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A hope-less budget?

Yesterday's budget promised a $326m boost for science, innovation and research -- big wow!

Why am I underwhelmed?

Because this is once again a case of the government (in all their dullardry) playing at trying to pick winners -- something that they've repeatedly proven themselves utterly incompetent at.

How's that Martin Jetpack coming on? How's the taxpayer's almost $1m investment in that white elephant doing I wonder?

From the perspective of the hi-tech industry, yesterday's budget simply shows that this government, like the one before it, is unwilling to yield control and allow the hi-tech sector to grow at the rate it could if properly incentivised.

This is something I find astonishing from a supposedly right-wing government that has often espoused the power of "market forces".

Well why aren't you [the government] simply creating the right environment in the hi-tech sector and allowing those forces to take effect?

Why do you instead, opt to micromanage an industry where your track record in such a role is so abysmal?

And why, while borrowing $400m a week just to keep our heads above water, are you spending $326m of taxpayers' money when the non-transferable, over-unity tax-credit for new R&D ventures I've proposed would cost the taxpayer NOTHING and see an strong inflow of overseas investment in our own hi-tech startups?

I also recall reading somewhere that Kiwis who earn under about $50K effectively pay no income tax -- once benefits are tallied against tax-paid.

So why don't we simply provide a tax-free personal income threshold like so many other countries do? That would constitute an enormous saving in bureaucracy, audits and compliance costs that currently do nothing but sap our productivity?

I'm picking it's for the same reason the government wants to dole out cash for R&D rather than simply create incentive for private investment -- CONTROL.

This budget, perhaps more than any other, shows us that our governments are far less concerned with improving our economy, improving our prosperity and ensuring that all Kiwis enjoy a decent lifestyle than they are with retaining an iron-fisted level of control over us.

I've repeatedly asked a number of politicians why my over-unity, non-transferable, new-venture R&D tax-credit scheme would not work and ought not be adopted -- none could come up with an answer other than "it's not our policy".

This latest budget will add fire to the fuel of our brain-drain and sap hope from the hearts of those who might seek to turn their potentially rewarding ideas into a commercial reality.

What a shame, what a waste, what a disaster.

Even given my own situation I see numerous opportunities to turn ideas and products I've developed into money-making export ventures -- but, given the hurdles that are in the way, I really just can't be bothered.

I could sell masses of the FPV systems I've designed and I'd really like to get the local labour force involved in assembling them. They'd learn valuable new skills, get much-needed jobs and the country would earn some extra export receipts.

But why should I even bother?

The red tape, bureaucracy, forms, risks and hassles are just not worth it. Instead, I'm giving the designs to the public domain and allowing anyone who wants to do so, to manufacture these things and make money.

If the budget had addressed people wanting to get a new startup venture going I might well have bitten the bullet and given it a go -- but I want a government that works with me to enrich this country, not one that works against me and only in their own personal interest.

Instead, I'll subsist on the wife's meagre ACC earnings-related compensation and the few gifts that I get from readers -- while slowly building towards my next net-media-based "empire".

Think of all the tax I would be paying if I were running a successful export-oriented manufacturing business -- and I bet there are a lot more like me who simply "can't be bothered to fight the visionless" and resign themselves to sitting on the sideline instead.

Links:

• My FPV backpack
• My diversity controller on the bench
• My diversity controller in use

I did get a little excited and optimistic when I read that the government plans to spend $60m on "national science challenges" over the next four years.

Is this money that would be spent on the kind of open science challenges that DARPA, NASA and the X-Foundation have run in the USA?

Alas, I fear not. Apparently we're already spending around $11m per year on such challenges now so I think it's something completely different.

What a shame... another glimmer of hope extinguished.

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