And no I am not referring to the traditional mid life crisis suffered mostly by men according to popular culture where they run off with the trophy bride and start driving a sports car.
I am referring to real life where it is a stage in your life where your parents are often reaching the end of their lives with some of the end of life dramas we all suffer of declining health an increasing need for support and possibly the associated death of some of the potentially closest relationships you will ever have.
Mean while back at home your kids have stopped being loveable little toddler types and have potentially turned into diabolical teenagers whose sole purpose in life seems to be making your life harder. Even if they haven’t reached this stage yet it will be looming and the calls on your time to run them to and fro to sports and other activities are high.
Career wise you are likely to have approached your peak, old enough to have some experience and young enough to be considered useful, on the other hand assuming you are not running a multi national conglomerate fulfilling your every career dream it is much more likely that work has become routine and you have become the victim of the Peter principal (people are promoted to one level above their competence) which generally makes life either boring or very stressful and because this is your lot the dream of the corner office is over.
And sounding like a good economist, on the other hand again it is this group that is called upon to be the back bone of society, donating their time in many volunteer roles to keep any number of clubs, charities community groups and the like functioning and in today’s society with minimal if any thanks and the potential for a large amount of criticism.
And if it is not bad enough that your parents health is falling apart, mid life is when doctors state talking about digital exams without a computer insight etc and your own health is not what it used to be. Lucky the dog is now as unfit as you are so you can just go for a walk around the block and pretend that “snack” exercise is sufficient to keep you looking and feeling 20.
Finally, the more traditional mid life crisis of realising that the attractive girls that you see on the street think you are a potentially creepy old man and you think they should dress properly and talk without using the word like at the beginning and end of every sentence. Damn you have turned into your father.
So it is no wonder that I have noticed an increasing number of my middle aged acquaintances who are feeling down or who are genuinely clinically depressed. The good news is that society is maturing enough after the work of John Kirwin and the like so that these folks feel secure enough to talk about it.
I suspect the bad news is there are more people out there soldiering on, well look around it is tough in the middle of your life, at a minimum share with your mates and if it is really bad get help. People as a general rule love to help. Look out for someone middle aged that’s what they do.
Random thoughts on Random topics sparked by my travels through life and the things I see or hear on the way
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Get with the program
Lately there seems to have been a raft of media stories on the pro’s and cons of Vaccination.
Last night there was an Australian 60 minutes article focusing on two young babies (under 6 months and therefore not able to be immunised) that had died as a result of contracting Whooping Cough.
Before that it was some parental outrage from a group of mothers whose children had been sent home from school as they were not immunised against measles and there had been an outbreak in the community.
They were outraged because they had to take time off work to look after their kids and couldn’t seem to understand why the school didn’t start running separate classes etc for their children. It was after all their right not to immunise their kids.
And sadly it is their right, but should it be? First let’s dispose of the outliers in this argument, there are some limited cases where immunisation is not a good idea, for example children already suffering from cancer or have a problem with their immunity for whatever reason. We clearly shouldn’t immunise these children and have no need to do it as there is room in the system for a few unimmunised individuals.
In the 60 minutes doco though they were looking at a community where 1 in 4 kids were not immunised. And we are not talking about some down and out community that didn’t understand the issues this was a solid middleclass community of educated people.
Generally I think people should be left to get on with their lives and compulsory anything needs to be treated with caution, however your rights can’t be allowed to harm others as a general rule and in this instance those unimmunised people who therefore allowed Whooping Cough into their community effectively killed those babies. In the normal course of events if that was one person we would prosecute of murder but because a mob of ignorant people did it they get away with it.
And yes I said ignorant any one that does not immunise their child (without medical advice not to) is simple ignorant and too stupid to be left in charge of a child. There is simple no credible evidence that this is a bad idea. Tens of millions of people have been immunised with probably thousands of studies undertaken on the matter and no one of any standing in the community would be prepared to be against this. If it was systematically bad for people don’t you think we would have noticed by now? Millions and millions of people have had this remember, in every country in the world to a greater and lesser degree.
What we do know for an absolute fact is that many, many diseases have been effectively wiped out in developed nations, generally babies do not die from whooping cough, kids are not crippled by polio etc.
And the people deciding to not vaccinate are not the people who suffer the consequences, it is most likely to be their children or even worse someone else’s child. How do we continue to allow this, it is time we sorted this out once and for all and made it compulsory, to hell with the parents rights, what about the child’s rights. I have seen whooping cough in action and it is very unpleasant at the very least and clearly deadly at the worst.
