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

[aprilia_RS250]

Do you seriously think an extra $40.00 a week will get someone on $100k working harder and transform their lives? If anything they'll chill a bit because they don't NEED to work harder.

You're not comparing it on a relative basis here. Moneybags has to exert a lot more effort to get to a 100k salary and has to take on more risk (if starting a business/investing etc.) . Moneybags also probably has a lot more responsibility involved in his line of work compared to Brokearse. People do not take on risk/responsibility unless they have a chance of receiving a good pay-off. Someone who has a proven track record of being successful while taking on immense amount of responsibility/risk are deemed as being reliable hence this further adds on to their personal/career value, as historical performance is one of the indicators of future performance. These are the types of people you need to retain in NZ, a higher tax essentially makes their pay-off smaller.If you reduce the tax not only are you inciting them to stay in NZ but you will also attract this talent from overseas.

[mashman]

Like Sir Fred Godwin? (crawls back into hole)

[rainman]

and here is why "They pay the most tax because they have the most money The richest 1% (34,000) have an average income of $325,000; their total income is the same as the total income of the 1,345,000 lowest income taxpayers, who average $8,400 a piece."

There are around 4.2 million people in NZ. Lets assume that 3 million are of working age.

Marty believes that 44% of the income earners earn $8400 per annum
Thats 161 per week
thats $ per hour after tax. Well, well, well below the legal minimum wage. - So cannot be a accurate figure for people out there working.

So who make up this number? you got it - beneficiaries. The standard / left / labour actually think just because someone is taxed on their benefit (a silly exercise ifd there ever was one) that this is 'earning' a income.

fucken lefties. burn them all.

Here are some facts from the IRD, wage and salary earners only, so excluding filthy bennies and people deriving an income from investments, among others. 2008 figures:
- Top 1.12% (26,710 people) make $232.485.96 on average. Given the band starts at $150k I expect there are some big numbers in there, and perhaps if I had better data and could exclude that pesky 0.12% the average would creep up to Marty's $325k. Or maybe the wealthy are not affected by the recession like the poor are, and the 2009 data shows them making out like gangbusters, yet again.

Those 26,710 people make as much as the bottom 887,840 (actually a few less, it's hard to be exact as the data is banded) - all of whom earn less than $19,000 per annum. Average income for this group is $7201.41 per annum. $138.49 per week. Yes, below minimum wage if they work a full 40 hour week. Perhaps not everyone is fortunate enough to have a full time job?

BTW, the 887,840 are 37.4% of the wage and salary earning population, which in 2008 was 2,375,550.

Doesn't look to me like removing the beneficiaries makes much difference.

71.5% of the wage earners earned $45k or less, or just 39.5% of the income, average $19k-ish per year.
26.4% earned between $45k ad $120k, 49.2% of the income, average $64k-ish. (Most of the gimme-my-tax-cut crowd here, I guess).
2.1% over $120k, being 11.3% of the income. Average $186k and change.

If I could get more detail on the top band I suspect the data would look more extreme, there must be quite a few just inside that $150k range.

That sound fair to you? That bottom 72% are just all lazy fucks, I guess?

What is the baseline cost to run a household for Mr and Mrs NZ Average, I wonder? Rent/mortgage, food, petrol, cars, schools, insurance, medical and all the rest? This is why we need WfF and similar things, I suspect.

[rainman]

Moneybags has to exert a lot more effort to get to a 100k salary and has to take on more risk (if starting a business/investing etc.) . Moneybags also probably has a lot more responsibility involved in his line of work compared to Brokearse. People do not take on risk/responsibility unless they have a chance of receiving a good pay-off. Someone who has a proven track record of being successful while taking on immense amount of responsibility/risk are deemed as being reliable hence this further adds on to their personal/career value

Calling bullshit here. Compare the effort of a comfy office job (say, an accountant) vs almost any minimum wage labouring or factory job, no contest, the worse paid job is harder work. At the top end there can be more stress, but not always. And responsibility... pah. What I'd respect would be accountability. I've seen so many cases of senior execs stumbling from one incompetent action to the next being pushed gently aside with a large golden handshake. One company I worked for the CEO signed a partnership that completely destroyed a big chunk of the business (one that ould have been a great engine for growth). Cost millions. Was he marched out unceremoniuosly? Not quite, over 2 or so years he made about $3.5m. AUD$, too, and that's just the real salary and handshake component, not the options and other perks. Complete cretin. And yet he floated off to another big paying role, because he knew the right people.

