Culture hack | Zambezi Kiwi

100 years of communism

April 5, 2017

Let’s meander through the Museum of Marxism today. It’s a good time to do it, because the oldest exhibit is 100 this year.

It’s just there on the left, in fact where you see Lenin’s Bolshevik uprising in 1917. That was where the little child conceived by Marx and Engles first entered the world, and was christened “communism”. This baby idea that would soon storm the world is decorated in red flags. Red for the blood of the tens of millions whose lives it demanded in the name of equality, freedom and true justice.

In the Soviet Union alone, as you can see, the bones of 20 million people are piled under communism’s smiling face. Those bones were earned through war, through the purging of those with different ideas, or through starvation induced by property and industry reforms. Academics argue over the body count. Communism didn’t care enough to chronicle the names of the workers it murdered while claiming to rescue them.

At our next exhibit you can see the hammer and the sickle in the hands of Mao Zedong. He too stands atop a pile of bones taken from 65 million people. With the hammer he destroyed thousands of years of “bourgeois” culture, with the sickle he culled comrades in ways so cruel, and in numbers so great, it would make a normal human cry to think about. And still, communism didn’t care to record their names.

Communism also made a move into Cambodia and his lust for blood was still not satisfied. As he had every where he went, he killed dissidents, intellectuals, those from different ethnic or political groups and he killed the religious. He claimed around 2 million lives through disease, starvation and torture, out of 8 million people.

In the other exhibits, of course, we find communism calling workers of the world to unite. And they do unite, in every one of the scores countries in which he is or was present. Under the guise of redistributed wealth he unites them in poverty. Under the guise of equality communism unites workers in some of the most unequal nations. Under the guise of justice, communism unites them as victims of terrible human rights abuses. Under the guise of freedom he unites them in an intellectual and political prison. His hollow-eyed citizens don’t even have the energy to laugh anymore at the words “equality, freedom and true justice”.

There five nations where the dying man still maintains a firm grip: China, North Korea, Loas, Vietnam and Cuba. Perhaps they are the five points of the communist star, but none shines as a model for freedom or equality.

We have reached the end of our tour for today, and just outside the back door (for they refuse to come in) you will find intellectuals – even in New Zealand – telling you that old man communism is yet “untested” and may still work under the right conditions. They have never lived in communist states, nor have their families. You will know them by the hammer and sickle on their hats, or the red star on their shirts – symbols that, on body count alone, are ten times more offensive than the swastika.

These intellectuals will say Marx was right, it is just his followers that got it wrong. Ask them how many more they are willing to sacrifice to find out if this is true, and how much more time we will need.

Because, as the Little Black Book of Communism says, the body count is almost at 100 million, making Marx and Engle’s ideas the most deadly ever conceived in human history once they were put into action.

Surely it is time to put communism in the museum forever.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz

The bells are tolling

April 5, 2017

It is the hottest issue in international politics, and now it is knocking at our door too.

Immigration. Yes, across Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, porus borders are taking their toll.

Locals are tired of watching the values they grew up with erased, the traditions they cherished replaced, and the culture they saw their parents work hard to build constantly denigrated.

They are tired, too, of politicians who skirt the issues over fears of sounding racist. If you want evidence of that just cast your eye across Europe.

In the Netherland’s the Party for Freedom has just won an the second-highest number of seats in Parliament, and joins an assortment of right-leaning parties that stole votes from the left and sent it to an historic defeat.

The same is happening in France where the National Front may yet win the election with Marie Le Pen at its head. Meanwhile, the Alternative for Germany Party leader says immigration guards may have to turn guns on illegal immigrants, while his party continues to ride high in the polls. Greece’s Golden Dawn, Hungary’s Jobbik, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Law and Justice Party in Poland, the Sweden Democrats – the list goes on.

That’s not to mention the seismic shift that was Brexit in the United Kingdom, or President Trump’s win in the United States.

All of these parties and people have swooped into their respective Parliaments with growing numbers of seats or into the public consciousness with increasing effectiveness.

And all share the common thread of nationalism. All have picked up on an under-estimated public sentiment against unfettered immigration.

I know, I know. New Zealand is slightly different. We don’t have boats arriving or borders rammed up against another country, and we certainly need many of the immigrants who choose to make our country home (I’m even married to one of them).

But even so, after two years of the words “record immigration figures” appearing most months, New Zealanders are growing wary.

