The Prize for the (only) Kiwi billionaire who's widely read, doesn't only think about money & isn't afraid to put his views into writing goes to .. Bob Jones.

Its not easy to keep up with the Joneses, especially during a cost-of-living crisis. At 84 years old, Sir Bob Jones is more interested in the world, and has more interesting observations to make about it, than any other big-business owner in NZ. Its hard to keep up with this Jones, but not on the money front - in terms of reading, writing & public commentary. So Sir Bob gets the inaugural DownToEarth.Kiwi Prize for, "NZ Billionaire who doesn't take himself seriously and who has things to say to help NZ that make sense". He has stuff in common with Elon Musk. Though he hasn't invented as much, Jones has a big achievement even Elon hasn't pulled off - he single handedly started a new political party & had the genius to name it, "The New Zealand Party". Winston went & plagiarized the name, adding the word "First" to the end of it. By adding that word, Winston turned his party into one more nationalistic & protectionist than Sir Bob's more liberal & libertarian one. Had MMP been in place back in the 1980s when Sir Bob started his NZ Party and won 12.2% of the vote, he would've had more seats than the Green's won at our last election.

What's impressive about Sir Bob is that he's never been afraid to write & say what he thinks, often infused with comedy. Not so practically every other billionaire in NZ who mostly have, in my view, betrayed folks like me. They've never been supportive. They mostly give money to all political parties. One of them once told me that he didn't care who was in power, since he makes money regardless. Others have rebuffed me when I've pleaded for moral (never monetary) support (since I run on a zero budget) saying, "Look mate, my philosophy is, if you're making money, then don't rock the boat". I heard that line at the NZ Initiative whilst attending its meetings on behalf of a wealthy libertarian Kiwi who'd decamped abroad with his French citizenship. Another (almost) billionaire, Alan Gibbs, like Sir Bob, has also never been afraid to publicly air his political views. They are warrior types. As for the rest of today's Kiwi's rich list types, when they're quoted in the news these days, its mostly to tell us what good people they are & bleat about how they would like to pay more taxes because they believe in equity, or that capital taxes are a good idea. Or they try pretending they're in favor of some dubious social cause that wont help NZ's prosperity but is rather due to their own private aim of wangling social standing and making their employees like them more. They know who they are.

Technical Econ Note: Does the "Gross" in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) explain the degradation of NZ's assets?

It's gradually dawning on Kiwis that the cost of fixing NZ's depleted infrastructure is fast becoming unmanageable. The run-down Whangarei hospital needs $1 billion spent on it and the decaying Dunedin hospital $3 billion to make them fit for purpose. The breaking interisland ferry needs $3 billion if it is to have a rail-enabled replacement. Wellington, with its tunnel plans & leaky water supply, wants more billions to fix those problems. Meanwhile Auckland has no second harbour crossing. The proposed highway from Whangarei to Auckland, promised in the Coalition Agreement, and so exempt from cost-benefit, will gobble up much of the money that should've been spent on these other projects.

So what's Gross Domestic Product got to do with it? Not many people know this - you have to be curious about one of the less-interesting topics in economics, namely how GDP is measured, to be into it. But the "Gross" in Gross Domestic Product refers to the fact that depreciation is not deducted from the total. It's a "gross" figure, not a net one. In company accounts, by contrast, depreciation is deducted from revenues when working out how well the firm is doing. If you're into accounting, the reason is important. It's to ensure funds are being set aside to do capital spending in the future to replace the firm's assets as they get worn out. You're not meant to declare a profit before you can say you're able to keep the firm operating at a similar capacity. Otherwise you could declare big profits now and then in a few years time have to tell shareholders you're bankrupting since your buildings & machines don't work anymore. Not so with GDP. It measures the total value of production within the boundaries of nation, without expenses like depreciation subtracted. Its closest comparator in company accounts is "sales".

It may sound a trivial, academic point, but its not. Successive NZ governments have tricked people into thinking that because GDP has been (weakly) increasing most years, we're not doing too badly. But they've not been investing in our future. They have not been doing the necessary investments to keep the productive capacity of the nation intact. They've allowed depreciation to diminish tens of billions of value from our hospitals, schools, water supplies and more, and the public have, in a sense, been conned into thinking all was okay, since the depreciation on those assets never appeared in our national accounts. Essentially, our politicians have done the equivalent of running a business whilst falsely inflating profits, pretending the firm was doing well, until it reached the point where everything broke, and then gone and blamed the previous managers (who had done the same thing).