Whanganui letters: 'Tackling inequality requires political guts'

Green Party MP Chloe Swarbrick has said "tackling inequality will require political guts". Photo / Dean Purcell

Swarbrick, wealth, bank
"Tackling inequality in NZ requires political guts", writes Chloe Swarbrick (Chronicle, February 19) and adds: "The inherent problem with wealth inequality is that it compounds".

"Wealth makes more wealth" - echoing the dominant message of French economist Thomas Thomas Piketty in his book: Capitalism in the 21st Century.

Although Swarbrick is rightly critical of the Reserve Bank's LSAP (Large Scale Asset Purchases) programme, she ignores the mechanism used, called "Funding-to-Lend".

This involves the Reserve Bank "printing" billions of dollars each week to feed the reserves of the systemic banks in exchange for new assets (Treasury bonds).

The banks get first pickings of these on the debt markets before selling at a profit to the RBNZ.

Sound crazy? Well, it is. Considering the RBNZ has the legitimate power to buy those bonds directly without interest, enabling it to then fund the public sector without imposing a debt burden on our mokopuna. Can't exactly blame the banks for taking advantage, though.

Sadly, all our current MPs support debt-funding - as illustrated by their united support for Shane Jones' Independent Infrastructure Bill in the last Parliament.

Jones was adamant that the planned infrastructure roll-out be funded with private money, PPPs (Public-Private-Partnerships) being a particular favourite. So much for slogans about putting people before profits.

Perhaps, at the risk of sounding like Social Credit, Chloe Swarbrick might lead a change of thinking in the corridors of power.

HEATHER MARION SMITH
Gonville

Jealous of wealth?

Joanna Sprat, Oxfam's communications and advocacy director, is decrying the wealth collected by the wealth creators. She wants to take it off them and give it to the poor countries.

She is obviously advocating for a system of governance that creates poor countries. The problem is the leaders of these countries, like Joanna, think wealth is collected not created.

If she opened her jealous eyes, she would see the wealthy countries are the countries that have a lot of wealthy people, they are wealthy because they have created wealth, it trickles down, the more wealth created the more trickles down.

Most substantial undertakings need lots of money, someone has to get this money together and that's the domain of the wealth creators.

They all appear to have different driving forces; greed, ego or a drive for what they believe is success - but their wealth is not created overnight. Most start small but with due diligence they grow that wealth.

So, Joanna, of the jealous group in our society, just be thankful we have them or there would be no one for you to dream of taxing their wealth away. You know you would spend it better, don't you?

GARTH SCOWN
Whanganui

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