Posts by 3410
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Excellent releases to arrive their recently include..
Not you too, Russell? ;)
Wot is an "astroturfer"?
Fake (ie politically orchestrated) grass-roots movement.
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From the Guardian:
London mayoral election: doubts over 41,000 votes counted by machine -
Agreed.
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Andrew, You might be right, but that's a pretty big assumption; I don't think it's correct. I'd be interested to know the proportion. I had a look aroung the HNZ website, but couldn't find anything.
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Sofie, state housing income-related rents apply to only a small proportion of beneficiaries. Your other points are well made, but as someone who was a beneficiary in 1990 and is again now, I'm telling ya, overall, it's certainly harder now. I'm not here to apportion blame or credit; just trying to get the frame right.
(BTW, 15% down on 1990 levels overstates it a bit; more like 10, I think. To clarify: all of the drop occured in 1991, but has come back silghty, on occasion, since.)
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3410, aren't you ignoring Working for Families in this analysis?
Yes, that's right. I'm talking about people who aren't working.
Do you mean unemployment, disability etc? I understood that, as a result of increased employment and wages, improved housing and WfF, income levels for low- to middle-income individuals and families were better?
Yes, I do. Your point is basically correct, on average, but only relevant to working people. I'm sorry, I don't quite know what you mean by "improved housing".
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... however beneficiaries do face the prospect of cuts to their income if National's elected and particularly if it's reliant on ACT.
Just a reminder that benefit levels are currently (in dollar terms) still lower than they were before Richardson's 1991 budget; by my reckoning about 15%. In real terms, of course, it's much more than that.
Also, not really keeping up with (relevant) inflation, so in fact still going down.
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Rich, just make sure you can afford the $11.31 per year in "lost quality of life".
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"Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"
Doesn't that just boil down to "Should something good be illegal?"
If the petition says "John Key is a Knob and should have to wear a T-Shirt everyday that says 'I Am A Knob'" and they can get 350,000 signatures ....
Anyone want to put up the $500 and start this one rolling? I'll sign it...
I'm in for 10 bucks.
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[Apologies for any repetition of points already made by previous commenters. The following is taken from notes I made last night.]
The primary problem with the methodology of the NZDHI is the inclusion of the costs of prohibition into overall social harm costs of illicit drugs. These costs (Customs, Police, Criminal courts, prisons, community sentences, preventative expenditure, etc.) account for approximately two-thirds of the total DHI.
Inclusion of these figures is simply a feedback loop of self-justification. The State deems certain drugs illicit because they are harmful, and a State agency deems these drugs harmful because (in large part) they are illicit.
I could, according to this “logic”, spend $500,000 protecting my house from being attacked by pterodactyls, and then conclude that pterodactyls are extremely “harmful” because of the enormous cost of protection against them.
[T]his study assumes that illicit drug consumption is abusive and imposes a social cost. Therefore, all resources diverted by illicit drug consumption are regarded as social costs. (3.3.1)
This is a spectacular assumption, and one which the study does not explicitly justify, other than by claiming that such an assumption is industry standard. Everything which follows in the report is built on this erroneous foundation.
So, whilst work absenteeism due to cannabis use is valued at $6.4m p.a. (Appendix Table 1), no account is made of any avoided absenteeism due to cannabis use. Despite the fact that the difficulty of measuring each figure is the same, the latter (despite having tangible financial benefits) is simply ignored because the report “does not analyse consumption benefits of illicit drugs. Nor does this study aim to include any potential benefits of illicit drug consumption.”
The report describes depression as being “recognised widely as affecting many drug users”(5.4.1) and includes related health care costs in its calculation of social harm. This assumes (without any given justification) the causal direction of the correlation between the two, yet provides no evidence for that assumption.
In short, the report’s authors take every opportunity to include all possible “related” costs in their calculation of social harm, and similary exclude any possible benefits. Every assumption works in the same direction. The report is designed, not to create an accurate measure of social harms, but to maximise reported social harms.
A secondary problem with this report is its total absence of data relating to licit recreational drugs. Clearly, to include measurement of the social harms of alcohol and tobacco use, would be too embarrassing to the commissioners of this report; the hypocrisy would shine from every table. Nevertheless, in accurately calculating social harm, the distinction is between licit and illicit is arbitrary. Worse, it is invalid circular reasoning (again) to make such a distinction, if the conclusions of the report are intended, in part at least, to be used to drive funding decisions.
But why not? It's entirely in the interests of the NZP to demonise recreational drugs as much as possible, since the worse the percieved problem, the stronger the argument for the allocation of more resources to fight against it, and anyone who would criticise such an approach simply "do[es]n’t care how harmful [drugs] are", right?
Rather than conclude, which would, I fear, employ disdainful language of Ranapian proportions, I’ll just leave it there, for now. Thanks for reading.
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PS. One more random thought: As we know, when percentages approach zero, their reliabilty as an indicator also approaches zero. So, what are we to make of the claim (extrapolated from given figures) that smoking cannabis will cause the average smoker to lose his life after 812,533 years, and thus costs each cannabis smoker $3.75 p.a. in "loss of life"?