Letters: Does it sound familiar?

"A government of any colour cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else", says a reader about the election

I witness yet again the endless parade of political promises from all and sundry, including the sitting government.

From Winnie, who promises to move the world to the North.

To Hone, who wants to take from (to use his own words) the 'rich pricks', ignoring the fact families like ours never smoked, rarely drank, worked two jobs for decades, and limited our children to the two we could afford (something his claimed electorate might like to consider as a life philosophy).

To Labour, who are yet again hell-bent on spending our hard-won surpluses in its usual 'tax the industrious and spend the money objectives', totally forgetting the underlying truth surrounding socialisms' objectives, in that eventually they will run out of other people's money.

And to the Greens, who seek a utopia without the apparent need to increase the production of food to feed the hungry.

I am left to wonder why the electorate seems to actually delight in swallowing these nonsensical platitudes and promises every three years, only to be disappointed yet again in the face of economic realities that are both certain and timeless.

In case the voting public has forgotten, the simple facts are:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the hard-working out of prosperity.

2. What one person seeks to receive through enforced wealth redistribution, another person must work for without receiving.

3. A government of any colour cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work and save for decades to achieve anything worthwhile, because the other half are going to take care of them, and when that other half gets the idea it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what (they) worked for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Now doesn't that sound familiar?

ROB SINTES
Kerikeri