Criticisms of the Church’s call for justice from the neoliberal establishment
Back in 1985 when some politicians embarked upon a love affair with market ideology, I remember wondering how it would all turn out. Here was something new, something different from the community approach that had characterised New Zealand politics all my life. Could a new approach increase our national wealth and lead to greater well-being for all? Could this be the ‘rising tide which lifts all boats’, as the policy architects of the day proclaimed?
It soon became clear that the rising tide was lifting the most luxurious boats, but many of the poorer craft seemed anchored to the bottom and were clearly foundering. What also became clear was that market economics were based on ideological foundations quite different from the values the nation had lived by for a long time. The new values were trumpeted by Ruth Richardson, Minister of Finance, when she introduced the 1991 Budget. ‘This Budget,’ she proclaimed, ‘is a battle for the hearts and minds of New Zealanders.’
It was an unfortunate choice of phrase. American President Lyndon Johnson once used it to describe the US pacification programme in Vietnam. When US forces bombed villages, he said, they were engaged in a struggle for the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. Perhaps the Minister saw the warfare here as being socio-economic rather than military, but the destruction of lives and communities was a common feature. I selected the phrase for the title of my book[1] in response to the social devastation.
I also read some of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and in particular her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1962). Russian born, Rand migrated to the USA and wrote several books based on the philosophy of objectivism. Her morality is centred on the ethics of rational self-interest:
The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself (sic), not the means to the ends or the welfare of others – and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose (her italics).
The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.
I have not met members of any Randist sect in this country, but the radical libertarian philosophy of deregulated markets, minimalist government and maximum individual freedoms has many staunch adherents. I always enjoyed talking with Lindsay Perigo, editor of a 1990s publication The Free Radical. After a TV interview one night we had a stimulating conversation ranging from Adam and Eve to free market philosophies. For Lindsay, private health and education systems were just for starters as he went on to canvass privately purchased security officers in lieu of a police force. Quite how privately purchased fire protection would operate was never explained.
About this time Auckland businessman Alan Gibbs arranged for the live feed of BBC Radio into New Zealand. On weekdays Lindsay compered a breakfast business and politics programme insert which included a short, sharp Soapbox component with a roster of speakers. I was clearly the token liberal speaker set up as cannon fodder for the other contributors.
Many would be horrified with Ayn Rand’s view that the achievement of individual happiness is the highest moral purpose in life. And yet it seems to me that was the underlying ideology we were led into during those years of radical socio-economic change. The ideological divide had never been so clear, with the churches and others having a radically different view. In a fine turn of phrase, the Business Roundtable’s Roger Kerr described the churches as being ‘perpetrators of corrosive myths’. Such ‘myths’ were a belief in the common good, and an ethos of mutuality whereby the wellbeing of all was a collective social responsibility.
Rand would doubtless have endorsed the views of Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish moral philosopher, with his views on ‘the invisible hand’[2]:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their own self-love.
(The individual is) led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention…..I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the common good. It is indeed an affectation, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in persuading them from it.
The US economist JK Galbraith comments[3]:
The reference to the invisible hand has for many a mystical overtone: here is a spiritual force that supports the pursuit of self-interest and guides men (sic) in the market to the most benign of ends…A man of the Enlightenment, Smith did not resort to supernatural support for his argument…(but) in our own time the market has, indeed, acquired a theological beneficence; Smith would not have approved.
Galbraith’s reference to a mystical overtone is well captured by my all-time favourite cartoon of the 1990s by Dana Fradon in The New Yorker. The economy was engaged in the idolatrous worship of market mechanisms, mindless of the human consequences.
New Zealanders are not ungenerous. It is always moving to see people respond to cases of human concern. We learn of a child who needs money to go abroad for life-saving surgery. We hear of a tourist couple assaulted and robbed of everything they have. An old lady is attacked in her own home by an intruder. A young family finds their home totally wrecked by storm or fire. Israel engages in yet another modern day slaughter of the innocents in Gaza. The appeal goes out to the nation and people give generously with moving messages of support.
But when it comes to the nation’s attitudes and policies about those in need, a very different mindset takes over. In a TV3 programme The Vote in June 2013, Duncan Garner and Guyon Espiner led two teams in a debate on the causes of child poverty: was it the result of poor parenting and budgeting, or was it a lack of income? One team was from the well-heeled commentariat of the ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ brigade, while the other included social justice advocate Celia Lashlie and Children’s Commissioner Dr Russell Wills, along with graphic accounts from budget advisers and foodbank operators working at the grassroots, those who knew the reality of poverty on a day-to-day basis.
