am here to state it: the agent of retribution was the law of identity, which you cannot escape. Just as man cannot live by means of the irrational, so two men cannot, or two thousand, or two billion. Just as man can’t succeed by defying reality, so a nation can’t, or a country, or a globe. A is A. The rest is a matter of time, provided by the generosity of victims.
“Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality-to think, to work and to keep the results-which means: the right of poverty. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of ‘human rights’ versus ‘property rights,’ as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that ‘human rights’ are superior to ‘property rights’ simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of ‘human.’
“The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man’s mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence. You cannot force intelligence to work: those who’re able to think, will not work under compulsion: those who will, won’t produce much more than the price of the whip needed to keep them enslaved. You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner’s terms, by trade and by volitional consent. Any other policy of men toward man’s poverty is the policy of criminals, no matter what their numbers. Criminals are savages who play in short-range and starve when their prey runs out-just as you’re starving today, you who believed that crime could be ‘practical’ if your government decreed that robbery was legal and resistance to robbery illegal.
“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.
“Only a brute, a fool or an evader can agree to exist on such terms or agree to give his fellow men a blank check on his life and his mind, to accept the belief that others have the right to dispose of his person at their whim, that the will of the majority is Omnipotent, that the physical force of muscles and numbers is a substitute for justice, reality and truth. We, the men of the mind, we who are traders, not masters or slaves, do not deal in blank checks or grant them. We do not live or work with any form of the non-objective.
“So long as men, in the era of savagery, had no concept of objective reality and believed that physical nature was ruled by the whim of unknowable demons-no thought, no science, no production were possible. Only when men discovered that nature was a firm, predictable absolute were they able to rely on their knowledge, to choose their course, to plan their future and, slowly, to rise from the cave. Now you have placed modern industry, with its immense complexity of scientific precision, back into the power of unknowable demons-the unpredictable power of the arbitrary whims of hidden, ugly little bureaucrats. A farmer will not invest the effort of one summer if he’s unable to calculate his chances of a harvest. But you expect industrial giants-who plan in terms of decades, invest in terms of generations and undertake ninety-nine-year contracts-to continue to function and produce, not knowing what random caprice in the skull of what random official will descend upon them at what moment to demolish the whole of their effort. Drifters and physical laborers live and plan by the range of a day. The better the mind, the longer the range. A man whose vision extends to a shanty, might continue to build on your quicksands, to grab a fast profit and run. A man who envisions skyscrapers, will not. Nor will he give ten years of unswerving devotion to the task of inventing a new product, when he knows the gangs of entrenched mediocrity are juggling the laws against him, to tie him, restrict him and force him to fail, but should he fight them and struggle and succeed, they will seize his rewards and his invention.
“Look past the range of the moment, you who cry that you fear to compete with men of superior intelligence, that their mind is a threat to your livelihood, that the strong leave no chance to the weak in a market of voluntary trade. What determines the material value of your work? Nothing but the productive effort of your mind-if you lived on a desert island. The less efficient the thinking of your brain, the less your physical labor would bring you-and you could spend your life on a single routine, collecting a precarious harvest or hunting with bow and arrows, unable to think any further. But when you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.
“When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom your spend your time denouncing.
“The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the mystics’ Middle Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort. How many tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for Hank Rearden? Would you dare to claim that the size of your pay cheek was created solely by your physical labor and that those rails were the product of your muscles? The standard of living of that blacksmith is all that your muscles are worth; the rest is a gift from Hank Rearden.
“Every man is free to rise as far as he’s able or willing, but it’s only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to which he’ll rise. Physical labor as such can extend no further than the range of the moment. The man who does no more than physical labor, consumes the material value-equivalent of his own contribution to the process of production, and leaves no further value, neither for himself nor others. But the man who produces an idea in any field of rational endeavor-the man who discovers new knowledge-is the permanent benefactor of humanity. Material products can’t be shared, they belong to some ultimate consumer; it Is only the value of an idea that can be shared with unlimited numbers of men, making all sharers richer at no one’s sacrifice or loss, raising the productive capacity of whatever labor they perform. It is the value of his own time that the strong of the intellect transfers to the weak, letting them work on the jobs he discovered, while devoting his time to further discoveries. This is mutual trade to mutual advantage; the interests of the mind are one, no matter what the degree of intelligence, among men who desire to work and don’t seek or expect the unearned.
“In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which you have damned the strong.
“Such was the service we had given you and were glad and willing to give. What did we ask in return? Nothing but freedom. We required that you leave us free to function-free to think and to work as we choose-free to take our own risks and to bear our own losses-free to earn our own profits and to make our own fortunes-free to gamble on your rationality, to submit our products to your judgment for the purpose of a voluntary trade, to rely on the objective value of our work and on your mind’s ability to see it-free to count on your intelligence and honesty, and to deal with nothing but your mind. Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high. You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments, with radios, movies and cars, should own our palaces and yachts-you decided that you had a right to your wages, but we had no right to our profits, that you did not want us to deal with your mind, but to deal, instead, with your gun. Our answer to that, was: ‘May you be damned!’ Our answer came true. You are.
“You did not care to compete in terms of intelligence-you are now competing in terms of brutality. You did not care to allow rewards to be won by successful production-you are now running a race in which rewards are won by successful plunder. You called it selfish and cruel that men should trade value for value-you have now established an unselfish society where they trade extortion for extortion. Your system is a legal civil war, where men gang up on one another and struggle for possession of the law, which they use as a club over rivals, till another gang wrests it from their clutch and clubs them with it in their turn, all of them clamoring protestations of service to an unnamed public’s unspecified good. You had said that you saw no difference between economic and political power, between the power of money and the power of guns-no difference between reward and punishment, no difference between purchase and plunder, no difference between pleasure and fear, no difference between life and death. You are learning the difference now.
“Some of you might plead the excuse of your ignorance, of a limited mind and a limited range. But the damned and the guiltiest among you are the men who had the capacity to know, yet chose to blank out reality, the men who were willing to steel their intelligence into cynical servitude to force: the contemptible breed of those mystics of science who profess a devotion to some sort of ‘pure knowledge’-the purity consisting of their claim that such knowledge has no practical purpose on this earth-who reserve their logic for inanimate matter, but believe that the subject of dealing with men requires and deserves no rationality, who scorn money and sell their souls in exchange for a laboratory supplied by loot. And since there is no such thing as ‘non-practical knowledge’ or any sort of ‘disinterested’ action, since they scorn the use of their science for the purpose and profit of life, they deliver their science to the service of death, to the only practical purpose it can ever have for looters: to inventing weapons of coercion and destruction. They, the intellects who seek escape from moral values, they are the damned on their earth, theirs is the guilt beyond forgiveness. Do you hear me, Dr. Robert Stadler?
“But it is not to him that I wish to speak. I am speaking to those among you who have retained some sovereign shred of their soul, unsold and unstamped: ‘-to the order of others.’ If, in the chaos of the motives that have made you listen to the radio tonight, there was an honest, rational desire to learn what is wrong with the world, you are the man whom I wished to address. By the rules and terms of my code, one owes a rational statement to those whom it does concern and who’re making an effort to know. Those who’re making an effort to fall to understand me, are not a concern of mine.
“I am speaking to those who desire to live and to recapture the honor of their soul. Now that you know the truth about your world stop supporting your own destroyers. The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction to give it. Withdraw your sanction. Withdraw your support. Do not try to live on your enemies’ terms or to win at a game where they’re setting the rules. Do not seek the favor of those who enslaved you, do not beg for alms from those who have robbed you, be it subsidies, loans or jobs, do not join their team to recoup what they’ve taken by helping them rob your neighbors. One cannot hope to maintain one’s life by accepting bribes to condone one’s destruction. Do not straggle for profit, success or security at the price of a lien on your right to exist. Such a lien is not to be paid off; the more you pay them, the more they will demand; the greater the values you seek or achieve, the more vulnerably helpless you become. Theirs is a system of white blackmail devised to bleed you, not by means of your sins, but by means of your love for existence.
“Do not attempt to rise on the looters’ terms or to climb a ladder while they’re holding the ropes. Do not allow their hands to touch the only power that keeps them in power: your living ambition. Go on strike-in the manner I did. Use your mind and skill in private, extend your knowledge, develop your ability, but do not share your achievements with others. Do not try to produce a fortune, with a looter riding on your back. Stay on the lowest rung of their ladder, earn no more than your barest survival, do not make an extra penny to support the looters’ state. Since you’re captive, act as a captive, do not help them pretend that you’re free. Be the silent, incorruptible enemy they dread. When they force you, obey-but do not volunteer. Never volunteer a step in their direction, or a wish, or a plea, or a purpose. Do not help a holdup man to claim that he acts as your friend and benefactor. Do not help your jailers to pretend that their jail is your natural state of existence. Do not help them to fake reality. That fake is the only dam holding off their secret terror, the terror of knowing they’re unfit to exist; remove it and let them drown; your sanction is their only life belt.
“If you find a chance to vanish into some wilderness out of their reach, do so, but not to exist as a bandit or to create a gang competing with their racket; build a productive life of your own with those who accept your moral code and are willing to struggle for a human existence. You have no chance to win on the Morality of Death or by the code of faith and force; raise a standard to which the honest will repair: the standard of Life and Reason.
“Act as a rational being and aim at becoming a rallying point for all those who are starved for a voice of integrity-act on your rational values, whether alone in the midst of your enemies, or with a few of your chosen friends, or as the founder of a modest community on the frontier of mankind’s rebirth.
“When the looters’ state collapses, deprived of the best of its slaves, when it falls to a level of impotent chaos, like the mystic-ridden nations of the Orient, and dissolves into starving robber gangs fighting to rob one another-when the advocates of the morality of sacrifice perish with their final ideal-then and on that day we will return.
“We will open the gates of our city to those who deserve to enter, a city of smokestacks, pipe lines, orchards, markets and inviolate homes. We will act as the rallying center for such hidden outposts as you’ll build. With the sign of the dollar as our symbol-the sign of free trade and free minds-we will move to reclaim this country once more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its meaning, its splendor. Those who choose to join us, will join us; those who don’t, will not have the power to stop us; hordes of savages have never been an obstacle to men who carried the banner of the mind.
“Then this country will once more become a sanctuary for a vanishing species: the rational being. The political system we will build is contained in a single moral premise: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force. Every man will stand or fall, live or die by his rational judgment. If he fails to use it and falls, he will be his only victim. If he fears that his judgment is inadequate, he will not be given a gun to improve it. If he chooses to correct his errors in time, he will have the unobstructed example of his betters, for guidance in learning to think; but an end will be put to the infamy of paying with one life for the errors of another.
“In that world, you’ll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit you have known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and certainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe. No child is afraid of nature; it is your fear of men that will vanish, the fear that has stunted your soul, the fear you acquired in your early encounters with the incomprehensible, the unpredictable, the contradictory, the arbitrary, the hidden, the faked, the irrational in men. You will live in a world of responsible beings, who will be as consistent and reliable as facts; the guarantee of their character will be a system of existence where objective reality is the standard of the judge. Your virtues will be given protection, your vices and weaknesses will not. Every chance will be open to your good, none will be provided for your evil. What you’ll receive from men will not be alms, or pity, or mercy, or forgiveness of sins, but a single value: justice. And when you’ll look at men or at yourself, you will feel, not disgust, suspicion and guilt, but a single constant: respect.
“Such is the future you are capable of winning. It requires a struggle; so does any human value. All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal. Do you wish to continue the battle of your present or do you wish to fight for my world? Do you wish to continue a struggle that consists of clinging to precarious ledges in a sliding descent to the abyss, a struggle where the hardships you endure are irreversible and the victories you win bring you closer to destruction? Or do you wish to undertake a struggle that consists of rising from ledge to ledge in a steady ascent to the top, a struggle where the hardships are investments in your future, and the victories bring you irreversibly closer to the world of your moral ideal, and should you die without reaching full sunlight, you will die on a level touched by its rays? Such is the choice before you. Let your mind and your love of existence decide.
“The last of my words will be addressed to those heroes who might still be hidden in the world, those who are held prisoner, not by their evasions, but by their virtues and their desperate courage. My brothers in spirit, check on your virtues and on the nature of the enemies you’re serving. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, your love-the endurance that carries their burdens-the generosity that responds to their cries of despair-the innocence that is unable to conceive of their evil and gives them the benefit of every doubt, refusing to condemn them without understanding and incapable of understanding such motives as theirs-the love, your love of life, which makes you believe that they are men and that they love it, too. But the world of today is the world they wanted; life is the object of their hatred. Leave them to the death they worship. In the name of your magnificent devotion to this earth, leave them, don’t exhaust the greatness of your soul on achieving the triumph of the evil of theirs. Do you hear me … my love?
“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this word to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.
“But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.
“You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle-and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:
“I swear-by my life and my love of it-that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

