Friday, May 28, 2004
Cullen would never win at Monopoly
Anyone who has played Monopoly knows that to succeed, you need to pile houses and hotels onto your properties as quickly as possible. In other words, you build capital and infrastructure. The quickest way to be out of the game would be to party your way around the board.
But that's about what happened in Michael Cullen's Budget yesterday. New Zealand's infrastructure is running down fast, but the Finance Minister decided that it was far more important to party up. There was narry a single mention of money to get our essentials back on track.
The headline in my newspaper today read: "Cullen gives millions to the poor." It would be as well to reflect where Dr Cullen got those millions from. If he keeps taking it off them - those people who actually build the economy - without giving them something back, the party is going to come to a very sorry end in a few years' time.
Anyone who has played Monopoly knows that to succeed, you need to pile houses and hotels onto your properties as quickly as possible. In other words, you build capital and infrastructure. The quickest way to be out of the game would be to party your way around the board.
But that's about what happened in Michael Cullen's Budget yesterday. New Zealand's infrastructure is running down fast, but the Finance Minister decided that it was far more important to party up. There was narry a single mention of money to get our essentials back on track.
The headline in my newspaper today read: "Cullen gives millions to the poor." It would be as well to reflect where Dr Cullen got those millions from. If he keeps taking it off them - those people who actually build the economy - without giving them something back, the party is going to come to a very sorry end in a few years' time.
