It is entirely misleading to compare 'wealth' with income (GDP).
A useful example illustrating this is to note that Auckland has more than 600,000 houses, and their average value is reported as $1.2m by the web just now. As a hugely conservative estimate, let's say that the owners of those houses have equity (wealth) in each house they own of $500,000 (but it's nutty otherwise to imagine that the average mortgage for them all is $700,000). The wealth of these 600,000 homeowners is at least $300,000,000,000 on these figures, ie, $300 billion. That's three times the wealth of the NBR 2025 richlisters.
Just those living in Auckland, and just their houses or those they own to rent in Auckland - not their shares, beach houses, the businesses many of them own etc.
The real power in NZ comes from the people who live in and own these houses - so I am deliberately excluding those who rent, but not those who own. These owners, collectively much more wealthy that the NBR Richlisters, each have a vote. I think it's pretty clear that they have the power in NZ, via their vote and Parliament.
The flaw in that argument is that if you own a house worth a million dollars you merely have a roof over your head. If you own a house and have another million dollars of cash in the bank, then you have capital which can be invested at a profit. The more capital you have over and beyond that necessary to sustain a life, the greater the power that you are able to exercise in the market. Those who merely own a house are still obliged to sell their labour to the owners of capital (such as the rich listers) and thereby serve to make those capitalists even richer. That is why inequality of wealth is steadily increasing and why the number of New Zealanders who own their own homes has now dropped to only 60%. In the Peoples Republic of China, incorrectly derided as a communist state, home ownership is in excess of 90%, which is one reason why the Chinese economy can be expected to continue outperforming that of New Zealand.
Your second argument, that New Zealanders have power "via their vote and Parliament" is also incorrect. As Bryce has shown in previous posts, New Zealand governments are influenced or controlled by vested interests working through professional lobbyists, old boy networks, and foreign governments. We may vote for them, but they do not represent us, and it is probably fair to say that the majority of New Zealanders now recognize that as a fact.
Geoff, I was not arguing. I was merely placing the $102bn of wealth of rich listers in a context, which I felt could be best understood if compared to the wealth of 600k houseowners in Auckland - to give a sense of scale. GDP is grossly conceptually wrong (but commonly done by people like Bryce) for wealth comparisons, but also is impossible for mere mortals to conceptualise, whereas 600k houses can be understood.
I think most NZers would realise Bryce has shown nothing with a great number of emotive words and no evidence about any material power of the rich to distort our lives. My second 'argument', not made above, would be that the most damage done to NZer's daily lives has been by the bourgeoisie via town planning, which has facilitated developers' ability to land bank, as NIMBY objections to how many houses where has driven up land prices for over 50 years. House prices are our shame, and the cause of family poverty and many other ills of our society. Rich listers did not do that, we did it to ourselves by supporting stupid politicians who enabled the greedy middle class.
The rest of Bryce's long effort could be cut and pasted from five years ago and kept for another five, with the exception of a useful debate, not yet completed, about lobbying. Remember, we can all be lobbyists, and many of us are in writing to our MPs. Companies, professions, associations (doctors, lawyers, teachers - Bryce can only see the lobbying of companies, which I find strange) find it more efficient to employ someone or a PR firm to take their case to politicians. I am glad they can and don't yet think pollies here, or the bureaucrats they command, are stupid enough to be taken in by poor arguments. There are a few obvious exceptions like Winnie's crowd, but compared with most democracies, we are pretty clean, as international surveys tend to demonstrate.
"House prices are our shame, and the cause of family poverty and many other ills of our society. Rich listers did not do that, we did it to ourselves by supporting .. politicians who enabled the ... middle class".
When I remove the two pejorative adjectives from your statement, as above, does the second sentence make any sense?
The price of land in New Zealand is an issue that goes back to the 1830s when the New Zealand Company established a system whereby land prices were kept artificially high and large scale immigration was encouraged for the explicitly stated purpose of establishing and maintaining an English-style class society in New Zealand. High land prices meant that migrant labourers were obliged to remain as wage workers for wealthy landholders for most if not all of their working lives. That remains the plan to this day. Young people are shackled to mortgages or condemned to paying exorbitant rents for life. Consequently they are unable to go out and set up on their own account as independent trades people or small business owners. It is the mentality of colonialist capitalism that underlies most of our nation's problems - not "the middle class".
Agreed Andrew. I think this shows the top very rich NZers are not as dominant as some depictions represent, in terms of wealth. Most of the value in their $100bn plus is their businesses of course, and the effort they have made to build these should not be underestimated, nor the value the rest of us obtain, in terms of jobs, co-ownership through the sharemarket and so on.
Nah what it shows is an obscene level of growing wealth inequality. And we know that this comes with significantly larger emissions of green house gases by the wealthy, compared to everyone else, and greater power to ensure their interests are met at the expense of workers.
Well said Bryce - you did well with Plunket too - he really tried hard to rattle you and you were remarkably zen + get this piece posted on the Platform to boot :)
Bryce did not actually say that. He asked whether the rich have undue influence over the New Zealand political process, and it is undeniable that they do. That is nothing new. It has been the case since the days of the Russell and Whitaker "war party" that pressed for the invasion of the Waikato. Bryce and the NBR have just brought us up to date on the details of the current crop of plutocrats who have the ear of governments, of all stripes.
How is it undeniable that they do and specifically the Mowbrays? I’ve been involved in politics for a very long time and I’ve seen influencers of all sizes. Some people with very little money have influence simply through their personality or position. Some rich have no influence at all. Of course the potential is there but we have laws designed to reduce that.
Business people like the Mowbrays do not give "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to political parties which have policies that conflict with their business interests. Political parties need money. Business people have money. On that basis they come to an arrangement. Both sides know what is required of them. You write "Some people with very little money have influence simply through their personality or position." To be specific: if they have a "personality or position" that can bring in votes, they will have influence.
Money talks. The politician sees it in his bank statement. Celebrity endorsements are visible and bankable. That much is certain. But under the secret ballot system the individual voter has no influence. If he or she explicitly offers the politician his or her vote, or threaten to withdraw it, that promise or threat will be taken with a pinch of salt because there is no means of confirmation.
" Rich listers did not do that, we did it to ourselves by supporting stupid politicians who enabled the greedy middle class."
I am gobsmacked that you would call the rapidly disappearing "middle class - greedy" is NZ the cause of the problem. It is possibly one of the most ludicrous statements I have read in years!!!
Wages and salaries - generally taxed at source - mean that the only way an average family can improve it's lot is to buy & sell their own property to accrue enough cash to afford a rental or up scale their own house thereby helping them in their older age.
Every year NBR publishes its "Rich List" and every year commentators of the right and the left respond with moral judgements which are utterly predictable because they are purely ideological and do not even pretend to have any empirical basis.
The right will insist that the Rich Listers have been rewarded for their "hard work". Yet no effort is made to demonstrate in every particular case that "hard work" is the explanation for their wealth. Even the most cursory examination of the list reveals that inheritance is a large factor in the wealth of most of the individuals and families. "Who you know", whether in politics or business, is also of vital importance.
"Hard work" is the definitive explanation of wealth only if we include the hard work of our parents and grandparents, and of all the people in their employ, as well as all the people that we ourselves may have employed in the process of acquiring wealth. But that simple and obvious truth would hardly suit the purposes of the ideologues of capitalism.
The left takes a similarly dogmatic ideological position. The wealth of the rich, they insist, should be taxed for the greater good of society. Yet it is only a presumption that the state would spend that wealth in better ways than the rich themselves. New Zealand's Rich Listers have a penchant for gathering up automobiles, aeroplanes and islands in the gulf, while building mansions in the most scenic locations. "Not much public benefit in that", one might say. Yet there may be some inadvertent benefit to the public, particularly if one takes the long term view that assets preserved for strictly private benefit can be turned to the public benefit in some future dispensation.
Then again, if, as their courtiers imply, the rich use their wealth to engage in direct charity, or invest it in productive enterprises that produce necessary goods and employ willing workers, then it would make no practical difference if 119 individuals and families controlled all of the nation's wealth.
Of course if we look beyond ideological dogma, which is to say if we start examining the individual cases on the Rich List, something which both right and left seem loath to do, then we form a different perspective, and the argument for "taxing the rich" begins to look more plausible.
Yet, taihoa. The left is making another presumption, which is that the state will spend the extra tax revenue wisely and compassionately. In the actual present political context, there is little possibility of that happening. Whether under a National or Labour led government, any time in the current decade extra tax revenue will go to meeting President Trump's designated objective for vastly increased military expenditure by vassal states of the US. It will not go to health, education, social services or even necessary infrastructure.
Aside from the opportunity presented for political posturing, the real advantage of the Rich List is that it helps to show us how New Zealand capitalism works. The value of the list is not that its members are exceptional, but that the 119 listed are representative of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of New Zealand capitalists who share similar characteristics. Yes, hard work is a factor, but inheritance is important, and cheap labour is critically important. New Zealand capitalists will take labour from wherever it is cheapest. They will import RSE workers from the Solomon Islands, or they will shift their manufacturing to China, Vietnam, or Thailand. The Mowbray family is a case in point. Their wealth was not and could not have been acquired in New Zealand. Chinese workers and American consumers worked together to make them into billionaires. It could not have happened here, because in New Zealand, the market is small and the costs of production are so high as to be uncompetitive. Why? Not because the New Zealand worker is overpaid, but because non-productive capital, principally working through infrastructure charges (e.g electricity) and the property market, takes an inordinate share of the national income. The Mowbrays are not the only "New Zealand" capitalists doing all their manufacturing offshore and directing most of their product to offshore markets. It is the norm for almost all successful manufacturing capitalists. So these "New Zealand" capitalists are practically indistinguishable from foreign capitalists. That is part of the reason why they want New Zealand to be opened up to more foreign capital, that is to say people like themselves who will strengthen their position within the New Zealand economy and society. Their actual impact within New Zealand is limited to buying up desirable blocks of real estate. We see their helicopters flying to and from their island hideaways, but we really would have no idea whether the passengers in those craft are New Zealanders, American, German or Chinese. And it makes no difference to us.
The Mowbray name has a long history in the top echelons of New Zealand capitalism, going right back to 1864, yet so far as I can surmise the Zuru branch of the family have no direct connection to the Mowbrays of DIC and DFC fame. So we can accept that although they had a helping hand from affluent parents, their wealth is largely newly acquired. Yet that is clearly not the case with most of the other Rich Listers. Much wealth is inherited in New Zealand, and in many cases that inheritance can be traced right back to the raupatu. And inherited wealth is increasingly important not just to the top 119, but to the three million or so who constitute the most affluent 60% of the population. The bottom 40% inherit only poverty.
But it is not just the poor who suffer harm from the regime of inherited wealth. The need for a material inheritance is hugely damaging to the morale and the morals of the children of the middle classes. The Rich List shows us where New Zealand is heading, and it is not to a good place.
Completely with you Bryce on property investment bashing, which is largely parasitic, creating almost zero new wealth and capability. Also agreeing with Les Mills, a capital gains tax does make sense or rather a more universal income tax that avoids excluding realised earnings such as via a capital gain. However such legislation would need to be carefully drafted to avoid taxing prospective income, or unrealised income, such as that locked up in assets up to the point at which they were effectively sold, including via barter, which is when taxation should kick in, but only on the actual amount gained, avoiding double dipping.
Most of the rest of the billionaire bashing I don't really care about, including rich getting richer and even their political influence, providing this rubs off positively onto the nation as a whole, which I think you are indicating is really not the case for most of our particular set of billionaires.
So whilst many of the billionaires of other highly successful, wealthy countries have achieved their wealth through property development and investment, both the USA and China lean far more toward innovation-driven wealth. Indeed New Zealand’s near-total reliance on property among its few billionaires is unique amongst nations, which raises serious questions about economic diversity and long-term growth potential compared to other prosperous countries. Let's hope it's really not a national wealth potential thermometer ... although I fear it might be.
Using the word “oligarch” in the NZ context is trying to influence your argument with a term that is emotive and simply not applicable in terms of political influence or lack thereof. Particularly with declining wealth in this country along with the prospect of earning it. Russian oligarchs benefitting from state contracts and relationships with Putin are one thing. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel aka the “tech bros” in the US another, as federal contracts are directed their way after they’ve bought elections. But Thiel came here and then picked up his toys and went home after he didn’t get his way. So please don’t compare NZ to Russia and Trump’s USA, we are worlds apart!
Great read Bryce…sort of, pretty sad. Do you know how New Zealand’s wealthiest-to-GDP ratio stacks up compared with other countries? Australia, Canada, UK?
It is entirely misleading to compare 'wealth' with income (GDP).
A useful example illustrating this is to note that Auckland has more than 600,000 houses, and their average value is reported as $1.2m by the web just now. As a hugely conservative estimate, let's say that the owners of those houses have equity (wealth) in each house they own of $500,000 (but it's nutty otherwise to imagine that the average mortgage for them all is $700,000). The wealth of these 600,000 homeowners is at least $300,000,000,000 on these figures, ie, $300 billion. That's three times the wealth of the NBR 2025 richlisters.
Just those living in Auckland, and just their houses or those they own to rent in Auckland - not their shares, beach houses, the businesses many of them own etc.
The real power in NZ comes from the people who live in and own these houses - so I am deliberately excluding those who rent, but not those who own. These owners, collectively much more wealthy that the NBR Richlisters, each have a vote. I think it's pretty clear that they have the power in NZ, via their vote and Parliament.
The flaw in that argument is that if you own a house worth a million dollars you merely have a roof over your head. If you own a house and have another million dollars of cash in the bank, then you have capital which can be invested at a profit. The more capital you have over and beyond that necessary to sustain a life, the greater the power that you are able to exercise in the market. Those who merely own a house are still obliged to sell their labour to the owners of capital (such as the rich listers) and thereby serve to make those capitalists even richer. That is why inequality of wealth is steadily increasing and why the number of New Zealanders who own their own homes has now dropped to only 60%. In the Peoples Republic of China, incorrectly derided as a communist state, home ownership is in excess of 90%, which is one reason why the Chinese economy can be expected to continue outperforming that of New Zealand.
Your second argument, that New Zealanders have power "via their vote and Parliament" is also incorrect. As Bryce has shown in previous posts, New Zealand governments are influenced or controlled by vested interests working through professional lobbyists, old boy networks, and foreign governments. We may vote for them, but they do not represent us, and it is probably fair to say that the majority of New Zealanders now recognize that as a fact.
Geoff, I was not arguing. I was merely placing the $102bn of wealth of rich listers in a context, which I felt could be best understood if compared to the wealth of 600k houseowners in Auckland - to give a sense of scale. GDP is grossly conceptually wrong (but commonly done by people like Bryce) for wealth comparisons, but also is impossible for mere mortals to conceptualise, whereas 600k houses can be understood.
I think most NZers would realise Bryce has shown nothing with a great number of emotive words and no evidence about any material power of the rich to distort our lives. My second 'argument', not made above, would be that the most damage done to NZer's daily lives has been by the bourgeoisie via town planning, which has facilitated developers' ability to land bank, as NIMBY objections to how many houses where has driven up land prices for over 50 years. House prices are our shame, and the cause of family poverty and many other ills of our society. Rich listers did not do that, we did it to ourselves by supporting stupid politicians who enabled the greedy middle class.
The rest of Bryce's long effort could be cut and pasted from five years ago and kept for another five, with the exception of a useful debate, not yet completed, about lobbying. Remember, we can all be lobbyists, and many of us are in writing to our MPs. Companies, professions, associations (doctors, lawyers, teachers - Bryce can only see the lobbying of companies, which I find strange) find it more efficient to employ someone or a PR firm to take their case to politicians. I am glad they can and don't yet think pollies here, or the bureaucrats they command, are stupid enough to be taken in by poor arguments. There are a few obvious exceptions like Winnie's crowd, but compared with most democracies, we are pretty clean, as international surveys tend to demonstrate.
"House prices are our shame, and the cause of family poverty and many other ills of our society. Rich listers did not do that, we did it to ourselves by supporting .. politicians who enabled the ... middle class".
When I remove the two pejorative adjectives from your statement, as above, does the second sentence make any sense?
The price of land in New Zealand is an issue that goes back to the 1830s when the New Zealand Company established a system whereby land prices were kept artificially high and large scale immigration was encouraged for the explicitly stated purpose of establishing and maintaining an English-style class society in New Zealand. High land prices meant that migrant labourers were obliged to remain as wage workers for wealthy landholders for most if not all of their working lives. That remains the plan to this day. Young people are shackled to mortgages or condemned to paying exorbitant rents for life. Consequently they are unable to go out and set up on their own account as independent trades people or small business owners. It is the mentality of colonialist capitalism that underlies most of our nation's problems - not "the middle class".
Another way of looking at this would be to say the NBR richlisters have the same level of wealth as 200,000 Auckland homeowners.
Agreed Andrew. I think this shows the top very rich NZers are not as dominant as some depictions represent, in terms of wealth. Most of the value in their $100bn plus is their businesses of course, and the effort they have made to build these should not be underestimated, nor the value the rest of us obtain, in terms of jobs, co-ownership through the sharemarket and so on.
Nah what it shows is an obscene level of growing wealth inequality. And we know that this comes with significantly larger emissions of green house gases by the wealthy, compared to everyone else, and greater power to ensure their interests are met at the expense of workers.
The wealthy generate greenhouse gases more than anyone else?! Evidence required!
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-more-carbon-pollution-90-minutes-average-person-does-lifetime
The other issue is if they actually are involved in feedback!
Well said Bryce - you did well with Plunket too - he really tried hard to rattle you and you were remarkably zen + get this piece posted on the Platform to boot :)
Bull dust. The Mowbray have no nfluence commensurate with 20:billion. This article,is,total nonsense.
Bryce did not actually say that. He asked whether the rich have undue influence over the New Zealand political process, and it is undeniable that they do. That is nothing new. It has been the case since the days of the Russell and Whitaker "war party" that pressed for the invasion of the Waikato. Bryce and the NBR have just brought us up to date on the details of the current crop of plutocrats who have the ear of governments, of all stripes.
How is it undeniable that they do and specifically the Mowbrays? I’ve been involved in politics for a very long time and I’ve seen influencers of all sizes. Some people with very little money have influence simply through their personality or position. Some rich have no influence at all. Of course the potential is there but we have laws designed to reduce that.
Business people like the Mowbrays do not give "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to political parties which have policies that conflict with their business interests. Political parties need money. Business people have money. On that basis they come to an arrangement. Both sides know what is required of them. You write "Some people with very little money have influence simply through their personality or position." To be specific: if they have a "personality or position" that can bring in votes, they will have influence.
Money talks. The politician sees it in his bank statement. Celebrity endorsements are visible and bankable. That much is certain. But under the secret ballot system the individual voter has no influence. If he or she explicitly offers the politician his or her vote, or threaten to withdraw it, that promise or threat will be taken with a pinch of salt because there is no means of confirmation.
Clive Thorpe
" Rich listers did not do that, we did it to ourselves by supporting stupid politicians who enabled the greedy middle class."
I am gobsmacked that you would call the rapidly disappearing "middle class - greedy" is NZ the cause of the problem. It is possibly one of the most ludicrous statements I have read in years!!!
Wages and salaries - generally taxed at source - mean that the only way an average family can improve it's lot is to buy & sell their own property to accrue enough cash to afford a rental or up scale their own house thereby helping them in their older age.
One wouldn’t think the middle class is greedy, would one?!
Hi Bryce Edwards,
Another great piece of work.
I think you would find my latest very complimentary to this, as to just how this growing corporatocracy was allowed to come about:
https://upcmnz.substack.com/p/the-privatisation-agenda-the-new
Every year NBR publishes its "Rich List" and every year commentators of the right and the left respond with moral judgements which are utterly predictable because they are purely ideological and do not even pretend to have any empirical basis.
The right will insist that the Rich Listers have been rewarded for their "hard work". Yet no effort is made to demonstrate in every particular case that "hard work" is the explanation for their wealth. Even the most cursory examination of the list reveals that inheritance is a large factor in the wealth of most of the individuals and families. "Who you know", whether in politics or business, is also of vital importance.
"Hard work" is the definitive explanation of wealth only if we include the hard work of our parents and grandparents, and of all the people in their employ, as well as all the people that we ourselves may have employed in the process of acquiring wealth. But that simple and obvious truth would hardly suit the purposes of the ideologues of capitalism.
The left takes a similarly dogmatic ideological position. The wealth of the rich, they insist, should be taxed for the greater good of society. Yet it is only a presumption that the state would spend that wealth in better ways than the rich themselves. New Zealand's Rich Listers have a penchant for gathering up automobiles, aeroplanes and islands in the gulf, while building mansions in the most scenic locations. "Not much public benefit in that", one might say. Yet there may be some inadvertent benefit to the public, particularly if one takes the long term view that assets preserved for strictly private benefit can be turned to the public benefit in some future dispensation.
Then again, if, as their courtiers imply, the rich use their wealth to engage in direct charity, or invest it in productive enterprises that produce necessary goods and employ willing workers, then it would make no practical difference if 119 individuals and families controlled all of the nation's wealth.
Of course if we look beyond ideological dogma, which is to say if we start examining the individual cases on the Rich List, something which both right and left seem loath to do, then we form a different perspective, and the argument for "taxing the rich" begins to look more plausible.
Yet, taihoa. The left is making another presumption, which is that the state will spend the extra tax revenue wisely and compassionately. In the actual present political context, there is little possibility of that happening. Whether under a National or Labour led government, any time in the current decade extra tax revenue will go to meeting President Trump's designated objective for vastly increased military expenditure by vassal states of the US. It will not go to health, education, social services or even necessary infrastructure.
Aside from the opportunity presented for political posturing, the real advantage of the Rich List is that it helps to show us how New Zealand capitalism works. The value of the list is not that its members are exceptional, but that the 119 listed are representative of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of New Zealand capitalists who share similar characteristics. Yes, hard work is a factor, but inheritance is important, and cheap labour is critically important. New Zealand capitalists will take labour from wherever it is cheapest. They will import RSE workers from the Solomon Islands, or they will shift their manufacturing to China, Vietnam, or Thailand. The Mowbray family is a case in point. Their wealth was not and could not have been acquired in New Zealand. Chinese workers and American consumers worked together to make them into billionaires. It could not have happened here, because in New Zealand, the market is small and the costs of production are so high as to be uncompetitive. Why? Not because the New Zealand worker is overpaid, but because non-productive capital, principally working through infrastructure charges (e.g electricity) and the property market, takes an inordinate share of the national income. The Mowbrays are not the only "New Zealand" capitalists doing all their manufacturing offshore and directing most of their product to offshore markets. It is the norm for almost all successful manufacturing capitalists. So these "New Zealand" capitalists are practically indistinguishable from foreign capitalists. That is part of the reason why they want New Zealand to be opened up to more foreign capital, that is to say people like themselves who will strengthen their position within the New Zealand economy and society. Their actual impact within New Zealand is limited to buying up desirable blocks of real estate. We see their helicopters flying to and from their island hideaways, but we really would have no idea whether the passengers in those craft are New Zealanders, American, German or Chinese. And it makes no difference to us.
The Mowbray name has a long history in the top echelons of New Zealand capitalism, going right back to 1864, yet so far as I can surmise the Zuru branch of the family have no direct connection to the Mowbrays of DIC and DFC fame. So we can accept that although they had a helping hand from affluent parents, their wealth is largely newly acquired. Yet that is clearly not the case with most of the other Rich Listers. Much wealth is inherited in New Zealand, and in many cases that inheritance can be traced right back to the raupatu. And inherited wealth is increasingly important not just to the top 119, but to the three million or so who constitute the most affluent 60% of the population. The bottom 40% inherit only poverty.
But it is not just the poor who suffer harm from the regime of inherited wealth. The need for a material inheritance is hugely damaging to the morale and the morals of the children of the middle classes. The Rich List shows us where New Zealand is heading, and it is not to a good place.
Completely with you Bryce on property investment bashing, which is largely parasitic, creating almost zero new wealth and capability. Also agreeing with Les Mills, a capital gains tax does make sense or rather a more universal income tax that avoids excluding realised earnings such as via a capital gain. However such legislation would need to be carefully drafted to avoid taxing prospective income, or unrealised income, such as that locked up in assets up to the point at which they were effectively sold, including via barter, which is when taxation should kick in, but only on the actual amount gained, avoiding double dipping.
Most of the rest of the billionaire bashing I don't really care about, including rich getting richer and even their political influence, providing this rubs off positively onto the nation as a whole, which I think you are indicating is really not the case for most of our particular set of billionaires.
So whilst many of the billionaires of other highly successful, wealthy countries have achieved their wealth through property development and investment, both the USA and China lean far more toward innovation-driven wealth. Indeed New Zealand’s near-total reliance on property among its few billionaires is unique amongst nations, which raises serious questions about economic diversity and long-term growth potential compared to other prosperous countries. Let's hope it's really not a national wealth potential thermometer ... although I fear it might be.
Using the word “oligarch” in the NZ context is trying to influence your argument with a term that is emotive and simply not applicable in terms of political influence or lack thereof. Particularly with declining wealth in this country along with the prospect of earning it. Russian oligarchs benefitting from state contracts and relationships with Putin are one thing. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel aka the “tech bros” in the US another, as federal contracts are directed their way after they’ve bought elections. But Thiel came here and then picked up his toys and went home after he didn’t get his way. So please don’t compare NZ to Russia and Trump’s USA, we are worlds apart!
Why wouldn't getting rid of extra taxes, adding inheritance taxes and raising income/proft tax help?
Great read Bryce…sort of, pretty sad. Do you know how New Zealand’s wealthiest-to-GDP ratio stacks up compared with other countries? Australia, Canada, UK?
Well said Bryce.