Would You Kill Your Mother to Pay Michael Cullen?

 

Libz Glorious Five-Year Plan

 

The secret to balancing the budget is to remember that all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head. Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay your taxes you'll be fined. If you don't pay the fine you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot. Thus, I - in my role as citizen and voter - am going to shoot you - in your role as taxpayer and ripe suck - if you don't pay your share of the national tab. Therefore, every time the govt spends money on anything, you have to ask myself, ‘Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?’

 

PJ O'Rourke, from the chapter Would You Kill Your Mother to Pave I-95, in Parliament of Whores.

 

 

By the time this issue comes out, Michael Cullen's plans for one more year of theft (i.e., the 2001/02 budget - Ed.) will have just been released. One thing that can be predicted with certainty is that the amount of government theft will be up, and Government will be bigger than ever before. Local and central government currently consumes 40% of New Zealanders' production - the body politic is a body-snatcher. An average income earner works well over one-third of his life to support the people who hold the gun against his family's head. If John Taxpayer worked a forty hour week, he'd be working for the grey ones all day Monday and Tuesday, and they'd still be looking over his shoulder the rest of the week. Is this really what we want?

 

We don't! We want to see how quickly we could reduce government so John is only working for government until Monday morning smoko -- and that only voluntarily. Libertarianz’ Finance Spokesman, Tim Sturm, has figured out it will take just 5 years to get there, and he has the figures to prove it. The budget shows that it is possible to get to a libertarian society peacefully and happily in a short period of time, one in which people's property is secure, and their wallets are no longer plundered by govt.

 

If this budget was enacted on May 24, 2001 instead of Michael's, by May 24, 2006 you'd be paying zero tax  by 2006. The cost to the taxpayer to get to that stage is just 15% income tax over the five year interim period - all other taxes would be reduced to zero immediately.

 

There's a Sea Change in them there hills (and a mixed metaphor checker in the parlour)

 

The Libertarianz alternative budget assumes a cultural and philosophical sea change has already occurred. We've got a majority in the House -- or, at the very least, our ideas have achieved a majority in the House -- and there's been a revolution in people's minds. People have rejected the endemic moral cannibalism of our current system of plundering Peter to pay for Paul; they have rejected the legalised plunder of coercive govt; they have begun to assume responsibility for their own lives, and they have come to grips with the hard truth that to remove large coercive government permanently they must, eventually, have to pay for small non-coercive government voluntarily.

 

This budget, it is hoped, is a signpost that will help to make that revolution possible -- to show how quickly a non-coercive libertarian society can be achieved while avoiding blood in the streets; upholding valid existing debt contracts; and making provision (from government asset sales) for those who are currently dependent on the state, and are no longer in a position to do much about it.

 

These last two hurdles are the highest. Her Majesty's NZ Government has a big debt -- bigger than Hitler's gas bill -- about a third of GDP - a debt that responsible government would never have allowed themselves to incur. But libertarian governments upholds contracts, so we'll endeavour to pay this off ASAP, while repudiating just a little of it -- we won't, for instance, be contributing to bloody Bill Birch's retirement, since most of it is his bloody debt.

 

The last high hurdle before the finish line is the thousands who have been stolen from to such an extent that they are now bereft, who believed the promises of previous government and so are now unable to make provision for themselves. If we trip at this hurdle we won't finish the race, we'll be disqualified. We've chosen to allow for these unfortunates through a one-off, transitional measure by selling the government's 'assets,' and providing each with a secure, protected annuity from the proceeds of this sale. They'll no longer visit WINZ or the Super office every fortnight, and no longer will they need to picket parliament every three years.

 

Stand back!

 

Let's get some starting assumptions out of the way first. As we're scrapping the Reserve Bank Act, we've assumed 0% inflation as history has shown is a reasonable under a system of free banking,. We’ll be removing the regulatory burden from the economy. Out with RMA, OSH, ACC and several million pages of regulatory red-tape, and off with supercharged economic growth. We’ve kept our figures conservative however, GDP growth has been modestly assumed at 5% in the first year, growing to 10% by the fifth year.

