In his Sunday Star Times column today, Michael Laws predicts more violence for 2007. I would agree if for no other reason than there is nothing happening to reverse the trend.Reviewing the much-proffered causes, he lists media violence, a decline in moral standards and even consumption of KFC.
"But the truth is a little more prosaic. Simply, we have bred an underclass in New Zealand. They are disproportionately brown, uneducated, and habitues of Income Support. And we have no idea what to do with them.
They were nascent in 1987, entrenched in 1997. And they are now legion in 2007. And they are almost wholly responsible for the sharp increases in murder and violent crime statistics and child abuse reports, the spike in truancy and incarceration rates.
Indeed remove the underclass from this country's social statistics and we would be a paradise on earth. Admittedly a cold and pluvial paradise but at least your television news would feature outrages from overseas rather than some devilish deeds done domestically."
Couple of points. Any first world country would be 'a paradise on earth' if they removed their underclass statistics. We are not unique.
Law's also claims that the underclass was 'nascent' in 1987 which links its birth to the economic reforms. That is a myth.
The underclass has always been there but we didn't pay it much heed until government and academia - like modern day missionaries - decided it was a problem, something to be corrected.
It started to expand rapidly from the 60s. Maori urbanisation and Pacific migration (the second to a much lesser extent), the rise in single parent births leading to loss of family links (particularly corrosive for Maori), increasing availability and consumption of drugs and alcohol, and, of course, welfare as a 'right', all contributed to its significant growth.
Finally, "We have no idea what to do with them". He's right. But we are going to have to figure it out soon.
We could do little better than looking to the past and admitting that some practices and philosophies worked better - they weren't perfect - just better.
5 comments:
This goes along with all his other rascist views - it's the brown slugs that cause all the problems. It is time he got off his high horse and did something about the decline of society and not just sit on the sidelines and critisize people that he does not agree with. A lot of ill-informed bile comes from the mouth of this small minded twat.
Nup, don't agree. The problem became significantly more manifest after the economic reforms. At the time everyone knew it (reform) had to work fast or this (an entrenched & necessarily increasing substantial underclass with reflected consistently poor educational performance)would be the consequence ... & it didn't & hasn't. So now we have generations worth of this 'engineered & fostered underclass,' & removing the financial supports for this will certainly result in extreme, polarised (deemed 'racially based')expression of disfavour.
How politicians & policy makers believe that they can change systems & that it wont impact on peoples' behaviour & society as a whole (due to enduring moral character?) is beyond belief.
So yes ... unemployment & associated paid alternatives (sickness/invalids benefits, ACC)will remain high & with it those excesses resulting from solitude/preoccupations & lack of moderation thru' social involvement; violence will increase; burglaries will increase which means so will rapes, & those working will increasingly detest supporting those 'victims' of sociey & those 'victims' will further ascribe their 'victimness' to the working & feel they are 'owed,' & a large percentage will feel that because of this they can take.
& this 'victimness' is constantly reinforced by sociologists (who put the 'spin' (interpretation on statistics) & our education system that further entrenches this notion.
All quite sad really.
Given our economy is tied to Australia and (more so then) the UK, who went through the same high unemployment and resulting migration to incapacity benefits, I don't believe the economic reforms exclusively exacerbated the underclass. Without the reforms we would be worse off, which is why they haven't been undone.
And you have ignored the underclass pre-reform, which most certainly existed.
Apart from that I think we agree. Very, very sad really. Tragic.
The UK also went thru' similar reforms - there it was Thatcherism, here Rogernomics - same experiment, similar 'fall out.'
& it marked more than that - the change from a full employment economy as focal realised the change from peoples' welfare as paramount... & Lange was the 'window dressing' behind which this occurred.
Interesting, tho,' it was the Muldoon era & his contraction of the money supply post election (freeing it pre election)that reliably realised an increase in burglaries (& the associated physioloical arousal being a slight reframing away from sexual arousal) & rapes. Simple reversal design that was frequently replicated - it quickly dealt to my youthful idealism & may, just may, be a statement about personal responsibility.
Interesting. But I think you are putting too much emphasis on the link between the economy and crime. What happened in the US? The crime trends preceded ours - just - yet it never practiced full employment as a deliberate 'welfare' policy and its unemployment stayed well below ours in the reform period.
Here, it wasn't unemployment that drove crime. They rose in unison but the increase in crime came first and started in the fifties. Why? Which takes me back to my original post.
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