Roger Partridge: The High Cost of Luxury Beliefs

Some ideas cost nothing to believe but a great deal to implement. Political commentator Rob Henderson calls them “luxury beliefs” – convictions that signal virtue among the comfortable while imposing very real costs on those with much less room to manoeuvre.

New Zealand, for reasons cultural as much as political, has become fertile ground for them. We are a small, highly educated country that prizes good intentions. Yet too often, the people who congratulate themselves for their ideals are not the ones who bear their consequences.