How the left hate it when international surveys show New
Zealand doing well. It undercuts their basic thesis that the country
desperately needs rescuing from the clutches of cold-hearted capitalists.
Professor Marilyn Waring, who gives the impression of being
a career misery-guts, went to great lengths on Morning Report this morning to pour scorn on an international index
that rated New Zealand No. 1 in the world for social progress.
Waring, who teaches social policy at the Auckland University
of Technology, wasn’t terribly clear about what she didn’t like about the
Social Progress Index. Academics often have difficulty expressing themselves
plainly. But she was certainly keen to talk it down.
I think most New Zealanders are smart enough to understand
that international rankings are not foolproof. However they are a useful guide
to where we stand, and this index – pioneered by Harvard University business
professor Michael Porter – seems a genuine attempt to measure countries’
wellbeing in a more holistic way than by simply looking at gross domestic
product.
That wasn’t good enough for Waring, although she could only
resort to waffle when interviewer Susie Ferguson attempted to establish exactly
what it was that she objected to, or how countries’ wellbeing could be more
accurately measured.
I suspect the basic problem is that academics like Waring
spend much of their time sounding off about all the things that are wrong about
New Zealand, and it’s a huge inconvenience when a reputable research project confirms
that in fact we’re blessed to live in one of the world’s freest and fairest societies.
1 comment:
I think that Marilyn Waring is an excellent example of someone who has not only reinvented herself but also re-written her own backstory. She now says that it was her and her alone who objected to the Muldoon government and effectively bought it down. In the same way she reinvented herself to become an academic whose opinion is worth listening to-this of course from a left-wing perspective. To admit that we are doing well is simply not on the agenda. I was amused recently to compare our Labour Party who almost completely deny the existence of an economic recession with the Labour Party leader in Tasmania who explained that although they had lost the election they had done really well considering the the huge recession!
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