Too Much Money
A real achievement … a huge contribution. – Paul Diamond, Radio New Zealand
Drawing on new data, personal stories and historical narrative, Too Much Money: How Wealth Inequalities are Unbalancing Aotearoa New Zealand describes the regrowth of class divisions in a supposedly egalitarian nation.
Today, someone in the wealthiest 1 per cent of adults – a club of some 40,000 people – has a net worth 68 times that of the average New Zealander. Possessing such wealth opens up opportunities to live in certain areas, get certain kinds of education, make certain kinds of social connections, exert certain kinds of power. And when access to these opportunities becomes alarmingly uneven, the implications are profound.
Too Much Money is an account of the way that wealth – and its absence – is transforming the lives of people across Aotearoa. It reveals the way wealth is distributed and shows how disparities risk turning into entrenched class divisions, puncturing the myth of a ‘classless’ New Zealand. It arrives at a time of massive interest in related issues including house prices, private debt and trusts.