 

How much loose change have we got?

 

We keep hearing from Greypower that they paid for the govt's assets. Fine. Have them back with our compliments -- these aren't assets, they're a millstone. Te Papa cost $300 million to build; who wants to pay that now? Taxpayers' money has been poured down a hole for so long that there's barely any value left, but what there is we're either selling and returning the proceeds to existing pensioners as secure annuities, or distributing to them in the form of shares which they are then free to keep, sell, or otherwise dispose of. If they want to ‘sell their family silver they can’ – there’ll be plenty of willing buyers – and if they want to keep it they can do that too. And no need for Winston Peters to travel the country flirting with old ladies either.

 

The government has valued its assets at $74.6 billion. Now, we would certainly value these things differently than the Government Valuer -- we would for instance value Epsom Teachers' College on the basis of how many apartments it could be turned into rather than its replacement cost - as if we would want to replace such a monstrosity -- but mostly we've used the government’s figures to be on the conservative side. The one exception is national parks -- which we've conservatively valued at $15.2 bn, compared to the government’s $1.5bn. National parks would partly be sold with covenants attached, and partly given away in the form of shares to parties with a valid interest such as tramping, shooting and skiing clubs,

 

Just give me the last sentence

 

Now, as you'd expect with financial statements, there's a truckload of maths to get to the last sentence. Just to show we took that truck for a spin we've put all the maths on our website (See the 2005 Libz budget  here http://www.libertarianz.org.nz/) so suit-wearing accountancy types can pore through our figures and realise just how close we've come to a Nobel Prize for economics.

 

But here's some highlights:

·        The current government puts a gun to your head in the order of $120 per person per week - that's $480 per week for a family of four - more than this Libz budget over the interim period. That means you'll have this much more in your pocket each week to spend on things the government is currently doing on your behalf; things like brain-washing your kids, giving to needy strangers, and building national museums that now aren't worth very much.

·        The country’s defence forces are massively under-budgeted and in dire need of huge investments and the level of economic growth in New Freeland and its politiccs of freedom will make it a prime target for envious socialist states. An initial investment of $18bn has been assessed as minimal for the country to bild a credible defence force.

·        Excluding debt and the initial defence spend-up, total government expenditure will be 4% of GDP.

·        All taxes are gone -- bye, bye GST, FBT, ACC, PAYE -- and piss off petrol, alcohol, tobacco taxes  - except income and company taxes for the immediate future. But these have been slashed to just 14%, and instead of PAYE, you'll get one bill per quarter from DOLT (Department of Legalised Theft -- the renamed IRD) which we expect to become a voluntary payment just as soon as Bill Birch's credit card bill is repaid, and Nzers realise the government isn't doing them over anymore.

·        During this transitional period the first $10,000 of income is tax free. T

·        he enormous debt, which is what most income tax payments are repaying, will be repaid by the fifth year. Asset sales and the creation of annuities to remove liabilities are smoothed over the first three years to ensure that sufficient funds to reduce the debt principal in each year. As the debt obligations are removed, the necessary investment in adequate defence forces will be increased and completed in the same year as the debt is paid off, 2006. After this time all taxes will be voluntary.

·        All victimless crimes will be abolished, which means that police will spend less time snooping on private communications and raiding marijuana patches and will be available to hunt down burglars and murderers instead. Concentration on what police should be doing means we've doubled the police budget.

·        By year three we'll be talking to insurance companies to help voluntarily fund the police --they should be interested, since life and property protection will save them a fortune -- and to people registering contracts, title deeds and so forth -- who will want to ensure that they pay enough to have law courts and a legal system sufficient to protect an uphold their contracts and their property.

·        Tax-paid social welfare, that vestigial remnant of moral cannibalism, has been outlawed, and families can give their $480 per week to the Sallies or the family next door if they want to. But since solo parents can't leave the rugrats at home while heading off to the factory, we've earmarked secure annuities -- from state asset sales -- for existing DPB-takers until their ankle-biters reach the third birthday.

 

Conclusion