Hobit Economics

Hollywood Economics

Soon after his DotCom red face and apology the PM is off to Hollywood to drum up business for the film industry. He claims that the Hobit Movie employed 3000 jobs. Before you say WOW, are those 3000 still employed now that the Hobit movie is finished? Of course not. Don't forget that the contribution to our GDP is minus the tax break and tax payer contribution to Warners of some $40m. Most of that money went offshore. This is the kind of market economics that fairy tales are made of. In the meantime our coal mines are closing and miners are laid off, not to mention Mataura Freezing Works redundancies and other horrors. And our PM goes off to Hollywood. He has no vision, plan or sense of direction. Once a merchant banker always one. He's whistling in the wind if he thinks that is the way out of the recession. 

Poverty? What Poverty?

Don't think I've gone gaga. I know what poverty is. I was born into it like so many of my post-depression generation. Then the 1950s and 60s full employment lifted most NZers out of it to be one of the top five per capita income nations by the 1950s. Now we have studies and statistics indicating that there is child poverty in NZ on a proportionately large scale especially for the usual Maori and Pacific Island population. The problem is poverty generally is invisible and child poverty is visible only if you happen to see it as concerned teacher, social worker, community person or even policeman. I have seen men scouring the bins for food or the footpaths for cigarette butts outside a bar. That to me is more than poverty but signs of mental illness and social  

neglect. However, I find it hard to look past the huge number of the latest vehicles on our roads and streets to get a clear impression of poverty. The whole country is clogged with them. They don't only belong to the top 20% of income earners. So what is poverty and how is it measured? Or rather, how should it be measured?