As Yogi Berra said, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will lead you there”.

As Russel Norman noted in his address to the Green Party,

“There are 20,000 New Zealand children going to school each day without food, or shoes or raincoats”

This is a major issue facing NZ. Poor health and nutrition impacts hugely on the ability to learn and on general outcomes in life. As Jamie Oliver has shown with his Food Revolution, starting early in schools can change behaviour before it becomes embedded and beyond repair. The Sustainable Kids Programme has been a real winner so far but we need more of this. Sadly the National Party over turned a previous policy on health eating in schools. It’s these types of programmes that are being slowly squeezed in the name of cutting spending. This is the classic mistake many governments make when trying to cut costs….they don’t realise that this ends up costing us all more in the long run.

We should be investing hugely in our children. In an employment constrained world, in an outsourced world, in a world of highly competitive manufacturing, we need our people to be as well as possible. They are our future. If we are going to develop a hi-tech, productive and efficient economic system then we need smart kids with good habits and a good understanding of how systems work. Food and nutrition is a perfect example of where this kind of learning can come from. If you ever seen the faces on children who have grown their own food and then cooked and eaten it then you will know what I am talking about.

We are in severe need of new jobs. Well here is a start: get every school a food and nutrition specialist, with a garden alongside. Make it a core part of the curriculum. It’s as important as P.E. (if not more important according to research). I would love to see all schools with a canteen, cooking and supplying a healthy lunchtime meal. For some children this may be the most important meal of the day. Now imagine how many jobs that could generate (with 2000 primary and secondary schools in the country).

The main argument against this approach has been of interfering in what should be a parental responsibility and also taking away to choice to eat crap, unhealthy food. Well my response to that would be to argue that schools have the advantage of scale: they can teach many kids at once. Scale is the pathway to efficiency. The most efficient way to get healthy eating into our society is through our schools and our children. They children will then take that back home and slowly change will take place.

It’s this type of vision that we need to see. Hopefully the Green Party will be the ones to bring it to the Parliamentary table.

The film follows the theme of the previous two movies, namely the issue of debt slavery and the monetary system that underpins it as well as the Venus Project (TVP) which envisions a different societal structure. What is different to ZA is the structure of the film: it splits into four parts: human nature, the market, inequality and the resource based economy. This gives the film, and ultimately the proposition, more depth and more connection for viewers. I know some people still grapple with the explanation of the money system (though my 16 year old son saw the logical answer as quite obvious: why doesn’t the government create the money. doh!) so a look at our innate and determined nature helps to provide some context to the discussion.

Why do we behave the way we do? Does poverty, racism, inequality drive our behaviours? Is our society sick from its institutions and structures? Why does the monetary-market structure treat the well-being of society as irrelevant. Going back to Locke and Smith we see that racism and inequality within the market system was well anticipated. The drive to individual success at all cost (especially social and environmental) was paramount as a system based on cyclical consumption and demand for product was created.

The film posits, quite correctly, that we are stuck on a spin cycle of consuming to be happy even though we must work like slaves to be in this position, that slavery defined by the debt we must accrue in order to enjoy the products paraded before us. That the production process is almost anti-economy, building in obsolescence and focusing on the short term simply puts my pressure on both resources and available money. In essence product sustainability is inverse to economic growth. Yet politicians keep saying they will speed up economic growth. They never say we will build a more healthy society. Perhaps that is because they have swallowed too many blue pills.

So if efficiency, sustainability and preservation are enemies of the current economic system the we have a problem. Crime, war, terror are positives for the economy. Does any of this make sense? Certainly it feels like the US has been gutted by the corporatocracy and inequality is at an all time high. ZMF draws a picture showing how our monetary-market system and socio-economic structure has raised inequality to never before seen levels. The rise of the super-elite is complete.

So far so good. I don’t disagree with anything in this film. In fact I’ve been aware of it for many years now….so whilst I appreciate the diligent work that Peter Joseph has done on these films, what do we do about it? The answer, as alluded to in ZA, is The Venus Project. TVP lays out a move to a resource based economy with no institutions, laws, money and a world based on abundance for all based around the very smartest of technology. Think of it as a techno-utopia. It’s certainly visionary and I leave it to the individual viewer to imagine it and see for themselves. It’s certainly not unachievable.

My main question would be “how do we get there?” This isn’t dealt with in the film but the general suggestion is to somehow opt out of the current system and to move to a more localized and transition based economy. This is all good stuff but the most important message of the film for me is still that we must take back control of our money supply and issue it interest free.

That is the first and most important step on the road to a people centered world.

