(Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Guest Post

Most of us will lie; sooner or later, for one reason or another. It’s the scale of the lie that matters and Labour are lying: Bigly.

Why would they do that? How would they expect to get away with lying to the public? Well, a certain Austrian fellow once said something on the subject: “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility…people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”

I’ve been hurting myself reading Labour’s Fiscal-Forecast; so you don’t have to. I spotted the small lie soon enough: there seemed to be money for jam, money for tea, money for you and money for me. Money, money, money. Everywhere. But there’s a catch.

The individual amounts glow from the page of the Fi-Fo, but they are meaningless unless applied in context to the total wealth available: the Gross Domestic Product. I found the numbers I wanted innocuously labeled: memo item: nominal Domestic Product, but the projections looked wrong, very wrong. The scale of projected growth in the economy looked unbelievable, unachievable unless gold is found again in Gabriel’s Gully. The average growth in the economy, year-on-year, in Labour’s books was well over 4% — that’s pure nonsense; most economists are projecting less than half of that, some say much less. Here’s the relevant part of the Fi-Fo; I calculated (roughly) the percentage increases and posted them above Labour’s numbers:

And there, in plain sight, is the small fib. Can you see it? It’s the word ‘nominal’.“Nominal” has a precise meaning in economist’s language: It means including inflation. It’s normally expressed as a rate, in percentage terms, rather than applied as whole numbers. The difficulty is: inflation is not wealth creation, it is dilution of money value in the economy. If inflation was wealth Venezuela would be the richest country on earth. To put it in the context of Labour’s propaganda spreadsheet; everybody seems to be getting more money, but what they are getting is worth less.

Going back to numbers in the Fi-Fo, armed with my new understanding of Robbo’s mickey-mousey sums and meaningless riches, is a revelation; several items showing increases in spending under Labour are actually decreases after allowing for Robbo’s hidden and unannounced inflation shenanigans. For instance: After including the shadow-minister’s  estimates including inflation over the period of the Fi-Fo (close to 7.5% over the four years projections) “Defense” is in for a caning; the current spend $2286M should increase to $2459M but it doesn’t, Robbo only allocated $2372M for the military. That is, effectively, an $87M decrease in funding, but who cares? That just means there’s less money for flying helicopters into remote valleys and launching attacks on women and children, plus, there’s less for Nicky Hager to fantasise about. Next item: “Law and Order”, should increase from $4435M to $4776M; but it doesn’t—it comes in at $4686, that’s getting close to $100M less for Law and Order funding. ‘So what?’ will be the predictable Labour response on this anomaly; ‘less people will be stealing bread to survive than they were under National, we won’t need as many coppers’.

Then there’s the doozy, and she’s a real beauty I can tell you; “Housing and Community Development”, yes; ‘Housing’ the very subject the opposition and the media (same thing) have bashed National about for over eighteen months, competing with each other to come up with the biggest tear-jerk story, the juiciest Tory monstrosity. Here’s how it works out: Current Spend $2215M should increase with inflation to $2383M, but comes in after Robbo’s calculations at $2357; that’s nearly $30,000,000 less for the hapless homeless. The tear-jerk’s on you; Labour supporters, get yourselves a sleeping bag, a good one.

Now: to the big lie. BIG. BIG. LIE.

The Fi-Fo is replete with impressive graphs and pretty pictures; and we need to talk about one of them. What it purports to show is Grant and Cinda’s clever work. You see; despite the misleading figures they tried to blind us with earlier, the Dynamic Duo still don’t possess enough cash for all the lollies they hope to hand out to their mates, so they’re just going to take it, or withhold it, from ordinary working Kiwi’s, refusing to follow through on National’s tax-cut package. They’ve made no secret of this.

So, here’s the graph; entitled “ADDITIONAL REVENUE”, isn’t it cute? The dark red section is your money—now theirs. The one little bar on the left denotes extra income derived in the current financial year, it’s just a baby cos’ it hasn’t had a full year of sucking your wallet. What’s not to like? It’s nice and even and, really, what sort of meany would deny the helpless and homeless, the wracked and ruined, a mere $2B to help with social evils? That’s about where the bar-graph levels off.

Trouble is: It’s Dishonest. Grant and Cinda didn’t want you to see a truthful bar-graph, and they still don’t want you to see an honest one: The graph says “The figure below sets out the additional sources of revenue… That is untrue: We know it’s untrue. Completely and utterly untrue. Because they plan to take more, much, much more than $2 billion.

The Tooth-fairy is doing a merry-dance, teasing all and sundry about her ‘working group’ and their plans; she’s dancing the maypole to distract you. While it’s important, and we all want to know, what sections of the community will be hit with new levies, and who will be worst off; the thing that is most important is the actual cost. How much extra tax under Socialist-‘Cinda? Think eye-watering, think huge, think about how you’re going to pay 22% more tax within the next four years, because that’s the amount they’re coming for, and we know it’s the amount they seek because it’s right there in Labour’s numbers.

A $17 billion dollars increase! ($16,964,000,000 to be precise)

We will pay, on average, an extra $108 per week tax under Labour to raise the amount necessary to fund Cinda and Grant’s socialist wet-dream. $5660 per year more than now.

To put things in perspective, and show the true scale of Labour’s lies I reproduced the “ADDITIONAL REVENUE” graph from above on an honest, factual basis and it appears below, but be warned; it is scary. It might even break your machine. You may need to turn your screen sideways to see it; such is the magnitude of the lie. It may make you feel sick, so perhaps you could rush to the refrigerator before you view it and grab yourself a glass of milk.

Ladies and Gentlemen…may we never hear the awful words “We won. You lost. Eat that” coming from the lips of Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson because, if we do, this is what we get:

THE TRUE SCALE OF LABOUR LIES

-idbkiwi