The Greens wealth tax

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Did he also sign that plea from the group of wealthy business people - most of whom were also celebrated philanthropists, who begged the government to re examine the tax system that enabled each of them to have a much lower tax burden than the supermarket checkout operator who sorted their shopping for them?

I grew up playing in the showroom of the business my family started back in the forties, importing ceramics and fabrics and creating the lighting kiwis couldn't import. They took huge risks too, and the company did really well, employing makers and sales people and supplying top end retailers nationwide. Then the import laws changed and competition ramped up, and focusing on the top end quality meant they simply couldn't sustain their place in the market. Like Crown Lynn, the family business sank beneath the waves...

But lots of people benefited while it was one of the top manufacturing companies in the mid century design world.

That's life. It isn't fair, or predictable, and there are always winners and losers. However, when the gap between those two sections of the community is so wide, when so few own so much of the communities wealth, it is up to that community to re examine the basis on which it operates. We are a wealthy, educated first world country. Surely we can do better than the way we operate today and do that without opening that schism any further.