03 September 2008

The world of the Green Party - an investment

You have to love the evasion of the Greens. ETS creates a "billion dollar fund" like some magical money tree that you've planted, and you don't even have to think about what those who earned the money might have spent it on - you can spend it in whatever way you wish. Good that.

This fund is to subsidise the installation of insulation in all of the homes of people who OWN their properties (hardly the poor) who couldn't be bothered paying for it themselves.

So it is a tax on everyone, to transfer to those who are moderate to high incomes, to reward them for their own unwillingness to spend money on their properties.

Great!! You can see the Green Party incentives at work there, force other people to pay for something we think everyone should have, rewarding those who are least interested in getting what we want, and who are also undoubtedly able to do it if they so choose to do so.

Furthermore it's an "investment". Yes. You, in your insulated house, being forced to pay for someone else to get his house insulated returns $5 in benefits for every dollar spent. This evades who is paying and who gets the benefits. The person paying gets none of the benefits, the person receiving the benefits is getting a high ratio of benefits to cost because everyone else has been forced to pay for them.

It's like "investing in public transport", which is really about making people who never use it and wont benefit from it (except at the margins) to pay for something that others (who don't even pay half the costs of using it) will benefit from.

So the Greens are selling snake oil. Pay $1 and give someone else $5 worth of benefits.

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