Last night there was an Australian 60 minutes article focusing on two young babies (under 6 months and therefore not able to be immunised) that had died as a result of contracting Whooping Cough.
Before that it was some parental outrage from a group of mothers whose children had been sent home from school as they were not immunised against measles and there had been an outbreak in the community.
They were outraged because they had to take time off work to look after their kids and couldn’t seem to understand why the school didn’t start running separate classes etc for their children. It was after all their right not to immunise their kids.
And sadly it is their right, but should it be? First let’s dispose of the outliers in this argument, there are some limited cases where immunisation is not a good idea, for example children already suffering from cancer or have a problem with their immunity for whatever reason. We clearly shouldn’t immunise these children and have no need to do it as there is room in the system for a few unimmunised individuals.
In the 60 minutes doco though they were looking at a community where 1 in 4 kids were not immunised. And we are not talking about some down and out community that didn’t understand the issues this was a solid middleclass community of educated people.
Generally I think people should be left to get on with their lives and compulsory anything needs to be treated with caution, however your rights can’t be allowed to harm others as a general rule and in this instance those unimmunised people who therefore allowed Whooping Cough into their community effectively killed those babies. In the normal course of events if that was one person we would prosecute of murder but because a mob of ignorant people did it they get away with it.
And yes I said ignorant any one that does not immunise their child (without medical advice not to) is simple ignorant and too stupid to be left in charge of a child. There is simple no credible evidence that this is a bad idea. Tens of millions of people have been immunised with probably thousands of studies undertaken on the matter and no one of any standing in the community would be prepared to be against this. If it was systematically bad for people don’t you think we would have noticed by now? Millions and millions of people have had this remember, in every country in the world to a greater and lesser degree.
What we do know for an absolute fact is that many, many diseases have been effectively wiped out in developed nations, generally babies do not die from whooping cough, kids are not crippled by polio etc.
And the people deciding to not vaccinate are not the people who suffer the consequences, it is most likely to be their children or even worse someone else’s child. How do we continue to allow this, it is time we sorted this out once and for all and made it compulsory, to hell with the parents rights, what about the child’s rights. I have seen whooping cough in action and it is very unpleasant at the very least and clearly deadly at the worst.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Welfare
In common with a lot of other countries NZ spends a significant chunk of government money on direct hand outs to some of its citizens. I refer of course to Welfare payments in the broadest sense from Unemployment benefits to Superannuation Payments. Most Superannuation recipients don’t see this as welfare as if you ask them most will tell you they “earned it” through paying their taxes while they were working, but for the purpose of this I will ignore those issues for now and the wisdom of other benefits that people worry about, for example “dole bludgers” and “professional DPB recipients”.
What I do know for an undisputable fact is it costs a lot, specifically $22.9 bn or 31% of total government expenditure with the next two biggest being health at $14.4 bn and education at $12.3 bn making it not too far off the size of those two combined.
What do we get for this huge spend, well by and large we get people trapped in poverty and dependency because despite the large sums spent as a general rule living on a benefit is hardly the life of luxury.
And it is a lot of people specifically this many
Benefit Numbers
Unemployment 60,000
Sickness 60,000
Invalids 85,000
Domestic Purposes Benefit 113,000
Then there are approx 500,000 people over the age of 65 who are entitled to and therefore the majority of whom will be drawing superannuation. It is much harder to generalise about their economic circumstances as for quite a number the superannuation they receive is a top up for other savings etc that they may have. The value of paying people who don’t need it is a much debated topic and refers us back to the “earned it” argument again.
So what’s your point I hear you ask, well for one thing 22.9bn divided by 600,000 people is about $40,000 a person and that is a long way from what they actually get which I would suggest is much closer to about $15,000 but that’s not my point either. My point is being on a benefit is generally a bad idea and has all sorts of negative outcomes. I don’t propose to back that statement up I am just going to ask you to believe me on this one but a small amount of research on your own will undoubtedly confirm this fact.
So here is what I think is the most elegant solution a single universal benefit for every working age person in the country. Yup everyone, working, not working, rich or poor, sick or healthy, with or without children.
So first off we eliminate the majority of benefit fraud as other than pretending you are two people there are no other wrinkles in the system.
No more admin costs, well very minor ones to add people to the list at age 18 and delete them when dead but a relatively small task compared to the current system.
But the key idea is it provides a strong incentive to get work as nothing gets taken off you, every dollar you earn is yours to keep, whereas at the moment you end up with a benefit reduction when you work, giving you a low effective earning rate. This will provide the right signals and incentives to get people out of that benefit trap.
