Ryan Bridge: Banning and taxing won't solve the problem

This week the Tony Blair Institute warned Andy Burnham that you can't tax your way to prosperity.

Some of our politicians could use a similar lecture.

We have parties wanting new taxes to fund what is basically a Universal Basic Income, even though AI hasn't yet stolen the number of jobs they claimed it would.

A Wall Street Journal piece this morning talks about exactly this point – even big tech seems to be u-turning on the job doomsday scenario.

We had the Greens yesterday come out with a policy that was not serious, but potentially destructive to our standard of living.

You can read it on their website. It's four pages long. Two of the pages are pictures and photos.

Fewer cows. Synthetic nitrate fertiliser should be phased out.

But zero detail on when, how, and the economic impact of doing so.

Same goes for bottom trawling. 70% of our fishing industry by volume is caught by trawling within a metre of the sea floor.

The industry's worth $5 billion a year. 16,000+ jobs. Dairy's our biggest exporter. $16 billion a year.

To try and take them down is to launch an assault on our standard of living akin to the doomsday AI job wipe-out that was once predicted to happen, but hasn't yet eventuated.

On top of this, there's a plan for more taxes, which, remember, even Tony Blair admits is no plan for prosperity.

The thing about the Greens' rivers plan is that they're partly right. Agricultural run-off has made many rivers un-swimmable.

But simply banning and taxing things does not solve problems.

It creates new ones. Like how we're going to feed the kids, create jobs, and stay in the OECD.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week, the Tony Blair Foundation warned to Andy Berman
that Burnham I should say the incoming British Prime Minister
that you can't tax your way to prosperity. Some of
our politicians could probably use a similar lecture. We have
parties wanting new taxes to fund what is basically a
universal basic income, even though AI hasn't yet stolen the

(00:20):
number of jobs that they claimed that it would. In fact,
there's a Wall Street Journal piece out this morning that
talks about exactly this point. Even big tech seems to
be you turning on the job's doomsday scenario that's been
painted for AI. We had the Greens yesterday come out
with that policy that was not serious but potentially quite
destructive to our standard of living. You can read it

(00:43):
on their website. It's four pages long. Two of the
pages of pictures and photos Cows are gone should be
gone capped. Synthetic nitrate fertilizer should be phased out. Bottom
trawling should be banned. Zero detail on when, how, and
the economic impact of doing so in this four pages.

(01:03):
Same goes for bottom trawlings. Seventy percent of our fishing
industry by volumes caught by trawling within a meter of
our sea floor. Did you know that? The industry did
you know? Worth five billion a year sixteen thousand plus jobs.
Dairies our biggest export sixteen billion a year. To try
and take them down is to launch an assault essentially
much like the Chinese on our standard of living, akin

(01:25):
to the doomsday AI job wipeout that was once predicted
to happen but hasn't yet eventuated. On top of this,
there's a plan for more taxes, which, remember even Tony
Blair admits, is no plan for prosperity. The thing about
the Greens the River plan is that the partly right
agricultural runoff has made many rivers unswimmable in New Zealand.

(01:48):
But simply banning and taxing things does not solve problems.
It creates new ones, like how are we going to
feed the kids? Create jobs or stay in the OECD
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