The Warehouse Group founder Sir Stephen Tindall and Hire Things founder Peter Torr Smith are two of 174 millionaires to have signed the document so far.

The open letter said: "Today, we, the undersigned millionaires, ask our governments to raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently."

The letter says as Covid-19 strikes the world, millionaires have a critical role to play.

"So please. Tax us. Tax us. Tax us. It is the right choice. It is the only choice."

"No, we are not the ones caring for the sick in intensive care wards. We are not driving the ambulances that will bring the ill to hospitals. We are not restocking grocery store shelves or delivering food door to door."

"But we do have money, lots of it. Money that is desperately needed now and will continue to be needed in the future."

It goes on to stress that the pandemic crisis cannot be solved with charity alone - no matter how generous people around the world were.

They say it was the responsibility of governments and world leaders to raise the funds needed and to go onto spend and spread those funds out equally and fairly.

Statistics NZ in 2018 said while the wealthiest 20 per cent had seen their fortunes skyrocket, the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of Kiwis hadn't changed in years.

An Oxfam report, in 2018, found one per cent of New Zealanders own 28 per cent of new wealth generated the previous year - while the poorest 30 percent only got one percent of it.

Last month, the Green Party unveiled a Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) policy designed to address this inequality, which would be paid for by increasing taxes on the very wealthiest members of society.

They say it would raise $7.9 billion in its first year, "covering the GMI's costs."

The plan has been widely admonished, with members of National and ACT labelling it an "envy tax" and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying it makes "fairly heroic assumptions."

Read the letter "Millionaires for Humanity."

Source

• newshub.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: newshub.co.nz

One of the key questions facing the Tax Working Group was whether it should be aiming to reduce inequality, officials said.

A broad-based capital gains tax would help if that was the goal, according to the Inland Revenue and Treasury officials who are currently serving as the group's secretariat and who prepared the advice.

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Equality Network says it wants a New Zealand in which everyone has the resources they need to provide for their families and whanau.

The network says big imbalances of income and wealth have been "deeply destructive and unfair" and corrosive of New Zealand's social fabric.

It says New Zealand experienced its biggest increase in income disparity in the decade after the mid-1980s.

The network's aim is to reduce inequality in New Zealand to levels enjoyed by countries such as Denmark.

There, the richest tenth has an average income five times that of the poorest tenth.

That's the level New Zealand had in the early-1980s.

Currently in New Zealand that ratio is nine-to-one and the network believes a ratio of five-to-one is achievable.

The network says some direct causes of inequality include the effects on Maori of colonisation, and discrimination, as evidenced by the gender pay gap.

Other causes, like globalisation and robotic manufacturing either cannot or should not be directly opposed because they do bring benefits.

But they say politicians can reverse indirect causes of inequality.

These are tax cuts for the rich, benefit reductions, failure to build sufficient houses and restrictions on workers' bargaining powers.

The network's recommendations come under three broad headings: income inequality; wealth inequality and; addressing the long-term causes of inequality.

The network says those don't cover all the changes needed but that they would be both politically feasible and effective.

The network comprises 37 non-government organisations.

These include Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, the Catholic Bishops' agency for justice, peace and development, and the National Council of Christian Social Services, of which Catholic Social Services is a member.

Sources

• Release to media
• Full statement (PDF)
• Image Newswire

He said it encouraged people to value wealthy people and wealth - at the expense of social considerations.

"It's ideological. It comes out in publications owned by wealthy people produced for mass consumption but targeted at other relatively wealthy consumers." Continue reading

Salvation Army says the budget is a step in the right direction to correct the growing imbalance in New Zealand society between the "haves and have nots".

"Although all the areas identified by the Army have not been addressed Budget 2017 delivers a substantial boost to low income working families" said Ian Hutson the Salvation Army's social policy director.

In its media release the Salvation Army says:

• The most significant boost for low income working families will be achieved by the movement of the $14,000 tax threshold to $22,000.
• Increases in the Family Tax credit and increases in the accommodation supplement will make things easier for vulnerable working families.

The Salvation Army says while for beneficiary families the gains are not nearly as great these families will benefit from Accommodation Supplement increases and an extra $350 million of social housing rent subsidy.

"Our concern is that for the Accommodation Supplement gains to be effective, housing supply also needs to increase."

The Salvation Army had asked for a commitment of $500 million dollars in capital funding a year for social and affordable housing, but the Government's commitment in the budget to capital for housing supply is well below this.

They say while supporting Governments efforts to move people from benefits to work where possible, for some beneficiaries' health and childcare means work is not a realistic possibility.

Earlier in the year, in its written submission on the Budget Policy Statement Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand focused on four areas in its call for the government to ensure economic growth brings a better quality of life for everyone in New Zealand and that no one misses out on essentials for wellbeing.

The four areas were: the well-being of vulnerable communities; homelessness; protection of migrant workers; and climate change.

Source

• scoop.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• pndiocese.org.nz
• Image: apnonline.brightcove.com.edgesuite.net

Waikato University demographer Dr Tahu Kukutai says that New Zealand is still wasting its "demographic dividend" of young Maori and Pacific people reaching working age, as investments in health and education fail to flow through into highly paid jobs.

Dr Kukutai's data shows that Maori and Pacific incomes still show no trend towards catching up with higher-paid Europeans, and that Maori and Pacific people have lost relatively more jobs in the recent recession.

The youthful Maori and Pacific populations make up almost 27 per cent of New Zealanders aged 18 to 24, compared with only 17 per cent of the older working age group aged 25 to 64 - giving New Zealand a demographic "dividend" that other developed countries with rapidly ageing populations don't have.

But 22.7 per cent of young Maori and 20.1 per cent of Pacific people aged 15 to 24 were not in employment, education or training (Neet) last year, compared with only 9.9 per cent of young Europeans and 5.7 per cent of young Asians.

Many others have gone to Australia. Despite offsetting immigration, last year's Census revealed that New Zealand's total population aged 25 to 39 dropped by 5 per cent between 2001 and 2013. The Maori population in that prime working age group dropped by 9 per cent.

"There is a lot of unrealised potential, a lot of waste," Dr Kukutai says.

"The focus on closing the gaps tends to juxtapose groups in opposition to each other, but really what New Zealand has failed to grasp is that what's good for Maori is good for the country and that it's actually in the national interest that all those gaps that continue are remedied."

Source:

• New Zealand Herald
• Image: New Zealand Herald

The Household Incomes Report measuring the wellbeing of New Zealanders by their total after-tax takings has revealed a fall in average incomes for the first time since the early 1990s.

It shows the gap between rich and poor widened substantially in 2011, putting inequality at its highest level ever.

Continue reading

The net wealth of the 55+ in New Zealand has risen from 43% ($176 billion) of the population's total net wealth in 2002, to 52% ($492 billion) in 2011.

The rise in wealth of the 55+ age group is only partly due to this group's increasing proportion of the population. Since 2002 the 55+ age group has risen only from 19.5% to 24.7% of the population.

Commentator Bernard Hickey says "The unlucky ones were those that took on massive debts in the last five years to buy houses at the newly inflated prices. They were mostly below 40."

"This structural shift in wealth to the aged and a loading up of debt on the young is obviously not sustainable, particularly when combined with the current promises of universal superannuation from 65 and publicly funded healthcare," he says.

"With the current policies, New Zealand faces the bizarre prospect of either higher income tax rates on the increasingly indebted young to pay for pensions and "free" healthcare for the increasingly wealthy old, or huge amounts of government borrowing, which would of course have to eventually be repaid by the young."

The Roy Morgan Report is based on data from a nationwide survey of approximately 12,000 New Zealanders in the 12 months to December 2011, but also includes trended data stretching back over the past decade.

Sources

• The New Zealand Herald
• RoyMorgan.com
• Image: FitnessZone

Laws are going to be changed, requiring solo parents on a benefit to look for part-time work when their youngest child is five and fulltime work when that child turns 14.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says extensive skill training programmes and help with childcare are essential parts of her package. "We're not cutting benefits, we're trying to move people ahead and we're not being punitive," she said. "Long-term reliance on benefits is one of the worst things that can happen to families and we need to help them get off it."

Responding to claims these reforms amounted to beneficiary bashing and were unrealistic the Prime Minster, John Key expressed the opinion that plenty of women go back to work when their baby is a year old and that it makes financial sense to do so.

Labour, NZ First, the Greens and the Mana Party say there aren't any jobs available and beneficiaries are being unfairly targeted.

Child Poverty Action Group says at the time when the Government is consulting on vulnerable children, it's about to blow a huge hole in the safety net provided to thousands of children whose parents are on a benefit. Spokesman Dr Mike O'Brien says there are also issues around what provisions will be put in place to protect parents of high-needs children.He says the proposals suggest there's no understanding within the Government that the care of children is hard work.

New Zealand Council of Christian Social Service's (NZCCSS) most recent Vulnerability Report, published in September 2011, concluded that the increasing hardening of access to government benefits and housing is resulting in higher levels of vulnerability and more people wanting services from social support organisations. It said most NZCCSS members experienced another strong increase in demands for their services.

The NZCCSS is fostering debate to encourage politicians to address the impact of income inequality through government policy.

NZCCS represents six denominations — Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist and the Salvation Army — who are responsible for about 500 social service delivery sites nationwide.

The changes in benefit eligibility and access to state housing in particular seem to have been having an impact. "There has been a large drop in the number of hardship grants - including for food and benefit advances to help pay for power. This appears to be a direct result of the requirement to get budgeting advice if you need to get more than three grants a year", said NZCCSS Executive Officer, Trevor McGlinchey. "Community social service providers have been coping with a surge in budget advice referrals, and while some areas in Auckland had a drop in demand for food parcels many others have had a marked increase in requests."

"The National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) believes in principle that stage one of the Government's welfare reforms represents a positive step in the right direction," NCWNZ President Elizabeth Bang said today.

The National Business Review has an extensive list of links to blogs and opinions about the welfare reforms.

• The Manawatu Standard
• NZCCSS
• NewstalkZB
• TV3
• The Christian Century
• Image: Stuff.co.nz

New Zealand families are under growing financial stress as stagnating wages and salaries prove inadequate to cover spiralling costs - and even top-tier earners are feeling the squeeze.

According to Statistics New Zealand's Household Income Survey, 29,200 more families now rate themselves as having incomes too low to meet their daily needs than in the same survey four months before John Key's first term.

In June 2007, the number of households rating themselves income-poor was 254,100. That number has now risen to 283,300.

While some of that is due to natural growth in household numbers, there is also a clear erosion in the belief by many households across the spectrum that their incomes are adequate.

In 2007, the proportion rating their incomes as "not enough" was 16.23%. It's now 17.57%.

Continue reading Rob Stock's article "New Zealand families feel the income squeeze".

• New Zealand families feel the income squeeze
• Image: Habitat for Humanity