How do you pay for this I hear you ask. Well assume that we pay everyone $15k per annum then at about 3 million people to pay it will cost $45 bn. First of all we can use the money we are all ready paying the $22.9 bn which is half and then we need to increase taxes, yep sorry that is the only place money comes from, but hey if you are working then you will be happy to pay $15k more in tax as effectively nothing will change for you anything less than that would be a bonus and I think the cost would be lower but don’t have the data to work it out.
Get out and promote this idea with you local politician etc, it is contained within the working parties ideas and is the best of their proposals in my opinion.
What I do know for an undisputable fact is it costs a lot, specifically $22.9 bn or 31% of total government expenditure with the next two biggest being health at $14.4 bn and education at $12.3 bn making it not too far off the size of those two combined.
What do we get for this huge spend, well by and large we get people trapped in poverty and dependency because despite the large sums spent as a general rule living on a benefit is hardly the life of luxury.
And it is a lot of people specifically this many
Benefit Numbers
Unemployment 60,000
Sickness 60,000
Invalids 85,000
Domestic Purposes Benefit 113,000
Then there are approx 500,000 people over the age of 65 who are entitled to and therefore the majority of whom will be drawing superannuation. It is much harder to generalise about their economic circumstances as for quite a number the superannuation they receive is a top up for other savings etc that they may have. The value of paying people who don’t need it is a much debated topic and refers us back to the “earned it” argument again.
So what’s your point I hear you ask, well for one thing 22.9bn divided by 600,000 people is about $40,000 a person and that is a long way from what they actually get which I would suggest is much closer to about $15,000 but that’s not my point either. My point is being on a benefit is generally a bad idea and has all sorts of negative outcomes. I don’t propose to back that statement up I am just going to ask you to believe me on this one but a small amount of research on your own will undoubtedly confirm this fact.
So here is what I think is the most elegant solution a single universal benefit for every working age person in the country. Yup everyone, working, not working, rich or poor, sick or healthy, with or without children.
So first off we eliminate the majority of benefit fraud as other than pretending you are two people there are no other wrinkles in the system.
No more admin costs, well very minor ones to add people to the list at age 18 and delete them when dead but a relatively small task compared to the current system.
But the key idea is it provides a strong incentive to get work as nothing gets taken off you, every dollar you earn is yours to keep, whereas at the moment you end up with a benefit reduction when you work, giving you a low effective earning rate. This will provide the right signals and incentives to get people out of that benefit trap.
How do you pay for this I hear you ask. Well assume that we pay everyone $15k per annum then at about 3 million people to pay it will cost $45 bn. First of all we can use the money we are all ready paying the $22.9 bn which is half and then we need to increase taxes, yep sorry that is the only place money comes from, but hey if you are working then you will be happy to pay $15k more in tax as effectively nothing will change for you anything less than that would be a bonus and I think the cost would be lower but don’t have the data to work it out.
Get out and promote this idea with you local politician etc, it is contained within the working parties ideas and is the best of their proposals in my opinion.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
The lowest common denominator
Not my usual posting style but how could you put this any better.
What's with all the silly news.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/38776
What's with all the silly news.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/38776
Monday, May 16, 2011
What are you against?
Probably lots of things but why do I ask.
There is a TV show here where a psychologist ties to figure out where some murderer (usually) went off the rails and turned into such a “bad” person. The answer appears to me to be much the same each time, namely someone, usually the parents, were mean and nasty to the now mean and nasty man (it is always a man let’s face it). So learned behaviour mixed in with the mental trauma of rejection, isolation etc mixed with a few drugs and hey presto violent dangerous perp.
So during the latest programme they talked about just such an individual who was a bit lost in the world until he discovered a white power gang. The psychologist noted that given this young man was struggling to define himself in a positive fashion discovering a simple ideology that he could cling to was just what he needed (psychologically presumably) and that this group appealed because they were simply “against” things which is a very easy idea to grasp with no great thinking required.
Now in the case of any racist group this is undoubtedly so, no great world via required to be against black people, all you need are some mental flash cards to compare the person in front of you to and if they register as black then hey presto you are against them.
But this set me to thinking, this applies to most “against” debates, it tends to be a simple argument with being for things making the debate a lot more complex. For example I am against child porn, and it is one of those ideas that doesn’t seem to need much debate and therefore doesn’t get it. If I asked you why you are against it I suspect your brain does a short freeze why it tries to understand the question. I am further willing to bet some form of “because it is” is your first thought and the following arguments that you muster come a little slower. I reckon this is the same simple mindedness (in terms of debate) that drove our white power fellow.
