That's not fair...

Children go through a period of acute awareness of a type of justice as they discover that the world is unfair. They first discover that there are rules and that sometimes these can be used to their advantage. A complaint of “jimmy has two trucks and I have none” will likely motivate an adult to take one truck of jimmy for my benefit. Mostly we grow out of this childishness as we realise that trucks are earned not given.

So chalked on the sidewalk today as I went for a lunchtime stroll was, “10% of NZers have 60% of the wealth, while 40% have just 3%”. This is a statistic from a recent Statistics NZ survey on wealth distribution in NZ as at 2015 and is an accurate reporting of at least what part of the report says.

I don’t know the motivation of the sidewalk chalk messenger but I suspect they wrote it because they felt it was wrong in a childlike response to a supposed injustice. Because in itself the quote tells us nothing about the situation or even if it is a good or a bad idea. It needed at a minimum a qualifier such as “large wealth inequality can lead to rebellion” (think French revolution if you want a famous example, let them eat cake and all that)

But is wealth inequality a bad thing, accepting that excess inequality is, but is this split particularly bad and why. I don’t pretend to know but some thoughts occur.

One household is a group of students and another is a couple just about to retire. No one would expect equal wealth between these groups now would they. Likely as not the students have no wealth and the retiring couple might own a house at the very least. But this is just a run of life variance, kids have no money adults have more money, wow who knew.

How about one person purchased a house in Auckland 10 years ago for $300k and one purchased one in Invercargill for the same amount, both equal at that stage, but now the Auckland house is worth $1M and Invercargill house is worth $350k. Again so what?  A big wealth disparity but both have one house each to live in, neither is really any better off unless Ms Auckland sells up and moves to Invercargill.

One couple decide not to have kids and another couple has three kids. Pretty sure the no kids group will have more money but perhaps a less fulfilled life depending on your value set. Would the couple with the kids feel worse off, even though they will be less wealthy?

Choices can make a big difference for example the South Islands richest man (at one stage) never left home and eventually took possession of his parents’ house, purchased only one car that he used rarely, would walk to the library to read the paper and never left the country and seldom left his home town. No kids, no pets, no hobbies (except making money), no life, but he died really wealthy but so what. I have met a lot of poor people who were much wealthier than him.

But I hear you say, there are really poor people who have nothing and really rich who have everything. Well the poverty is relative is my first comment, better to be poor in NZ than India or China and they have really rich people too.

Those really wealthy people also pay a lot of tax (yep even with their loopholes and fancy accountants) As we have also heard this week that 40% of households pay no net direct tax. The wealthy also invest in business etc which provide jobs and having a lot of gold bars or fancy cars does not make you healthier or necessarily happier.

Sure wealth inequality might not be a good thing but we need to get past the sandpit stage and provide better arguments than a bald quote designed to elicit whining “that’s not fair…” type response. 

Middle Age is Depressing

And no I am not referring to the traditional mid life crisis suffered mostly by men according to popular culture where they run off with the trophy bride and start driving a sports car.


I am referring to real life where it is a stage in your life where your parents are often reaching the end of their lives with some of the end of life dramas we all suffer of declining health an increasing need for support and possibly the associated death of some of the potentially closest relationships you will ever have.

Mean while back at home your kids have stopped being loveable little toddler types and have potentially turned into diabolical teenagers whose sole purpose in life seems to be making your life harder. Even if they haven’t reached this stage yet it will be looming and the calls on your time to run them to and fro to sports and other activities are high.

Career wise you are likely to have approached your peak, old enough to have some experience and young enough to be considered useful, on the other hand assuming you are not running a multi national conglomerate fulfilling your every career dream it is much more likely that work has become routine and you have become the victim of the Peter principal (people are promoted to one level above their competence) which generally makes life either boring or very stressful and because this is your lot the dream of the corner office is over.

And sounding like a good economist, on the other hand again it is this group that is called upon to be the back bone of society, donating their time in many volunteer roles to keep any number of clubs, charities community groups and the like functioning and in today’s society with minimal if any thanks and the potential for a large amount of criticism.

And if it is not bad enough that your parents health is falling apart, mid life is when doctors state talking about digital exams without a computer insight etc and your own health is not what it used to be. Lucky the dog is now as unfit as you are so you can just go for a walk around the block and pretend that “snack” exercise is sufficient to keep you looking and feeling 20.

Finally, the more traditional mid life crisis of realising that the attractive girls that you see on the street think you are a potentially creepy old man and you think they should dress properly and talk without using the word like at the beginning and end of every sentence. Damn you have turned into your father.

So it is no wonder that I have noticed an increasing number of my middle aged acquaintances who are feeling down or who are genuinely clinically depressed. The good news is that society is maturing enough after the work of John Kirwin and the like so that these folks feel secure enough to talk about it.

I suspect the bad news is there are more people out there soldiering on, well look around it is tough in the middle of your life, at a minimum share with your mates and if it is really bad get help. People as a general rule love to help. Look out for someone middle aged that’s what they do.