Unfortunately his is not an unusual or isolated case. Reynolds going to show some accountability for the terrible state of Telecom? Not likely.

As for risk, the mighty captains of the banking industry are clearly taking the consequences of their risky behaviour... oh, wait...

[aprilia_RS250]

Calling bullshit here. Compare the effort of a comfy office job (say, an accountant) vs almost any minimum wage labouring or factory job, no contest, the worse paid job is harder work. At the top end there can be more stress, but not always. And responsibility... pah. What I'd respect would be accountability. I've seen so many cases of senior execs stumbling from one incompetent action to the next being pushed gently aside with a large golden handshake. One company I worked for the CEO signed a partnership that completely destroyed a big chunk of the business (one that ould have been a great engine for growth). Cost millions. Was he marched out unceremoniuosly? Not quite, over 2 or so years he made about $3.5m. AUD$, too, and that's just the real salary and handshake component, not the options and other perks. Complete cretin. And yet he floated off to another big paying role, because he knew the right people.

Unfortunately his is not an unusual or isolated case. Reynolds going to show some accountability for the terrible state of Telecom? Not likely.

As for risk, the mighty captains of the banking industry are clearly taking the consequences of their risky behaviour... oh, wait...

Easy job 'cos you sit in an air conditioned office in a comfy chair? Fark! What else you gonna try and sell me, that the lolly pop man that turns the stop/go sign at roadworks is one of the most disadvantaged people in the workforce 'cos he has to find some sort of entertainment while sitting in the cold? Making deals, creating growth, negotiating is where the real bread winner is for a business, not lifting crates and driving forklifts.

The bankers have paid, most went down with their company (Bear Stern, Lehman....) even more fired due to cost cutting measures.

[rainman]

Easy job 'cos you sit in an air conditioned office in a comfy chair? Fark!

I've done both and I know which one I'd rather do...

Making deals, creating growth, negotiating is where the real bread winner is for a business, not lifting crates and driving forklifts.

Listen carefullly: more difficult, not more lucrative for the business. Try to keep up.

The bankers have paid

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!! Funny man.

[MisterD]

I've done both and I know which one I'd rather do...

Same. I'd be driving tractors if it paid the bills...

[scott411]

71.5% of the wage earners earned $45k or less, or just 39.5% of the income, average $19k-ish per year.
26.4% earned between $45k ad $120k, 49.2% of the income, average $64k-ish. (Most of the gimme-my-tax-cut crowd here, I guess).
2.1% over $120k, being 11.3% of the income. Average $186k and change.

so 28.5% of the working population paid 60.5% of the tax, and those are the ones that are getting some more of the tax cut, seems fair to me, they were paying the most anyway

[Tank]

One thing I would LOVE to see is income splitting. Lets say I earn $200k - and my wife nothing (Stay at home Mum).

We get no g'ment help and I pay more tax than 2 people earning $100k each. So our family is actually worse off than the other despite having the same income coming in.

[aprilia_RS250]

I've done both and I know which one I'd rather do...

Listen carefullly: more difficult, not more lucrative for the business. Try to keep up..

