Goff’s GST pledge rewards top 10% three times more than bottom 10%

If one goes to the Household Expenditure Survey, it give details of on fruit and vegetables by income decile.

The poorest 10% of households spend $9.80 a week on fruit and vegetables. Assume two thirds is “fresh” and that is $6.53 they spend on fresh fruit and vegetables.

The “rich pricks” households making up the top 10% spend $30.70 a week on fruit and vegetables. Assume two thirds is “fresh” and that is $20.47 they spend on fresh fruit and vegetables.

The Goofynomics announcement yesterday means a weekly saving of 98c for the poorest households and a saving of $3.07 for the rich pricks. So the rich pricks gets more than three times the benefit of Goofynomics than the poor.

But let us give the final word on Goofynomics to Dr Michael Cullen, who said on 4 August 2004:

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I am aware of many countries that have appallingly inefficient GST systems where they exempt various articles, where they have differential , and where one has to differentiate between food taken away from a place and food consumed within a place. Thank goodness we have not followed those very bad policies.

So we have it officially from the last Govt – “very bad policies”.

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