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ETS TAX ETC

National have introduced a new tax 3 months ahead of the proposed GST tax increase. Sure, there will be a PAYE Tax reduction in three months time, but by then the new ETS will have pushed the general cost of energy and goods up and we will be feeling the bite from increases in property taxes (rates) at well above CPI.

How high can the GST go, even as other taxes kick in? The UK will be moving from 17.5% to 20% soon. This is done with the promise of offsetting other tax rates, but keep your eye on new taxes, and don't be surprised when they all creep up again as government spending continues unabated. When cuts are made in one area, you can be sure they are spending in yet another. It's a tornado of taxes, spiraling higher and faster leaving only destruction in its wake.

There are taxes on our freedoms too. Smoking being banned in prisons, certain cars being banned from the roads at night, alcohol facing further tax increases to supposedly force moderation, and yet is only satisfied when it results in abstinence. Tax is the preferred method for delivering lessons in morality and social responsibility. The lesson is democratic - it applies equally to those that don't need the lesson as much as those that refuse to learn.

Of course, abortions are tax free. But think of all the welfare we save. Morality expressed through the balance sheet.

Absent fathers are fully funded. Childcare when some-one else - anyone else - acts in place of a parent gets a tax deduction, but real mums are best off advancing their working career. Besides, mothers can work "productively" if they aren't mothers. Extended families disintegrated long ago. Even the nuclear family is an artifact of the past. Kids are more often shared over week-ends, with school, daycare and TV managing baby sitting duty during the week.

And we wonder about the drinking culture, the boy racers seeking excitement, the teen kids using their vast knowledge of human relationships as defined by MTV to act out as adults with little understanding of the consequences.

Well, if they get through school they can get a student loan so they mortgage their youth, put aside thoughts of a family because they finally "get" responsibility. Responsibility is paying off a student debt, as practice for paying taxes and mortgages, superannuation and private healthcare plans.

In the past, you did an apprenticeship and got paid for it. Now a piece of paper says your debt represents enough knowledge to entitle you to enter the workforce. Somehow, structured learning has trumped experience in every job, for every situation. It's because monitoring and control has been given too much importance.

Lay the old staff off, because the industry moves so fast, we need new blood, new ideas, fresh committment. Actually, we just need lower pay scales and more technology to substitute for human capital. Again, it's about the bottom line and we buy into that argument.

So, happy to get a job, convinced we are on the fast track to success, we get our debt under control by DINKing. The goal is to fund a childless lifestyle, having bought into the modern belief that material wealth enables self-actualization.

Later, when we are much older, we'll learn that being a parent can teach us more about life than regular sessions at the gym listening to Anthony Robbins through the iPod and long evenings at the foreign film festivals or drinking short blacks in Cuban style cafes musing on the revolutionary spirit of Che Guevara, had he only had a decent shot at Hollywood.

So the ETS kicks in tomorrow. ETS TAX ETC, it's more from National that Labour didn't get time to do in it's nine years. They can rest easy, looks like things are right on track.

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