As a student I worked with a construction crew. My job was just to help out with lifting and basics. I did everything from helping build homes to digging holes in the ground. I can tell you its piss easy work, no thinking involved. Where as in an office I have been really streched to hit deadlines, close deals etc. Brains are worth a lot more than brawn in this day and age. You simply fail to inderstand that

[GOONR]

...One company I worked for the CEO signed a partnership that completely destroyed a big chunk of the business (one that ould have been a great engine for growth). Cost millions. Was he marched out unceremoniuosly? Not quite, over 2 or so years he made about $3.5m. AUD$, too, and that's just the real salary and handshake component, not the options and other perks. Complete cretin. And yet he floated off to another big paying role, because he knew the right people.....

Not Suncorp by any chance, sounds very familiar to me.

[MisterD]

One thing I would LOVE to see is income splitting.

Won't happen...giving publicity opportunities to Peter Dunne at the mid-term budget? Nope.

[Mudfart]

ive done drainlaying all over auckland city, open trenching with diggers, watching out for underground gas pipes, telecom cables, fibreoptics, and most dangerous of all, underground power cables. Then we would lay heavy water pipes, usually concrete lined steel or MDPE, which was farkin heavy, join it all up, cut it, make fire hydrant risers, valves and then cover back up with metal. then we would have to reinstate whatever we had carved up originally, topsoil, concrete driveway, footpath, hotmix road etc.
I will tell you in the middle of summer, doing a job for vector wearing their compulsory full length overalls is not fun.
You work from dawn to dusk during daylight savings, one day I worked at MT Roskill roundabout for 17 hours.
If I ever did the lollipop, it was because I had worked my ass off the day before.
And dont think the lollipop is easy either. It really sucks to stand there all day in the heat, I would rather have been doing the labour!.
Also a couple of times working in the dodgey areas of beautiful south auckland, the odd drunk, drugged islander would walk past and want to fight, it was brilliant. Well, I had my boys to back me up.
So dont think the lollipop guy is always some reject asswipe, although I did meet some retard temps from allied labour hire, who did it.
We were paid a flat rate, had to work 6 days a week so I only saw my kids on saturday nite, sunday. I went to work wen they were asleep, got home wen they were asleep. But with all the hours, the money was ok, however the work was full on labour, taxing on the body and very stressful.
One guy died of dehydration wearing the vector overalls, and occasionally live water lines, power, gas, telecoms were cut.

[Jonno.]

As a student I worked with a construction crew. My job was just to help out with lifting and basics. I did everything from helping build homes to digging holes in the ground. I can tell you its piss easy work, no thinking involved. Where as in an office I have been really streched to hit deadlines, close deals etc. Brains are worth a lot more than brawn in this day and age. You simply fail to inderstand that

Getting a job with your dad's friends building crew is not labouring.

How about getting to town at 5.30am so you can get to your job at 7 if you even get one. Lifting shit that would make osh shit their pants and using concrete breaker for 10x the recommended max time. Get put into a hole and dig for 12 hours and getting minimum wage. Pulling out mouldy timber without protection. Guess what happens when you get sick? Nothing.
You know what get you get for saying anything about your conditions? Unemployed.
You work with people who pick up cigarette butts.
Then you get home at 8pm; you're out from 5.30-8, 15.5 hours but you only get paid for 10 and at minimum wage.

I've done 120+ hours/week in construction as a carpenter; there will never be more stress in any office job.
That's why I'm going back to university.

[Tank]

I've done 120+ hours/week in construction as a carpenter; there will never be more stress in any office job.
That's why I'm going back to university.

Depends on the office job - Ive had to made decisions that have made me physically ill. I have ended up in hospital with panic attacks.

Perhaps when you are responsible for the livleyhood of people and understand that decisions you make can break people - and you are forced into horrid situations - then, perhaps you can comment on stress - but dont for one second discount the amount of stress in some office bound roles.

edit - while Im at it - my old job and the stree in it almost cost me my marriage, and I was close to a breakdown. But Heh - its a office and us managers dont really care about the workers - fucken yeah right! I fucken loved telling mates that their jobs were gone, with people I had worked with for years and watched their kids grow up - piece of piss.

Lets see some minimum wage fucker end up on a hospital bed because of stress in his role.