The system is broken

Last week I had the privilege of meeting Jenny Salesa, the Associate Minister of Education, who struck me as a very perceptive woman, a good listener who asked searching questions. What I found particularly interesting, however, is what she said about her electorate, Otara, largely Pacifica. She talked about poverty, people, whole families sleeping in their cars because they can't afford to rent in Auckland even in a low decile neighbourhood. These are not bludgers, not addicts, not people on welfare for whatever reason, but people whom National Party politicians would describe as hard-working New Zealanders, couples who work in two jobs for minimum wages. With the free market we imported not only cars, gadgets, cheap gizmos from third world countries, we also imported poverty. Whatever happened to the New Zealand dream of my father's generation, when everyone could get a job and buy a house for three to four times his annual salary? The greedies took over. The way to get ahead is to buy a piece of dirt, limit the land available, so that the piece of dirt would appreciate in value, then leverage the value of that piece of dirt to buy more land, more property, control the availability of land, encourage building monopolies, sit back and watch the value of the assets appreciate. People who prosper on the strength of their assets don't need to worry about the impoverished sleeping in their cars, they can afford to put labels on them, those are improvident, spend their money or drink or gamble their money away. They can be swept under the carpet, ignored. Today's newspaper writes about loan sharks who lend money to the needy at unimaginably usurious rates. There is nothing new about this, colonial New Zealand was built on land speculation. If you had a little capital you signed up for a tracts of land, knowing that the land to be developed was artificially restricted, and watch your money grow. But there was a time when some idealists took over the government and forged a fairer society, riding rough shod over ideas of free market and capitalism. It is time dreamers and idealists unite to forge a fairer society in which people can live in well built, well insulated homes, even if that means entertaining unfashionable economic ideas and taxing unearned wealth more rigorously.