Imagine there was a will to fix inequality

spear-tackle an opponent into quadriplegia. Which is worse? A cathedral, made from sticks and stones, is to be rebuilt with money that could be used to feed hungry children and fund education and welfare. Which is more important? If Jesus and Mohammed, looking on arm in arm, were asked for an opinion, what would they say? Clive Shaw

Timaru Timaru and surrounding areas I wish to thank the public for their support and generosity for our recent Red Puppy Appeal. The money collected helps in the training of the guide dogs which keep our members independent.

I also thank the many volunteers who manned the various sites both days of the appeal.

I have not been informed of the amount collected in this area as this takes time to collate.

‘‘. . . But now no-one can ever say again ‘we don’t have enough money’ when we talk about issues of poverty, access to clean water, education for girls and many other social issues the world is beset with.

‘‘The problem is not that we – as society – don’t have enough resources to deal with poverty, and its causes and effects. We just don’t have enough desire,’’ well-known South African-based futurist Graeme Codrington wrote in a Facebook post.

Exactly. A question of priorities. It was a point many made, most tellingly when it became clear the White House had offered to assist with the rebuilding of Notre Dame, while huge funding shortfalls and problems affecting ordinary people remain closer to home, most notably in Puerto Rico, still massively hamstrung by the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria in 2017.

These situations are not imaginary, they’re all too real. But imagine we could actually do something about them. We could. Codrington and many others are right. It’s a question of desire, of will.

That’s what was missing for me in the decision announced by Ardern on Wednesday, a suggestion of a true collective desire to address growing inequality in New Zealand.

Yes, the tail has wagged the coalition dog, and the decision’s about pragmatism over principle, but just imagine for a second that we were all invested in what something could do for us as a society, not what it would cost us individually.

Pretty soon someone will throw out the S word here, and all the negative connotations deliberately attached to it will follow. Because capitalism’s done such a fine job of making us a united society . . . and that trickle-down economics. The best.

Sorry, got carried away with the imagining.

A society isn’t a business, it’s a collective of real people. People aren’t ‘‘cost centres’’, they’re far more than their productive output, as someone shared with me this week. If suggesting that makes me a socialist, I’ll take it. It’s about society.

A few days earlier I’d read something by author and renowned Guardian columnist George Monbiot. It’s a concept he wrote about in 2017 and has gone back to, the idea of ‘‘private sufficiency and public luxury’’.

‘‘There is an almost universal assumption in politics that you have the right to help yourself to as much of the global commons (atmosphere, soil, water, fish) as you can afford, though this reduces what is left for other people to share. You have the right to occupy as much physical space as your money can buy, regardless of the restrictions this imposes on others,’’ he writes.

It’s not true, the choice we face is between private luxury for some and public luxury for all, he writes. A simple concept that emphasises the needs of the wider populace over individuals. It addresses inequality and the state of the planet. It’s easy to imagine it working, well.

If only we could start from scratch again. Now far too big a chunk of the resources needed to make it happen is in too few hands. What it would need to work is desire, will, from those who have the ability to make the difference.

Imagine we had that.