John Key among the rich getting richer

The free market is nothing more than a myth perpetuated by a wealthy elite to maintain the status quo.

6 billion smackers! That's how loaded Graeme Hart is. Now, we've got millions and millions of people around the globe that have been literally reduced to nothing but skin and bones. Now I wonder if they are that way because food resources are extremely scarce or maybe its because they simply can't be bothered looking for food and are inherently lazy. Well-off reprobates like Mr Hart would suggest the latter to justify their insatiable lust for the dollar and to maintain a lavish lifestyle that much of the world's lower classes could only envy. The aforementioned, on the other hand, is in itself logical evidence to suggest that these people are in some form or another, down the socio-economic hierarchy in dire straits due to the rampant avarice of an small, insignificant elite.

We have the leader of the National party, who's just made it on to the 'national rich list' and looks inevitably to climb even higher, campaigning on a more moderate platform of economic policy and is insisting that National will retain Labour-instigated services such as the Working For Families package. How can one be expected to believe these people? They've cunningly fabricated lies and rhetoric through philosophies such as objectivism, libertarianism, and classical liberalism, and used them to lure the vulnerable in to accepting their empty promises of prosperity and happiness. Furthermore they've taken the lazier dole-bludging, oversized
family stereotype (whom account for a very small minority of the lower classes) to associate poverty with freeloading. Sooner or later, they will run out of excuses.

How dare the wealthy use hard work as a cover-up for what ultimately amounts to gambling and risk taking. After all, when you're hungry to the point where skin wraps tightly around your frail skeletal frame like glad wrap, the hunger pangs surely must be beyond excruciating.

" because firing people, laying people off is a natural part of a business"

Yes I know. This is a bad thing. We shouldn't encourage it - which is exactly what the free market does. When your scale of profit is so huge, you can afford to keep some workers. I know that sounds alien because compassion is seriously lacking in so many people today. It goes against the most fundamental principle of capitalism - self interest.

Honestly, does anyone think John Key actually works (or worked) so much harder than, say, you? Do you honestly think he got all his money through "hard work"?

Imagine if you were born 10,000 years ago. Are you particularly fit or strong? Or would you have been terrible at hunting and moving around a lot, and maybe die? Today different skills and attributes are favoured. Everyone who posts on this website is a beneficiary of the times.

Let's put this into perspective: for John Key to have earned $5 million a year, he must have been working about 100 times harder than the average worker (if the theory of "hard work" is to hold). Is that even possible? Is it possible for one person to work 100 times harder than an average wage earners. There will even be discrepencies between average wage earners as to how "hard" they work.

John Key went from maybe poor for a brief period of his life to riches, yes, but you cannot honestly believe it was all because he "worked hard," and defend him and other rich people when someone dares to point it out. The right conveniently interprets it as a personal attack on John Key, but it's actually an attack on the belief that fortunate people have worked hard to get where they are, and that poor people are poor only because they are lazy and useless.

Alex you have obviously never run a company, because firing people, laying people off is a natural part of a business, especially when businesses are in trouble, but I guess you would rather companies keep a full staff and collapse losing all the jobs.

julie, you obviously need to grow up. Here is a man who has gone from nothing to what he is. And yet you put him down. you should admire people who can do that, instead of people who sit on a benefit and moan about the wealthy. He doesn't flaunt his wealth, you just need to grow up. Many people have nice holiday homes, that doesn't mean he is flaunting his money, it just means you have serious problems in your own life and perfer to blame others for your sad little life.

OK. Proves he can run a business and his life, and he started from nothing which is where he will start from all over again, with the country. Let's see him do it again.
He is enjoying the rewards for success and good decisions. Hope we do the same.

If you ask me it just shows he is a smart cookie to have done so well, let's see if he can be a smart leader and put the country on the right track and not on the P.C. filled one that Uncle Helen is on.

Also why do right wingers never ever type coherently? It makes it even harder to understand the mind-boggling insanity.

Oh dear, not only do the righties miss the point, but they're also incredibly defensive. It's funny - poor people receive so much flak from the right -"dole bludgers," "lazy," "don't work hard enough." Kicking people while they're down - completely ignoring the fact that only 10% of people on a benefit at the start of a year are on it at the end of the year. And just for your information - they haven't been transferred to sickness benefits. There are fewer people on benefits now than there were during the last National government.

I suppose there's also the idea that it was only because of good economic times that the unemployment rate is so low. But the economy has been growing for more than two decades at rates that haven't been seen before then - so National had good times too. Obviously they didn't capitalise on them.

But when a rich man is attacked for sacking employees for the sake of his $5 million, you'd better watch out. When you don't condone the greed that the free market encourages, you'd better watch out. When you think money can be distributed more equitably, when you think there's no amount of "work" that makes someone deserve to live the life seen on "My supersweet sixteen" at the expense of people dying, you'd better watch out.

OK so I sit down after work and fire up the lap top to read the news Peter's is doing his Best not to lose it and the there a storm Brewing in the North so I flick on to Politics
and the leading story is John Keys Got shit loads of Money.
It just rolled of my tongue to the wife Bet Alex and Deane have had there say and shore enough flick the left Button and there's the Lefty's.

But I must thank you Both.

After reading your comments Alex (Smiling assassin) and the reason they called him that I though shit I thought this guy was alright so I Google John Keys and read the herald's bio 15 pages I now look at Keys in a new Light What an intresting Man and it is a rag to riches story. Alex he did state that he did not enjoy sacking the employee's and he went to Bat for them. Deane you should have look as it name thous Friends your talking about and your right there are a lot all with intresting comments from all over the would.

John Keys must be expecting to spend quite a bit of time holidaying in Hawaii, to have invested such an obscene amount of money in a "holiday home"..

He obviously doesn't need the NZ taxpayer funded, Prime Ministerial salary, that we slog our guts out to provide...

Call it "tall poppy" syndrome , jealousy , stupidity , moral highground, a democratic choice - whatever you like.... I don't admire and won't be voting for a man who flaunts his wealth in the faces of the people he expects to pay his salary .