The $3b child poverty pric tag

[dken31]

And, to address the original thread topic: if it was as simple as: shelling out $3B will solve child poverty, this government would be all over it. However, the reality is that throwing money at problems doesn't necessarily make them go away, and money allocated to one thing equals less to allocate to another.

I agree with the person Oh_hunnihunni respects as to bigger not being better with regard to communities. I heard recently that Rodney Hide massively regrets creating the Auckland "Supercity" because that definitely hasn't resulted in greater efficiencies, improvements to services at lower costs etc. Instead we just have a great unwieldy beast that provides less & less but costs more & more, and is largely run by faceless bureaucrats seemingly answerable to no-one. Auckland City Council's debt is increasing at roughly $1.5B per year (12%), and that is despite regular big rate increases and the $835M sale of Auckland Airport shares. And that would be OK if we could all see that Auckland was improving/future proofing etc., whereas it feels like the Council is really only managing to slow down the gradual decline.

Anyway, enough doom & gloom for today; time to get back to work to earn enough to cover the latest rate increase!

[zqwerty]

RE: Communes and Lilith7, I checked on a couple of communes when I arrived in NZ in the first couple of years, not very impressive, my NZ female cousin from Wellington was a founding member of CentrePoint, when I met her on a special trip to meet her, she seemed disenchanted with everything and had left the commune. More recently she had metamorphosised into an elegant little black dress business woman looking like a different person, young and vivacious, but unfortunately a few years later she died.

Another cousin Margaret Ann from England was a founding member of one of the first independent charities that was like a cult that gathered money for donations to Africa but unfortunately I can't bring the name to mind, it's quite well known, from back in the early 60's maybe late 50's. Could have been Oxfam but that not really ringing a bell for me.