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Days Out Stealing

By Rodney Hide in HideSight

"40 per cent of GDP is produced out of the Beehive" - Hon John Tamihere

There are two ways to make a living. The first is to work for it. That means producing something that your fellow citizens want and are prepared to pay for.

The second is to steal it. That means taking what your fellow citizens produce.

Making a living by working creates wealth. You trade your labour, your ideas, your enterprise to advantage yourself and your trading partner. You both agree to trade because the trade makes you both better off. Wealth is created.

Stealing just takes what is already produced. The victim loses what the thief takes. No value is created. Worse, resources get spent both in stealing and in trying to provide some security. Stealing destroys wealth.

Successful societies have systems of law and order that make it pay to work rather than to steal. These societies prosper and their citizens are protected.

That's government's job - to protect people from the thugs and the bullies. To do its job government has the power to make laws and lock us up.

The logic runs like this. We allow government to be the strongest gang in the country to keep the other gangs at bay. The government gang has advantages over the others: we can vote it out of power if it gets too stroppy, government gang members are probed and tested through the parliamentary process, and the government gang is constrained by its own set of published laws.

The logic is that Helen Clark and her mob are bad - but they are not as bad as the Mongrel mob. Hmmm.

We don't volunteer to pay the government gang. Government thumps it out of us through the tax system. The logic here is that we all benefit when government locks a bad guy up and so we all should pay for it.

Trouble is the government is making a hash of it. It has reversed the incentives. Crime now pays. The expected cost of burglarising is now less than a day in prison. As long as you get away with $100 or more, it pays to rob.

Worse, those who work pay tax. Those who steal don't.

It pays now to steal. It doesn't pay to work.

Government has used its power to engorge itself instead of to protect us. It now takes some 40 percent of all that we produce. It's now so big and busy that it has forgotten its core function of protecting us from the thugs and bullies.

In engorging itself government has opened up a new source of income. Don't work, have a baby, hurt your back, get legal aid, apply for a business grant, make a treaty claim. The ways that you can make money through government are endless.

That's what Hon John Tamihere told the Wellington Maori Business Network this week. "This is a great place to be, in Wellington, for pursuit of opportunity on behalf of your people". He is right. There's a living to be made out of government. And potentially a good one.

He is wrong, though, when he declares that "40 per cent of GDP is produced out of the Beehive". Government doesn't produce 40 percent of GDP. It takes it. It then redistributes it.

And so we have a third way to make a living: steal it legally through the government. Like illegal stealing, government stealing doesn't create wealth - it destroys it. And like illegal stealing, it now pays too.

That's the new incentive that successive governments have provided. It makes me wonder why anyone is left motivated to work and to create wealth just for others to pinch.

Quizlet

Cutting five per cent out of the welfare budget would increase the police budget by:

1. Five percent.
2. Fifteen percent.
3. Fifty-five percent.
4. Eighty-five percent.

Answer: Eighty-five percent. This year's welfare budget is $16,534 million. The Police's budget is $985 million.

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Rodney Hide is the leader of ACT New Zealand. He publishes a regular email newsletter, HideSight, from his website.