Reframe the question, I am in favour of............ because this will help to eliminate child pornography.
So what goes in the blank? Harsher penalties for offenders? Treatment programs for consumers? Self defence lessons for children? I have to readily admit I have no idea as while the idea of child porn makes my skin crawl because of my easy default “I am against it” view I haven’t given it any further thought. I have no idea what generates the demand, I don’t know where it is made etc. etc.
So without getting lost in a debate on child porn, hopefully everyone who reads this agrees it is a bad idea and if you don’t please send me an email so I can report you to the authorities. My challenge for today is what are you against and stop framing your thinking as "against stuff" and ask yourself what are you for that will achieve your objective of eliminating that which you are against.
Another for example a lot of people would say they are against increased CO2 emissions, which is an easy idea to defeat (it will stifle growth, kill people in the third world, requires concerted global actions that will not happen etc). However if you are in favour of an increasing proportion of our energy needs coming from renewable sources it is a much stronger argument, what can your opponents say? Renewable energy is bad?
So accentuate the positive, eliminate being against stuff.
There is a TV show here where a psychologist ties to figure out where some murderer (usually) went off the rails and turned into such a “bad” person. The answer appears to me to be much the same each time, namely someone, usually the parents, were mean and nasty to the now mean and nasty man (it is always a man let’s face it). So learned behaviour mixed in with the mental trauma of rejection, isolation etc mixed with a few drugs and hey presto violent dangerous perp.
So during the latest programme they talked about just such an individual who was a bit lost in the world until he discovered a white power gang. The psychologist noted that given this young man was struggling to define himself in a positive fashion discovering a simple ideology that he could cling to was just what he needed (psychologically presumably) and that this group appealed because they were simply “against” things which is a very easy idea to grasp with no great thinking required.
Now in the case of any racist group this is undoubtedly so, no great world via required to be against black people, all you need are some mental flash cards to compare the person in front of you to and if they register as black then hey presto you are against them.
But this set me to thinking, this applies to most “against” debates, it tends to be a simple argument with being for things making the debate a lot more complex. For example I am against child porn, and it is one of those ideas that doesn’t seem to need much debate and therefore doesn’t get it. If I asked you why you are against it I suspect your brain does a short freeze why it tries to understand the question. I am further willing to bet some form of “because it is” is your first thought and the following arguments that you muster come a little slower. I reckon this is the same simple mindedness (in terms of debate) that drove our white power fellow.
Reframe the question, I am in favour of............ because this will help to eliminate child pornography.
So what goes in the blank? Harsher penalties for offenders? Treatment programs for consumers? Self defence lessons for children? I have to readily admit I have no idea as while the idea of child porn makes my skin crawl because of my easy default “I am against it” view I haven’t given it any further thought. I have no idea what generates the demand, I don’t know where it is made etc. etc.
So without getting lost in a debate on child porn, hopefully everyone who reads this agrees it is a bad idea and if you don’t please send me an email so I can report you to the authorities. My challenge for today is what are you against and stop framing your thinking as "against stuff" and ask yourself what are you for that will achieve your objective of eliminating that which you are against.
Another for example a lot of people would say they are against increased CO2 emissions, which is an easy idea to defeat (it will stifle growth, kill people in the third world, requires concerted global actions that will not happen etc). However if you are in favour of an increasing proportion of our energy needs coming from renewable sources it is a much stronger argument, what can your opponents say? Renewable energy is bad?
So accentuate the positive, eliminate being against stuff.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Let The Hindsight Begin
And a lot of hand wringing and moral outrage and some notable cheering. I am of course referring to the American execution of Osama Bin Laden. And no I didn’t choose the word execution carelessly that is in my mind what happened and frankly I don’t care that much that the chap is dead but I am interested in some of the reactions from around the world.
First let's remind ourselves that while he may have been a great friend, husband and father for all I know publicly at least he was not a nice bloke and he started the events that lead to his death. Originally by declaring war on the United States (which is probably regarded by most military experts as unwise at best). He then followed up by among other things arranging for the death of a bunch of US civilians. So perhaps we could just dismiss these folk as the casualties of war because as we know people get killed in wars. However I note that Mr Bin Laden ordered the death of his own people too (the pilots of the 911 planes were bound to die after all) and not just as a possible consequence of soldiers in battle but a guaranteed certainty. And I don’t know a huge amount about it but I suspect he wasn’t a great spokes person for Islam either and was probably corrupting the words of the Koran to suit his own ends. So all in all a lying, murdering, war lord with scant regard for human life, i.e. not a nice guy.