Towards the end of last year polls started picking up on a growing public discontent with New Zealand’s endless run of record-breaking immigration figures.

And now the latest numbers are out, with at least one bank saying our population could hit 5 million in three years, thanks to the influx of 60,000 people a year.

It is the fifth straight month of record immigration gains.

And those figures aren’t just made up of returning Kiwis seeking refuge from the political storms or sluggish economies around Europe.

They are made up of “a real mix of people coming for different reasons”, according to economist Daniel Snowden.

That means any slowdown in the numbers will take time, “because if one factor changes and falls away, you’ve still got four or five groups of people coming.”

Already New Zealand has had political parties dip a toe into the voter sentiment these numbers might create -but it wasn’t on the far-right. It was the Labour Party calling foul on the number of immigrants sweeping into the country. In October last year Labour Leader Andrew Little said Government efforts to reduce New Zealand’s record runs of immigration was overdue and under-played.

He cited concern over immigrants taking local jobs.

He said there were “a number of growing issues”, calling them “acute”.

That follows his suggestions that people with Chinese-sounding names were behind Auckland’s high house prices in 2015 – an issue he pegged as being about foreign investors, but which the Chinese community in New Zealand saw as being about race.

But after Trump’s immigration policy scandal, Andrew Little suddenly back-tracked. And he has been quiet on immigration ever since.

And that leaves Winston Peters of New Zealand First mining anti-immigration voter sentiment, which is stock standard New Zealand politics.

Still, let’s hope the government hears the warning bells before voters start looking for Europe-styled solutions here.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz

The death of feminism

March 20, 2017

Feminism is dying, and Rosemary McLeod is to blame. Well, she and a small, but vocal, group of women.

The reason, of course, is that they have hijacked a movement that used to be about equality, which a lot of women can relate to, and transformed it into a movement that is all about man-hating, which virtually no women can relate to.

If you want an excellent example of this please read McLeod’s column on the death of Jane Roe.

Under the guise of women’s rights, she rails against “old white men”, “paternalistic doctors” and “loser” absconding fathers who don’t take responsibility for impregnating women and who need to be fed nausea-inducing drugs while begging for mercy at the hands of a panel of women.

Don’t get me wrong. Fathers who abandon their families do something terribly, terribly wrong. But responding with mild torture doesn’t right the wrong. Trying to teach men to be men so they don’t keep repeating the cycle is helpful.

Such columns are deeply disturbing, of course. After all, any woman with a brain knows that equality means treating men equally as well as we treat women. When a lady comes along demeaning old white blokes for being old white blokes (which isn’t their fault at all) we rightly get a little suspicious. After all, what we didn’t like before was when women were demeaned for being women (which isn’t their fault at all). Simply switching the sex that is being demeaned isn’t equality. It’s just carrying out the same wrongs in reverse order.

When she begins to hint at a grand conspiracy of women-hating men, we feel quite uncertain. After all, as women we know that, mostly, we like blokes and think they are really alright. Sure there are a few women around who hate men, but they’re a minority. So, we reason, it seems fair to believe that, like us, the vast majority of blokes probably quite like women too. Sure, there will be a few around who really hate us, but a grand conspiracy is just a step too far.

By the time McLeod gets to suggesting mild torture as revenge for historic wrongs, we really know we’re not talking about equality anymore. We’re talking about misandry. Man-hating.

And that is why the vast majority of women don’t actually call themselves feminists anymore. The liberal Huffington Post in America found this out when it did a poll with YouGov in which only 20 per cent of women identified themselves as feminists, despite the majority claiming they believed in equality of the sexes.

The Fawcett Society received the same shock in the UK, where its poll showed that only 7 per cent of women now identify as feminists, despite two thirds believing in equality of the sexes. The feminist organisation that did the study tried to make the best of the numbers, by haplessly concluding that Britain was a nation of “hidden feminists”.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any statistics on feminism in New Zealand, but I doubt the numbers would be too different.

After all, the movement has been hijacked by misandry here too. There are plenty of opinion pieces, just this week, to pick from.

You could check out why Kasey Edwards won’t let men babysit her children. Or you could read subtly demeaning comments about contraception and men in Michelle Duffy’s piece on contraception.

And the simple fact of the matter is that man-hating is not mainstream. Because most blokes are brilliant. They are responsible fathers, good husbands, and hard workers who might occasionally give us reason to complain, but don’t give us reason to hate. They are, put simply, equally as brilliant as women.

