The Greens’ new poverty action plan released today may have admirable aims but it will introduce a vastly more intrusive level of investigation into business and private affairs and a bureaucracy that will be enormously costly and will cause more people to hide their assets offshore.

Tax lawyers will no doubt start making sizable donations to the Greens campaign fund.

It will have the effect of sending more highly talented kiwis overseas to look for better opportunities and better incomes for the skills that we desperately need to retain in New Zealand and increase the need to draw on immigrants from other countries to fill those positions.

The proposed progressive tax reform is a misnomer.

It is simply another example of the Greens putting taxes up on more successful performers in the economy.

Social Credit’s Poverty Free New Zealand plan released earlier this month provides for an adequate living income at much higher levels than the Greens new plan proposes.

It also contains -

• A maximum payment of $20 for all GP and dentist visits
• No tax on the first $20,000 of income, and only 20% tax on the next $20,000
• No fares on all urban public transport
• A “Child Dividend’ of $30 per week for all children under 18
• A guaranteed minimum income for all low income earners
• A rent-to-own public housing programme
• Grants for relocation to lower cost parts of the country

Social Credit would pay for this by harnessing the power of the country's Reserve Bank to fund the package rather than increasing taxes and providing a disincentive for people to generate wealth.

Currently the Reserve Bank is helping speculators and bond dealers increase their wealth through purchase of government bonds rather than providing the government with no interest, no debt funding for the economic rescue package.

Social Credit’s plan is forward-looking, aiming to lift up those on lower incomes and not pull successful people down where-as the Greens are going back to the politics of envy have run out of innovative ideas on how such measures can be funded.

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