Yesterday Jordan Williams – head of the Taxpayers’ Onion and courageous fighter for the right to call women ugly in private – sent out a tweet which got me all excited:
I’m a helpful kind of woman, and yes, my household’s income is over 120k. I got ready to put my hand up and aid Jordan in his doubtless completely-unbiased quest to help the media tell a balanced story about National’s stellar economic management whatever it was.
Alas, his next tweet dashed my hopes:
Two strikes and I’m out.
There were some amusing, and some serious, responses to Jordan’s request:
https://twitter.com/MeLlamoLlama_/status/509566079342219265
But it made me think. Why the focus on a non-political person or family? I suppose the obvious answer is to ensure there’s no political agenda behind what a person chooses to tell the journalist, but in that case I wouldn’t be asking Jordan “runs to the Backbencher to film Winston Peters drunk” Williams to be finding my candidates.
The other possibility is: because a non-political person might be more likely to take the question at face value. Do I feel better off now than I did 6 years ago? Hell yes I do. Things now, compared to 6 years ago, are going swimmingly.
Of course that might have something to do with the fact that 6 years ago my household wasn’t earning 120k! Not even close! We didn’t own our house. I was still in university typing dictation part-time, he was at the beginning of his career.
Through a very fortunate series of events, including a decent dollop of sheer good luck, we are now very well off, especially for our age group, and depressingly high on the wealth distribution table.
None of that makes me think “gee, the government’s done a great job.” It makes me think: How are people raising their kids on the low wages in this country? How are other people my age ever going to afford to buy their first home?
And how can we survive another three years of National?
(I think the answer might be Voting Positive because we #LoveNZ.)
Stephanie Rodgers 
sounds like the average family in Dunedin, Oops was that 120 thousand ,not 12 thousand? why bother when the economy is designed by this govt to maximize tax paid by the low income earner through regressive taxes such as GST, ACC, petrol ect, while the bulk of the tax cuts went to people earning over one hundred thousand. talk about looking for the answer that you want in a survey with a non political family just to justify it. This just goes to show that it does not take intelligence to get to a high paying position in society rather who you know.