Congratulations, Michael, on winning Letter of the Week in the NZ Herald last Saturday. I don't often repeat others' stuff but, with others, I have been so impressed with your carefully thought out and well presented statement I'm doing that this time:
MICHAEL'S LETTER:
New Zealand has been likened to Norway in areas of tolerance, human rights, near absence of corruption and so on. There is, however, one glaring difference, and that is income equality. Comparing the income of the richest 20 per cent with the poorest 20 per cent, the ratio is 3.9 in Norway and 4 in Sweden. In New Zealand it is 6.8, in Australia 7, and in the United States 8.5.
Inequality of incomes has a major influence on rates of social disease such as infant mortality, imprisonment rates, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse and so on. Norway has a low index of health and social problems, while New Zealand is among the highest. Now, we are focusing on our embarrassing child abuse record.
New Zealand has failed for too many years to live up to the ideal of a good place to bring up children. We only try to tinker with the symptoms. It is time to address the underlying factor, inequality of income. Everything else flows from there.
Michael is a member of the NZ Methodist Liberal Society and is imokurok2@igrin.co.nz
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When we came to New Zealand from Britain in 1972, one of the things that attracted us was that there weren't big differences between the 'rich' and the 'poor'. Things have changed since. . . .
ReplyDeleteBut what hasn't changed is Dave's ability to put sensible thoughtful comments succinctly with a touch of humour!