by Tim Watkin
Source:pundit.co.nz
If John Key wants to talk about obligations and responsibilities, he should listen more to Warren Buffett and less to David Cameron. Building community is about everyone sharing those old rights and responsibilities
Sometimes fragments of news from all round the world fit together into a single story. In the past 48 hours, we’ve had John Key here in New Zealand demanding more from unemployed and non-training teens, David Cameron in Britain talking of slow motion moral collapse, and Warren Buffett, the king of investors, in the US demanding that he, and others like him, pay higher taxes.
While the words are different, they’re all singing the same tune – one of mutual obligations and of how a society binds and holds together. In three different continents they are all expressing concerns about a lack of community. So who has it right? Who has more integrity?
For me, the answer sticks out like a queue for jobs at an Auckland supermarket. Key and Cameron are preaching responsibility whilst blaming others. Buffett, on the other hand, is talking sacrifice and offering it up himself. Writing in the New York Times, he concluded that his near-$7 million tax bill was insufficient when so many Americans are suffering.