Acting on consequences of inequality and greed

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

I’ve long said that affordable housing for the elderly or singles is a fast-looming problem.

If people earn incomes that need to be topped up by the government for most of their lives, how are they supposed to buy their own home? They can barely survive.

Then when they get to the age where they retire, there aren’t enough state or council units for those who don’t own a home.

Poverty in the elderly is increasing.

I am pleased to see this Government thinking ahead, though, with smaller homes being built. This should have been done decades ago instead of social housing units being sold.

There are dire lifetime social consequences to becoming wealthy through paying your workers too little.

Someone always loses in a pyramid game.

The rising minimum wage is going some way to address this but businesses also need to reduce their sometimes enormous profit margins as well.

The perceived wealth of those who own several overvalued homes charging unaffordable rents could also collapse.

To stay wealthy you need people who have money to buy your goods or services, or rent your homes.

Increasing poverty and reducing the number of takers will affect your bottom lines.

In addition, the results of growing inequality and greed are more crime and deprivation, bad educational achievements, poor health and desperation in general.

The Government is trying to address these consequences but as a society, we all need to care for each other, do our share and be more inclusive than we have been.

We should be better than that.

Mary-Ann De Kort