[MisterD]

Only proving you don't understand either concept.

Not all libertarians are Hayekian, and not all socialists are state socialists. The first people to use the term libertarian were Dejacque and Proudhon, neither of whom I suspect you would have much in common with. You should perhaps read their work, it might broaden your horizons somewhat.

Oh fuck, not the "philosophers I've read" dick-measuring contest again....for the record, my interest in philosophers begins and ends with knowing the words to Monty Python's song by heart.

[SPman]

Dejacque can't be a philosopher - there's no "r" in his name.......

[rainman]

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt?...

Gawd but she is boring.


Oh fuck, not the "philosophers I've read" dick-measuring contest again....for the record, my interest in philosophers begins and ends with knowing the words to Monty Python's song by heart.

Hardly, I'm not greatly well-read and I'm quite ignorant in many senses. I've drunk but lightly from the stream of past brilliance (and stupidity) that is out there. To willfully ignore those thinkers who have gone before, though, on the basis that to educate yourself would be to indulge in a "dick-measuring contest", is first-class idiocy. Well done.

Also doesn't make your original point less wrong, incidentally.

[davereid]

Proudhon - yeah he didn't think much of private property ownership. Still, he seemed to understand government pretty well !


"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed,
law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached
at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded,
by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the
virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every
transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured,
numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented,
forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of
public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed
under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted
from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest resistance, the
first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harrassed,
hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned,
judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to
crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is
government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

P. J. Proudhon, _General Idea of the Revolution in the
Nineteenth Century_

[mashman]

et al

there's just no telling some people :shifty:

[Ixion]

The ownership of the means of production... the peoples tractor factory with the profits used to run the peoples school and the peoples hospital ! As Ixion points out, its perfection, with no need for taxation, a job for everyone, and the cleaner able to earn as much as the tractor designer.



No, that's something else. Syndicalism , maybe?. There is no inate reason in a communist model why people should not be rewarded at different rates. After all , Comrade Stalin had a dacha in the Crimea, Comrade Stakhanov didn't. Important thing is that the PROFITS are distributed on some (reasonably) fair model.




As long as no one cleverer than the tractor designer makes a new better tractor you have utopia, and as you can simply ban the better tractor designer from making a better tractor it will never be a problem. As long as you like the old tractor.

.. The peoples tractor factory - There is nothing to stop the people, if they so desire purchasing shares in the tractor factory. And there is nothing to stop the government doing it either if it wishes to find money for schools or hospitals.

nO, It doesnt need to be done with a gun. Yes, indeed. And it has been done a good many times. It's called co-operatives (big in the UK); Fonterra (big in some country somewhere - think about it - who owns Fonterra ? ); joint ventures. Just needs extension. Which is why capitalists hate co-ops, and are trying to hi-jack the Fonterra model

[mashman]

Yes, indeed. And it has been done a good many times. It's called co-operatives (big in the UK); Fonterra (big in some country somewhere - think about it - who owns Fonterra ? ); joint ventures. Just needs extension. Which is why capitalists hate co-ops, and are trying to hi-jack the Fonterra model

Ha ha ha... so capitalists haven't realised that they are a cooperative yet???? as they both already screw the consumer (milk going up again i believe, so the farmers can get a bumper payout) for obscene profit... not sure why i'm so surprised... unless of course you meant something else



As long as no one cleverer than the tractor designer makes a new better tractor you have utopia, and as you can simply ban the better tractor designer from making a better tractor it will never be a problem. As long as you like the old tractor.


Why would a newer tractor upset utopia? Surely the idea behind utopia would be to keep trying to do things better, in order to make resource use more efficient?

[MikeL]

Bringing the discussion back to tax rates...

If you believe that all taxation is theft you're unlikely to have much to contribute to a debate about a fairer taxation system overall.

As far as GST is concerned, here's something to think about:

Which countries in the OECD, apart from NZ, don't have a lower rate for some or all food?
I have been able to find only one [Denmark].
From this you can draw one of two conclusions depending on your mindset. Either
(a) NZ is out of step with the rest of the world, or
(b) the rest of the world has yet to catch-up with these two leading lights of the global economy.

A further question:
Since one of the arguments in support of a single-rated GST was that it was a relatively low rate, and it is now 50% higher than when it was introduced, is it not reasonable at least to re-examine that policy decision?

[Jonno.]

Bringing the discussion back to tax rates...

If you believe that all taxation is theft you're unlikely to have much to contribute to a debate about a fairer taxation system overall.

As far as GST is concerned, here's something to think about:

Which countries in the OECD, apart from NZ, don't have a lower rate for some or all food?
I have been able to find only one [Denmark].
From this you can draw one of two conclusions depending on your mindset. Either
(a) NZ is out of step with the rest of the world, or
(b) the rest of the world has yet to catch-up with these two leading lights of the global economy.

A further question:
Since one of the arguments in support of a single-rated GST was that it was a relatively low rate, and it is now 50% higher than when it was introduced, is it not reasonable at least to re-examine that policy decision?

It's funny you still haven't replied to any of my posts. You're really proving arguement. I've posted 4 posts in 3 days so you can't say you've missed them.



You seem to think removing GST on food is a silver bullet to end poverty, help middle class families and stick it to the rich man but what you fail to realise is that supermarkets have little or no incentive to reduce the price of food and even if they did initially they did initially it would be short lived.
You think food prices would drop 15%? Anything even close to that?
What would keeping the price of food 15% below what the food would be without the gst drop?

Read my post.

Until you can understand that
1) removing the GST on food would cost shitloads and have to come from somewhere.
2) We're borrowing shit loads of money.
3) Businesses employ people.
4) Removing GST would would be negative as the supermarkets would absorb it into their profit and the govt would be out of pocket.
5) The labour party didn't introduce it either.

It's funny, everytime I come into this thread I see MikeL viewing but he hasn't responded.

[davereid]

No, that's something else. Syndicalism , maybe?. There is no inate reason in a communist model why people should not be rewarded at different rates. After all , Comrade Stalin had a dacha in the Crimea, Comrade Stakhanov didn't. Important thing is that the PROFITS are distributed on some (reasonably) fair model.l

That would be sort of like buying shares. The more shares you own, the more risk you have. But the more profit you might make !



Yes, indeed. And it has been done a good many times. It's called co-operatives (big in the UK); Fonterra (big in some country somewhere - think about it - who owns Fonterra ? ); joint ventures. Just needs extension. Which is why capitalists hate co-ops, and are trying to hi-jack the Fonterra model

Capitalists have no problem with co-operatives. Indeed they are usually shareholders in them !
Those who don't like co-operatives may be capitalists but they don't represent capitalism, they represent the interests of their shareholders. Co-operatives are the very signature of capitalism !

