A new beginning…

Crikey, was Big Economics ever so much in the news? I’ve always wanted to knock up a bit of a Marshall Plan, you know, hang out for a week or two at Bretton Woods and create a new world order. Here’s my draft proposal, a working document, a new beginning…

My gut instinct is to tax everybody more – except teachers of course whose tax will be cut to zero. Teachers will also be exempted from petrol tax, TV tax, car registration and alcohol tax. (I think we can further boost the economy by giving teachers an alcohol subsidy.)

Teachers will spend their money on new cars and new houses and new MacBook Pros and iPhones and new clothes and restaurant meals. This boosts industries which go round virtuous cycles and then trickle down. Sort of.

We’ll do a bit of government spending to replace private spending. We’ll spend it on schools because no one can whine about that. We’ll replace all the old blackboards with new ones and we’ll buy new boxes of chalk.

We’ll buy new textbooks and we’ll renovate all the schools – especially the staffrooms which will all be fitted with stylish little cafes with stylish little staff serving stylish coffee, blueberry muffins and chocolate cake – which is legal now that the food-in-school fascists suffered their humiliating defeat – ha ha ha.

There’ll be some cutbacks. Recessions demand cutbacks. We’ll cut some MPs back.

We’ll bail the banks out of course – all the way out of NZ and back to where they and their dopey irresponsible sub-prime lending came from. We’ll start again with our own banks.

We’ll build more hospitals. This will keep builders and plumbers and electricians in work and we’ll be able to give retired teachers the kidney, liver and heart surgery they deserve.

We won’t build new roads, we’ll just fill in the pot holes on the roads we already have. We’ll not build more roads in Auckland either – we’ll buy more buses and we’ll make public transport free all over the country. At the same time we’ll increase taxes on cars, petrol, oil and tyres (although teachers will be exempt).

And we’ll plant trees everywhere – especially manuka from which the bees make honey which we’ll export.

I think we’ll grab the opportunity to sneak in a few other changes. I think we’ll pass a good manners law – everyone has to say thank you to teachers because we’re the ones who’ll rescue the country. They’ll all have to say sorry for trying to blame us for their bratty kids. Black forest gateau in lieu of a spoken apology will be acceptable.

I can feel the economy expanding already.

— Peter Giddens