The theories of the commentariat did not match the facts of the grassroots operators. At the end the studio audience was asked to give its vote, while the TV audience recorded their votes via email, text or Twitter. The graphic accounts of those at the coal-face notwithstanding, 63 per cent believed poverty to be the result of poor parenting and budgeting skills. In an almost throw-away line, Duncan Garner summarised: ‘so there you are, folks – that is the view of middle New Zealand.’
His use of the word ‘middle’ was significant. If almost two thirds of middle New Zealand believe the poor have enough money, there is no political incentive to change anything. It is not just the Government that is responsible for policy: every voting Kiwi affects the wellbeing of those at the margins of society.
In similar vein Rewi Alley, a Kiwi who spent 60 years of his life in China as an educator, writer and workers’ advocate, revisited his homeland in 1971 and wrote this poem, Auckland:
Weekend, and comes the sound of motor-mowers clipping neat lawns street after street. And in gardens fig trees, lemons and grapefruit bear richly, a myriad flowers throw out their fragrance…
And people speak of world problems as though such were no pressing concern of theirs; go on thinking that more and more prosperity is just around the corner and that the end of life is just to be comfortable and happy, protecting their children from hardship…
No sea so blue as that of Auckland, no gulls whiter, no youth more straight-limbed and eager, and truly no place where challenge is greater for the new Oceania to be.
Taxation is an ongoing political debate, and in 1988 I critiqued Roger Douglas’ proposal for a flat tax. A flat tax was mooted as a simpler way of doing things, a solution to tax evasion and an incentive to entrepreneurs who would work harder if they were able to keep more of their earnings. In a media release I pointed out that a flat tax was good news for those on high incomes but no benefit at all to lower income earners. Nor did I think entrepreneurs were working at half speed because of high tax levels. I suggested the solution to tax evasion was to plug loopholes, a challenge many governments have addressed with only modest success.
Dr Lisa Marriott[4] said that $23 million of welfare fraud was detected in 2012, compared with $1 billion of tax evasion, the latter amount being potentially as high as $5 billion annually. In spite of the vast differential in amounts, 800 people were prosecuted for welfare fraud but only 50 for tax evasion. The average amount of welfare fraud was $70,000, with 60 per cent of those convicted being given jail sentences. By contrast the average amount of tax evasion was $270,000 but only 20 per cent of those convicted were imprisoned. Clearly institutional morality has a significant inbuilt bias against the crimes of the poor as compared with the crimes of the rich.
Tax rates can be too high, but there are those who attempt to portray tax as one of society’s great evils, following Ayn Rand’s philosophy that taxation is theft. Often in May each year a business organisation proclaims Tax Freedom Day, the day when all one’s tax liabilities have been paid for the year and one can now get on to working entirely for oneself. One year chartered accountants Staples Rodway ran a newspaper advertisement:
CONGRATULATIONS NEW ZEALAND, TOMORROW YOU CAN HAVE A DAY OFF. IT’S TAX FREEDOM DAY.
The average New Zealander will spend 141 days working to pay government and local taxes. But look on the bright side… you have 224 days to find an astute accountant.
There is little doubt as to what end astute accounting would be applied.
A total contrast is found in the famous words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, inscribed on the Inland Revenue building in Washington DC: ‘taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.’ Taxes pay for all the essentials in a decent society – health, education, public housing, police, fire services, roads and infrastructure, welfare support, the justice system. Careful stewardship of public monies is always essential but a fixation on cost-cutting inflicts flesh and blood wounds on those least able to manage.