[davereid]

Ha ha ha... so capitalists haven't realised that they are a cooperative yet???? as they both already screw the consumer (milk going up again i believe, so the farmers can get a bumper payout) for obscene profit... not sure why i'm so surprised... unless of course you meant something else

This capitalist absolutely loves co-operatives. I celebrate them ! they actually are purely capitalist, they just reflect the extra ability of some individuals to organise and co-operate.



Why would a newer tractor upset utopia? Surely the idea behind utopia would be to keep trying to do things better, in order to make resource use more efficient?

The problem lies with human beings. We are inherently capitalist, even if we hate to admit it.

For utopia, it has a tractor. It does its job. But in Utopia, as you have the tractor already, the engineer will be designing improvements based on his experience of the defects in the existing tractor. When he makes one with the improvements you will be able to (apply) to buy it.

But the Entrepreneur will have decided he doesn't need to wait for a defect to show up.
Even though your existing fuel injection works faultlessly and has done so for 20 years,
Even though there is no shortage of fuel,
Even though he is not the official tractor engineer,

he is willing to take his own money and design and build electronic fuel injection.

The trouble for the state factory is simple. If the idea works they are broke !

Better to ensure that the idea dies quietly, and the perfectly good tractor we already have, makes a profit, to pay for the hospital.

[MikeL]

It's funny you still haven't replied to any of my posts. You're really proving arguement. I've posted 4 posts in 3 days so you can't say you've missed them.

Shows how carefully you read other peoples' posts. Look at no. 393, 11:18 today. Now you answer my latest two questions.

[mashman]

The problem lies with human beings. We are inherently capitalist, even if we hate to admit it.

For utopia, it has a tractor. It does its job. But in Utopia, as you have the tractor already, the engineer will be designing improvements based on his experience of the defects in the existing tractor. When he makes one with the improvements you will be able to (apply) to buy it.

But the Entrepreneur will have decided he doesn't need to wait for a defect to show up.
Even though your existing fuel injection works faultlessly and has done so for 20 years,
Even though there is no shortage of fuel,
Even though he is not the official tractor engineer,

he is willing to take his own money and design and build electronic fuel injection.

The trouble for the state factory is simple. If the idea works they are broke !

Better to ensure that the idea dies quietly, and the perfectly good tractor we already have, makes a profit, to pay for the hospital.

It is true, human beings are the problem... and believe that we aren't inherently capitalistic... we're taught it... hence we become it... it would be quite easy to bring up an entirely different generation to "mould" the successful generations of human beings... smarter, less greedy, more efficient, more open to reason...

"Utopia" will have thousands of tractor engineers... all designing tractors based on the last best known model... the last best known engine configuration... the last best know aerodynamic body... wheels etc... not on the defects... if it works it's not defective, as you point out... that's the way I see it... everyone who uses a tractor will then be issued a new one... the old one being recycled...

The Entrepreneur will not necessarily exist... but that does not mean that joe public/hobbyist is unable to contribute/join the engineers... the more minds the better...

lol, i'm not going down the burying ideas road with you... they'll likely keep the plans and upgrade slowly...

why have 10 different makes of tractor if they do the same job... why not pool resource/experience and make the 1 or 2 best tractors based on current technology that are fit for the job? Please don't say competition lol... there will still be competition... but everyone will start with all of the data and hence competition will start with an even playing field and compete for the best tractor "award"...

[davereid]

Bringing the discussion back to tax rates...If you believe that all taxation is theft you're unlikely to have much to contribute to a debate about a fairer taxation system overall.


Of course. Democracy with forced taxation on individuals requires no contribution.

Its a bit like voting for which gang you want to be raped by. Actually, you would prefer not to be raped, but your options don't include "leave me alone".

Instead we end up being told "I'm best, I love you and I wear a condom and everyone else voted for me"

[Ixion]

This capitalist absolutely loves co-operatives. I celebrate them ! they actually are purely capitalist, they just reflect the extra ability of some individuals to organise and co-operate.




The problem lies with human beings. We are inherently capitalist, even if we hate to admit it.

For utopia, it has a tractor. It does its job. But in Utopia, as you have the tractor already, the engineer will be designing improvements based on his experience of the defects in the existing tractor. When he makes one with the improvements you will be able to (apply) to buy it.

But the Entrepreneur will have decided he doesn't need to wait for a defect to show up.
Even though your existing fuel injection works faultlessly and has done so for 20 years,
Even though there is no shortage of fuel,
Even though he is not the official tractor engineer,

he is willing to take his own money and design and build electronic fuel injection.

The trouble for the state factory is simple. If the idea works they are broke !

Better to ensure that the idea dies quietly, and the perfectly good tractor we already have, makes a profit, to pay for the hospital.

Back in the 19th century , your argument was valid. Today, I don't think so. How many of the developments in tractors (or bikes, or cars) , come from some Bert Munro type tinkering in his garage, as opposed to coming out of a big corporate. Maybe 1%, if that. The old dream lingers longer and harder in NZ than most places (que, Brittan) but , realistically, it's dead.

What you are describing is in fact industrial mercantilism, not capitalism. Your tractor inventor doesn't sit back and make his money by investing his capital. He makes his fortune by investing his sweat effort and ideas. Quite a different thing to capitalism.

In reality, once capitalism came along the scenario goes more like :

Entrapreneur builds a better EFI. One that works.

Corporates see what he is doing. Bugger me, they say, we have $Obscene millions invested in carburettor factories. This invention could majorly devalue our capital. Get this guy closed out, now. So the entrapreneur gets bought out. Or strnagled out. Strangely, he can't get supplies. The bank calls in his overdraft. The landlord gives him notice. Either his clever idea never sees the light of day, or it is the latest release from MegaCorp Inc.

[mashman]

If you believe that all taxation is theft you're unlikely to have much to contribute to a debate about a fairer taxation system overall.


In the US tax is voluntary... there are IRS agents that do not pay tax (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1UT2Ms5E2k&feature=related)... it's possible that the same is true in NZ (http://www.investigatemagazine.com/FEB00%20Tax%20NZ.htm)

[davereid]

Back in the 19th century , your argument was valid. Today, I don't think so. How many of the developments in tractors (or bikes, or cars) , come from some Bert Munro type tinkering in his garage, as opposed to coming out of a big corporate. Maybe 1%, if that. The old dream lingers longer and harder in NZ than most places (que, Brittan) but , realistically, it's dead.

What you are describing is in fact industrial mercantilism, not capitalism. Your tractor inventor doesn't sit back and make his money by investing his capital. He makes his fortune by investing his sweat effort and ideas. Quite a different thing to capitalism.

In reality, once capitalism came along the scenario goes more like :

Entrapreneur builds a better EFI. One that works.

Corporates see what he is doing. Bugger me, they say, we have $Obscene millions invested in carburettor factories. This invention could majorly devalue our capital. Get this guy closed out, now. So the entrapreneur gets bought out. Or strnagled out. Strangely, he can't get supplies. The bank calls in his overdraft. The landlord gives him notice. Either his clever idea never sees the light of day, or it is the latest release from MegaCorp Inc.

Other way around. In the 19th century, "the means of production" was land. It had been obtained by violence and was maintained by the capitalists who owned it. (Thats a product of greed, not capitalisim by the way.)

But now, the means of production, at least for the most wealthy is our brain. You-tube, Face-book, Microsoft, etc etc etc.

The old dream is booming. Its just that the old dont know how to cast it.

[davereid]

Corporates see what he is doing. Bugger me, they say, we have $Obscene millions invested in carburettor factories. This invention could majorly devalue our capital. Get this guy closed out, now. So the entrapreneur gets bought out. Or strnagled out. Strangely, he can't get supplies. The bank calls in his overdraft. The landlord gives him notice. Either his clever idea never sees the light of day, or it is the latest release from MegaCorp Inc.

Thats the modern music industry. They defend, sue, prosecute, lobby for new laws to protect the SONY recording. Of course thats IS capitalisim. So is the new download industry. The EFI man is being attacked by the old school, and what else would you expect ? Maybe the old school will win, as they have Microsoft championing DRM and the old pay-per-view system. Maybe the new school wil win. With your download fee payed for by the advert, the data collection, or the data charge.

[Ixion]

Other way around. In the 19th century, "the means of production" was land. It had been obtained by violence and was maintained by the capitalists who owned it. (Thats a product of greed, not capitalisim by the way.)

But now, the means of production, at least for the most wealthy is our brain. You-tube, Face-book, Microsoft, etc etc etc.

The old dream is booming. Its just that the old dont know how to cast it.

No, land as a primary income source was 17th C , early 18th C. By 19th C Lady Bracknell could truely say "land gives one a position, without the means to maintain it". The millionaires and billionaires of the 19C didn't make their money out of land.

It is true that about once each generation some new technology breakthrough comes along. And, for a short time, conditions in the businesses that spring up around that technology will resemble those of industrail mercantilism (or, the pure mercantilism of the 16C). But only until the new tech becomes sufficiently wide spread for the corporates to move in on it. The most recent, we call the Dot Com boom. But the era of the super nerd making his millions out of the Net ended about 10 years ago. there's a few still cashing up, but the Internet is now corporatised.

[avgas]

Gawd but she is boring.
Reality is a son of bitch

[rainman]

The problem lies with human beings. We are inherently capitalist, even if we hate to admit it.

Note to readers of this thread: davereid does not understand what capitalism is.


But the era of the super nerd making his millions out of the Net ended about 10 years ago. there's a few still cashing up, but the Internet is now corporatised.

Absolutely - very little is not corporatised these days, and the shift from nation-states to corporate interests is of profound concern. Big oil co's or investment banks that operate in tens of countries are a difficult thing to deal with when it comes to matters of labour, tax, environmental behaviours, ...

Also, the "innovations" that reward their inventors are usually derivatives of derivatives of derivatives of CDOs, or some such thing unrelated to the productive economy. Come the revolution, I say we line up all the quants and their handlers against a convenient wall...

[mashman]

Come the revolution, I say we line up all the quants and their handlers against a convenient wall... why wait :)

[Scottie]

I have worked for both the public and private sector and I now run a small private sector firm. I am convinced that the private sector is just as incompetent as the government at running things - it's just that the private sector is a bit more greedy.

[mashman]

Not that anyone will care, but the UK have released figures on the costs of benefit fraud to the tax payer... pretty stunning numbers for a country slightly smaller than NZ (a look into the future perhaps)... http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/28052010/389/cost-benefit-fraud-revealed.html

[davereid]

...Note to readers of this thread: davereid does not understand what capitalism is....

Actually, it may be that you are right.

I'm defending the right of people to go about their lives non violently. Buying and selling willingly, without a man with a gun demanding tax, koha, insurance or a bribe.

I can see how that can be obtained by a system based on fair trade, with minimal government .
A system where I can sell the products of my endeavour at the highest price the purchasers are willing to pay, and that the profits I generate doing this cannot be taken off me by force.

This does not preclude government from existing, or as I have already explained, from collecting tax.
It doesn't preclude government from social spending either, as it is free to open the peoples tractor factory if it wishes, or to buy shares in my tractor factory.

It doesn't even preclude government collecting social taxes from individuals if they wish to contribute.

All it does is say, you can't steal it.

[MikeL]

All it does is say, you can't steal it.

And to prevent other people from operating their own version of private enterprise and robbing you at gunpoint of your money or your tractor factory you presumably want protection from the police, who will of course be paid for by voluntary contributions from the community?

[rainman]

Actually, it may be that you are right.

Now there's a waste of half a dozen words... :wari::)


I'm defending the right of people to go about their lives non violently. Buying and selling willingly, without a man with a gun demanding tax, koha, insurance or a bribe.

I can see how that can be obtained by a system based on fair trade, with minimal government .
A system where I can sell the products of my endeavour at the highest price the purchasers are willing to pay, and that the profits I generate doing this cannot be taken off me by force.

This does not preclude government from existing, or as I have already explained, from collecting tax.
It doesn't preclude government from social spending either, as it is free to open the peoples tractor factory if it wishes, or to buy shares in my tractor factory.

It doesn't even preclude government collecting social taxes from individuals if they wish to contribute.

All it does is say, you can't steal it.

That's really lovely, but it's as idealistic as my libertarian socialist utopia, and as likely to happen. Which is to say, not at all. I'd still argue that trade (only) as a basis for society rather than a community built on common identity is less resilient and more likely to fail, but the libertarian perspective in your picture above is not actually a million miles from my own. Like I say, I'm fond of personal responsibility - as long as it is tempered by compassion.

Back in the real world, though, we don't have anything like our respective ideals in place, so how about instead of arguing about that which isn't gonna happen, we work out how to improve what we actually have?

Switching rapidly to either view would be hugely destructive. Addressing all of the mess of modern day living, dealing with generations of inequity and imbalance of power, social systems that don't encourage resilience but rather dependence on large-scale commerce, the frankly incredible levels of de-skilling and lost capability that have taken place over the last few generations, reducing the cancerous role of the finance sector, removing complexity (and therefore "brittleness") from our social and economic systems, and addressing the cultural issues or powerlessness, disengagement ,and, yes, laziness... will take generations at best. And I'm not even including religion, race, gender and the rest of the background human issues! I'm also assuming there will be no large exogenous shock, like, say, radical climate change or an energy transition cause by resource depletion. Which there will be, within the timeframes under consideration.

In that context, arguing for a libertarian utopia does seem a lot like fiddling while Rome burns.

[davereid]

And to prevent other people from operating their own version of private enterprise and robbing you at gunpoint of your money or your tractor factory you presumably want protection from the police, who will of course be paid for by voluntary contributions from the community?

Governments can raise income without taxing individuals. There are numerous methods, I already discussed some earlier in the thread.

Glad to see you have given up defending tax at gunpoint though !

[mashman]

Back in the real world, though, we don't have anything like our respective ideals in place, so how about instead of arguing about that which isn't gonna happen, we work out how to improve what we actually have?

Switching rapidly to either view would be hugely destructive. Addressing all of the mess of modern day living, dealing with generations of inequity and imbalance of power, social systems that don't encourage resilience but rather dependence on large-scale commerce, the frankly incredible levels of de-skilling and lost capability that have taken place over the last few generations, reducing the cancerous role of the finance sector, removing complexity (and therefore "brittleness") from our social and economic systems, and addressing the cultural issues or powerlessness, disengagement ,and, yes, laziness... will take generations at best.


I disagree, but have as much of a chance of seeing my ideas come to fruition as "fair trade" actually being fair... It WILL take a single generation... the planning will take 2 - 3 years... consultation will be with the entire country... then implement it once the rest of the world agrees... removing the "financial system" does not mean we cannot survive in a financial world (again you just need to think your way around it)... i'm surprised the "intellectuals" can't grasp the concept... it's simple... much more simple than fucking around and arguing over tax rates and any tax in general... and tackling a whole raft of social issues by default, probably changing day to day life for the better... if you still have an imagination left, i dare you to use it...

[Argyle]

Most people are not on +50K, it's more like 28 - 33K Annually..... I got a letter from Telstraclear and Mercury saying there will be an increase in their bills.. Add on to this higher GST plus higer rents from landlords....

Hopefully there will be an increase in wages also!!

[avgas]

Most people are not on +50K, it's more like 28 - 33K Annually..... I got a letter from Telstraclear and Mercury saying there will be an increase in their bills.. Add on to this higher GST plus higer rents from landlords....
Hopefully there will be an increase in wages also!!
Nah doesn't look like it.
On the upside it looks like lots more people are gonna quit smoking. So you target demographic should be saved.
That is unless they give food stamps for smokes.

[avgas]

Not that anyone will care, but the UK have released figures on the costs of benefit fraud to the tax payer... pretty stunning numbers for a country slightly smaller than NZ (a look into the future perhaps)... http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/28052010/389/cost-benefit-fraud-revealed.html
I would say that in NZ is probably twice as bad (per head) than UK. The main problem here is there NO WHERE to report it anon.
I love it how WINZ can send letter automatically to the most expensive roads in NZ.

[rainman]

I would say that in NZ is probably twice as bad (per head) than UK.

On what basis?


The main problem here is there NO WHERE to report it anon.

The main problem here is that there's f-all work around at the moment, and the tax cuts (funded by borrowing, what's more) are unlikely to do a great deal to fix that... Seriously, how many benefit fraudsters do you know, that you would need to report? If you have ever had to deal with WINZ, you might have a gentler view. Put it this way, they make ACC look competent.

[RON SOAK]

When is a tax cut not a tax cut? when delivered by dorks like key and co. Whats up with NZ? seems to be determined to do as badly as possible while whinging as much as possible and complaining about it to no one in particular. shoot the cunts and start again!

[mashman]

When is a tax cut not a tax cut? when delivered by dorks like key and co. Whats up with NZ? seems to be determined to do as badly as possible while whinging as much as possible and complaining about it to no one in particular. shoot the cunts and start again!

excellent strategy :)... but as long as it placates the masses noone will give a shit... am sure NZ is full of people that will deny that the current robbing of Peter to pay Paul is a bad thing, because tax cuts are always good????????... did someone slip a mental bromide into the water????? at the end of the day, some have already mentioned, money can not be used to solve our social issues... social issues that need a "social policy"... and not just a tinkering with the tax system (all of the taxes collected) as has gone on for decades/centuries/millenia... Seriously, how can you support a system that has been proven not to work if not because it's better the devil you know (because you can't be arsed... lazy unimaginative baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaastards)... it obviously doesn't work...(yes ticketyfuckinboo) and that our leaders are on the money (pun intended) when it comes to looking after the people of New Zealand... it's all arse about face... more money is not the solution, and throughout history has been proven not to work for anyone... we have the ability to print as much money as we like, yet there are those that stop us from doing it... why? because it affects the global market economy (fucking ignorant bastards)... who gives a shit about the people? Anyone??? probably not... because it's a system that doesn't touch a single facet of daily life... and YOU refuse to put it down...

True though... whinging does make one feel so much better... funny that there's noone that you can actually complain to...

[shrub]

Well said Mashman. Modern New Zealanders remind me of the people in Brave New World, happily swallowing whatever they're given. Our masters tell us tax cuts will make the world a better place and encourage growth despite there being no evidence I am aware of to support that argument, so we happily take a few extra dollars a week and we're all happy.

[MisterD]

Our masters tell us tax cuts will make the world a better place and encourage growth despite there being no evidence I am aware of to support that argument

Really? Pete Creswell debunks (http://pc.blogspot.com/2010/05/tax-cuts-dont-cause-growth.html) the lefty arguments..

[Oscar]

excellent strategy :)... but as long as it placates the masses noone will give a shit... am sure NZ is full of people that will deny that the current robbing of Peter to pay Paul is a bad thing, because tax cuts are always good????????... did someone slip a mental bromide into the water????? at the end of the day, some have already mentioned, money can not be used to solve our social issues... social issues that need a "social policy"... and not just a tinkering with the tax system (all of the taxes collected) as has gone on for decades/centuries/millenia... Seriously, how can you support a system that has been proven not to work if not because it's better the devil you know (because you can't be arsed... lazy unimaginative baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaastards)... it obviously doesn't work...(yes ticketyfuckinboo) and that our leaders are on the money (pun intended) when it comes to looking after the people of New Zealand... it's all arse about face... more money is not the solution, and throughout history has been proven not to work for anyone... we have the ability to print as much money as we like, yet there are those that stop us from doing it... why? because it affects the global market economy (fucking ignorant bastards)... who gives a shit about the people? Anyone??? probably not... because it's a system that doesn't touch a single facet of daily life... and YOU refuse to put it down...

True though... whinging does make one feel so much better... funny that there's noone that you can actually complain to...


Speaking of lazy unimaginative bastards, do you speak in anything but slogans?
Why don't you drop the lefty propaganda manual and say what you would do?

For example, what does this mean?

... social issues that need a "social policy"...
And what would you do about it?

[mashman]

Speaking of lazy unimaginative bastards, do you speak in anything but slogans?
Why don't you drop the lefty propaganda manual and say what you would do?

For example, what does this mean?

And what would you do about it?

:rofl: glad you missed my point... I wouldn't have expected anything more from someone who is incapable of understanding that some people don't hold any allegiance to ANY political party...

social issues that need a "social policy"... to me, it means no matter what the cost, it should be done as it's better for all concerned...

I've already proposed my solution in several places on the forum, a very simple concept, remove the financial system from the country and try something entirely different... whilst i don't have all of the answers, I have a quite few (wrong or not... noone will get around the table to discuss them), including an approach to appease the global "powers", that we'd still be able to punch well above our weight in the financial world, even without having a financial system in NZ...

Can you figure out how that woud work and the associated benefits? I'm guessing not.

[SPman]

we have the ability to print as much money as we like, Well, if it's good enough for the US Federal Reserve.......

[Brian d marge]

Really? Pete Creswell debunks (http://pc.blogspot.com/2010/05/tax-cuts-dont-cause-growth.html) the lefty arguments..I would agree with that long done are the days when farming was lucrative , in other words More of us have got to produce more valuable stuff and I think the farming sector is limited
Weta is one avenue, Fish Farming might be another
either way The productivity per person must at least double ,( Smarter not harder )

Stephen

[Oscar]

:rofl: glad you missed my point... I wouldn't have expected anything more from someone who is incapable of understanding that some people don't hold any allegiance to ANY political party...

social issues that need a "social policy"... to me, it means no matter what the cost, it should be done as it's better for all concerned...

I've already proposed my solution in several places on the forum, a very simple concept, remove the financial system from the country and try something entirely different... whilst i don't have all of the answers, I have a quite few (wrong or not... noone will get around the table to discuss them), including an approach to appease the global "powers", that we'd still be able to punch well above our weight in the financial world, even without having a financial system in NZ...

Can you figure out how that woud work and the associated benefits? I'm guessing not.

Missed your point?
You have a point?
You really should join a political party, that is one of the best examples of taking several paragraphs to say nothing I have seen outside a party manifesto. I particularly love the last bit where you are condescending about my inability to work the benefits of system that you admit you have no details for. Your pompous brand of hot air would play well in Wellington.


And why does the fact that I question with your incoherent ramblings, make me a party stooge?
It doesn't - it should be an indication to you that you should perhaps check you posts for coherence and/or put the bong down.

[Ixion]

For example, what does this mean?
... social issues that need a "social policy"...
And what would you do about it?


Too many bludgers milking the system.

Labour camps and Kalasnikovs.

Sorted. Next question

[mashman]

Missed your point?
You have a point?
You really should join a political party, that is one of the best examples of taking several paragraphs to say nothing I have seen outside a party manifesto. I particularly love the last bit where you are condescending about my inability to work the benefits of system that you admit you have no details for. Your pompous brand of hot air would play well in Wellington.


And why does the fact that I question with your incoherent ramblings, make me a party stooge?
It doesn't - it should be an indication to you that you should perhaps check you posts for coherence and/or put the bong down.

Yes.
Yes.

No I shouldn't... Translate it anyway you like... I've yet to see any party manifesto containing policies on the removal of the financial system, you know different, so i'll bow to your experience. If, as you freely admit, you can't decipher my pompous incoherent ravings, then I stand by my statement that you would be unable to figure out how "my" system would work and the associated benefits... what other conclusion could I come to?

Never said you were a stooge... but you read me how you read me... I can't change that...

I gave you the basic idea... figure the rest out for yourself and ignore my blahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Oscar]

Yes.
Yes.

No I shouldn't... Translate it anyway you like... I've yet to see any party manifesto containing policies on the removal of the financial system, you know different, so i'll bow to your experience. If, as you freely admit, you can't decipher my pompous incoherent ravings, then I stand by my statement that you would be unable to figure out how "my" system would work and the associated benefits... what other conclusion could I come to?

Never said you were a stooge... but you read me how you read me... I can't change that...

I gave you the basic idea... figure the rest out for yourself and ignore my blahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Your noise to signal ratio is a problem.
It's your idea, so instead of constantly using the same pat slogans, why don't you explain it?

Simply advocating "The removal of the financial system" and saying "..social issues that need a "social policy"..." doesn't make a whole bunch of sense.
Tell us how it works.

[mashman]

Your noise to signal ratio is a problem.
It's your idea, so instead of constantly using the same pat slogans, why don't you explain it?

Simply advocating "The removal of the financial system" and saying "..social issues that need a "social policy"..." doesn't make a whole bunch of sense.
Tell us how it works.

Fair enough...

bit long winded in places i'm afraid, but you'll get the idea pretty quickly... http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/showthread.php/122031-My-first-poll-for-the-NZ-public.

I did have a 20 year plan lying around somewhere, but seem to have misplaced it...

[davereid]

Our masters tell us tax cuts will make the world a better place and encourage growth despite there being no evidence I am aware of to support that argument, so we happily take a few extra dollars a week and we're all happy.

There is plenty of evidence that lower taxes produce growth. I have more money. I put some in the bank and it loaned to someone else, and its value to me grows. I put some in shares, and if I invest wisely, the value to me grows, as the the business I invested in. I spend some, and it creates employment.

Of course if the government decreases taxes but borrows to cover the shortfall we are worse off. As we will have to be taxed for both the money spent, and the interest on it.

With regard to the "printing of money" its a very popular from of taxation.

Look at it like this.

You grow a ton of potatoes. You sell them for $1000. The tax-man takes $500. 50% of your wealth has been destroyed.

You grow a ton of potatoes. You sell them for $1000. The tax-man prints himself $1000. 50% of your wealth has been destroyed.

[Ixion]

Almost all taxation revenue is spent on purposes that are not productive. They may be desireable, or necessary, eg defence, but seldom do they actually produce anything (there are exceptions of course). So, the amount removed as tax from the pool of national wealth comprises 'dead' money.So it is fair to say, regardless of what 'ism' one supports, that low taxes are a good thing.

But , alas, there is no free lunch. It is unlikely that the shade of the old blind lady who just died of hunger, in the libertarian tax free paradise, thinks it such a good thing

There will always be the halt, the blind, the maim. And a modern society that left them to starve in the gutter would be reprehensible indeed.

And the long experience of history shows quite clearly that unless such unfortunates are provided for by the state, all too often they won't be provided for at all.

So the practical reality is that taxation in some form (call it taxes, tithes, poor-law rates, what you will) is unavoidable.

The problem is when the merciful provision intended for those too disabled to provide for themselves, becomes captured by those too lazy to provide for themselves.

And the long experience of history shows quite clearly that unless such reprobates are dealt to by the state, all too often they will sit back in lazy sloth.

Socialism is often associated with benefits and the welfare state, but there is nothing inherent in the economic basis of socialism (even less communism) that dictates that. It is just a coincidence, by and large the people who were attracted to socialism and fought for it, were those who had seen at first hand the social evils of unfettered capitalism. So , when they got the chance , they determined that no more old ladies should die of hunger.

Unfortunately they were not so successful at ensuring that bludgers would not hi-jack the system. And the welfare state has no inherent mechanism to force the workshy to pull their weight. All that can be done is to try to make the benefits just sufficient to survive on, whilst low enough to be unattractive to those who have alternatives. It seldom works , and usually ends up with the worst of both worlds - benefits too low to provide adequately for the truely disabled, but high enough to remove the compulsion to work.

Which is why (one why) communism is the answer. Only communism can provide for the genuinely needy , and at the same get the bludgers to put their shulders to the wheel.

[mashman]

Which is why (one why) communism is the answer. Only communism can provide for the genuinely needy , and at the same get the bludgers to put their shulders to the wheel.

Unfortunately: The Declaration on Crimes of Communism is a declaration signed on 25 February 2010 by several prominent European politicians, former political prisoners, human rights advocates and historians, which calls for the condemnation of communism. It concluded the international conference Crimes of the Communist Regimes, that took place at the Czech Senate and the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic from 24 to 26 February 2010. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on_Crimes_of_Communism)

so I can only assume if you try to implement a communistic state in NZ, the world and his dog would come to stop it... never heard that on the news...

[davereid]

Unfortunately: The Declaration on Crimes of Communism is a declaration signed on 25 February 2010 by several prominent European politicians, former political prisoners, human rights advocates and historians, which calls for the condemnation of communism. It concluded the international conference Crimes of the Communist Regimes, that took place at the Czech Senate and the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic from 24 to 26 February 2010. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on_Crimes_of_Communism)

so I can only assume if you try to implement a communistic state in NZ, the world and his dog would come to stop it... never heard that on the news...

I think its a basic mistake to assume that because "ists" of any flavour have done bad shit, that their particular "ism" must do bad bad shit.

That's the issue for me in a way. I cant see how communists and socialists can get revenue without using a gun. But I cant see how a capitalist or libertarian country can guarantee the protection of the vulnerable.

[mashman]

I think its a basic mistake to assume that because "ists" of any flavour have done bad shit, that their particular "ism" must do bad bad shit.

That's the issue for me in a way. I cant see how communists and socialists can get revenue without using a gun. But I cant see how a capitalist or libertarian country can guarantee the protection of the vulnerable.

looks like mashism is out of the window then lol :)... amazing what THEY can get away with these days...

[shrub]

There is plenty of evidence that lower taxes produce growth.

I'm no economist so I'd be interested to see some evidence of this.

[Argyle]

Singapore got a very good financial and tax system!! They were the first to introduce the "not generation after" pay for your pension system...

I think New Zealand can take advantage of the service sector more then what it does, make Auckland the new financial Mecca... Make New Zealand attractive to businesses who want to build their HQ here and live a nice lifestyle...
This will create heaps of jobs and make the welfare spring up...But NZ need to cut down on the taxes, make it a business welfare state where everything is put into that businesses run the country, how it should be.

The government only provides an overview over whats going on, look after roads, healthcare and make sure NZ keep up to the standards... I think with competition people sort them selves out because everything they do actually inflicts on them selves...

There is no greater feeling then to own your own business or work together in a business, see it grow and prosper...

Singapore is a state we all can learn from!!

[davereid]

Singapore got a very good financial and tax system!! They were the first to introduce the "not generation after" pay for your pension system... Singapore is a state we all can learn from!!

Yes, NZ had an army base there from the end of the second world war, right through the Malaysian conflict. The NZ dollar was worth several Singaporean dollars. Many Singaporeans lived in shanties, and us kiwis laughed at them. I went there again a few years ago. Now I needed several of my dollars to buy one of theirs. They had better incomes than us, all achieved by lowering tax rates, encouraging foreign investment and creating wealth everywhere.

Low taxation attracts overseas investment and creates wealth. Multinationals often only pay tax in low tax economies, bypassing our tax man all together.

Next time you buy a pack of oil, look to see where it was "officially" refined.

The Oil man may have drilled for the oil in Nigeria.

But it was easy to make a loss in Nigeria, and pay no tax.

The oil got sent to Malaysia where it was refined, by a Singaporean owned company. No profit was made in Malaysia either, as it was sold to the parent company at cost.

Final refining and packaging was done in Singapore. That's where all the profit was made, as the corporate pays only 7% tax.

Then the oil was sent to NZ where it was sold through NZ petrol outlets, who once again barely make a profit.

Only local businesses ever pay "real" income tax. Its completely voluntary for multinationals.

[Argyle]

Yes, NZ had an army base there from the end of the second world war, right through the Malaysian conflict. The NZ dollar was worth several Singaporean dollars. Many Singaporeans lived in shanties, and us kiwis laughed at them. I went there again a few years ago. Now I needed several of my dollars to buy one of theirs. They had better incomes than us, all achieved by lowering tax rates, encouraging foreign investment and creating wealth everywhere.

Low taxation attracts overseas investment and creates wealth. Multinationals often only pay tax in low tax economies, bypassing our tax man all together.

Next time you buy a pack of oil, look to see where it was "officially" refined.

The Oil man may have drilled for the oil in Nigeria.

But it was easy to make a loss in Nigeria, and pay no tax.

The oil got sent to Malaysia where it was refined, by a Singaporean owned company. No profit was made in Malaysia either, as it was sold to the parent company at cost.

Final refining and packaging was done in Singapore. That's where all the profit was made, as the corporate pays only 7% tax.

Then the oil was sent to NZ where it was sold through NZ petrol outlets, who once again barely make a profit.

Only local businesses ever pay "real" income tax. Its completely voluntary for multinationals.

I like Singapore, English is the main language or Singlish as they've named it...Never been there but would really like to visit the country!

[mashman]

Singapore is something entirely different to NZ... it's gotta be the biggest shipping port in the world... when you have that kind of money and trade rolling in through the harbour it's hardly surprising that you can keep the tax low... as mentioned you can't do that here, mainly because of our proximity to the rest of the world... you're comparing apples to oranges... our lazy lords aren't doing the leg work in regards to making life better here... they seem to think that money is the answer to everything, tinkering with taxation here, little tweak of services there... and on the whole they get it wrong and have been for decades/centuries...

I thought we were meant to be working smarter...

[Ocean1]

Singapore is something entirely different to NZ... it's gotta be the biggest shipping port in the world... when you have that kind of money and trade rolling in through the harbour it's hardly surprising that you can keep the tax low...

Cart. Horse.


I thought we were meant to be working smarter...

We'd like to.

Now if you'd kindly remove yourself from the workforce we'll be getting on with it.

[mashman]

Cart. Horse.

We'd like to.

Now if you'd kindly remove yourself from the workforce we'll be getting on with it.

Cart. Horse? What, you need the lower taxes to encourage business to come here... lol, you're at the wrong end of the world and have next to nothing to offer the rest of that world... nothing that they don't already own...

I've already said I'd rather not become a politician thanks :) irrespective of my dumbness...

[shrub]

Cart. Horse? What, you need the lower taxes to encourage business to come here... lol, you're at the wrong end of the world and have next to nothing to offer the rest of that world... nothing that they don't already own...

I've already said I'd rather not become a politician thanks :) irrespective of my dumbness...

I think that's a failing that New Zealanders are prone to, and one that is going to be exacerbated by our timid and unimaginative government - we look at other countries and want to be them without realising that we're very, very different. The current crop of pollies are obsessed with catching up with Australia, but don't seem to realise that Aussie is richer because they have a hiuge and easily accessible resource base, and most importantly they don't belong to anyone else and the mining companies in Australia are generally Australian owned. On the other hand, we have sold all our strategic commercial assets to overseas buyers, so in effect we are employees of foreign corporations (frequently Australian).

You're absolutely right about us and Singapore - Singapore has done well mostly because of their location and if we introduced a 7% tax rate we would become a tax haven for every dodgy dealer in town and would be a third world country in no time. Paying bugger all in tax is of little benefit when you're earning next to nothing.

[davereid]

I think that's a failing that New Zealanders are prone to, and one that is going to be exacerbated by our timid and unimaginative government - we look at other countries and want to be them without realising that we're very, very different. The current crop of pollies are obsessed with catching up with Australia, but don't seem to realise that Aussie is richer because they have a hiuge and easily accessible resource base, and most importantly they don't belong to anyone else and the mining companies in Australia are generally Australian owned. On the other hand, we have sold all our strategic commercial assets to overseas buyers, so in effect we are employees of foreign corporations (frequently Australian).

You're absolutely right about us and Singapore - Singapore has done well mostly because of their location and if we introduced a 7% tax rate we would become a tax haven for every dodgy dealer in town and would be a third world country in no time. Paying bugger all in tax is of little benefit when you're earning next to nothing.

Where does money come from ?

The answer is, it actually grows on trees. Your Mum was wrong. At least wealth does, the creation of "money" and "credit" is a little different.

So, by way of explanation, lets think of wealth and poverty, to avoid the trap of talking about money.

If we were super-intelligent squirrels, we might have a basic economy. There would be some squirrels that built nests, some squirrels that collected nuts, some that stored them and guarded from the rats. There would be some who stole nuts rather than collect their own, and would be some squirrels who became dominant or "king" squirrels.

But as an economy we can see one thing clearly. If a squirrel has more nuts than he can eat he is wealthy. If he has less nuts than he needs he is poor.

Rule 1 - A community's wealth comes from production.

Lets imagine our squirrel government notices that some squirrels have plenty of nuts and some are hungry. It sends soldier squirrels and takes nuts from the squirrels with extra and gives them to the other squirrels. It takes some to fund its own activities as well, and it plans for a hard year next year by getting builder squirrels to build a store house.

For a community to have wealth, it can be achieved only by production. There is NO alternative.



Rule 2 - Government spending increases economic activity, but not wealth.

The builder squirrels report a bumper year as do the transport squirrels, the Guard Squirrels and the squirrels that got a handout are not starving.
But the Government spending has not created a single nut more.

Government spending does not increase production. It actually removes productive capital from the economy.


Rule 3 - Capital is mobile

The squirrels now have a comfortable world, where there is just enough for every squirrel to eat. But some hard working, and productive squirrels notice that they live little better than the squirrels who don't do anything. The productive squirrels also notice that they earn much less than the government squirrels in charge of the nut store. Across the river they see some other squirrels. Its looks a bit more sunny over there, and the nuts are hanging lower in the trees, so they take less effort to get. Some of the productive squirrels take the nuts they have left, and cross the river.

Excessive taxation will result in capital flight.

[shrub]

Oh that life were that simple. Sadly too many people base their ideology on simplistic, and inevitably flawed, models like yours, so we end up with a system that doesn't work. But using your analogy, a number of rabbits saw the squirrels munching away on nuts, and decided to start collecting nuts in expectation of a long, cold winter. The winter was long and cold, and when they went to eat their nuts they found they couldn't, so were forceto sell their nuts to the squirrels to buy grass, but they got very little grass and many starved.

And in the field on the other side, a number of squirrels had a really good system going where everyone had plenty of nuts. The first group of squirrels rocked up and said "Hi guys, we've just got a whole heap of nuts off the rabbits which we don't need - how about we buy some of your trees off you for 1 bushel of nuts? You can still live in them and eat the nuts, but we'll just take a few every year. Not all of them, just a few. The second group figured that was a good deal, so they grabbed it with both hands, handed them out and for a while all was good. Then they noticed that the first group of squirrels had tons of nuts, and they had less than they used to (they used to have more nuts than the first group). "Why don't we have as many nuts as them?" they asked, and the wise king of the squirrels said "It's easy, we must give less nuts to the sick and elderly squirrels, and then I can give the nuts they were getting to you. And then I'll borrow some nuts from the squirrels next door and share them around".

So the king borrowed some nuts, and all was good until the first group of squirrels wanted their nuts back (plus interest), so the king had another brain wave - if he sold the last few trees they owned, he could pay them back and even have a few extra nuts to give to the fattest squirrels because if they were fat they must be the most important and productive squirrels. So he sold the last few trees and everyone was happy, especially the first group of squirrels. Then the nuts ran out, and the king realised that he had nothing left to sell, so he borrowed some more from the first group who were happy to lend them because they were good like that, and the interest rate was a cracker.

Rule 1: He who owns the means of production has the power and the wealth.

[shrub]

Bob the builder sold his business to pay his Placemakers bill and spent the balance on a holiday and a new ute, but it was OK because the new owner gave him a job. Then he wondered why he wasn't getting paid as much as he used to.

