Slowing our age
Writing as one who has attained her 97th year, I question this incessant pursuit of youth, which, if I remember rightly, contains invidious problems (“Elixirs of youth”, May 6).
To learn to enjoy the here and now may not be a scientific achievement, but it may be more rewarding. PE Lamm (St Marys Bay, Auckland) I was delighted and surprised to read in the article about living longer that eating nuts results in significantly lower rates of death. But if this fact is promulgated, won’t we soon have an overpopulated nuteating world? Lindsay Gunn (Calton Hill, Dunedin)
MIGRATION MORATORIUM
Our high immigration disguises a multitude of national shortcomings ( Editorial, May 6). It provides an artificial economic boost, mostly to the advantage of the already wealthy, but at enormous cost to our infrastructure and the poor, placing pressure on our roads, schools, hospitals and housing.
We need at least a five-year moratorium on immigration just to catch up, during which we need to decide what the optimum maximum population should be for our small country, which has limited usable land and resources.
We need to recognise that importing immigrants to do certain jobs is only a shortterm fix and we must instead train our own people. If people can’t be found in this country for certain farming activities, perhaps short-stay Pacific migrants could be employed, but it might be better for the environment if some of these activities were discontinued. Murray Eggers (Paraparaumu)
MIND THE GAP
Companies could reduce their pay gaps by giving equal dollar-amount increases to all staff (“Awash with dosh”, April 29), including chief executives, perhaps after a percentage increase to cover inflation.
For example, a firm with 1000 employees and able to increase its payroll costs by $1 million would give all staff an increase of $1000.
Of course, few boards would have the moral courage to implement such a scheme, despite the mounting evidence that CEO salaries do not reflect performance. The Government could move towards the same outcome by introducing tax rebates, which in time would result in lower-paid workers having negative tax obligations. It could be an election-winner. Brian Smith (Wellington) A public online register of the ratio of CEO earnings to mean worker pay (including bonuses) for all listed companies would allow consumers to vote with their feet to support companies with lower ratios. I’d be happy to, even if it cost me to do so.
But I suspect companies with lower ratios would also be the most cost-effective, as they will not be supporting a topheavy administration. With people power, we can wrestle back control from the Institute of Directors. Richard McKenzie (Alexandra) LETTER OF THE WEEK A BBC online article headlined “How Western civilisation could collapse” chimes with Rebecca Macfie’s April 29 cover story. Among the factors listed as putting the West at risk are ecological strain and economic stratification.
The West faces two possible outcomes. In one, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is insufficient to sustain them – think Briscoe worker “Antoinette” in Macfie’s story, whose boss earns in two weeks what she makes in a year.
In the other, the widening gap between rich and poor
sets up the psychological and social prerequisites for mass violence; collapse is then difficult to avoid.
Going by history, the second outcome is more probable. It’ll happen this century. We won’t have too long to wait. Digby Scorgie (Kaiapoi)
COUNTRY LIFE
I read the excellent profile of Henrietta, Dowager Duchess of Bedford, twice. The accompanying story, “Horses for courses”, was of particular interest as I follow both horse racing and breeding.
What also interested me was when Henrietta opined that she is amused that most people who live in Auckland feel superior to rural folk. Auckland, as she had earlier observed, could not survive without the rural community. Brian Collins (Aro Valley, Wellington) Henrietta, Dowager Duchess of Bedford, has clearly lived, and
continues to live, a privileged and cloistered existence that bears no resemblance to that of 99% of the world’s population ( Shelf Life, May 6).
She says, “The peasant and the aristocrat always got on very well.” This ignores the subjugation and abuse that the landed wealthy classes have inflicted on the less well off.
It reflects a total lack of understanding of the exploitation of the working classes by the wealthy and privileged and suggests that she lives in a world that ignores the advances made against such repression over the past two centuries.
As for the middle class causing the problems, perhaps she might want to stop and look at the successes and achievements of many such people who have worked their way out of the peasantry that she so fondly embraces.
Sorry, Henrietta, this is 2017, and times have changed. Chris Brady (Taumarunui)
EDUCATION’S FAILINGS
Hurrah for the Editorial drawing attention to the dumbing down of the country’s universities (“Failing by degrees”, April 15).
Waikato University recently aired a proposal to chop 17 staff in the humanities. The University of Otago proposed similar dippy measures last year.
As a holder of master’s degrees in the arts, literature and legal studies from the University of Auckland, I can attest to the persistence, intellectual rigour and critical thinking needed to reach those milestones.
In comparison, the Bachelor of Business Studies I completed at Massey University could have been achieved by any half-baked idiot with a reasonable memory.
The concentration by our universities on engineering and business studies, both of which could more properly be taught at technical institutes, lessens the likelihood of students emerging from their tertiary studies with academic rigour, philosophical knowledge, literacy and the sense of history extolled in the Editorial.
Here in Christchurch, there are retirement villages named after such icons as Ngaio Marsh, Charles Upham and Anthony Wilding, but I am yet to find a recent university graduate who has the foggiest idea as to who these luminaries were.
Clearly I am encountering an overabundance of business studies graduates.
Hopefully some of the philistines – adherents to the Steven Joyce school of learning – who now dominate the administration of our universities will take some time to ponder the Listener’s words: “old-school study lifts us to higher places”. Leister Monk (Linwood, Christchurch)