So why the hand wringing and moral outrage? Is it back to this whole idea that we shouldn’t kill people? Well if you care to read my Murder is Wrong? Entry I think we can put that idea to bed, we routinely kill people for all sorts of reasons, which I admit doesn’t necessarily make it right but it is a bit late to start weeping into your chardonnay over this guy of all the potential candidates.
“He didn’t get a fair trial” is another comment I have heard. Well true but let’s be serious he confessed over and over in personal taped video messages etc, would there really have been an alternative outcome? OK so OJ Simpson got off but do we really think Osama was gonna wriggle out of this one? No I didn’t think so.
“If the Americans can just go around killing people they don’t like without due process what sort of world will we end up with?” Well the one we have now as far as I can tell. Do we really think this is the first politically motivated assassination that the Americans have ever carried out? Never mind a bunch of other people and nations.
“Some people will be upset by him being killed” and variations on this theme. Well in the words of Homer Simpson “D’oh” Hopefully those same “upset” people will think twice before joining in on his game lest they suffer the same fate.
But any way why the hand wringing, after all according to Osama isn’t dying a martyrs death in the service of god the greatest thing you can do? Well this seems to be a case of “be careful what you wish for” as his wish appears to have been granted.
First let's remind ourselves that while he may have been a great friend, husband and father for all I know publicly at least he was not a nice bloke and he started the events that lead to his death. Originally by declaring war on the United States (which is probably regarded by most military experts as unwise at best). He then followed up by among other things arranging for the death of a bunch of US civilians. So perhaps we could just dismiss these folk as the casualties of war because as we know people get killed in wars. However I note that Mr Bin Laden ordered the death of his own people too (the pilots of the 911 planes were bound to die after all) and not just as a possible consequence of soldiers in battle but a guaranteed certainty. And I don’t know a huge amount about it but I suspect he wasn’t a great spokes person for Islam either and was probably corrupting the words of the Koran to suit his own ends. So all in all a lying, murdering, war lord with scant regard for human life, i.e. not a nice guy.
So why the hand wringing and moral outrage? Is it back to this whole idea that we shouldn’t kill people? Well if you care to read my Murder is Wrong? Entry I think we can put that idea to bed, we routinely kill people for all sorts of reasons, which I admit doesn’t necessarily make it right but it is a bit late to start weeping into your chardonnay over this guy of all the potential candidates.
“He didn’t get a fair trial” is another comment I have heard. Well true but let’s be serious he confessed over and over in personal taped video messages etc, would there really have been an alternative outcome? OK so OJ Simpson got off but do we really think Osama was gonna wriggle out of this one? No I didn’t think so.
“If the Americans can just go around killing people they don’t like without due process what sort of world will we end up with?” Well the one we have now as far as I can tell. Do we really think this is the first politically motivated assassination that the Americans have ever carried out? Never mind a bunch of other people and nations.
“Some people will be upset by him being killed” and variations on this theme. Well in the words of Homer Simpson “D’oh” Hopefully those same “upset” people will think twice before joining in on his game lest they suffer the same fate.
But any way why the hand wringing, after all according to Osama isn’t dying a martyrs death in the service of god the greatest thing you can do? Well this seems to be a case of “be careful what you wish for” as his wish appears to have been granted.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Left, Right, March
As they say a week is a long time in politics and recent weeks have shown the truth of this axiom with the rise from the dead of ACT and the creation of the Mana party to add a second “Maori” party to the mix.
This once again raised the whole left vs right issue in the public arena with ACT being labelled as a party of failed Neo Liberal politics and Right Wing ideologs. I think the chances of the users of those phrases having a good grasp on their meaning is likely to be low never mind the people hearing these “slogans”. But it was a clear attempt by some people to paint them as right wing extremists who would do terrible things if they ever got any power.
This right versus left debate is a constant mystery to me. Given that there are intelligent people on each side of the debate (and as much as each side would like to pretend otherwise there are) equally skilled and educated and dealing with the same set of facts (eg economic indicators or data on education etc) how do we constantly come up with such opposing views on the best way forward.
