Restructuring the economy

Press, 12 September 1980, Page 16

Restructuring the economy

Sir, — New Zealanders appear to have accepted without protest the stated aims of the Government to “restructure” the economy. Perhaps they are not aware that the concept and term “restructuring" first occurred in the writings of Lenin. The inhuman results of the Russian Government’s restructuring not only the economy but individuals’ lives and minds are known to many of us. Why must successive New Zealand governments have this obsession with fiddling with our money, our livelihoods, our moral standards? They are there fundamentally to run the police, courts, and army, so to protect our freedoms, not to meddle in every facet of our lives and thus violate our freedoms. New Zealand, as recently as 10 years ago, had minimum government interference and was called “Godzone”; we were prosperous and happy. Now we pay Big Brother a huge amount from every dollar we earn to finance his awesome growth and pur decline..— Yours, etc., FRANK A. SMITH. September 9, 1980.

Sir, — When I go to my bank for an overdraft the only “real wealth” involved is. the deed to the ancestral quarter acre. On the basis of its lowest possible value if sold, the bank tells me that I am able to overdraw my account to the extent of

minus 1000 dollars. They will now keep my financial record in red “minus dollars”. I will make out cheques which will increase the minus dollars in my account and add them to an account in my bank or another bank in the form of “plus dollars”. Only about a tenth of my transactions will require token wealth in the form of cash. The rest are just book entries. Transactions between the five trading banks involved will be carefully balanced out and no actual transfer of money is ever done. In the process the “minus” overdraft dollar becomes a “plus” credit dollar which has been “created” by the trading bank system. — Yours, etc., JIM TIMINGS. September 8, 1980.