Until the violently vocal feminists realise that, they’re fighting a losing battle.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz

The right to die

March 13, 2017

For the last couple of days I’ve been really blessed to be part of a very respectful, sincere and personal discussion online over the subject of euthanasia.

It was all sparked by this little video.

I’m so glad to be talking about it, and hearing those who disagree, simply because I think it is a topic most of us haven’t really bothered to listen in on yet. We simply make up our minds, then move on.

But when you get digging through that 21,000 high stack of submissions made on the bill, you find an unbelievably vast array of life experiences and reasons both for an against euthanasia. It really makes you think. It might even change your mind.

As I mentioned to those in the discussion online, I made up my mind on this issue after a huge amount of reading and research. Initially I didn’t think it was such a bad idea. By the end of my reading I was convinced it is a terrible idea.

The reason (if you are interested) goes a little something like this: Euthanasia laws create a right to die, for people who fit a certain category, and generally are introduce with very good protections in place. However, over time, people in excluded categories begin to claim their right to die is being discriminated against. As a brief internet search shows, this is already happening in countries where euthanasia is legal for the depressed, children and the elderly without terminal illness, among others.

So, the evidence shows us that when we create a right to die, the original restrictions around it are soon challenged, and removed. After all, if there is a right to die, how can we tell some people they are not allowed it? It gets even harder to say no when international law shows that right to die being upheld by all sorts of people the law was never originally intended for.

As the groups of people allowed to die grows, the protections in the law weaken.

If the elderly can die when they feel life is complete, despite not suffering terminal illness, those being bullied and abused by relatives or pressured to pass on an inheritance, might easily end up euthanased. New Zealand’s media is full of stories of elderly people being abused like this, and through the budgeting service we help out with, I know elderly people often get themselves into dire financial straits because they love their children too much to say no.

The examples go on, with the disabled, the suicidal and those experiencing any sort of suffering at any time all being placed at risk by the trajectory this law places us on, in my view.

Add to this the fact that people are people, and we break the law. What is to stop us from doing so with euthanasia, where we would have to rely on difficult concepts like consent or coercion to decide if a person was murdered or not, instead of relying on the toxicology report or coroners findings? There is always a balance with every law between the freedom of choice for an individual and the potential impact on others in that society. Here, the potential impact includes undesired death, and to me, that is just too high a cost.

But that is just my voice. There are 16,000 others (that’s three in four submitters) who made their opposition clear on this, including doctors, vets, the terminally ill and Maori. If you would prefer to hear their thoughts, head to www.16000voices.org.

I heart humanities

February 24, 2017

The humanities are critical, in both senses of the word. But it is not the government killing them. It is us.

That is why I couldn’t support the Love Humanities day this week, where professors and students around the country spoke against Government funding cuts and shrinking departments. That is despite my ardent love of the humanities.

You see I’m a third generation writer with several cousins in the business. Words and ideas were my friends before friends were my friends. I wrote a diary from the moment I could form letters, wrote stories throughout my childhood, wrote dramatic journals as a teenager, wrote essays at university and then stories (again) for my job. And I read. A lot.

I can still remember first learning the word “philosopher” and being filled with awe. I can remember walking past the library at University and catching my breath every single time (despite it’s hideous exterior) at the thought of all the thoughts it contained. To think that I – the first in my immediate family – was worthy of walking such hallowed ground! That was something to be proud of.

I thought.

As the years have scurried by, I’ve become less and less sure of that sentiment. The humanities let me down you see.

Badly.

I arrived fresh face thinking I would be immersed in a cauldron of ideas so potent I would barely survive. But I discovered that humanities in New Zealand didn’t mean the clashing of ideas. It meant rapid indoctrination into narrow left wing politics, and it meant learning the unspoken expectation that you must agree.

It didn’t mean talking about how Fox News was evil for pushing a right wing view, then pointing out that CNN was its equal on the left. It simply meant talking about how Fox News was evil.

It didn’t mean arguing about the meaning of life, it meant writing essays on the meaning of ripped jeans. (Yes, actually).

It didn’t mean being able to give your opinion openly in an atmosphere of respect. It meant getting scathing looks and condescending remarks if, for example, your social work class was discussing the then anti-smacking bill and you argued abusers were already law-breakers so another law wouldn’t work.

Most distressingly, it often didn’t mean much more than reading books our professors wrote, then obediently regurgitating quotes in essays. That meant I ended up hidden away in my room with a copy of Plato’s Republic during my spare time at University, while I studied the (let’s be honest) less worthy works of my Professors.

And all the while the only real debate and discussion was between left-wingers and extreme left-wingers, both trying to out-smart each other by being the more shocking.

In short, intelligence, courtesy, reason, critical thinking, and an open mind were not required. Only the desire to drink copiously while frittering away taxpayer money discussing the evils of capitalism.

It really did feel like the only requirements for graduation were a healthy dose of victimhood and wealth-hating, along with the sure and steady knowledge that “the system” was behind every problem in the world, so no one (except the wealthy) was really to blame for anything.

Hence the well-worn joke that graduates from other degrees make when you say you studied humanities: “Would you like fries with that?” (The idea being humanities degrees get you work only at fast food chains).

You see, what we have in New Zealand isn’t humanities. It is political and values indoctrination class masquerading as critical thinking. It is censorship pretending to be open-mindedness. It is thoughtlessness saying it thinks.

That is why I say it is not lack of government funding killing the humanities. Us artsy people are doing a great job of that all on our own.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz

Russian Hackers: The full story

February 20, 2017

If you thought the tension between America and Russia had nothing to do with our fair land, think again.

We have been thrust into the so-far cyber battle. I know, because I was on the front lines.

That’s right, the faceless force cloaked in fear and mystery that made headlines during the US Presidential elections has turned its dreaded hand to the sweet shores of New Zealand.

Well, to my computer, to be exact.

You see, I recently emerged from a brutal battle with Russian hackers.

I may have accidentally stumbled into the battle, but I’d rather not think of myself as that stupid. So instead, I’m blaming Russia for making the computer virus I stumbled into.

In an innocent search for a baby website, I must have wandered from safe internet highways and entered a cold, dark side alley.

Still wrapped up in my warm thoughts of babies, I didn’t notice, until suddenly the website wouldn’t open.

“Odd,” I thought, “I’ve been here before with no problems.”

Out of the blue, a little notification popped up. Our internet browser fonts were out of date, would we like to update?

My warm thoughts of babies were getting colder, but not because I was suspicious. The realisation that my little boy would soon wake from his nap was creeping up on me, and I knew I needed to hurry up.

“Yes,” I thought to myself, “I would like to update. Somehow Will is always behind in these things.” I clicked the affirmative, and a massive green arrow suddenly appeared at the bottom left-hand corner of my screen, gyrating up and down with excitement.

The notification box now read “Click on the update and then click “Run” to download your font”.

I would like to say I got suspicious at this point, but I didn’t. I was too busy thinking that I didn’t have time for this.

I clicked on the box, and the mouse hovered briefly over the word “Run” before a tiny little click invited the deadly cyber disease known as a virus onto the computer.

At that point, Kepler woke up, so I walked off to get him.

It wasn’t until hubby asked me why I had changed his computer language to Russian later in the day that I realised what I had done.

By that stage the hackers had all of our Word and Excel documents, and they were quickly making their way into hubby’s company’s files via a shared Dropbox account.

Hubby called the IT guy. The stealth attack was about to be countered, and demolished, by the forces of good, I thought contentedly to myself.

And at first, things were looking up. IT guy charged the hacker line and re-gained the Dropbox account. The hackers pulled back to focus on hubby’s computer.

At that stage it became apparent that the forces of good are only so much protection against stupidity. After a long and arduous battle with the hackers, the IT guy lost the war over the computer.

Mostly, it was because we were unwilling to pay the US$70 ransom money to get our files back.

That being said, we didn’t want to pay the money because the majority of our files were also saved in the cloud, a factor the hackers had overlooked in their otherwise carefully executed and lethal attack.

On that count, I consider us to have outmanoeuvred the hackers, which really makes the whole battle a draw.

It is only now that we have a functional computer back (minus Word and Excel documents), that I’ve been able to emerge from the trauma of the attack and speak about it.

And what I really want to say is this: Be careful out there New Zealand. The internet is a dangerous place.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz

Who will you vote for?

February 15, 2017

It’s the all important date that determines the fate of so much and so many. Election day. This week Prime Minister Bill English announced that New Zealanders will select the future direction of their nation on September 23, and already the electioneering gears of every political party will be whizzing into action.

Which policies and platforms will resonate with people most? What are the issues that Kiwis care about? How best to market party leaders and messages?

