Wealth gap growing

The government and financial wizards would have us believe that we are, as a country, getting wealthier by the minute. The stockmarket and house prices seem to be on an unstoppable march upwards. More and more upmarket vehicles are appearing on our (clogged up) roads and the America’s Cup is coming to town.

It may come as a surprise to many that you cannot create wealth by dreaming. Wealth can only be generated by working. If you have become wealthy without doing any work then that wealth will have had to come from somewhere. Either it has been borrowed by someone in the financial chain, adding to the debt mountain, or it has been taken from someone else. The usual mechanism for this is by paying lower wages or charging higher rents than necessary. The consequence is, of course, the gap between the so-called 1% and the rest continues to grow.

Only the wilfully blind cannot see that the stresses imparted by the direction we are headed are too much for the rotting fabric of the lower stratas of our society. Unfortunately, I can only see social problems growing to a point that society ceases to function, and may in fact implode, as it is overwhelmed by increases in drug use, foetal alcohol syndrome, suicide, child poverty, anxiety and depression, homelessness, domestic violence et al. Us boomers are probably not going to be around to see a very different world from today that our grandchildren are going to have to survive in.

Geoff Orchard

Ohaupo