I don't think anybody expected billionaires to become a topic of discussion in this election but here we are.
It started, of course, with Jack Tame's question to the Chris' during the leaders' debate on whether it was basically morally offensive for someone to be a billionaire.
Then John Key raised it again during Herald Now's Future of New Zealand debate, taking issue with the question itself. He says we're wowsers if we think it's okay for sportspeople and artists to be successful but not okay for billionaires, businesspeople and entrepreneurs to be successful.
And he's bang on, isn't he?
Because we should be celebrating success, whatever it looks like. We need to stop this strange impulse we seem to have to turn rich people into evil caricatures.
Often, you'll find rich people do very good things with their money.
Nick Mowbray, who made his money from his toy empire, and his wife have helped dozens of people have children they otherwise wouldn't have had by funding IVF treatment.
The Plowman family has donated $150 million to conservation projects in New Zealand this year.
Mark Dunajtschik in Wellington built a children's hospital.
What, you don't want a children's hospital? I'd like a children's hospital. And if he has to build it, I'll take it, thanks very much.
And that's what Chris Luxon should have said.
After all, his Government is actively trying to attract this very type of person, wealthy individuals, to New Zealand by offering the golden visa.
But he didn't. He didn't defend them. John Key did.
Because do you know what John Key's got?
John Key has the clarity of thought and the absolute certainty in his position that is only possible because he is not embarrassed to be in the National Party.
I'm grateful for John Key's return to politics, if only to remind people in this country to be proud of our successful people and to want more of them, even if they're billionaires.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
14 comments:
I used to mentor teen-aged boys in a program called Tracks. Some of these kids came from low income families. Some of them told me "All those rich people are assholes." I said "Well I guess you'll always be poor because you don't want to be an asshole, right?"
I added that I'd personally spent time with several rich people who were good people and supported charities, and I'd also known poor people who were ratbags and took advantage of everyone around them.
In New Zealand the "Tall Poppy Syndrome" and the "Politics Of Envy" is alive and well. These memes are very difficult to change. They are reinforced by Identity Politics, Neo-Marxism, and Woke where everyone is either a victim or an oppressor.
The three great fallacies that define woke consciousness are, first, that being a victim makes you morally superior to other people; second, that this superiority can be inherited; and third, that this superiority is unaffected by your actions — thus you can be a bully and a tyrant, and still remain morally superior to other people because your ancestors were victims.
This is the reason that Luxon will not be PM a year from now, even if the right coalition wins.
I recall the death of a UK-born Chch businessman several years ago who donated heavily to charities. He died and left all his money to charities. On FB he was derided by some as just giving back what he had stolen. There are many in this country who detest anyone being better off than themselves through work and brains. Losers who think they are owed something.
How many billionaires are there in Russia and China ?
Hypocritically, so many of the poor Communists aspire to be billionaires.
Kim Jong Un is worth about $5 billion. Not bad for a country 60% of the people of which are below the poverty line.
Heather to dislike billionaires is a clear Marxist philiosophy. People need to understand where the left is coming from and why. The media must ask them questions such as " Who do you look up to politically? Who are you inflenced by? Which politician living or dead do you look up to? In which country has communism ever worked ? Why do you think a form of communism would be a good system for Nz?
Hipkins and co are not hiding their marxist views so please ask them about it! New Zealand's fiuture is at stake!!
In the Marxist worldview how much wealth you have is a moral issue, because you are automatically assumed to have done evil things if you have a lot of money. That is the thinking behind Jack's question and it is dangerous thinking that needs to be called out.
If a billionaire does one, or even a handful of good things, are they absolved of all of their evils? HDPA getting stuck into philosophy but apparently skipping anything close to nuance. Wonderful article though! It has reinforced my preconceptions about who HDPA supports.
Anonymous @12:41 PM. Inherent in your argument is the assumption that billionaires have all done something "evil". I guess this supports my preconception that you assume that acquiring wealth is inherently evil.
Agree that J Tane infers that rich people have become rich by treating others, especially their workers badly and unfairly..
Ask how much Tane is worth and if his earnings are exorbitant compared with the workers on the factory floor.
Might not be so keen about "equity".
It’s possible for a surgeon to earn twice, three times, perhaps five times as much as, say, a cleaner, based on measurable things like years of training, experience etc. It’s not possible for someone to earn through their own labour alone a hundred or a thousand times more than someone else, as billionaires do, unless they have worked out a way to siphon off the value created by the labour of others. That, not envy, is the basis to the moral objection to billionaires.
