In its latest editorial, the NZ Medical Journal has called for GST off healthy food and higher benefits, according to the Herald.
The good thing about this statement is that these doctors are looking at the wider social factors contributing to poor health among their patients, namely poverty and poor diet.
This leads them to call for political changes like taking tax off “healthy” food and increasing benefits (a brave stand to take in the face of the current government’s beneficiary bashing). The catch is, they also say the retirement age should be raised to pay for this.
But why should senior citizens pay this price? It’s not the cost of pensions or the pensioners themselves who have have forced up the price of food, increased unemployment, held down wages or cut benefits.
(Although I can’t help noting that Don Brash and Roger Douglas still want to call the economic shots, despite being well past the age of retirement.)
Unfortunately these good doctors seem to be buying into the cut-back mentality that insists there just isn’t enough to go around.
This simply isn’t true. There’s plenty of wealth in our society, much of it created by pensioners and those nearing retirement, throughout there working lives. The fundamental problem, underlying the affordability of food and unhealthy poverty is that this abundant wealth is concentrated in the hand of a few.
A fairer way to fund taking GST off food and increasing benefits, would be to reverse the recent cuts to corporate and top bracket incomes and tax financial speculation.