Is it immigration and jobs, as Americans and Britons believe? Or perhaps law and order? Maybe the issue that sits under the skin of most Kiwis is education or the economy?

Whatever the case I would like to suggest that all of those issues hinge on one thing: the thing that every election should really be about.

It is a six letter word that has greater influence in a justice system than a Judge or law maker. It’s the tiny word that has greater sway over your chances of entering a life of crime or unemployment than rehabilitation funding or the amount paid out for the dole. It is the simple little word that underlines the findings of almost every aspect of our very own Dunedin study when it comes to the outcomes of individuals in our society.

It’s the word that speaks more strongly than teachers or their pay systems regarding the educational outcomes of children, according to international research. Its syllables have more to say about your future financial security and contribution to the economy than your socio-economic status or social engagement levels.

It is the sound that echoes longest about your likelihood of maintaining safe, stable and nurturing relationships.

That humble little word is family.

It is family that we really need to talk about if we sincerely want to make the world a better place. Good laws, great wages, and fantastic jobs are wonderful things, but more important are good dads, great mums and fantastic marriages.

That is because good laws don’t make for law-abiding citizens, good parents do. Great wages don’t make for wealthy people, children who have learned to manage money wisely do. Fantastic jobs don’t make for a stunning economy, young people who can stick in them long-term and work hard do.

Strong and stable families are the institution that underpins and strong and stable country.

That’s why every child in New Zealand both needs and deserves the right to know both their parents wherever possible.

That is why we need schools that stick to the job of teaching kids facts and figures and that let parents do the job of teaching children about sex, life, identity and how to think.

That is why we need a justice system that recognizes children have an inherent right to know who made them and why. One complimented by social services that encourage mums and dads, as far as is possible, to grow happy, healthy marriages and one that benefits them for choosing to stick together.

That is why we need an economy and jobs that push parents out the door at day’s end to be back home with their families, and support systems in place not for early childhood education but for parents to spend more time with their kids.

We need a society where strong, stable relationships produce strong, stable individuals who have the time, energy and finances to look around their neighbourhood and see its needs – whether it is the single mother who just needs a meal made after a big day, or the immigrant kid struggling to learn English.

Yes, we need to vote for family this election.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz

I’m back!

February 15, 2017

Hello! And sorry about the two week silence there…it turns out I downloaded a virus onto the computer and so we’ve been offline for the past wee while.

So while you have been wondering where your latest update is, Will’s IT guy at work has been battling Russian hackers tirelessly in a desperate effort to save our Word and Excel documents.

He failed, mostly because we decided not to pay the $70 ransom money to get the documents back. That being said, the documents were pretty much all saved on the Cloud anyway, which the hacker’s failed to factor in to their attack, so I’m going to call the battle a draw in the end.

(As a side note, don’t accidentally go onto a website called bounty.SOMETHING WEIRD when you mean to go onto a website called bounty.COM, and then take the advice of said website to download a new font).

Anyway, the main point is we’re functional again. Another point is that I have learned the vast and endless depths of my husband’s graciousness. Who else would look gently at their very silly wife and tell her its okay after discovering Russian hackers infiltrating his company via his laptop?!

Only Will!

Anyway, onward and upward with the blogging I say. Keep an eye out in the next couple of days for those updates.

When being progressive is regressive

January 31, 2017

The irony was almost unbearable. Amidst the swaying crowd of protestors placards were heaved up from the ground and held high overhead. Slowly, steadily, 1000 humans began to move along Queen Street.

And as they did so, smiling grandly beneath the words they had scrawled upon bits of wood or cardboard, they were filled with a sense of jubilation.

They were here, under the shining sun, and they were going to make a difference.

It’s just that it was all so confusing.

The signs didn’t help matters. There was one proclaiming “my body my rights”. It didn’t mention any responsibilities, which usually precede rights, but that wasn’t the confusing part. Apparently the slogan is one of those commonly used arguments that prove abortion is ok. Of course, if it was our body being aborted, we wouldn’t be alive, so I’m going to assume someone missed a word out and the sign should have read “my baby’s body, my rights”.

That made me feel a little edgy, I’ll admit. After all, demanding the right to kill the little body inside your own body didn’t quite fit with the dignified air of moral superiority and compassion with which the demand was made. It was a bit too incongruous for me.

I felt the same about a sign that read “Sex is beautiful, reproduction is optional”. It didn’t sound so nice when I put thought about what it really meant: “Sex is beautiful, babies are optional”. I didn’t particularly want the right to kill my baby.