[Winston001]

Good discussion guys and I find myself agreeing with both sides. NZ is remote and we do not have much that is unique to offer to the rest of the world. What we do have is lifestyle - but you can't sell that without compromising it. Tourism is the next level down and it is finite - imagine 10 million visitors and the crowded degraded experience they would have. We currently receive 2.4 million tourists and could comfortably double that, but no more if we are to retain our clean fresh uncluttered environment.

We also have high quality food which could be increased by more intensive land use. Market gardens on a grand scale. We have fish but that resource is not infinite and is under pressure from other nations vessels.

We have forestry but that is not even slightly unique - Siberia could swamp us with a few days production. The one positive is our trees grow very quickly.

NZ is a long way from any market. We do not have zillions of acres of mineral resources. On the other hand we are protected from international conflicts and disease with the oceans making NZ possibly the most secure country in the world. Plenty of water. Its not all bad, in fact we are very lucky. We simply need to appreciate this as a whole nation.

[MikeL]

Rule 1: He who owns the means of production has the power and the wealth.
Rule 2: He who has power and wealth makes the rules.

And that is it in a nutshell!

[MikeL]

Its not all bad, in fact we are very lucky. We simply need to appreciate this as a whole nation.

But we don't. Because we've become obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses and so-called living standards and our ranking in the OECD and all the other unimportant things. We'd sacrifice our environment and our quality of life and everything that makes this country special to climb up one rung on the economic ladder. Greed and envy have blinded us to the true values. Don't look to the present government (or the previous one, for that matter) to return to a saner view.

[shrub]

Rule 2: He who has power and wealth makes the rules.

And that is it in a nutshell!

And that's no longer us.

[shrub]

But we don't. Because we've become obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses and so-called living standards and our ranking in the OECD and all the other unimportant things. We'd sacrifice our environment and our quality of life and everything that makes this country special to climb up one rung on the economic ladder. Greed and envy have blinded us to the true values. Don't look to the present government (or the previous one, for that matter) to return to a saner view.

A very, very good point. Somewhere along the line someone sold us on the idea that the only true measure of success/happiness/wealth is the financial one, so we sacrifice everything on the altar of money. Kind of like a bike builder deciding that the only thing to consider is RWHP, so the next thing you know you have a peaky, unreliable, under braked bike that is not just a piece of shit to ride, but is actually slower than it used to be.

I have no problems with making more money and pursuing financial goals, but let's look beyond simple bank balances and look at the world we live in. I'd rather be moderately prosperous in a beautiful, safe country than rolling in cash in a shit hole. If I wanted that I'd go and work in Baghdad.

[mashman]

Rule 1 - A community's wealth comes from production.


a community's wealth comes from its people... shit pay, shit people, shit community... unless of course you're born to make profit...

[shrub]

a community's wealth comes from its people... shit pay, shit people, shit community... unless of course you're born to make profit...

It comes down to whether your interpretation of wealth is confined to money, or whether you can look beyond those constraints.

[mashman]

It comes down to whether your interpretation of wealth is confined to money, or whether you can look beyond those constraints.

Completely agree with you... although without the people of the community there is no money... this isn't the chicken and egg scenario that some seem to believe holds true... If they're pissed off or disaffected for some reason (perhaps theft is easier money, perhaps they're happy with what they have) then there is no money/wealth generated (only taken)... I see that more as a fact than an interpretation... but that's just my perspective :shifty:...

[shrub]

Completely agree with you... although without the people of the community there is no money... this isn't the chicken and egg scenario that some seem to believe holds true... If they're pissed off or disaffected for some reason (perhaps theft is easier money, perhaps they're happy with what they have) then there is no money/wealth generated (only taken)... I see that more as a fact than an interpretation... but that's just my perspective :shifty:...

And I would argue that without a functioning community money has little value.

[mashman]

And I would argue that without a functioning community money has little value.

Could also say that even with a fully functioning community money has little value... but i'm biased :)... to me it's all trust... and financial systems breed mistrust amongst the people and is generally responsible for 90% of business related crime... ya know, business where all of our money goes... a simple look at the headlines each day from around the globe shows that the same shit (and much worse in many cases) is going on overseas... if that's what we have to look forward too, because we're "keeping up with the jonses", then i'd rather do something entirely different and as quickly as possible...

[shrub]

I think money needs to be seen as a mechanism, not an objective. It's a mechanism that allows the transfer of skills, services and goods between individuals who have, and groups who do not have, but we have made the mistake of placing a monetary value on everything - for that I blame the accountants, and that monetary value is an arbitrary value that has little relationship to reality. For example, why am I as a management consultant worth more than an equally well trained and equally skilled nurse or teacher? I don't see my work as being of any greater value to the greater good of my society, yet I can command more. Which is good because it means I can study full time and work part time.

Which is another failing of the current system. We are all compelled to get as much as we can, even when we don't need it. I remember approaching one John Harrington of Harrington's beer fame and offering my services to build his business. When he asked why, I said so he could make more money and I have never forgotten his response: "what do I want with more money? You can only eat and drink so much, and I do too much of both". He is one of the few genuinely rich people I know, and I suspect he'd be just as rich if he had 1/10th of his money.

BTW I ended up working for him - I convinced him to use my services because that way more people would drink his beer which he believes to be better than the big breweries offerings (and he's right).

[mashman]

I think money needs to be seen as a mechanism, not an objective. It's a mechanism that allows the transfer of skills, services and goods between individuals who have, and groups who do not have, but we have made the mistake of placing a monetary value on everything - for that I blame the accountants, and that monetary value is an arbitrary value that has little relationship to reality. For example, why am I as a management consultant worth more than an equally well trained and equally skilled nurse or teacher? I don't see my work as being of any greater value to the greater good of my society, yet I can command more. Which is good because it means I can study full time and work part time.

Which is another failing of the current system. We are all compelled to get as much as we can, even when we don't need it. I remember approaching one John Harrington of Harrington's beer fame and offering my services to build his business. When he asked why, I said so he could make more money and I have never forgotten his response: "what do I want with more money? You can only eat and drink so much, and I do too much of both". He is one of the few genuinely rich people I know, and I suspect he'd be just as rich if he had 1/10th of his money.

BTW I ended up working for him - I convinced him to use my services because that way more people would drink his beer which he believes to be better than the big breweries offerings (and he's right).

The problem is seperating the two... if the value is negligable, why have it... there'll always be those who value their effort more than anyone elses... and I'd say that's the vast majority of people... not trying to be cruel, but that's just the way it is... we're subject to market forces and that market won't just go away because the majority start to see money as a mechanism... You need a full on shift in thinking if you want to tackle more than 1 issue at a time... something that does not have value... the request being enough to illicit the service and the donation offered when you have more than you need... it's not trade or barter and I hate saying for the greater good, but that's what it amounts to... do yer bit and the world will tickover without the financial contraints that have been holding us back, dividing us, generating "political" power, causing social unrest etc... I can't see money helping at all, never has, never will...

Heh, so you get free beer for life too :)... but I know what you mean about the rich getting more out of a business than what they put in, and finances are a dull 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc... bloody good attitude to have...

[shrub]

I wish I got free beer for life... I got a few boxes and plenty of cash.

Sadly yours and my vision, while very doable, will never happen because too many people are bound up with terror of not having as much money as they can get their hands on. My colleagues in the marketing companies have been too successful.

[MisterD]

Rule 1: He who owns the means of production has the power and the wealth.


Rule 2: He who has power and wealth makes the rules.

And that is it in a nutshell!

Yet he who makes the rules obviously has control of the means of production...Et voila! An argument pulling itself up by its own shoelaces....

[shrub]

Yet he who makes the rules obviously has control of the means of production...Et voila! An argument pulling itself up by its own shoelaces....

And the best way to get into a position to make the rules is to control the means of production which is why the more our assets are sold the less autonomy we have.

[mashman]

I wish I got free beer for life... I got a few boxes and plenty of cash.

Sadly yours and my vision, while very doable, will never happen because too many people are bound up with terror of not having as much money as they can get their hands on. My colleagues in the marketing companies have been too successful.

lol, my Wife can't grasp the concept that i've thrown around, so know what you mean in regards to the letting go... The thing that gets me is that these same people will have the same worries as us, to a lesser or greater degree no doubt... but the worries about the safe society, the gangs, the excessive bank fees, inflation, who's in power (like there's ever a shift in that regard), education, health, the future etc... yet they believe that money can take you there... it can't... if it could, wouldn't it have taken less than 2000+ years to have accomplished that goal... wouldn't all of the above mentioned "concerns" have been sorted...

This is why the financial system has to go and needs to be replaced with an "honour" system... like you say we can see 2 different ways of moving forward... but there's only a handful of us that think so... the majority are a mixed bag of: don't think about it, throw it out as hippy nonsense, push it away because it's not their party policy etc... thus filed in the never gonna happen basket... not fully realising that it's their votes that actually stop "solutions" from being adopted... but sok, someone has a plan :blink:... it just so happens to be a very bad one...

[davereid]

Rule 1: He who owns the means of production has the power and the wealth.

No amount of hand-wringing and crying will stop it being the case. Get over it. Produce something. History tells us that being productive and having new technology can put you at the top of the heap. Crying wont do it.

[davereid]

Bob the builder sold his business to pay his Placemakers bill and spent the balance on a holiday and a new ute, but it was OK because the new owner gave him a job. Then he wondered why he wasn't getting paid as much as he used to.

Bob did very well. If he managed his business that badly he should have been bankrupt.

[shrub]

No amount of hand-wringing and crying will stop it being the case. Get over it. Produce something. History tells us that being productive and having new technology can put you at the top of the heap. Crying wont do it.

History tells us a lot, but not many people are smart enough to listen. I take it from your comment that you can't counter my position?

