New Zealand's Two-Tiered Economy: A Game in Progress

Hasbro recently launched an updated version of NZ Monopoly at the Sky Tower in Auckland. The game's new properties include Hobbiton, a nod to New Zealand's cultural heritage. However, the game's original creator, Lizzie Magie, would have been appalled by the celebration. Magie designed the game as 'The Landlord's Game' to illustrate the problem with land speculation and advocate for a land tax.

Magie's game was meant to show how property accumulation enriches wealthy land barons while impoverishing their tenants. In contrast, New Zealand has refused to implement taxes on land, capital, or wealth, resulting in a two-tiered system of housing haves and have-nots. The top 10% of New Zealanders own roughly half of all wealth, with the largest share invested in property.

The new NZ Monopoly board features the Sky Tower as its most valuable piece of real estate. This is a stark reminder of the country's failure to address rising inequality. Opportunity, a political party, has advocated for implementing a land tax similar to Magie's original concept. However, other parties have feinted in the direction of change but ultimately propose only mildly augmented versions of the status quo.