Another sign popped into view and this one read “I won’t tolerate intolerance”. I couldn’t quite figure out what to make of it. Was this woman saying she couldn’t tolerate herself? How does one not tolerate oneself? Ought we all be following her example to be good, liberal, feminist progressives? And most puzzlingly, how were we to create a society free of intolerance if we were all desperately busy not tolerating?

Yet another sign read “Our strength is in diversity”. “Excuse me,” I asked the woman, “does that mean I’m allowed to have a different opinion on abortion because the signs are doing a wonderful job of convincing me it’s not a good idea?” She said diversity of opinion was fine so long as we all had the same opinion.

I had rather a tough time trying to work that out, and in the end I gave up. I turned my mind to wondering whether it was possible to have diversity without diversity of thought, and decided that it wasn’t.

What baffled me most of all was that the Women’s March on Washington didn’t actually end up in Washington. It ended in Myers Park.

Not a police officer was in sight, according to the MC, “because women are perceived to be safe”. I felt again the strong pangs of uncertainty. Was that a compliment or a horrid, sexist remark by our men and women in blue? Should the crowd react by proving the stereotype, or by smashing things and hitting people to prove such sexism wrong?

I must confess I missed most of the speeches from then on. I was too busy thinking that there was no use trying, it was quite evident I would never make a good feminist, liberal, progressive.

I tuned back in as the crowd was being told that “today gives us an opportunity to just begin”. And then everyone went home.

Actually, I thought to myself, I’m not sure that I want to fit in.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz

Why inequality doesn’t matter

January 21, 2017

I don’t care about inequality. I confess. It’s heresy in this day and age, I know. But the plain and simple fact is I would rather be doing something useful with my time.

So it was with teeth gritted that I worked my way through Oxfam’s latest attempt at stirring the proletariat up to overthrow the billionaires. And I am still getting over the effort, to be honest.

First, I read how two Kiwi billionaires (who both live overseas) are worth as much as the poorest 30 per cent combined, and how the problem was “big businesses and the “extremely wealthy” are avoiding taxes, keeping wages down and paying producers less”.

I trudged through reports on the way in which Oxfam’s main source, Credit Suisse compiles numbers. You know, how it judges people based on assets, and therefore considers those with university debt, about to step into six figure jobs, as poorer than subsistence farmers in Africa. Oh, and the source for the wealthy was Forbes Magazine.

In fact, according to Forbes Magazine, this way of calculating things also means there are more poor people in the US and Europe than in China. Oh, and that wealthy 1 per cent that own more than the world’s poorest 50 per cent…well, the included in that poorest 50 per cent they are up against is, once again, European and American University students. Forgive me for saying the Oxfam definition of “poor” seems a mockery for those really struggling with poverty.

And that brings me to my next point. I would haved liked to have had the energy left to focus on the real problems in New Zealand society, as I’ve said, like how our poorest families are faring.

Because the truth of it is that inequality isn’t actually important when it comes to dealing with poverty. After all, we would all be perfectly equal if we were all just as poor as each other, but we certainly wouldn’t all be better off.

So the gap between our two billionaires and the bunch at the bottom isn’t what matters when it comes to poverty. What matters is the middle.

The you and me.

And I have a bone to pick with my fellow Millennials on this one. You see the combined wealth of those in the middle outstrips that of the 2 billionaires whom Oxfam headhunts (by how much they, strangely, are unwilling to say).

There are plenty in my age group who swan around with iPhones and branded clothes and $300 haircuts and rack up debt on credit cards, then Tweet about how irresponsible the billionaires are when it comes to giving back.

We, to our great shame, are the generation who share Facebook posts around the world about how bad business people are, but we don’t know whether our own neighbours are struggling. In fact, we don’t even know our neighbours.

We, I’m very ashamed to say, have redefined compassion from meaning “suffering with” to meaning “I made a post about it”.

Far too often, those of us in the middle of the Oxfam report, between the have-nots and the have-loads, between the baby-boomers and Generation Z, do not lift a finger to fix poverty. And yet we cumulatively own so much.

That’s why I can’t be bothered with inequality. All it does is point the finger at someone else and say they are responsible for fixing a problem perfectly within our reach to solve.

And poverty – not inequality – is the real problem, along with lazy, irresponsible millennials.

One thing is certain, we have more dollars than sense.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz