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What's terrifying is that so many in lower levels of prosperity seem to just ignore the facts, and persist in the pathetic and quite desperate hope wealth will somehow magically 'trickle down.' As is so frightily evident, the trickle from the filthy rich is dwindling at a rate competing with their failing prostates! They have no motive to let any of their mostly easily acquired goodies go to anyone else's pocket 🤑 🤦🤬

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Exactly! It’s excruciating to watch people who have so much more in common with the working class continually side with people who wouldn’t put them out if they were on fire!

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God, I love this so much. And if I may, I’d like to give a shout-out to my employer (Auckland Council), for acting assessing and correcting gender and ethnicity pay disparities last year. Those of us who aren’t white and male had salary adjustments to ensure that we were no longer being underpaid. So good.

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👏👏👏 there is some ongoing mahi happening on pay transparency which I think is the only way to address the gap.

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I noticed that article too. Apparently affluence is simply a matter of mindset. Just feel rich and behold you will be. People who struggle to make ends meet just have the wrong attitude. Jeez.

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Utterly ridiculous!

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And actually irresponsible journalism - or not journalism at all. As bad as the “Another 23-year-old who worked hard and now has 17 houses” story, you see on repeat, where said 23-year-old actually got a leg up from ma and pa and worked hard means asked Dad nicely and came out of Uni with no debt cos ma and pa paid for that too.

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I thought you were taking about the herald’s Max Key interview at first - where he says he got into property after taking to his dad about how to build up “massive wealth”. I do feel sorry for him in some ways (well the kid him). But who needs massive wealth?!!

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That line was incredible eh? Still blows my mind.

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How can so many people apparently think this any way ok.

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My six year old is intent on becoming rich. It’s become an unhealthy obsession (he’s recently got an add diagnosis), so we’re still figuring out how to navigate obsessions. It started off very naively on our part with getting him motivated into household chores and learning his numbers. Anyway, we’re currently at a campground, he found a rusty old pétanque set someone has discarded and he made a ‘shop’ to sell it and other associates treasures and artworks of superhero villains. It blew my mind but some lovely old man bought the game for $7! I am torn between pride at his entrepreneurship and panic that I’m raising a white male capitalist 😬

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Haha mine too. They want to be YouTube superstars 🙄🫠🥴🥴🥴

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Or like my nephew who used to obsessively Google the net worth of every famous and/or rich person he knew and gave up his 10 year old dream of being a police officer because it didn’t pay much. The good news is he was raised by good parents (like you ladies) who know that wealth is not the be all and end all of success and happiness. So now at just turned 16, while he wants to be comfortable and live well he knows that there are other things more important and has a strong social and community conscience.

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Found the RNZ item. Report from Oxfam called Survival of the Richest. Increasing inequality of wealth on a global scale. 1% of the richest have 2x as much wealth as the combined total of THE REST OF THE WORLD PUT TOGETHER. The report recommends a 60% tax rate for the richest as currently they contribute only 4cents in every tax dollar.

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Yep! It’s an amazing report. I linked to it in the piece. Oxfam do them annually.

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Thems fighting words. The lead story on RNZ news at 10pm was about the rich getting richer while most of the people in the world get poorer. Can’t recall the details but it was calling for a complete redistribution of wealth. Great writing Emily.

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This makes me both laugh and cry, you're so on the money.

Baby steps in the right direction, are you familiar with https://www.mindthegap.nz/ they're trying to get transparency around the pay gap which we can only hope will make s difference over time.

In the meantime thank god we have you to put a good spin on it 🤣#growthmindset

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Yes I love Mind The Gap! I mean I don’t but you know what I mean. Such good and shareable info.

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January 17, 2023
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I actually meant millions - if you look at the comments about tax in Aotearoa it’s about millionaires and they’re our richest. What “rich” means is a matter of opinion I suppose. You can be philosophical I suppose and say it’s “never having to look at your bank account” or “always being able to buy what you need each day”. But undoubtably the author of the original story is rich. We are very fond of saying in NZ someone is “asset rich” but money poor or whatever and in my opinion it’s bullshit and is used to try to breach a class divide. There’s no earthly reason why someone should own 30 homes.

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We also don’t have easy data about wealth in Aotearoa - which I link to. The rich don’t like to talk about just how much they own.

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