Mike's Minute: Labour's "splash the cash" mentality will solve nothing

What is the matter with Labour? They are giving me free doctor’s visits – I don’t want them or need them.  Now they are giving me free prescriptions… it’s tens of millions of dollars we don’t have, handed out to people who don’t need it. Some people need it – give it to them.  You are literally wasting money giving these things to anyone on a half-decent salary.  Now, the real problem with the policies is they are paid for by the capital gains tax. Now, in case you haven’t worked it out —given it’s not retrospective— they have no income from capital gains and won’t until lots of people with investment or secondary homes start selling them.  The bill, though, for the policies kicks in on day one.  So already they are running a credit card on their promises.  But the really major problem with the capital gains tax is it’s predicated on projections that have not —and indeed are not— turning out to be true.  For the last several years, property prices have gone nowhere.  The Labour forecasts are based on 3% a year. We have not returned 3%, or anywhere close, for years now.  The property flatline has been in place since COVID, and it’s not growing 3% this year. It might —big might— start getting close next year. But for every year it doesn’t, you need extra growth to make up the difference, all the while the bills for the free scripts, scans, and visits are real and piling up.  So it’s a twofold problem: they hand out money they don’t have to people who don’t need it. And they haven’t got the money anyway to hand out, given it hasn’t been generated, and they have no way of knowing when —or if— it will be.   In the meantime, it’s on the debt pile, which is already 47% of GDP, which, in case you forgot, was 19% of GDP until the old Labour Party arrived in 2017.  So from 19% to 47% – and now clearly more where that came from.  If voters are interested in detail and fact, this sort of cost-plus policy nonsense is a recipe for yet another economic disaster, and I thought in 2020 we decided we weren’t making that mistake again. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.