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this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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It's a hard problem to solve. People don't have enough money, but if you give them money then they just have to pass that money on to people who already have plenty. A realistic solution is to tax existing wealth and then pass that money back to people, but the people with the substantial share of the wealth stand a lot to lose so they lobby like crazy to stop it happening. And much of it is never declared, e.g. donations to the Taxpayers Union, NZ Initiative, etc.
What we need is a mandatory public register for lobbyists.
https://www.transparency.org.nz/blog/industry-code-of-conduct-for-lobbying
So organisations like the Taxpayers Union already register as a political organisation so they can run election ads and that sort of thing. I wonder if declaring who they represent would work, I suspect they would just say they represent the average tax payer even though that's not true at all.
Are there other countries that have properly solved this problem? I suspect not since (before this government) we were ranked high on the low corruption list, and we have this problem.