Colinxy: Is There a “Cost of Greed” Crisis?

Chlöe Swarbrick recently declared that New Zealand is facing a “Cost of Greed Crisis.” It’s a catchy line; the sort of slogan that fits neatly into a press release and even more neatly into a worldview where every social problem is caused by someone else having too much.

But let’s take the claim seriously for a moment. Is there a “Cost of Greed Crisis”?

Surprisingly, yes. But not in the way Swarbrick imagines.

Because if we’re going to talk about greed — real greed, not the cartoon version — then we need to be honest about where it actually lives in New Zealand politics.

And it isn’t in the private sector.

The Greediest People in the Country Aren’t Capitalists

Swarbrick frames “greed” as the desire to earn money by providing goods and services people voluntarily pay for. In her telling, the villain is the business owner, the entrepreneur, the productive citizen who succeeds by meeting the needs of others.

But let’s compare two kinds of “greed”:

1. The person who works, risks, invests, and succeeds

They create something people want. They hire others. They pay taxes. They innovate. They produce.

2. The politician who takes that success by force

They produce nothing. They confiscate. They redistribute. They punish success. They reward dependency.

Which of these is greedier?

The person who earns? Or the person who demands a cut of someone else’s earnings?

Swarbrick’s answer is predictable: the earner is the problem; the taker is the solution.

This is the moral inversion at the heart of socialism.

The Greed of the Redistribution Class

New Zealand is not suffering from a “Cost of Living Crisis” caused by greedy capitalists. We are suffering from a Cost of Government Crisis caused by greedy politicians.

The real greed is:

the greed for other people’s money,
the greed for control,
the greed for moral authority,
the greed for power disguised as compassion.

No one is greedier than a socialist with access to the Treasury.

They always want more:

• more taxes,
• more spending,
• more programmes,
• more bureaucrats,
• more control over your life.

And they call this “kindness.”

“Productive Greed” vs Political Greed

“Productive greed” builds. Political greed confiscates.

One is the engine of prosperity. The other is the engine of dependency.

One rewards effort—the other rewards grievance.

One expands the pie. The other fights over the slices.

And when politicians like Swarbrick talk about a “Cost of Greed Crisis,” they are not condemning greed; they are rebranding their own.

The Socialist Creed: Better That Everyone Be Poorer

Margaret Thatcher once observed:

"He would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich.

This is the creed Swarbrick channels, whether she realises it or not.

Socialists are not offended by poverty. They are offended by inequality.

They are not outraged that someone has too little. They are outraged that someone else might have “too much”.

They do not want to lift the poor up. They want to pull the successful down.

Because the real sin, in their worldview, is not suffering; it is freedom.

Wealth gives people options. Options give people independence. Independence makes people ungovernable.

And nothing terrifies a socialist more than citizens who don’t need them.

No Government Has Ever Cured Poverty — But Many Have Created It

Swarbrick speaks as if government redistribution is the cure for poverty. History says otherwise.

No socialist government — not the Soviets, not Mao’s China, not Cuba, not Venezuela — has ever eliminated poverty. They have only succeeded in equalising misery.

The Soviet Union didn’t cure poverty. It industrialised it.

Venezuela didn’t cure inequality. It redistributed hunger.

Every socialist experiment ends the same way:

• shortages,
• rationing,
• corruption,
• collapse,
• and a political class that mysteriously never suffers the consequences.

But Swarbrick wants us to believe that this time, this time, the solution is more government, more redistribution, more ideological economics.

So Yes, There Is a Cost of Greed Crisis

But the greed isn’t coming from the productive class.

It’s coming from:

• politicians who believe they have a moral right to your income,
• activists who believe they should decide how you live,
• bureaucrats who believe they know better than you,
• and ideologues who believe prosperity is suspicious unless it is centrally managed.

The real “Cost of Greed Crisis” is the cost of political greed; the greed for power, control, and other people’s money.

And until we confront that, no amount of slogans will save us.

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The Psychology of Envy in Socialist Rhetoric

Every political movement has an emotional engine. For socialism, that engine is envy; not the petty, personal kind, but the moralised, weaponised version that masquerades as compassion.

Envy becomes political when it takes this form:

' If I can’t have it, no one should.

This is the emotional core behind slogans like “Cost of Greed Crisis.” It reframes resentment as justice and punishment as fairness.

Envy Disguised as Equality

Socialist rhetoric rarely says, “I want what the wealthy have.” Instead, it says:

• “They shouldn’t have that.”
• “It’s unfair that they succeeded.”
• “Their gain must be someone else’s loss.”

This is not a desire to lift the poor up. It is a desire to pull the successful down.

Equality becomes a euphemism for levelling.

Envy Moralises Taking

Once envy is moralised, confiscation becomes virtue.

Taxation is no longer a fiscal tool; it becomes a moral cleansing:

• “They have too much.”
• “They didn’t earn it.”
• “We should take it for the common good.”

The act of taking is reframed as justice. The act of earning is reframed as greed.

Envy Thrives on Comparison

Envy is not about poverty. It is about relative status.

A person may be materially comfortable, but if someone else is more successful, envy interprets that as injustice.

This is why socialist rhetoric focuses obsessively on:

• “the top 1%,”
• “the wealthy,”
• “the rich getting richer.”

It is not about need. It is about comparison.

Envy Punishes Independence

Wealth gives people options. Options give people independence. Independence makes people politically unpredictable.

Envy-driven politics cannot tolerate this.

So, it reframes independence as:

• selfishness,
• greed,
• privilege,
• or exploitation.

The goal is not to help the poor; it is to discipline the free.

Envy Is a Zero-Sum Emotion

Socialist rhetoric treats prosperity as a fixed pie:

• If someone has more, someone else must have less.
• If someone succeeds, someone else must be harmed.
• If someone becomes wealthy, someone else must be exploited.

This worldview is emotionally satisfying to the envious because it validates their resentment.

But it is economically false.

Prosperity is not zero-sum. Envy is.

Envy Cannot Build — It Can Only Redistribute

Envy has no positive programme. It cannot innovate, create, or produce.

Its only tools are:

• accusation,
• confiscation,
• redistribution,
• and moral condemnation.

It is a politics of subtraction, not addition.

The Result: A Politics That Prefers Everyone Poorer

When envy becomes policy, the outcome is predictable:

• growth slows,
• investment collapses,
• productivity declines,
• and the poor remain poor.

But the envious are satisfied, because the successful have been punished.

This is the psychology behind the rhetoric.

Not compassion. Not justice. Not fairness.

Envy is moralised, politicised, and weaponised........The full article is published HERE

Colinxy regularly blogs at No Minister