I think journalists are unintentionally doing a disservice to the Greens’ wealth tax policy when they talk about in a single sentence. RNZ said something along the lines of “income guarantee, and tax changes, including a 2.5% wealth tax”.
In reality the wealth tax is only on wealth above a threshold that is set at $2m net per person. So few people will be hit by this, and those who are will be hit for less than they likely imagine. That’s a key part of it, I’d argue even more key than the actual %, yet if it gets glossed over it becomes a point by which people end up hating the policy, without even understanding the policy.
Unintentionally? I suspect not. When the media puts the other parties response to their policy ahead of the policy itself it lets National et al set the agenda on how it is framed
Yeah, no way at all is this an accidental oversight.
Giving the media the benefit of the doubt, which I think stretches credibility, I don’t think it’d matter even if it was fully explained.
There is a significant portion of the population who don’t want taxes raised, even if proposals like the Greens’ leave them no worse off than before. Some of it is the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” mindset but I think mostly it’s that they don’t trust the government to actually use the revenue in way that materially addresses poverty.
Rising inequality is undoubtedly the cause of most of our current social issues and that really needs to be main talking point. All the policies of the other major parties are ambulances at the bottom of the cliff. The Greens at least appear to have a plan to fence it off to prevent harm in the first place.
If anyone wants to get the full story, this is the place: https://www.greens.org.nz/ending_poverty_together
I was at a meet-the-leaders event last week for the Greens, and they mentioned that they have this general problem where their policies are really great but often misunderstood in the media. They used the example of the recent NZ steel deal, which some people in media dismissed as “corporate welfare” when in fact the funding comes from taxes on polluters - and that one government initiative has the potential to remove a huge amount of emitted carbon from our economy.
I reckon these are just very technical policies that are difficult to summarise, so journalists do a lazy job. Can’t blame them really, they’re on tight deadlines and are appealing to a wider audience.
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Absolutely.
I was going to say TOP has the same problem, but then I realised their ideas don’t get any less stupid the more you understand them.
Either way, selling your ideas is all part of the game, and if you can’t do that, you don’t get elected.
Even their own literature buries the fact it starts at 2 mil pretty deep, unfortunately for them.
Eat the rich eh? That is a recipe for some sort of disaster in the medium to long term.