And not everyone thinks it’s okay for sports people or artists to be “successful “ if you measure success by income. I’d like to live in a world where no one could earn a million dollars a week by playing football, or more importantly would WANT to earn a million dollars a week by playing football.
And does not Ms du Plessis-Allan realise by extolling the benevolence of the Rich, how reactionary, in the dictionary-definitional sense of the word, she’s being? Does she want to go back to the nineteenth century where the deserving poor were dependent on the charity of the rich?
Terry - consider Musk, for example. He employs approximately 150,000 people. The average wage of those employees is around $US 100,000 / annum. A total wage bill of $US 15 billion / annum. You seem OK with a surgeon earning 5 x what a cleaner earns, so you should therefore be OK with Musk earning 5x what his employees earn in aggregate. By my calculations, that would be around 75 Billion / annum. The aggregate is a distortion to make a point. Let's say he earns a 1% premium on employee salaries: that is still 150 million / annum. 1% margin is hardly fleecing anyone: Would you prefer he took his 15 billion and, instead of employing people, stuck it in a bank where he earned a billion a year in interest, yet employed zero people and produced zero (except providing finance for others to invest)?
Of course, he earns nothing like this. His wealth is not money he hides under an enormous bed: it is what the market has decided via stock value of the companies that he has developed that produce products that people want to purchase. He has employed over 150,000 people directly, and probably ten times that indirectly, and they appear to be paid pretty well.
Mr. Coggan said "earn through their own labour alone a hundred or a thousand times more than someone else, as billionaires do, unless they have worked out a way to siphon off the value created by the labour of others." My father, starting with a $2,000 loan from relatives in 1946, built a furniture making company with 50 employees. He worked all day standing up cutting the expensive upholstry fabric to patternshe created. At night, and often weekends, he worked 3-4 hours more designing the furniture. He created jobs for those 50 men and women that wouldn't have existed before he took the risk of starting a business, and put in the time after hours when the workers were watching TV. He was never worth a billion, but the principle is the same. He worked out a way to organize and MULTPLY the labor of others for mutual benefit. BTW he paid such a fair wage that the workers refused to be union members.
I too have no time for sportsmen or sportswomen billionaires. Sports create nothing, just "bread and circus" for the hoi poli. "more importantly would WANT to earn a million dollars a week by playing football."
Well Terry, good luck changing human nature. Sounds like "Brave New World" to me.
Terry’s argument is straight out of the Marxist playbook: billionaires must be siphoning off the value created by workers. That’s like saying a farmer who employs people to plant and harvest his crops is stealing from them because he owns the farm and keeps the profit.
The farmer pays them to do the work. He also provides the land, machinery, capital and organisation, and takes the risk if the harvest fails.
Does Terry imagine Kaleb Cooper is an indentured labourer on Jeremy Clarkson’s farm? Why is the labourer’s contribution legitimate but the farmer’s ownership and risk-taking somehow morally suspect?
Take Elon Musk. His fortune didn’t come from awarding himself a fat salary. Much of it comes from owning shares in companies he helped build, whose value increased. His Tesla compensation package was tied to performance targets and approved by shareholders seeking to benefit from his success. The package subsequently became the subject of a legal dispute, but the underlying point remains: his wealth is not simply a wage packet siphoned from workers.
Terry’s reasoning also assumes wealth is a fixed pie, so that if one person gets richer, somebody else must have been robbed. That’s like accusing a bakery of taking wealth from the public because it produces more bread, sells it to willing customers and makes a profit. Wealth can be created, not merely transferred.
Curiously, Terry accepts that a surgeon can earn several times more than a cleaner because of training and experience. But entrepreneurial skill, innovation, investment and commercial judgement apparently count for little when the rewards become large enough. Why should the number of hours worked be the measure of economic worth? A person can labour all day and create little value; another can develop a product that millions willingly buy.
His objection to footballers earning a million dollars a week is no more convincing. Clubs pay for top talent because they expect it to generate revenue. Terry may dislike the sums involved, but personal distaste is not an economic argument.
And then comes the appeal to the nineteenth-century poor, supposedly dependent on the charity of the rich. It’s a false choice. An economy in which people invest, build businesses, earn wages and create employment is not the same thing as a society in which the poor must rely on a wealthy benefactor’s goodwill.
Fraud, exploitation and monopoly abuse are legitimate grounds for criticism. But success is not proof of any of them. Terry treats the size of a fortune as evidence of wrongdoing, when the only way to establish wrongdoing is to examine how that fortune was acquired.
A large fortune tells us how much someone owns. It doesn’t, by itself, tell us that anyone was robbed.
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