Now he is taking his personal brand of straight talking to the heart of America’s chronic food related problem, Huntington, West Virginia. This five county metropolitan area was designated as the unhealthiest city in the nation. Nearly half the adults in the area are obese with heart and diabetes problems running alongside.

It’s tough love all the way from the Essex Crusader who keeps giving us the harsh cold truth: crap in, crap out.

Maybe we need him down here in NZ….

- Tax Reform: The perennial favourite, Capital Gains Tax, made some waves as did some more detailed examination of a possible Land Tax. This initially popped up 18 months ago as a floated idea and more recently was discussed at length over at Interest.co.nz.  The session on Tax Reform was sponsored by the Treasury so expect more debate on this in the near future.

- Aid and Development: There were a few papers on corruption and developmental outcomes which were worth following (though I haven’t seen anything to rival Paul Collier’s work). I especially enjoyed a paper on whether aid was helping to achieve the Millenium Development Goals. To me it was clear that whilst aid can make some contribution, targeted p2p actions such as microfinance and giving are more likely to have a lasting impact as they tunnel through the swathe of government and administration on both ends of the aid pipleline. Message to Government: Let people do the giving.

- Business and Innovation: It’s good to see economists looking at this topic since it’s of major importance to NZ. Again lack of capital and R+D incentives for business was a clear problem. We simply can’t compete with countries like Finland or Israel when all our capital is tied up in housing.

- Health: One good paper on “fat” taxes or food “subsidies”. It simply reinforced my position of taking a supply side approach. It’s hard to influence demand through pricing strategies when the underlying commodity (food) is experiencing huge swings in price. As with oil and carbon taxes, the prices movements in food prices will overwhelm any attempt to reduce demand by taking away GST for example (12.5%). Perhaps incentives like gift vouchers/cash in savings accounts will help focus (a bit like the idea to pay girls an annual stipend for each year they don’t get pregnant). We have to get our future health costs down somehow and creative solutions may be required. Time to call in the behavioral psychologists methinks.

- The Financial Crisis: Nice paper looking back at financial collapses over the last 200 years. Yes they happen with regularity…..whoa…yes we know that. The cycle goes back as far as records allow. Even the Bank of England was not immune from overstretching itself… a run on the Central Bank itself. Ooops. So my simple question is: When are we going to change the system?

Overall it was a good conference and a lot came out of it. For next year I can see more focus on the impact of microfinance and p2p activities, more focus on tax reform, more focus on the debt based financial system and hopefully we will have some more ideas to contribute ourselves.

Also good to see someone with a laptop on the go! Surely a first for the NZAE.

The analysis of the regulations shows an upward trend for obesity and metabolic syndrome with the accompanying costs. Japan already has a monster pension bill looming and health is just another area marked for a major budgetary blowout.

Health and nutrition are issues that governments have started to become very involved in. This leads us to the question of how far should governments go in their desire for us to have a healthy life. I would say not too far actually.

More and more the government is taking on people’s personal issues. This approach by the Japanese sets a dangerous precedent. It is against the law to hit your children but it isn’t against the law to be overweight or obese. Should the government attempt to intervene or leave it to the market?

By the market I mean the price mechanism as well as social incentives. The price mechanism can regulate food to some extent and also body mass (more expensive seats for larger people). Carrying a lot of extra weight can hurt in the pocket not just in the heart. Socially it can be difficult also with discrimination and exclusion from others.

The answer is not clear. Clearly something has to be done but are we prepared to do the hard yards (better diet and proper exercise) or wil lwe rely on the government to bail us out.

It will be interesting to see how this policy develops.

A food researcher from Massey University has asked for GST to be removed from fruit and vegetables.  This is a step in the right direction at least. It will not cause a sudden shift in diet…let’s face it it’s hard to come off a high sugar and salt diet but at least it will start to compete on price terms.

How the government can continue to justify this tax is beyond me. But given that the whole tax system is dysfunctional that is hardly a surprise.

It’s kind of kooky but has some merits once you wade through the initial reactions. The idea of getting a permit to smoke is not likely to win much support but what it does is create an extra layer in the choice process. If we assume that people are not rational actors (opposite to received economic theory) then asking them to consider the choice before they make it may have some merit.

This is a similar approach that I have often thought might work with drugs, namely that you have to apply for a permit to gain access to the required drug from a doctor. Implicitly this means rocking up and saying yes i’m an addict and a need a prescription. You then get your drug for example heroin, which would be pure and therefore less harmful, from the medical authorities.

We know what a healthy and balanced lifestyle looks like but for many that is a pipe dream. Could this proposal help or is it just another bad idea with good intentions?