Overselling consumption

Congratulations on your November 17 Editorial (“Cutting our cloth”), which highlights the extent and environmental impact of the overconsumption of clothing. It is especially significant in the context of the subsequent article on the impact of climate change on our coasts.

Overconsumption is deeply embedded in society. It goes beyond clothing to food, appliances and most other consumables. We have a sophisticated and pervasive advertising industry promoting consumption and much of our industry and commerce are dependent on it. Shopping has become a major recreation.

Overconsumption’s importance has been recognised by the international community in the global plan for creating a viable future: the Sustainable Development Goals. “Sustainable consumption and production” is one of 17 critical areas defined.

We have been told for decades that our lifestyles have been destroying our environment, with the likely results of sea-level rise and increased weather disruption. Yet, as a society, we have been persistently resisting these messages. What will it take to change?

Many people are making contributions in small but important ways, and the Government is bringing in legislation. But we are still a long way from the broad social movements required to transform society and the economy. People call for stronger leadership, which is certainly necessary. However, we also need to support our leaders in affirming that such leadership would be welcomed, and to undertake any personal and collective action that we can.

We all need to work together on this one. It is for our children, if not ourselves. Gray Southon (Tauranga)

HISTORY LESSONS

As Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron were shaking hands in memory of the reconciliation of Armistice, the words of the Editor’s Letter (November 10), “war teaches history”, rang true. It’s a lesson we need to be taught over and over again, but inclusively and in its entirety.

New Zealand’s human sacrifice in World War I was tragic, and proportionately the greatest of all countries of the British Empire. Here is a statistic of war dead of another empire to remember: nearly three million German soldiers and civilians, about 4% of the country’s population, were killed.

Another little-known item of WWI “history”: during a ceasefire on Christmas Eve, 1914, German soldiers stepped out of the trenches, candles in hands, singing the German carol Stille Nacht, since then happily adopted as Silent Night. Young men on the battlefield all longing for home.

Whereas surviving Kiwi soldiers returned to a country with infrastructure, homes and families intact, Germans attempting to repair the battlefields and rebuild their lives were stung by sanctions that caused deep recession, unemployment, famine and resentment – perfect conditions for Hitler to seize power.

Wars must teach history, and all of it. I hope that I, born in post-World War II Germany, will never again be confronted by a student in a Wellington secondary school asking ignorantly, “Miss, are you a Nazi?” Katrin Eickhorst (Newlands, Wellington) My grandfather died on active service off Murmansk, as the last flickering embers of World War I went out. Result: my grandmother lost her husband and had her heart broken, my mother never knew her father and I missed out on a grandpa.

WWI was absolutely unnecessary, and a colossal waste. I find the steadily increasing glorification and glamorisation of New Zealand’s part in this supreme debacle misplaced. They did not die for us. They did not die for a worthwhile cause, at all. Their lives were squandered. GM Tinker (Whangarei)

SAVING SUPER

Although universal superannuation is a lofty goal (“Retiring

with dignity”, November

10), surely the scheme can be more flexible and responsive to make it affordable while also meeting genuine need and supporting well-deserved retirement.

I advocate a much higher age for universal superannuation – perhaps the early seventies – preceded by an age band from 65 that is strictly means tested. Does a medical specialist, university professor, or lawyer, for example, in the 65-70 age bracket need the pocket money of NZ Super?

A means-tested band of seven or eight years that allowed a small income on top of superannuation would exclude only those who continue earning higher salaries or wages past 65.

People should have the choice about when to retire, but working past 65 should preclude the automatic right to even a portion of a pension. Rosemary McBryde (Dunedin) Raising the NZ Super age a little is perhaps inevitable over the long term as people live longer, but it is no answer to actual problems ordinary people face. Nor is it a fiscal saviour.

Let’s hope the promised retirement incomes review in 2019 does justice to examining

all the options for sustainability, fairness and affordability without just relying on the chimera of raising the age of entitlement. Susan St John Associate economics professor, Retirement Policy and Research Centre, University of Auckland

Roger White ( Letters, November 17) invited corrections, so I will offer some. It is against the law to be denied work due to age. Second, a universal pension is a matter of fairness, not entitlement. Trevor Sennitt (Avonhead, Christchurch)

“Retire?” I can hear my elderly friend say. “The only time I retire is when I go to bed.” Rae McGregor (Mt Eden, Auckland)

We often forget the “adjustment factor” in looking into the future. Generations adjust to their circumstances – the good and the bad normally balancing each other. We can have faith that the young will cope as resiliently as we have with life’s challenges. Alec Waugh (Nelson)

The pensions story skirted one issue: what do we do when we retire? I found a possible solution by establishing a MenzShed charitable trust. We shared our skills and worked together on making or repairing things for the community.

This can help the physical and emotional condition of retired people, give them a real reason for being and be of benefit to the community. John Shrapnell (Wadestown, Wellington) LETTER OF THE WEEK

The idea that those in paid employment support all others is grossly simplistic, as the elderly and hosts of other “unemployed” do work of

immeasurable benefit, partly through voluntary agencies, but mainly, and less visibly, through support to friends and families.

The extra self-sufficiency allowed by time at home, and the avoidance of employment costs like dressing up, commuting, eating out, and needing extra buildings to work in, are resource-saving national benefits. Informal workers work to meet real needs rather than prop up industries of often dubious value.

To say there are about 4.4 workers for every person over 65 is misleading and offensive.

By and large, the retired are workers. Of course, some indulge in travel and other expensive luxuries, but no more than other age groups. Informal work does not pay tax, but it saves others from having to pay more and consume more. And money circulates: if spent domestically, superannuation costs society far less than its 4% of GDP. It actually boosts the economy, for what that is worth.

Retirement Commissioner Diane Maxwell says work has meaning and gives people a sense of purpose. This is but partly true, and is denied by the book Bullshit Jobs, by

anthropologist David Graeber, which the Listener reviewed in August. Apart from those that are destructive or toxic or underpaid, or merely inefficient, there is, as Graeber puts

it, a host of ancillary industries that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

Pushing the age of Super to 67 prolongs and exacerbates the status quo of needless jobs and mindless growth and commits the elderly to competing with the young for the jobs worth doing, for the sake of a little more tax revenue in the short term, while perpetuating the myth that the money supply, so randomly and inequitably created by the banks, cannot be managed by the government.

Gavin Maclean

(Gisborne)