IS NEWZEALAND ECONOMICALLY NAIVE?

In the red corner v blue corner politics column published last week, Stuart Smith is typical for the National Party, never for the people on the lower income scale..

Most OECD countries have this kind of Income Insurance Scheme. In Germany where I worked for a New Zealand company, we paid about 8 per cent unemployment insurance, health insurance, a further 10-12 per cent and pension was in my case 20 per cent.

Half of these contributions are paid by the employer and half by the employee.

I don’t need to point out that Germany has the strongest economy in Europe – even the Chinese have some production lines in Germany with the high German wages.

When I became unemployed after the New Zealand company was sold to an American company (like most everything else now, even the All Blacks) my living standard did not drop because of this insurance. The length of payment depends on how long you paid into this insurance.

The naivety of New Zealand is unbelievable: it helps the rest of the world to grow kiwifruit, and in Chile it helped the country to set up a forest/timber industry.

Chile now sells 80-90 per cent value-added timber while New Zealand is selling logs to the Chinese to be used in the coal mines and our once plentiful sawmills have either been closed or sold, hence our building timber shortage.

I could not believe New Zealand sold the All Blacks; nobody donates $300 million without control over what they buy. Siegfried Jordan, Royal Oak