KEY POINTS:
It might be the best we have, but at times democracy is an ugly beast. US elections - where the public fixation on personality overwhelms policy debate - provide a striking example of its flaws.
But advocates for benign dictatorship might also draw ammunition from the tax cut bidding war currently blighting New Zealand's political landscape.
How far will an extra $16 or $28 in the pocket of punters take us along the road to becoming a more productive economy and ultimately a wealthier nation?
What does that amount of cash actually represent to most people?
For some it may mean as little as a nice bottle of Pinot Noir at the end of the week. For others it may mean some much needed help to deal with a spiralling food bill.
Sorted.org - the budget advice website - yesterday put out a hopeful press release suggesting people put the cash straight into KiwiSaver. Which is a good idea and one the majority of the public will file with other equally good ideas such as doing more exercise and drinking less.
But for the vast majority of us it is looking like the money will go straight into the petrol tank - the price of crude oil has spiked 20 per cent in the last month.
Even for those who are able to target debt (Sorted's other sensible suggestion) the tax cut won't make a major dent in mortgage repayments which have soared by more than $100 a week for many families in the past 12 months.
Compounding the problems for homeowners, economists say the inflationary effect of cuts could push back the prospect of Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard cutting rates - perhaps by just a few months but perhaps by even longer.
Even if, as Michael Cullen says, those inflationary concerns are being overstated by the market, the prospect of John Key trumping Labour's spend-up will compound this problem.
One card that Key has up his sleeve is that National Governments traditionally have ways of slashing costs that Labour Governments don't.
So Key may have scope to save some of the surplus by scything through public spending - flashback to 1991 and angry beneficiaries marching in the streets.
But National will still be guilty of using a precious pile of collective cash to apply a stimulatory band-aid to an ailing economy when major surgery could be administered for a similar cost.
A more visionary tax policy might go further on cutting the corporate tax rates to attract foreign investment or more radically address compliance costs for small to medium sized business (yesterday's Budget effort met with a lacklustre response from business leaders).
A tax cut might even be targeted to more aggressively promote saving and reinvestment in the economy.
Or the money might be used to make some revolutionary calls on new infrastructure.
Labour can rightly argue that they are already investing in infrastructure, that the corporate tax rate was cut last year and that KiwiSaver has been launched to boost savings.
But there is a case to be made that spending in those areas has merely kept the nation's head above water. None of it is transforming the economy relative to peers such as Australia.
Despite being strenuously advocated by many business leaders, tax experts and economists, there is little or no support for these kinds of ideas from National.
Key and his colleagues have an election to win - which leaves them intent on trumping a bad Labour policy rather than trumping the good ones.
The result of the vote grabbing process is that neither party is being ideologically true to itself.
Cullen shouldn't be cutting taxes at all and National should be targeting more productive policies for economic transformation.
George Bernard Shaw coined a well used phrase to sum this up: "Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
But given that it is seldom the public that goes down in history as creator of bad policy, a quip from Bertrand Russell may be more relevant for Key and Cullen: "Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame."
Liam Dann is editor of the Business Herald.
