Michael Knows Best

Yesterday was budget day in Kiwiland; the day when Michael, our wise minister of finance, dishes out our pocket money for the next financial year.

The response was normal. Some people think he should have spent more on this. Other thought he was spending too much on that. Others felt that they were forgotten or unloved.

The whole exercise strikes me as absurd. Why do mature adults allow a politician to spend a third of their money for them. Do they not trust themselves to spend their money correctly, that they need someone else to do it for them.

According to opinion polls, most people trust politicians about as much as they trust used car dealers. Yet they trust a politician to spend a third of their income.

And they do not even complain. If I snatched a twenty dollar note from someone's hand and said, "I can spend that more wisely than you can", I know what would be the response. Yet people gladly hand over a third of their income to be spent to a politician, they do not even like, because he knows better how to spend it. Something is seriously wrong.