Debt danger to financial stability

Your timely article warning of the likelihood of yet another financial crisis (Sept 8) overlooks a key factor generating financial instability. Almost every country’s money is overwhelmingly interestbearing debt to the banks which created it. This fractional reserve system collapses when debt reaches a level that borrowers cannot service. Furthermore the present system is dependent on continued nominal growth (which ignores inflation) to avoid collapse. Without monetary reform there will be inflation, and/or population growth, accompanied by increasing poverty, resource exhaustion and environmental destruction.

Distinguished economists Herman Daly (Maryland University), Patrizio Laina (University of Helsinki), Tim Jackson (Surrey University), and Kate Raworth (author of Doughnut Economics) are among a growing number supporting monetary reform. Opposed to change are the money barons of New York, London, etc, who benefit enormously from a crash.

Allen Cookson, Oxford

High fences

Ian Orchard (Sept 8) decries the rise of high boundary fences which spoil the whole look of a street. However, it goes further than this. It is downright dangerous.

In times gone by, when people seemed to have more common sense and compassion for others, high fences were seldom seen on front boundaries. Front fences were low, and side fences alongside driveways sloped down to about a metre high as they approached the footpath. This allowed good vision of the roadway and footpath as drivers left their properties.

Pedestrians, especially children, are no longer easily visible to these drivers, and with the advent of electric cars have lost auditory as well as visual warning not to step across the gateway. Similarly, drivers have little chance of avoiding them. A catastrophe waiting to happen. It is past time councils brought in a legal requirement for lower fencing. Philippa Lane, Russley

Balancing risk

The debate rages over Redcliffs School. I would like to put a new slant to this proposed project and other large projects to minimise risk. Too often today we see our leaders and powersthat-be attempting to reduce risk to zero. There is no such thing as zero risk – it simply can’t be achieved.

As for Redcliffs School, the risk to rockfall is negligible and can be made even less by spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars on a fence to keep the kids away from the cliff base. So what’s the risk balance? Not building a new school will save a couple of thousand tonnes of building material which would otherwise generate a couple of thousand tonnes of greenhouse gas, which in turn adds risk to the whole of Earth’s population.

Warren Pettigrew, Halswell

Thorough process

The building of the new Redcliffs School has been through a thorough process over many years, with the large majority of affected people in favour. Getting off the main road is safer, the environment for learning much improved and the fear of cliff collapse avoided. The buildings are elevated, the land remediated and, it is still a debate as to whether the sea levels along this coast are rising? Don’t think so. Ocean restaurant sits on the same spot as it has for the last 100 years.

Ron Williams, Clifton

Company tax

Mike Yardley’s column (Sept 4) made an excellent point regarding lowering company tax so employers could afford to pay a living wage of $20 per hour. The majority of New Zealand companies are small businesspeople who work increasingly longer hours for slimmer margins and are fast becoming the working poor due to ever-increasing costs, taxes, rates, and compliances. Small businesses are the backbone of the economy and pay the majority of tax. Without them there would be no hospitals and other infrastructure, so it would be wise for government to understand the need to support the engine-room of the economy.

Mary Hobbs, Aoraki/Mt Cook