HENRYs are the squeezed middle — and it’s getting tighter
Monday, 27 October 2025
Dr Michael Turner is a pollster and strategist. He is Director of consulting firm Freshwater Strategy, and CEO of polling and insights platform PollStream.
OPINION: You can almost hear them sighing into their reusable coffee cups; the “HENRYs” that is - High Earners Not Rich Yet. They’re the ones who did everything right. They studied, worked hard, and climbed the career ladder. They pay for everyone else’s welfare, public transport, and roads, and they’re rewarded with the moral equivalent of a parking ticket for success. They’re the walking definition of the “squeezed middle”; asset-poor, income-rich, time-bankrupt.
The most recent The Post/Freshwater Strategy Poll paints the mood: a majority (54%) of voters think the country is heading in the wrong direction, and nearly two-thirds cite the cost of living as their top concern. Fair enough; it’s rough out there. But it’s not only low-income households who are feeling it.
The so-called “comfortable” professionals - accountants, engineers, and mid-tier managers of New Zealand Inc - are also feeling the squeeze, like a pressure valve that’s about to blow. Housing feels unobtainable, saving is tough, now AI-is coming for their once prestigious white-collar job. No wonder they’re grumpy.
The problem is that income is easy to tax. Capital is slippery; it hides in trusts, in property, portfolios, and sometimes offshore. Income can’t move in the same way. It just sits there on your payslip, waiting to be clipped by the government.
So, the taxman takes the easy way out and keeps squeezing the same group of people because they’re the only ones who can’t run away. While many tradies jump the ditch to Australia every year, often in search of well-paid mining jobs, higher-income white-collar professionals are in a bit more of a bind. But given enough motivation, they too will leave.
The top 20% of earners in New Zealand pay around 64% of all income tax, while the bottom 20% contribute less than 2%. The top 3% of income earners carry almost one quarter of the total tax take. And yet, it’s fashionable to treat them as villains; as if their prosperity were a moral failing, rather than the underlying funding base for the country’s hospitals and schools.
Meanwhile, intergenerational wealth skews the picture completely. Many low-income Kiwis sitting on multimillion-dollar homes are far better off than the 40-year-old professional still renting, paying higher tax, and trying to save for a deposit that inflates faster than their salary. Boomers got capital appreciation, while their kids got bracket creep and unobtainable homeownership. It’s less a social contract and more ransom note.
The Government should be the one to rewrite that script. Instead of apologising for aspiration, make a point of selling it. Make it a story that voters can see themselves in. A believable plan where they can see a more prosperous life and greater opportunities for themselves. Tell them that New Zealand can be a place where ambition is rewarded, not penalised. Where attracting global talent isn’t a dirty word, but a real economic strategy.
The logic isn’t that complicated. People respond and adapt to incentives. The Laffer Curve may be out of vogue, but it’s alive and well in 2025.
Look at my native land, the UK. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, taxes non-doms, they move abroad. They then taxed private schools, and the Government ends up paying for more kids in the state system. They hiked taxes on employers, then the market slows, jobs are vanishing, and government revenue falls. Reeves is now desperately trying to plug a £30bn ($70bn) fiscal black hole that was entirely self-inflicted. And where does she turn to for cash? You guessed it. The HENRYs are being lined up for another hike.
The economy isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a living environment, full of “real humans” that adapt to new conditions. Having seen Reeves try to explain her plan to “stabilise” the UK economy, the jury is out on precisely how human Ms Reeves is. With the UK Budget fast approaching, many Brits have already given up and are weighing up their options abroad.
Luckily, New Zealand is not dreary old Blighty, but it needs to stop treating wealth like contraband. Lower, simpler taxes don’t just make economic sense, they send a signal: come here, build here, stay here. Wealthy migrants don’t clog hospitals or roads; they create demand, investment, and jobs. Pound-for-pound, they contribute far more to the economy than they take from it. And New Zealand is really, really, good, at welcoming contributing migrants to the country.
New Zealand could be the Singapore of the South Pacific; high-tech, clean, high-trust, and globally attractive. The leisure destination of choice for anyone who has made it. More wealth in New Zealand, means greater opportunity for Kiwis.
This is the kind of vision the Government should be selling. A tangible, believable plan for a better future; not a defensive briefing note, about “managing expectations.” A message that says: if you work hard, invest, and play by the rules, we’ll back you, not tax you into submission.
People are desperate for optimism. They want to see a government that can talk about growth and opportunity without sounding guilty for it.
The Post/Freshwater polling shows economic confidence has faded, and frustration is rising. That’s a vacuum; and vacuums don’t stay empty for long in politics. Fill it with a forward-looking story about prosperity, and voters might see a future worth believing in. If the government can’t sell hope, then someone else will sell anger.