What would happen if ...
WE PROVIDED EQUAL OPPORTUNITY?

The rebuild of our country and economy now awaits. It provides an opportune time to examine our main structural issues and use the opportunity to establish a secure, productive, cohesive nation that works (in all senses of the word), is housed, is fed, and seeks to assume personal responsibility where appropriate.

Today, a restructure suggestion that I have long favoured that would simultaneously address some major structural issues in our society whilst also establishing an equity of opportunity and subsidy for all in our nation.

There is little doubt that our current system:

1. Produces insufficient entrepreneurs and business creators:

We do not promote the wealth creators in New Zealand. In fact we denigrate their effort and assumption of risk as if it were a slight on our secured apathy. Should they dare to achieve success, it is a challenge to our perceived 'egalitarianism' and treated with contempt.

I would suggest a poll of final year students at high school asking 'what do you want to be?' would return a plethora of wanna-be 'All Blacks', 'politicians', 'social workers' and 'beneficiary mothers', but absolutely no one anticipating establishing a business which will ultimately employ others.

I would suggest that you could even retrospectively enquire of our extreme lotto winners on how they used their fortuitous millions - any business started? any Kiwis employed? any investment into the productive economy? I would posit the dominant response would be  "You've got to be joking! Why would I choose that life of pain for nothing! I just spent and consumed and had a great old time!"

... And yet we rely on the wealth generators ...
... And yet we rely on the employers ...

So how has NZ got it so wrong that people do not want to start business and employ others? It is after all, the very characteristic that has driven all the historical progressive improvement of living standards, as we currently witness with the sudden release of economic suppression in modern Asia.

2. Produces insufficient skilled tradespeople and technicians to build our society:

We do not promote those that construct and maintain the fabric of our society - build the houses, install the plumbing and wiring, nurse the ill, farm the land ... We produce too few, and our ability to meet the demands of our evolving society is failing as a result, as is amply demonstrated by our failure to provide and maintain the required housing stock.

... And yet we rely on the makers ...
... And yet we rely on the builders ...

Our societal mechanisms for both attracting people into these occupations, supporting their training, and retaining them in New Zealand is woeful, and we futilely attempt to cover own failings by attempting to entice others from overseas. So how has NZ got it so wrong that people do not want to be tradespeople and technicians?

3. Allows too many to enter the expensive tertiary education sector without purpose, analysis or investment:

While the numbers attending university has ballooned since the 1970s (along with the associated costs of providing tuition and infrastructure), we still produce a shortage of those following disciplines and careers of demand, and are promoting poorly evaluated and heavily-indebting 'educations of fancy'. Headlines such as 'one in three university students do not complete a degree' (Stuff, October 2018) speak to this folly, as does the $16 billion dollars of student debt accumulated, with $1.5 billion currently in default.

The current context not only cripples those that pursue this post-secondary avenue with indebtedness, but simultaneously, paradoxically, and inequitably, still demands massive state subsidy toward the costs of providing this tuition and infrastructure.

... And yet this largesse from the state is simply not provided
to others who do not follow this direction. Why not? ..