If our friends on the Left are to be believed, governments fell under the spell of a flying visit by Milton Friedman and his local neoliberal cronies and slashed taxes to the bone from about the mid-1980s in Australia and New Zealand.
Source: Revenue Statistics – Comparative tables.
In Australia’s case, the only time tax revenue as a percentage of GDP fell prior to the election of a Labour government in 2007 was during a deep recession in 1991. This was a recession bought on by irresponsible monetary policy by Paul Keating– the Keating recession.
As for New Zealand, the tax take increase quite considerably under tax reforms of the Labour Government of the 1980s. Roger Douglas, far from being a neoliberal plant, seemed to be a double secret agent of a tax maximising Leviathan. Little wonder the New Zealand economy was sluggish in the late 1980s because of this large increases in the tax take.
Osborne won't rule out tax cut for top earners ind.pn/1JaeId4 http://t.co/LvO7vgmmX0 http://t.co/YU3600Sk5s—
Marcus Chown (@marcuschown) April 05, 2015
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments