Damage to New Zealand’s economy makes inequality hard to ignore
For years now, one of the main reasons given for dismissing inequality as an issue has been about economics: you need income gaps to generate growth. Without a wide gap between rich and poor, who would...
View ArticleANZ says ‘addressing inequality’ key issue for NZ in 2015
One of the things that banks like to do is send out research notes about what they think the “key themes” of the future will be. The ANZ research note issued earlier this month is typical of the genre,...
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Are New Zealand’s universities the most elitist in the developed world?
I’ve just come across this graph about who gets to go onto higher education in developed world countries – and it seems to make pretty damning reading for New Zealand. Basically, it suggests that if...
View ArticleNew household wealth data
The Reserve Bank has just published a revised set of its household balance sheets – how much New Zealand households own and owe. The data is significant because it includes for the first time some...
View ArticleMaxim thinktank endorses ‘participation’ as poverty line
The Maxim Institute thinktank have a new paper out on how to measure poverty – and it endorses the idea that people need to be able to participate in society, not just survive, if they are to be deemed...
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What does the centre-right have to say about inequality?
At the moment, the left is dominating the debates on income inequality. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are plenty of reasons for people on the centre-right to be concerned by widened income...
View ArticleWhat could National do on inequality?
Today is Budget Day eve, an appropriate time to be thinking about what the morrow might bring when it comes to policies and solutions. So, following last week’s column on why centre-right voters might...
View ArticleDrinks Poured into the Pool: Beyonce, George Michael and Inequality
At the end of last week, there was a brief flare of outrage about a shot from Beyonce’s new video (available only on Tidal), in which she apparently pours a bottle of champagne worth thousands of...
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Why inequality just won’t go away for this government
Did the small child poverty package in May’s Budget makes the issue go away for National? Not in the slightest, according to the polling shown in the graph below. Concerns about poverty and inequality,...
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Key points from the 2015 Household Incomes Report
This document summarises the key points on inequality and poverty from the 2015 Household Incomes Report, published by the Ministry for Social Development. Inequality On most measures, income...
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Parliament: a long way to go for gender equality
Following the announcement that the Green Party’s Russel Norman would be stepping down, to be replaced by Marama Davidson, I did this chart of Parliament’s gender breakdown. It doesn’t make pretty...
View ArticleKiwi Rich Listers’ wealth even greater than thought
The combined wealth of New Zealand’s Rich Listers in 2015 turns out to be $57.4 billion, around $2.4 billion higher than initially estimated and a striking 12 per cent increase on the previous year’s...
View ArticleNo, Mr English, housing costs are not a key cause of inequality
A little while back, Finance Minister Bill English gave a speech in which he claimed that “poor urban planning is one of the significant drivers of inequality”. His logic is that bad urban planning...
View ArticleIs New Zealand really the world’s wealthiest country?
Reporting on the latest Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report has repeated its claim that New Zealand has the second highest average (mean) wealth in the world – and the highest median wealth. But is...
View ArticleWhy inequality is such a barrier to eradicating poverty
In the arguments about how wealth and income are shared out, one of the common lines is that poverty matters, but inequality, in the sense of the gaps across all of society, is a distraction. This is...
View ArticleIs Labour really going to deliver a UBI?
In news stories this week, senior Labour politicians have suggested they are open to a “debate” on the idea of a universal basic income, a no-strings-attached annual salary paid to everyone in the...
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Revealed: how the govt ‘defused’ inequality
New data shows how the government’s Budget last year took a huge amount of heat out of inequality as a political issue – though it may not have changed the long-term pressure very much. A previously...
View ArticleRevealed: No change in the rich’s income share under National
New data from the IRD shows that the share of taxable income going to the richest New Zealanders has not changed under National. However, that share is still very large, indicating significant income...
View ArticleThe Bare Minimum Budget
The best label for this year’s announcement by Bill English might be the ‘Bare Minimum Budget’. It does the bare minimum to defuse potential political damage in a range of areas – homelessness and...
View ArticleThe day I played cricket with Nigel Farage
The news last night that Nigel Farage had resigned as leader of UKIP, having helped lead Britain out of the European Union, made me cast my mind back to the time we were briefly united through that...
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