| Dom Helder Camara (1909-99) was a Catholic bishop in Brazil, and an apostle of non-violence. Politically conservative as a young priest, he experienced a conversion while ministering among the poor in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. ‘When I fed the poor, they called me a saint,’ Camara said, ‘but when I asked why they were poor they called me a communist.’ Labelled ‘the red bishop’, he worked tirelessly for democracy and human rights in Brazil. During a time of persecution a hired assassin knocked on the elderly Camara’s door. He was so moved by the sight of the bishop that he blurted out: ‘I cannot kill you. You are one of the Lord’s.’(From Common Prayer: a Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals). |
While some may believe taxation is theft, my sense is that a far larger number would agree with Sister Marie Augusta Neal that withholding basic necessities from the needy is a greater theft:
The Gospel mandates that no right of ownership supersedes human need….No matter who possesses food, it belongs to hungry people.[5]
The gap between rich and poor has been a growing debate in New Zealand in recent years. As the gap widens the more affluent push for private education and healthcare with a lessening commitment to adequate public provision. Elizabeth Anderson[6] has written:
As economic inequality increases, the better off perceive fewer and fewer shared interests with the less well-off. Because they buy many critical goods – health insurance, education, security services, transportation, recreation facilities – individually from the private sector….they tend to oppose public provision of these services to the wider population.[7]
A recent New Zealand study[8] has shown:
- From 1982 to 2012 the ratio between the top 20% of incomes and the bottom 20% has increased from 2.4 to 2.8
- The Gini coefficient[9] in the same period has risen from 0.26 to 0.33 which ranks New Zealand 22nd out of 34 OECD countries (where 34th is the most unequal)
- From c1985 – c2005 the increase in the NZ Gini score was the highest out of 24 OECD countries.
Research by two British academics, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett[10], correlates income inequality with a composite set of social factors such as social trust, mental illness, life expectancy, infant mortality, violence, drug and alcohol use, obesity, education, teenage births, homicides, imprisonment and social mobility. The authors found that in virtually every society, the larger the rich/poor gap, the worse that country performs in terms of social well-being, not just for the poor but across the board.
Their analysis is that countries with high levels of inequality are driven by individualistic and competitive attitudes, and by a consumerist[11] and materialistic ethos. ‘Keeping up with the Jones’, or better still ‘keeping ahead of the Jones’, has a divisive and stress-producing quality that affects rich and poor alike. A survey showed[12] that once people were earning enough to live comfortably, they were content with that income as long as their peers were not getting more. Social status was more important than purchasing power, with half saying they could live with a reduced income provided they knew they were ahead of others. This could well be the driving dynamic for the seven figure salaries paid to senior executives.
In unequal societies the affluent and successful strive to keep ahead and protect their margin. For those who lag behind there is a sense of failure that can lead to depression, anger and compensating behaviours such as drug and alcohol abuse, violence, crime and imprisonment.
It is popular to describe the behaviour of the latter group as anti-social, but in truth anti-social behaviour starts with the affluent who minimise their tax payments and thus avoid contributing to the social fabric. It is to be found in politicians who know votes can be won by appealing to people’s financial self-interest, and suggesting the poor have only themselves to blame. The behaviour of voters who support such policies rather than opting for the common good is also anti-social.
The consequences of inequality are seen in human lives. OECD and UNICEF (2009) statistics show that New Zealand performs poorly compared with other wealthy nations. We are:
- 2nd worst in terms of child well-being
- 4th worst in mental illness with 20% of the population affected
- 2nd worst in drug use, equal to UK and USA
- 2nd worst in infant mortality with a rate of six deaths per 1000
- in the bottom five nations in terms of overseas aid.
Of crucial significance is the issue of penal policy. Driven by punitive policies such as ‘three strikes and you’re out’, New Zealand has the second highest rate of incarceration with 195 per 100,000 of the population locked away. Only the USA has a higher rate with 576 per 100,000. By contrast the Scandinavian countries have a rate of only 60. There is a worrying racial dimension to imprisonment: 50 per cent of the nation’s inmates are Maori, their rate of imprisonment being 5.7 times that of non-Maori. With the closure of mental hospitals, many mentally ill people often end up in prison after committing some form of offence.
The situation is deteriorating. Even though some crime rates are falling, and we know that longer prison sentences usually make inmates less fit to lead constructive lives, the prison population is not shrinking. Pressure for tougher sentences is a reflection of inequality, say Wilkinson and Pickett, which is driven by a competitive win-lose mentality: others need to be put down so that I can stand higher. Inequality does not permit ‘soft’ policies such as restorative justice, or spending money on education to equip those ‘inside’ with the skills and confidence to reshape their lives.
The bullying and cyber-bullying of fellow students in schools and employees in workplaces, leading to high rates of youth suicide, is another likely indicator of how inequality destroys social cohesion. Not just the poor are affected.
Victoria University criminologist John Pratt studied prisons in Scandinavia in 2008/09 and found many benefits arising from policies aimed at re-establishing people in normal social life. Scandinavian countries have a greater sense of collective wellbeing which makes such policies possible. But he questions whether there is a sufficient level of trust and egalitarianism in New Zealand society, and hence the political will, to make changes in our own penal system, despite its manifest failings.
On the positive side, New Zealand does well with a high degree of social trust, good educational outcomes, and a comparatively low rate of homicides. But it is the more equal countries such as Japan, Denmark, Norway and Finland that score consistently well on all the indicators of social well-being. Characterised by social cohesion and a sense of family, these nations aim to see all provided for well. The common good is worth far more than tax cuts.
How can we reverse the prevailing Kiwi mindset so that we focus on the things that give life to all rather than on our own self-enhancement at the expense of others? As a nation we have a tremendous opportunity, and a tremendous responsibility. The Spirit Level documents that nations committed to the common good actually achieve that goal.
In December 1999 Jackie and I came home after our five years in Australia interested in what had changed during our absence. A year earlier the Anglican Church had initiated a Hikoi of Hope. People from all over the country marched to Wellington to show their concern about the entrenched poverty nationwide. Graphic pictures and stories emerged from the multiple journeys to the nation’s capital. Despair was mingled with bonds of affection among the marchers, and a renewed sense of hope and determination for change.
The hikoi converged on Wellington on 1 October 1998 with thousands of citizens gathered in front of the steps of Parliament. Church and community leaders presented to the Government a shared statement of concern with jobs, income, housing, education and health as prime objectives for action.
The 1999 general election saw a change back to a Labour Government. I was warmly surprised to find in the Treasury’s briefing to the incoming government[13] a section entitled Social Cohesion and Inclusion. The report noted that social cohesion was enhanced when people felt institutional frameworks were working well and treating people fairly, but weakened when people felt marginalised or institutions failed to deliver fair outcomes. ‘Protecting the living standards of those families who are most disadvantaged is a pre-requisite to achieving social cohesion’, said the briefing paper[14]. The report also noted growing inequality within New Zealand.
Messages about social cohesion and protecting the living standards of disadvantaged families had not been heard in policy-making circles for a long time. The advice had been freely on offer from the churches throughout that period, but now Treasury was coming to the party as well. Why had it taken highly-paid government researchers so long to reach such an obvious conclusion, I wondered? Or do public servants offer the kind of advice they think will be acceptable to the government of the day, so that independent thinking in the public service no longer exists?
The church leaders’ 1993 statement referred to earlier[15] suggested five principles of social justice:
- To respect human dignity with its rights and responsibilities
- To live in solidarity with others, aware of our interdependence
- To seek the wellbeing of all
- To value work and creativity
- To give priority to the needs of the poor.
They also emphasised that ‘a primary focus for our social justice concerns must be the special relationship which exists between Maori and all other New Zealanders, as expressed in our founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi’.
The church leaders showed how these principles are ‘firmly rooted in the teaching of Jesus Christ and the Hebrew scriptures’. But, of course, the principles are shared widely by many in society. One of the heartening experiences of the 1990s was the building of partnerships not only across church boundaries but with many different groups and individuals, such as in the hikoi, who shared a deep concern for those on the margins. Few would not endorse the principles, but with such a wide disjunction between principles and outcomes such endorsement can be vacuous.
And what of today? Each year the Salvation Army produces a succinct and focused analysis of the socio-economic state of the nation.[16] The 2014 report shows some marginal improvements but nonetheless:
- 19 per cent of children live in welfare benefit-dependent households
- from 2008-2013 recorded offences of violence, sexual assault and child neglect rose by 68 per cent
- in education there has been an improvement in NCEA Level 2 achievement, but a wide gap remains between low and high decile schools (26 per cent), and Maori and non-Maori (24.9 per cent)
- the prison population is unchanged at 195 per 100,000 population, one of the highest in the western world. The Maori imprisonment rate is 5.7 times that of other New Zealanders
- unemployment has fallen to 6 per cent, but for 15-19 year olds the rate is 24 per cent. For Pacific Islanders the rate is 13.9 per cent, and for Maori 12.8 per cent. All rates are lower than in 2012 but higher than in 2008.
- the Salvation Army distributed a record 55,718 food parcels in 2013, a 67 per cent increase over 2008.
