There have been remarkable juxtapositions last week in NZ that seem to show the two worlds we have split into, one where the reality of life is grim and one where privilege blinds us to that grim reality.
The debate over prisoner compensation and skinny people flying on planes next to fat people compensation highlighted how hollow our society has become. The shock by the mainstream media to discover that the system is biased against Maori is 176 years too late and the focus on a rich woman calling another rich woman a racist name when Police are pulling Maori over and threatening them with arrest for speaking Maori
Each of these examples shows us how out of touch with reality the privileged in NZ society have become, adding to these jarring impression of our society comes two stories painfully interconnected.
Compare news that a mega mansion is about to be built on the most expensive part of land in Auckland with the facts that a million NZers are now locked out of ever owning their own home.
Nothing shows up the distance between the privileged and those paying the most for that privilege better than a 16 address mega mansion and a million Gen Xers and Gen Y locked forever out of owning a home.
This is NZ in 2016.
Bloody crisis point exactly Martyn, “the bigger thry are the bigger they fall eh?
Jonkey is taking us to this as quick as he can, “A divided community”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/fairfield-county/501215/
BRIDGEPORT, Conn.—Few places in the country illustrate the divide between the haves and the have-nots more than the county of Fairfield, Connecticut. Drive around the city of Bridgeport and, amid the tracts of middle-class homes, you’ll see burned-out houses, empty factories, and abandoned buildings that line the main street. Nearby, in the wealthier part of the county, there are towns of mansions with leafy grounds, swimming pools, and big iron gates.
Bridgeport, an old manufacturing town all but abandoned by industry, and Greenwich, a headquarters to hedge funds and billionaires, may be in the same county, and a few exits apart from each other on I-95, but their residents live in different worlds. The average income of the top 1 percent of people in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metropolitan area, which consists of all of Fairfield County plus a few towns in neighboring New Haven County, is $6 million dollars—73 times the average of the bottom 99 percent—according to a report released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in June. This makes the area one of the most unequal in the country; nationally, the top 1 percent makes 25 times more than the average of the bottom 99 percent.
Hah, having closely followed the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan hearings, and read what was recommended and then largely voted for by Council, I am NOT one bit surprised about such developments:
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11713981
Developers have no requirements to meet to provide affordable housing, so many if not most will simply continue to make the most out of developments, in profit.
They will look at the better off to buy their properties, and ignore the poor in South and West Auckland, and the younger generation trying to get up the property ladder, but not having great, well paid jobs to pay for this.
The Unitary Plan we will have is one the ACT Party could not have better thought out and voted for, so developers, property owners and speculators will have an almost perfect playing ground to make much, much money, and others will continue to flood in from overseas, returning migrants, NZers cashed up from years of well paid work overseas, and pay for it.
The poor will continue to fight over patches in garages, caravan parks and motels and so forth, as the market simply does NOT cater for the bottom of society.
Thank you all so much, dear government, dear government appointed “independent” hearings panel, thank you Councillors, who were too busy voting it through, as they were rather concentrated on getting ready to run their campaigns for reelection.
I bet a fair few are property investors also, and they will have good connections to the developers anyway, as tight networks exist that most never learn much about. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, that is the motto of some.
I agree with what you say about the growing inequality, but it’s not just a generational problem and using that scenario is just playing into the righties hands by polarising the political issues of neoliberalism by generation not by government policy.
Trendy hipsters Gen Y and Gen X are going to inherit the family home… Maybe they don’t believe in state houses, the poor and think that the market will eventually provide them with a home. That’s what economists like Shamubeel Eaqub keep telling them, just like ACT tells us that a flat tax is the most fair. Sounds good but doesn’t work. Or Sky path that is a PPP that taxes walkers and cyclists is a good compromise.
Many people especially GenY and Gen X have lost the ability to think big about decency and what is fair. They are content with policy that tinker’s around the edges and what comes out does not make much sense to many.
Yep that’s where we are heading. Hope we snap back before it’s too late…
Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
Ya learn ta live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You’ll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me…
Guns N Roses
* could just as well have been taken straight out of the leaf of the neo liberal manual on greed.
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