For those who are interested in tax cuts, Keith Ng has an interesting analysis of the government's Budget package. The upshot: Labour's tax cuts are significantly more generous to the 70% of us who earn less than $40,000 a year than anything National has offered in the past (graph here). They are of course less generous to those on higher incomes, but you expect that from a centre-left government.
And that's the difference between National and Labour in a nutshell. While I have no enthusiasm for tax cuts, Labour is at least trying to ensure that the many benefit. National is interested only in the few. And as far as they're concerned, the rest of us - the vast majority of New Zealanders who earn less than $75,000 a year - simply don't exist.
