15-05-2025, 03:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 15-05-2025, 03:48 PM by Oh_hunnihunni.)
Most wealth taxes have a starting point, that most normal people would define as Lucky Lucky Bastards...
How much is enough?
Thing is, we need immigration. To fill the jobs we don't want to do, to fill the houses we don't want to live in, and to have the babies we don't want to have.
It really is about ourselves. Something we are very reluctant to come to terms with...
How much is enough?
(15-05-2025, 11:28 AM)dken31 Wrote: The real issue at the heart of so many of NZ's current challenges is high immigration, with the whole "diversity is our strength" slogan having been debunked by essentially every single serious study on the matter, to the point that any politician still trumpeting that line is just an outright liar (private individuals are most likely just severely misinformed).
The super wealthy love high immigration, because it suppresses wage growth by providing a steady stream of cheap labour. For the average worker though, high immigration means their wages stay low, and productivity stagnates because the ready supply of cheap labour removes the need to focus on technological development which would otherwise be needed in order to boost output per employee.
Politicians love high immigration because it boosts total GDP, which is the accepted measure of an economy's "growth", with far too little focus on the fact that GDP per capita is actually falling. The Philippines' GDP is almost twice that of NZ however NZ's GDP per capita is almost 13x the Philippines. Our government's seemingly sole focus on total GDP growth, instead of per capita growth, is based on the same logic that would argue that the Philippines is a more wealthy country than NZ.
Also, despite immigration being touted as necessary to plug labour gaps, the evidence actually shows that although it provides temporary solutions (which largely benefit big corporations/the super wealth), it actually exacerbates labour shortages in the long-run. All in all, it is basically a short term bandaid that papers over bigger issues, and thus allow those problems to grow bigger and bigger.
Additionally, the evidence shows that high immigration creates a fragmented society with reduced social cohesion/trust. It is strongly correlated with a reduction in both financial charitable giving and volunteerism (i.e. donating time), and it also results in a reduction in political engagement.
If you're concerned about the growing divide between the super rich and the "average" Kiwi, along with the over-burdening of our healthcare system, under-funding of education, general reduction in quality/availability of publicly funded services etc., the super high levels of immigration over the past 30-ish years is undeniably the main cause. Far more so than "greedy rich people" or an "unfair" tax system.
Thing is, we need immigration. To fill the jobs we don't want to do, to fill the houses we don't want to live in, and to have the babies we don't want to have.
It really is about ourselves. Something we are very reluctant to come to terms with...