Well my first culprit is single issue ism as represented by The Mana party, their stated goal is the advancement of Maori. Which sounds fine especially when they trot out the predictable statistics about the high crime, low employment, high poverty, low educational achievement etc that ascribe to Maori. But what is unsaid is advancement at the expense of whom as by definition they don’t care about any other group. And assuming we can engineer some win win outcomes so no one is disadvantaged, what is the Mana party policy on censorship or scientific research e.g. non Maori issues. To take a more substantive issue what is the Mana policy on roading as presumably there is no advancement of Maori per se in better (or worse) roads. So without the annoying need to worry about others they can promote policy that doesn’t really make sense in a total solution, to take a silly example they could promote separate lanes for Maori on Auckland motorways to provide better transport options for Maori, over all this is silly but from a Mana party point of view perfectly fine.
I mention this as it seems to me that there is a lot of single issue ism on the left wing of politics in my mind, the criticism of ACT most often trotted out is that there policies are not good for poor people and we need to do more for the “bottom of the heap”. They of course would deny this as they have a view that their policies are good for all. So without getting into the policy argument this is another example of single issue ism, promoting the bottom of the heap is no different than a suggestion that anyone earning over $200k has probably done enough and shouldn’t pay tax. Supporting poor people is more morally justifiable and therefore has a higher feel good factor.
A recent example of this was Labour suggesting that GST be eliminated from “basic food” as a way to help the less well off make ends meet in tough economic times. So this sounds good right, a policy to help poor folk but overlooking a raft of difficulties in defining basic food, they failed to articulate where the additional revenue would come from to cover the new hole they would create in the governments revenues.
So let’s stamp out single issue ism, which when you listen applies to a lot of things people promote, challenge them to explain the full consequences of their idea, who benefits and who pays and what behaviours might this promote. For example cereal would probably make the list for “basic food” but does this include Cafe style muesli or sugar laden coco pops (a chocolate milkshake only crunchy according to the manufacturer) If there was a 15% price advantage the manufacturers would be trying hard to ensure they were.
This once again raised the whole left vs right issue in the public arena with ACT being labelled as a party of failed Neo Liberal politics and Right Wing ideologs. I think the chances of the users of those phrases having a good grasp on their meaning is likely to be low never mind the people hearing these “slogans”. But it was a clear attempt by some people to paint them as right wing extremists who would do terrible things if they ever got any power.
This right versus left debate is a constant mystery to me. Given that there are intelligent people on each side of the debate (and as much as each side would like to pretend otherwise there are) equally skilled and educated and dealing with the same set of facts (eg economic indicators or data on education etc) how do we constantly come up with such opposing views on the best way forward.
Well my first culprit is single issue ism as represented by The Mana party, their stated goal is the advancement of Maori. Which sounds fine especially when they trot out the predictable statistics about the high crime, low employment, high poverty, low educational achievement etc that ascribe to Maori. But what is unsaid is advancement at the expense of whom as by definition they don’t care about any other group. And assuming we can engineer some win win outcomes so no one is disadvantaged, what is the Mana party policy on censorship or scientific research e.g. non Maori issues. To take a more substantive issue what is the Mana policy on roading as presumably there is no advancement of Maori per se in better (or worse) roads. So without the annoying need to worry about others they can promote policy that doesn’t really make sense in a total solution, to take a silly example they could promote separate lanes for Maori on Auckland motorways to provide better transport options for Maori, over all this is silly but from a Mana party point of view perfectly fine.
I mention this as it seems to me that there is a lot of single issue ism on the left wing of politics in my mind, the criticism of ACT most often trotted out is that there policies are not good for poor people and we need to do more for the “bottom of the heap”. They of course would deny this as they have a view that their policies are good for all. So without getting into the policy argument this is another example of single issue ism, promoting the bottom of the heap is no different than a suggestion that anyone earning over $200k has probably done enough and shouldn’t pay tax. Supporting poor people is more morally justifiable and therefore has a higher feel good factor.
A recent example of this was Labour suggesting that GST be eliminated from “basic food” as a way to help the less well off make ends meet in tough economic times. So this sounds good right, a policy to help poor folk but overlooking a raft of difficulties in defining basic food, they failed to articulate where the additional revenue would come from to cover the new hole they would create in the governments revenues.
So let’s stamp out single issue ism, which when you listen applies to a lot of things people promote, challenge them to explain the full consequences of their idea, who benefits and who pays and what behaviours might this promote. For example cereal would probably make the list for “basic food” but does this include Cafe style muesli or sugar laden coco pops (a chocolate milkshake only crunchy according to the manufacturer) If there was a 15% price advantage the manufacturers would be trying hard to ensure they were.
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