Week 8

Morris, Toby. The Pencilsword: Inequality Tower (2015). Published on: http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-inequality-tower

In "The War Against Poverty: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy", Herbert J. Gans explains that there are two types of poor, 'Deserving of assistance' and 'Underserving of assistance' (Herbert Gans, 1996) According to Gans, the difference between someone being considered deserving and undeserving is that the former is seen as hardworking and honest but unlucky, whilst the latter, the ‘underserving’ is seen as lazy and unwilling (Herbert Gans, 1996)

Toby Morris’ 2015 illustration for The Wireless “The Pencilsword: Inequality Tower” demonstrates how huge the wealth gap is in New Zealand. He uses statistics from the Statistics New Zealand report “Wealth Disparity in New Zealand” (Morris, 2015) and uses a building as a metaphor to show how the richest 10% have more than 50% of the country’s wealth “…savings, houses, assets…” (Morris, 2015), and the poorest 50% of the population have less than 6% of that same pool of wealth. The poor class might be seen by the rich population as 'lazy and unwilling' due to their low status but half of the New Zealand population can't be lazy, according to Herbert Gans there are two types of poor. (1996)