The Oligarchy Mordor is in the New Zealand Shire
The Oligarchy Mordor is in the New Zealand Shire…
Giga-yachts, golden visas and the Gilded Age: The startling escalation of Kiwi wealth
It’s dubbed the new Gilded Age, a modern-day era of extraordinary wealth in which giga-yachts replace superyachts and the uber-rich search for even more startling ways to spend their money.
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…compare their obscene wealth to this reality…
The region now has the highest rate of food insecurity in the country, with a recent report showing 40% of households are struggling to afford enough to eat.
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…there are 170 000 kids in material hardship, 600 000 Kiwis rely on food banks each month and our public services have been hollowed out to allow neoliberal free market capitalism to dominate all.
Billionaires operate in a society that enables their wealth.
Don’t believe me?
Listen to a billionaire then, Steve Jobs…
“I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I used. I make little of my one food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on.
…Billionaires stand upon the shoulders of a society and draw their wealth and power from that society with minimal obligations placed upon them. They have benefitted from an educated civil society but want to pay sweet fuck all for its upkeep!
Bernie Sanders 2025 Edition ofFight Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here makes the point that the Billionaire Class, Big Polluters and Corporations have transformed under Trump into a naked plutocracy:
- Three of the richest individuals (e.g., Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg) hold more combined wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population — roughly 170 million people.
- Three of the richest individuals (e.g., Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg) hold more combined wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population — roughly 170 million people.
- Multiple reports cited by Sanders and in broader discourse show the global richest 1 % increased their wealth by $33.9 trillion since 2015 — a figure used to illustrate oligarchic wealth trends.
- The top 1 % of U.S. households gained 101× more wealth than the median household over decades, translating to wealth per top 1 % household roughly $8.35 million vs ~$83,000 average household assets (Oxfam data referenced in discussions Sanders highlights)
- Around 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion on the 2024 U.S. elections, which Sanders describes as evidence of oligarchic influence over American politics.
- Billionaires are a tiny fraction of the population — about 0.0005 % of Americans — yet played a disproportionately large role in political spending in recent elections.
- Oxfam and similar sources note that billionaire wealth jumped over 16 % in 2025, bringing total billionaire wealth to $18.3 trillion — the highest ever recorded — and exacerbating inequality.
- About 60 % of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a statistic Sanders regularly uses to illustrate Americans’ economic insecurity.
- Tens of millions of Americans lack adequate health insurance — e.g., 85 million uninsured or underinsured — compared with soaring billionaire wealth.
- Sanders and his allies often cite homelessness figures like ~800,000 homeless people in the U.S. as part of the inequality narrative.
The book specifically calls Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — a $1 trillion tax-cut package — the largest transfer of wealth upward in living memory, concentrating benefit among the wealthy and exacerbating inequality.
In NZ the Mordor of Oligarchy has infected our Shire as well!
- The top 10% of New Zealanders own nearly 50% of all wealth.
- The bottom 50% share 6.7% ( $138b)
- The top 1% share 14% ($291b)
- The top 5% hold 34% ($707b)
- The top 10% hold 48% ($1t)
- The top 50% hold 93% ($1.93t)
- European/Pākehā New Zealanders hold substantially more wealth than Māori, Pacific and Asian groups
Look at how that money is donated politically:
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Party donations concentrated at top incomes:
In recent elections, ~60 % of total political donations came from businesses and individuals earning in the top tax brackets, while lower-income donors account for a small share. -
Lobbying prevalence:
Corporate and industry groups (banks, property developers, dairying sector) are among the most active lobbyists in Wellington, shaping tax, housing, and planning policy.
The Big Polluters, the Billionaire Class, the Corporate’s and the speculators own NZ Politically!
If we want to build the social and physical infrastructure we need to radically adapt to the realities of catastrophic climate change, we need to tax the rich!
I’m not looking for socialism here folks, just basic garden variety regulated capitalism!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.
You should be angry, NZ Capitalism is a rigged trick for the rich and powerful. The real demarcation line of power in a western democracy is the 1% + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us!
Do not allow their smears of ‘Envy’ dilute the righteous rage you should all be feeling!
There’s no point making workers pay more to rebuild our resilience, tax the rich!
-Sugar Tax
-Inheritance Tax
-Wealth Tax
-Financial Transactions Tax
-New top tax rate on people earning over $300 000 per year.
-Capital Gains Tax
-Windfall profit taxes
-First $10 000 tax free
Lift the tax yoke from the workers and the people and place it on the mega wealthy and have them pay their fair share for once!
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
In 2021, 20 people own more than 50% of the entire planet.
While in 2026, the top 0.001% of households hold three times more wealth than the bottom 50% combined!
This isn’t democracy, this is a feudal plutocracy on a burning Earth!
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber allas where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
Climate Change will make this tipping point a revolution.
It’s the System!!!…Nothing changes until that changes and pretty much from the ground up.
The Westminster system form of governance and judiciary has been an abject failure for anyone bar the Inheritocracy.
Those who through gender, race or culture, inherited privilege, usually in the form of property, they’ve then leveraged into perpetuating inter-generational wealth.
Fairplay if you’re one of them. You’re only playing the game with the rules skewed in your favour. Just dont think cos you did others can. Equality of opportunity is a myth.