A separate report on child poverty[17] published by the Children’s Commissioner, Russell Wills, shows:
- 285,000 children live in poverty defined by income, this number including 1 in 3 Maori and Pacific island children, and 1 in 7 European children
- 1 in 6 children are in families which struggle to afford basics such as healthcare and clothing
- 3 out of 5 will experience poverty throughout their childhood.
Reflecting on these sombre statistics, Major Campbell Roberts[18], writes:
The neo-liberal paradigm that has been so dominant in New Zealand politics is convincing us that a society is little more than a collection of markets, that citizens are only consumers, and that governments have only a residual role to play in mediating all of this. The Salvation Army does not accept this view of humanity or of community life. We believe that there is a spiritual and moral aspect to life that demands we individually have a clear spiritual and moral framework to our lives – not just a framework that sees achievement in personal economic benefit. Similarly, New Zealand’s strength and achievement as a nation is not found in economic indicators alone but in indicators that show the strength of our concern to deliver care, compassion and social justice to everyone…our ambition has been underwhelming and our imagination stunted.
Campbell Roberts names child poverty and affordable housing as core concerns and suggests the lack of voter pressure for change shows the public is unaware or unconcerned. He is clear that only a change in attitude by New Zealanders at large will create the political will for governments to respond to poverty.
At times I recall social situations deemed quite acceptable in the past which we now regard as scandalous. In the 19th century Maori were forbidden to speak their own language at school. In Australia I think of the stolen children generations – aboriginal children forcibly removed from their homes and families supposedly to give them a better life. There was the era when young teenage women who became pregnant were packed off to an institution where they gave birth only to see their child forcibly sent out for adoption. Churches and other institutions were willing players in all these arrangements, believing it was for the best. In hindsight we can see just how cruelly wrong we were.
And I ask: ‘how on earth could they have allowed such things to happen?’ And then I ask: ‘what are we doing today that later generations will look back on and ask how could we have allowed such things to happen?’
One such question is how any society can regard itself as moral when it allows a quarter or more of its children, with their families, to live in poverty, in cold, damp and overcrowded houses, doubling or tripling up with other families, with inadequate food, incurring illnesses such as asthma, pneumonia, rheumatic fever or TB, unable to afford proper medical care or medication, ashamed to send their kids to school in worn-out clothing, without jerseys, shoes, lunch or money for a class trip, sending mothers out to clean buildings in the middle of the night, packing pre-schoolers off to a day care at 6am so parents can work, earning a minimum wage of $14.25 an hour, or being unemployed, children having the best years of their lives ruined by the stain of poverty and the shame of social exclusion, parents denied the natural joy and pride of being able to provide for their children adequately with the basics and some of the simple pleasures such as a day at the beach.
How many of us who have been able to provide all these things would regard any of the above circumstances as socially acceptable? And yet the majority of us do, as that TV3 Vote programme indicated: 63 per cent of middle New Zealand believe the problem lies with the parents, not with economic deprivation. It is another example of the inequality that destroys social cohesion, mutuality and a commitment to the common good.
The other issue we may look back on in shame is unemployment. With 6 per cent of the workforce unemployed, New Zealand is better off than some countries, yet there are large numbers of job-seekers, and many who feel under-employed. Youth unemployment is at 24 per cent. In some European countries that rate is 50 per cent. How can we regard ourselves as a moral nation when we allow young people at the height of their hopes for a fulfilling life to be abandoned to idleness, despair and suicide? How much does this feed an anger leading to drugs and crime?
And why does it happen? It is because we are locked into a mentality that the only acceptable form of income is a wage gained from a paid job: welfare recipients are looked down on. Modern technology means fewer workers are required to deliver the basics. Yet the drive to produce more is a path to unnecessary consumption, the exploitation of scarce resources, growing problems with waste and pollution, and pressing issues of climate change from over-consumption.
Suppose as a society we broke out of the narrow job/wage straitjacket to develop a whole new paradigm of work and income. There is no shortage of work in the community. Proper care for the environment beckons on every side. An army of younger and older people could be deployed in caring for those in need in the community. Job-share situations could be further promoted. Good work is anything that contributes to community wellbeing and produces satisfaction, meaning and purpose for the worker. We should be exploring new approaches to ensure no person leaves school without some opportunity to grow through creative endeavour.
