JACINDA ARDERN : FRIEND OF THE FAT CATS

Property developer Bob Jones has become a billionaire under the Labour-led government....

FINANCE MINISTER Grant Robertson is right. There are indeed people who are enjoying much improved economic prosperity under the Labour-led Government.

According to the 2019 NBR Rich List the wealthy among us increased their total wealth by a staggering $90 billion over the past year, breaking the previous record of $81 billion recorded the previous year. These are boom times for the rich. They have never had it so good.

Joining the ranks of New Zealand's billionaires for the first time is property developer Bob Jones. His personal wealth is up $860 million from last year.

Jones is a long time opponent of a capital gains tax, once writing that the"clamour for a capital gains tax, like so many cries from the mob throughout history, stems from envy and ignorance." How delighted he must have been when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern backed away from introducing a CGT and declared that it was off Labour's agenda 'permanently'. This was the same Jacinda Ardern who had said tackling poverty would be one of the main priorities of her government.

But while the fat cats continue to get fatter there are lean pickings for mostly everyone else. The bottom half of the population have seen their incomes remain static, despite the rising cost of living. According to the Statistics Department's own figures released in April some 260 000 children are living under the poverty line.

Of course all this goes to prove, once again, that Marx was right when he wrote that ' Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole".

While there is immense wealth  being produced in New Zealand,  most of it is being expropriated by the people who occupy the NBR Rich List. This is the inevitable result of a fundamentally unjust economic system. We'd all be be better off if billionaires like Bob Jones didn't exist.