[davereid]

But we don't. Because we've become obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses and so-called living standards and our ranking in the OECD and all the other unimportant things. We'd sacrifice our environment and our quality of life and everything that makes this country special to climb up one rung on the economic ladder. Greed and envy have blinded us to the true values. Don't look to the present government (or the previous one, for that matter) to return to a saner view.

You argue that once the squirrels have a full belly they should stop producing. Trouble is, another group of squirrels will keep producing. Soon, not only will they be fed, they will be warm. Then they will have health care. They may even cut down the gorse, sacrificing the environment to plant more nut trees. Then they will be able to have an education system as well.

[davereid]

History tells us a lot, but not many people are smart enough to listen. I take it from your comment that you can't counter my position?

I have completely demolished it. Bob was not a good builder. He was not a good trader. Joe is doing it now.

[shrub]

I have completely demolished it. Bob was not a good builder. He was not a good trader. Joe is doing it now.

No, you haven't demolished anything. If anything Bob was a good builder - if he was a bad builder, why did Joe buy his business and then employ him? Bob was short sighted and lacked commercial acument, and didn't realise that hanging on to his business made more sense in the long term - much like Our Masters past and present. Owning the means of production (which is where Joe is) gives power. We have sold our assets, our businesses and our land, not even to the highest bidder, usually just any bidder.

And do you know who Bob is in this analogy? the NZ government (past and present). And Joe is Australia, China, the US and anyone else that has bought our assets.

[Ixion]

Rule 1: He who owns the means of production has the power and the wealth.

Not quite.

He who controls the army and the guns has the power and wealth. Power flows from the barrel of a gun.

All your ownership doesn't mean diddley squat if I have more guns , I'll just take it away from you.

As for the squirrels, they were doing very nicely , gathering nuts galore. Until the wolves arrived. Armed with modern weapons. The squirrels knashed their teeth -the only weapons they had; those squirrels who had suggested building guns had been denounced as war mongers. But teeth knashing doesn't cut it against machine guns. the squrrels were massacred, the wolves sold off the nuts, and pigged out on squirrel meat before moving on to their next victims.

[shrub]

Not quite.

He who controls the army and the guns has the power and wealth. Power flows from the barrel of a gun.

All your ownership doesn't mean diddley squat if I have more guns , I'll just take it away from you.

He who has the means of production owns the army. And having lots of guns isn't such an advantage in an era of 4th generation warfare as the Americans and Israelis have learnt, often to their cost.

[shrub]

Not quite.

He who controls the army and the guns has the power and wealth. Power flows from the barrel of a gun.

All your ownership doesn't mean diddley squat if I have more guns , I'll just take it away from you.

He who has the means of production owns the army. And having lots of guns isn't such an advantage in an era of 4th generation warfare as the Americans and Israelis have learnt, often to their cost.

[davereid]

Rule 1: He who owns the means of production has the power and the wealth.

In our squirrel kingdom, that was the man who controlled the trees. In the world until the industrial revolution it was the man who controlled the land. Thats where we produced food. It gave us political turmoil and revolution.

But now it's irrelevant, at least for the capitalist west. Food is now a tiny part of our production. Less than 1/10th of the average working man's day is productive enough to provide his food.

What's this "means of production" that is tied up by the evil man ? What can't you produce because of his activity ?

[Ixion]

He who has the means of production owns the army. And having lots of guns isn't such an advantage in an era of 4th generation warfare as the Americans and Israelis have learnt, often to their cost.

Tell that to the Georgians, Mr Putin is doing pretty well. The problem the Israelis and Americans have is that they have the guns, but they're scared to use them. Mr Putin isn't

[davereid]

He who has the means of production owns the army. And having lots of guns isn't such an advantage in an era of 4th generation warfare as the Americans and Israelis have learnt, often to their cost.

Sorry, they are playing the nice game. Either the US or Israel could end conflict, in their area in a week. They have the tools, they just haven't used them yet. And I hope they are never driven to.

[Ixion]

In our squirrel kingdom, that was the man who controlled the trees. In the world until the industrial revolution it was the man who controlled the land. Thats where we produced food. It gave us political turmoil and revolution.

But now it's irrelevant, at least for the capitalist west. Food is now a tiny part of our production. Less than 1/10th of the average working man's day is productive enough to provide his food.

What's this "means of production" that is tied up by the evil man ? What can't you produce because of his activity ?

Substitute oil for food in your argument .

[shrub]

In our squirrel kingdom, that was the man who controlled the trees. In the world until the industrial revolution it was the man who controlled the land. Thats where we produced food. It gave us political turmoil and revolution.

But now it's irrelevant, at least for the capitalist west. Food is now a tiny part of our production. Less than 1/10th of the average working man's day is productive enough to provide his food.

What's this "means of production" that is tied up by the evil man ? What can't you produce because of his activity ?

Food may be a tiny part if the average man's working day, but it's our primary export. And the means of production is the corporations and businesses we all work for.

I'm fine, I'm a consultant and my means of production is my brain, but for the majority of New Zealanders they are destined to work for foreignors who own the profits from the businesses we used to own in NZ.

And on that note, I am sick of computer screens and beer is calling my name. Good debate BTW, I enjoyed your posts.

[davereid]

He who has the means of production owns the army. And having lots of guns isn't such an advantage in an era of 4th generation warfare as the Americans and Israelis have learnt, often to their cost.

He who controls the army is unconnected to he who produces. However, warfare is often considered to be a battle of economies. The rich win wars and extend their rule to the subjected.. Thank god its not the poor doing it.

[shrub]

He who controls the army is unconnected to he who produces. However, warfare is often considered to be a battle of economies. The rich win wars and extend their rule to the subjected.. Thank god its not the poor doing it.

Actually the poor are winning most wars these days, or at least causing a disproportionate degree of harm to the rich. The AK47 is the most destructive WMD ever built and can be purchased for a few dollars in some places.

[davereid]

Substitute oil for food in your argument .

Easy. Once food was the commodity. Currently oil holds that position, or at least fossil fuels (of which NZ is rich) dominate. But just as the industrial revolution ended food shortages for the industrialised nations, the energy revolution will do the same with oil.

No one can predict what will be the turning point. Right now, my money is on the super-conductor. Get the super conductor right, and we have viable nuclear fusion. End of the oil age. The super conductor will also give us the super capacitor. Bogan's electric motorcycle is suddenly useable. My V8 is history, and the balance has changed.

[davereid]

... And the means of production is the corporations and businesses we all work for.... the majority of New Zealanders they are destined to work for foreignors who own the profits from the businesses we used to own in NZ....And on that note, I am sick of computer screens and beer is calling my name. Good debate BTW, I enjoyed your posts.

Hehe.. good on ya, go and enjoy that beer..

But, here's one for you. I think its great when foreign companies take dividends home.

Dave's analogy time again...

I have a gorse covered paddock. Its a pain, I run a few goats, and that's it.

Then an investor shows up. He sends me a tractor, gorse spray and seed potatoes. I do the work. I plant them in my gorse free newly, ploughed paddocks. They grow, and I harvest 1000 kg of potatoes which I sell for a profit. I pay myself, my workers, the tractor repair man, the man who took the spuds to market, and man who sold them. 50% of my gross profit goes in tax. And the man who invested takes his share back to England.

The key is, that it's new wealth. It didn't exist until we grew the spuds.

Even though the investor took his profit, we were all better off.

[shrub]

Only problem is the guy buys the paddock, pays you minimum wage, trashes the paddock by poor management, fills the stream with waste and then buggers off once the paddock stops producing potatoes.

And the paddock was in pretty good order and was producing some damn fine goats (perfect in a curry), but now you don't have a paddock, you don't have any goats and shortly the nice man from across the creek will head off and leave you unemployed.

I don't have a problem with overseas investment creating wealth and opportunities where there were none, but I do have a problem with good businesses, or businesses that could be improved being sold to overseas investors who don't necessarily do a good job with them, asset strip and run. The banks are a great example, as is Air NZ and the railways.

[Winston001]

And do you know who Bob is in this analogy? the NZ government (past and present). And Joe is Australia, China, the US and anyone else that has bought our assets.

The only significant silver I can remember being sold was the Post Office P&T (Telecom), Government Print, BNZ, and New Zealand Rail. The result was a vastly improved telephone network, connection within days rather than 6 weeks. Huge numbers of Kiwis and superannuation funds held shares and enjoyed the dividends.

Of the above, GP was the only mistake. It proved to be a winner for Rank Group. NZ Rail and the BNZ were disasters and certainly couldn't be considered valuable assets. Its been replaced anyway by Kiwibank.

The reality is that NZ has sold very little silver. Most of our stuff is still ours - Financial Accounts of the NZ Government as at June 2009 - link here http://www.treasury.govt.nz/governme.../yearend/jun09 (http://www.treasury.govt.nz/government/financialstatements/yearend/jun09)

Its a PDF and worth downloading. To find the assets and entities owned by us, go to page 178. The last 4 pages have the data including their equity.

[Winston001]

Shrub - Only problem is the guy buys the paddock, pays you minimum wage, trashes the paddock by poor management, fills the stream with waste and then buggers off once the paddock stops producing potatoes.

And the paddock was in pretty good order and was producing some damn fine goats (perfect in a curry), but now you don't have a paddock, you don't have any goats and shortly the nice man from across the creek will head off and leave you unemployed

Only it doesn't happen that way. To get a competent farmer to farm the land the investor is forced to pay a high wage. If he deliberately trashes the land (and I'm not sure how) then he's destroyed the value in his investment. Loss all around.

Again how the investor fills the stream with waste in this day and age of nosey neighbours and Environment Councils is hard to conceive. But lets say he does, he'll face fines, and the stream and the land will recover.

Its simply bad business to destroy the primary asset - and investors do not deliberately do that.

I'll give you an example: Saudi investors have established a huge market garden in an Ethiopian valley and the produce is shipped to Saudi Arabia. This provides work and the opportunity to learn new skills for the Ethiopians who are among the poorest people in the world.