One barrier to any such move is the bunker mentality that is relentlessly preoccupied with driving down costs, causing many of the social problems through under-funded public services and leaving people sitting idle each day. The bunker mentality also prohibits any holistic examination of policies which cut costs in one area, only to see them blow out in another. Inadequate household income, for example, drives up the costs of illness caused by poor nutrition or overcrowded houses. Unemployment leads to increased welfare payments, drug and alcohol addiction, violence, crime, vandalism, mental illness and a whole range of other symptoms, all with heavy costs.
It costs the nation almost $1 billion annually to keep 8700 prisoners locked up in jail. Suppose that money were spent on our children and young people long before they became disillusioned and anti-social. Money spent on prevention is much less than the cost of repairing damaged lives. The advocates of cost-cutting squander vast amounts of public money remedying the personal and social consequences of human lives wasted by a failure to spend up front what it takes to give every child a confident start in life. It is not just a financial issue. Money spent to bring life and hope to the next generation is morally preferable to spending money to sustain lives blighted by public neglect.
A cabinet minister once asked me if I agreed that voluntary giving to the poor was more moral than the tax and welfare approach. His reasoning was that money given out of compassion for someone in need had a superior moral motivation than money involuntarily taxed and distributed, generating resentment rather than compassion among taxpayers.
Compassion and generosity are the finest of virtues and our society would be the poorer without them. But I said in reply that providing for all was an essential moral dimension of a decent society, and no amount of personal philanthropy could ensure the basics for an entire population.
Philanthropy often depends on knowing at first hand the needs of another. The story is told of an Afro-American Pullman car attendant who cared meticulously for a wealthy passenger who was so impressed he agreed to fund the man through a college education and get him a better job. Perhaps if every citizen personally sponsored someone in need a system based on philanthropy might work.
But, of course, it could never happen. We know already that two thirds of middle New Zealand believe the poor have only themselves to blame. And how many of us know people living outside our own work and leisure networks? We have no idea what life is like for families in poor neighbourhoods. We speed past on motorways taking us from comfortable suburban homes to the equally comfortable offices where policy is formulated on the basis of statistics laced with the ideology of inequality.
Here is our dilemma as a nation. As individuals we can be caring and generous and go out of our way to help someone in need. But when it comes to policy-making the minds of most are closed to any action that would make a difference.
Thirty years ago New Zealand was a much more equal society. It could be so again. But it will take a huge shift in the mindset of the majority to undo the impact of the forces of individualism and privatisation which have eroded our sense of mutuality and the common good and turned us into one of the most unequal societies in the western world. Can we make the change?
Robert Reich, an American political economist and Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration from 1993-97, offers this challenge[19]:
There is thus an opportunity for us, as for every society, to redefine who we are, why we have joined together, and what we owe each other and the other inhabitants of this world. The choice is ours to make. We are no more slaves to present trends than we are to vestiges of the past. We can, if we choose, assert that our mutual obligations as citizens extend beyond our economic usefulness to one another, and act accordingly.
[1] Hearts and Minds: a Place for People in a Market Economy, Social Responsibility Commission, 1993.
[2] An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776.
[3] A History of Economics, 1998.
[4] Victoria University of Wellington, quoted in TV3’s programme Mind the Gap, 31 August 2013.
[5] A Socio-Theology of Letting Go, 1976.
[6] Philosopher, University of Michigan.
[7] Quoted in The Economist, 27 January 2014.
[8] Bryan Perry, Ministry for Social Development, 2013.
[9] The Gini coefficient measures income differentials in a society. It ranges from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 complete inequality.
[10] The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, 2009.
[11] An indicator of consumerist tendencies in the more unequal countries is that USA and New Zealand spend twice as much on advertising as Norway and Denmark. In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle writes that in making a purchase we are often not buying a product but an ‘identity enhancer’.
[12] The Spirit Level, p 225.
[13] Towards Higher Living Standards for New Zealanders, 1999.
[14] ibid, p. 42.
[15] In Chapter 5.
[16] Striking a Better Balance, Alan Johnson, the Salvation Army Policy and Parliamentary Unit, February 2014.
[17] The Child Poverty Monitor, 2013 figures, updated 27 February 2014.
[18] The highly respected director of the Salvation Army’s SPPU, in Striking a Better Balance, pp 7-9.
[19] The Work of Nations, 1991.
