DAVID SEYMOUR'S NEOLIBERAL FANTASY DEMONISES THE POOR

According to Act Party leader David Seymour, we've never had it so good! He claims that 'Even the poorest people in New Zealand today are living like kings and queens compared with most places and most times in history.' 

 

DAVID SEYMOUR'S insistence that New Zealanders are “living like kings and queens” is not just political rhetoric; it is a deliberate reframing of reality designed to justify an agenda of austerity, deregulation, and labour market punishment. It is a claim that collapses under even the most superficial scrutiny, yet it serves a crucial ideological function: if everyone is supposedly thriving, then the suffering of those who are not can be dismissed as personal failure rather than the predictable outcome of the neoliberal policies that Seymour subscribes to.

The material conditions of everyday life in New Zealand tell a very different story. Inequality has widened to levels that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small minority, while a growing number of households live week to week with no financial buffer. Foodbanks report record demand, not from the chronically unemployed but from working families who cannot keep up with rent, groceries, and power bills. Homelessness has become a structural feature of the economy, not an aberration. The labour market is increasingly precarious, with insecure work replacing stable employment. These are not the hallmarks of a society living in regal comfort; they are the symptoms of a system that is failing a significant portion of its population.

Seymour’s rhetoric depends on ignoring these realities. His political project requires the public to believe that hardship is exaggerated, that inequality is natural, and that the state’s role is to discipline the poor rather than support them. When he calls for more austerity, more cuts, and more people to be 'let go' from their jobs, he frames these measures as necessary corrections rather than deliberate acts of social harm. The claim that New Zealanders are living like royalty is not a misstatement—it is a narrative weapon.

Karl Marx understood this dynamic with clarity. He argued that capitalism inevitably produces polarisation: wealth accumulates at one pole, poverty at the other. The system is not malfunctioning when inequality grows; it is functioning exactly as designed. The owners of capital consolidate power and resources, while the majority experience stagnation, insecurity, or decline. Nothing in contemporary New Zealand contradicts this analysis. If anything, the modern economy—with its financialisation, speculative housing markets, and erosion of labour protections—intensifies the tendencies Marx identified.

The political class, however, cannot admit this. To do so would be to acknowledge that inequality is structural, not accidental; that poverty is produced, not chosen; and that the market does not reward merit but entrenches advantage. Seymour’s narrative of universal prosperity is a way of absolving the system—and himself—of responsibility. If everyone is already living well, then those who are struggling must be doing something wrong. This is the ideological sleight of hand that underpins austerity politics.

The consequences are profound. When leaders deny the existence of hardship, they make it easier to dismantle the very institutions that mitigate it. Cuts to welfare, health, education, and housing are justified as harmless because, supposedly, no one really needs them. The unemployed are framed as burdens rather than casualties of economic restructuring. Workers are told to accept lower wages and weaker protections because the alternative is worse. Public services are hollowed out while private wealth grows. The social fabric frays, and the blame is shifted onto the vulnerable.

What makes Seymour’s claim particularly galling is that New Zealanders are not actually demanding luxury. They are asking for stability, dignity, and the ability to meet basic needs without constant anxiety. They want secure housing, fair wages, and a social safety net that does not punish them for needing help. To describe these modest aspirations as 'living like kings and queens' is to trivialise the pressures people face and to mock the very real struggles unfolding across the country.

The truth is that New Zealand is at a crossroads. One path leads toward deeper inequality, harsher austerity, and a society in which the wealthy retreat into fortified comfort while the rest are told to tighten their belts. The other path requires acknowledging the reality Seymour denies: that the system is producing unacceptable levels of hardship, and that addressing it demands political courage, not ideological rigidity. It means accepting that managing a failed economic system is not the answer. 

Marx’s insight remains as sharp as ever: capitalism generates wealth for the few and insecurity for the many. Nothing in New Zealand’s current trajectory disproves this. Seymour’s rhetoric is not an argument—it is a distraction. And the longer the country allows such narratives to dominate, the further it drifts from the possibility of a fair and humane society.