A Real Bad Idea

Kindness Is Killing Us

As New Zealand languishes in the economic doldrums we are finding that our emperor-government has no clothes on. Its economic policy--that is, its statist recipe to get the country out of recession--has been "spend, borrow, and hope". It has spent with vigour, borrowed relentlessly, but hoped in vain.

At root here is a fundamental ideological and religious divide. The Bible prohibits the government becoming embroiled in economic activity. It is to own nothing. It is to fund itself by taxation. It's sole area of delegated competence and activity is to ensure that both civil and criminal justice is administered.

But we live in a society which long ago rejected God. We had a better idea. The view which prevails today is "smarter than the average bear" and suggests that governments have unlimited potential to tax in order to do "good things"--which include owning and operating businesses, subsidising businesses, passing laws to favour business activity, controlling vast swathes of territory and resources, and exacting and redistributing property from one group of citizens to another.

The only political debate to be found within this dominating zeitgeist is the degree of state involvement in the economy. The Left favours more; the Right slightly less. The more a Left government extracts and confiscates, the more a Right government does, only slightly less. Thus, the pundits that have assessed the current National government as Labour-lite are on the money, if you would excuse the pun. The current government is stuffed full to the brim of politicians who believe that Government can make a positive difference. It is an ideology widely endorsed by the public, with relentless enthusiasm. It will not entrust itself to Almighty God, so it ends up entrusting itself to Government. "In Government we trust" is our prevailing and established religion.

The costs and devastation wrought by this rebellion against God are high and pervasive. The kind benevolence of this soft-despotism smothers everything. The kindness that kills is deadly.

There is an abundance of economic evidence that government cannot create wealth, it can only destroy it. Therefore, if we are to move ahead and claw ourselves out of this recession the best thing the government can do is get out of the way. What follows, we believe, is the right economic prescription:

1. Cut government taxes every year gradually and relentlessly for the next ten years.

2. Cut government spending. The current government complex consists of thousands of quangos wasting money in "go gooding", nannying, and smothering. Get rid of them; all of them. Save millions upon millions of dollars. All the current government has done is pared back the budgeted increase in spending--it has not cut spending in real terms at all. Labour-lite indeed.

3. Relentlessly dismember the thousands of bureaucratic rules and regulations that make every employer and worker weighed down with pseudo-government responsibilities. The endless bureaucratising of life has not stopped under the Key Government--it has relentlessly pushed on, becoming much worse. It is both insidious and deadly.

4. Gradually and systematically reduce all entitlement spending and claims, making the most vulnerable the last. Working for Families has to be the first to go.

Then, get out of the way and let people work themselves out of the economic doldrums.

Will the current government do any of this? Of course not--because it does not understand the issues. Its members truly believe that government is good, and that bigger government is better and that biggest government is best. Its naive stupidity is painful to watch. Because it does not understand the problem, it is condemned, and it condemns us, to its exacerbated replication.

Now, of course none of this could be done without having an honest and candid discourse with New Zealand voters. "This is what the problem is; there is where we must head; this is what we will be doing next . . ." We read once that when President Clinton was forced into his big "pivot" by a Republican controlled congress, he moved successfully to put limits upon welfare entitlements. Just the fact of having the President of the United States say clearly and forcefully to beneficiaries, "You have to get a job" proved to have a remarkably salutary effect. Note the very different shade of meaning in the discourse--not, "you deserve a job", or "we will ensure that jobs are available", but the discourse of responsibility--something that you, the people, must do. It proved very powerful.

Our current government is too scared to have this conversation with the people. Its predominant focus and concern is upon getting re-elected next time. But for goodness sake--if you found the clarity of mind and courage to put this forward and the people rejected you, so what? Labour would be returned to government and things would just get worse more quickly. But, then, at least we would have a chance to repent of our folly, which would be evident even to the most obtuse statist.

It is not to our least advantage that National is destroying our economy with its smothering statism, rather than Labour. Destruction is destruction, no matter how you cut it.