Child abuse report reveals a “hidden cost” exceeding 2 billion for child abuse in New Zealand.

A timely analysis of the actual costs to society of child abuse reveals costs that greatly exceed expectations. A lifetime of psychological services, unemployment or imprisonment is a significant drag on the national resource. Child abuse takes on many shades from the severe to the hidden.

It is not just parents hitting their children, it is parents who fight and argue, it is sexual abuse, it is poverty and related issues like alcoholism, drug addiction and gambling that deny children a safe and happy environment in which to develop their minds and become productive citizens.

“…the victims often became unproductive members of society.”

Barnardos advocacy manager Deborah Morris-Travers said the economic analysis showed that failure to support families and prevent maltreatment of children was extremely costly long term. “It comes down to us needing a fundamental shift in priorities and in mindset so hopefully we appreciate that if we do get it right for children we all benefit.

“New Zealand doesn’t rate well compared with our OECD counterparts. We have the worst child death by maltreatment rate in the world, so it’s about identifying a range of different things we can do to better support families and build stronger communities so children are not vulnerable to maltreatment.”

The leader of Hezbollah warned Israel his fighters would hit Tel Aviv with rockets if Israeli forces attack Beirut or the guerrillas’ stronghold in its southern suburbs.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned last week, in the event of renewed hostilities, Israel would “go after not only Hezbollah but the entire state of Lebanon.”

The Hezbollah leader said the Israeli warnings were part of a “psychological war” aimed at preventing the militant group from joining a new Lebanese unity government, whose formation has been stalled since the June 7 election.

“Today we are capable of striking any city or village” (in Israel) “It is our right to make (Israel) understand that if it bombs Beirut or the southern suburbs, we will strike Tel Aviv,” Nasrallah said, drawing the cheers of supporters.

The referendum ask NZ voters to decide:

“Should a smack as part of good parental correction be considered a crime in New Zealand.”

The people behind this justify the question as a return to rights for parents to make their own choices. It is not just an illogical question, it is a question framed by a lawyer (The Dept of Justice) to determine, one way or another, the actual consequence of a decision. That is what law is, the division between what we accept and what we want controlled.

It makes absolutely no sense as a question for a referendum. It requires much knowledge of the law to realise how to correctly answer the question. For a start, it posits that “good parental correction” be a matter of justice. The proponents of this survey believe that “good parental correction” should be a matter for parents, not the law.

Parental correction is intergenerational behaviour. Law is useful to create boundaries for behaviour but it is not useful as social control. The referendum question brutally assumes parental correction should be a uniform matter. They want greater freedom for parents. The question reframes parental priorities as corrective and asserts a right of control.

To ignore evolution is the plight of belief. It is a tragic mistake to allow the referendum to run. Much child abuse will occur in its name.

Links:
Brian Edwards Media
Disturbing Trends article (July)

The world economy was imbalanced upon a falsehood. The West took and the East delivered. Growing up in the West the only idea we (as children) experienced of the East was the familiar “Made in Hong Kong” on every little plastic toy that broke or was discarded with no love given. The little collapsible cows, small plastic animals, pick up sticks – these toys were adequately made, more entertaining than they inherently should have been. Many of the expensive luxuries we enjoyed as children were not made in the East, these toys were somehow less “defining” – they demanded less imagination than the simple little disposable objects which must now populate land fills in the West. Disposability was an economic doctrine of sorts that seems to have existed in the wealthy sixties and when the seventies came around politicians started trying to engineer economics with notorious measures such as wage and price freezes. The net result of this was to hide inflation from the voters.

Economics is a bit like baking a pie. There is no single right way to get a result, but there are many ways to destroy it. The pie must be heated at the correct rate, or near enough to it, so that it cooks the inside before it starts to burn the outside. When the pie is correctly cooked you feed your family with it. Next year your family is a little larger. So the pie is no longer enough for them. This creates demand.

To satisfy demand (which in economics is more a life/death calculation) more pies are required than the ones you are able to bake. The demand translates from hunger to shortages of shortening and pie filler. Pastry become rare again, no longer a commodity but something people will walk hundreds of miles to find. Pies become more expensive and traveling to find them becomes common place so the 30 or so rickshaws employed to ferry pastry cooks around are all constantly busy. The ceiling on delivery is reached quickly and that stunts future growth in pie making. An economic boom may cause imbalances to exist. A smart rickshaw driver sees the opportunity and trains another 30 drivers.

To soak up the demand for pies, the Government decides to import extra pastry. Governments are run by individuals who over estimate things (power is intoxicating, hence it follows that politicians are intoxicated). Now there is a glut of pastry and 30 extra rickshaw drivers ensures that all rickshaw drivers get paid less. The pie makers make many many more pies but nobody can afford to buy them. Government interventions distort natural exchange regulators. So rickshaw driver wages drop and the business no longer maintains its vehicles.

Then along comes a clever banker who sees that if future delivery of pastry is predictable then businesses are able to project and make decisions that make sense. The banker funds many businesses that work in this way, producing not much more than was required to satisfy demand. Then along comes a smarter banker who invests in the first banker and many others. Then sells the future expected earning potential to the people who make the pastry. As the market starts to lose, the pastry cook modulates their production. As the market grows, they can invest in improved productivity.

Now money is making the world turn. We have an industrial revolution, turning out productivity at a much greater and more consistent rate than before.

In theory it sounds very much like the artificial world of a computer game. The pie makers can accumulate so many pies or resources that they become bigger and more powerful than the government. Their decisions/needs are no longer externally modulated. They gobble up other industries. Their successful behaviours are exported. Now they are a conglomerate. Now their fortunes are more important to the economy in which they live. They go around saying that their assets are more valuable now, so they control the prices.

We have these things called “countries” that exist as economic competitors. Economic take over is mediated through international finance. It used to be mediated by war. We had to find a less destructive way to share.

War can be viewed as an economic activity. Where inflation wears away at the value of the economic clout of savings, war makes money far more valuable. It is often the result of excessive inflation that a bankrupt government can no longer control. Theft is the easiest way to get wealth. If the government is so poor it can not invade and steal from a neighbor, it attacks its own citizens and this internal war is the worst economic medicine – look at Zimbabwe. A civil war has no real winner.

The current world situation is not dissimilar. The world has lived off inflation for so long that it forgets to produce pies. The current economic recovery could fail if the economic drivers behind productivity are not understood.

In America, the move to sustainable energy consumption is not just vital for the environment, it is intrinsically linked to replacing the unsustainable wealth with economic activity.

It is a defining moment, this reunion of the giants of the Democratic Party – solving an international injustice that can occur when a war is not ended. Bill Clinton has risen from the “political yesterday” firmly into the immediate political moment and has made up with Al Gore as, as he delivers back two intrepid journalists who strayed over the border into North Korea. That they were arrested by the secretive state is unsurprising. For them to be held in a prison in this way of course was not just, but prison without trial is not something that America has shied away from in recent years as we are all too familiar with – the orange jumpsuits that exclude individuals from the freedoms enshrined in the very word “America”.

If this is not a defining moment for everyone in the world, maybe that is understandable, but it certainly is a defining moment for both the Clintons, of course for Mr Gore – who’s journalists seem braver than any in this moment – and for President Obama – it signals a return to grace in American diplomacy.

If a visit from a past president was the respect for existing that Kim Jong Il’s North Korea needed to return to the nuclear table and find a way out of the game of atomic chess North Korea appears to be playing for “legitimacy” – then so be it. One should remember that although GW Bush idiotically labelled North Korea effectively with the same consideration that he used for terrorists – reduced this small, proud and broke country to negative options.

President Clinton, by brushing aside instincts of fear for his own safety that the reputation of North Korea may excite including the barbs aimed at his wife before this extraordinary meeting has achieved a better equilibrium from which it is possible to negotiate. The door is opened enough to pass information rather than insults.

Banks are paying salaries and bonuses afraid of “losing good people to competitors”.

This is the insanity of the market – it runs itself using protection rackets? The risk taken on insuring Lehman Brothers will drain the insurer who has never paid a claim before.

Meantime, we have this culture of bonuses and how does it really help sure up the position of the Wall Street banking industry?

“At Morgan Stanley, for example, compensation last year was more than seven times as large as the bank’s profit. In 2004 and 2005, when the stock markets were doing well, Morgan Stanley spent only two times its profits on compensation.”

See- NY Times

Signs of an economic recovery are starting to appear. After recapitalising the financial system, President Obama kept the US economy liquid. This is may have averted more depressing news but as the bankers start to return funds they were lent by the tax payer the question arises, where to now for the US economy?

An economy is a little like an elastic steam engine. As it gets hotter and more pressure the boiler can inflate – and that reduces the pressure. There are little feed pipes that take excess steam away and it is also possible that you may have too many coals firing the engine – if there is coal burning, and there is not enough water to accomodate the heat generated, then less coal is required. The coal that burns that is not required is in danger of becoming unemployed. What is the point of burning coal that is not generating heat? With the extra coal burning, there is more of a tendancy for the boiler to overheat, and expand without producing more energy as the water pressure is not sufficient to supply it.

There are two economic arguments:

1) prevent inflation at all costs (conventional economics)
2) avert as much unemployment as possible, despite a bit of inflation (putting wealth into the hands of the people).

The trouble with doing 1) is that it creates a wave of unemployment.
The trouble with doing 2) is that it creates future inflation.

The economic crisis however created a new condition. It is not just the burnoffs from the Madoffs

full article

See also:
NY Times