Last night I was listening to a bunch of economists on national radio, who were on an island in the south of Germany. They all had a talk about their theories on economics, but the only one who said anything interesting was a young trainee who mentioned the word 'greed”. This caused my ears to prick up, and led me to the real reason the western world is in such a mess.
We have all decided that buying products made in our own country are too expensive so we have opted to buy practically everything from China, the cheapest producer in the world.
This has then caused most of our manufacturing plants to close down, which has put thousands of our countrymen on the dole, and all the other countries as well.
When people have nothing to do they get into various sorts of trouble; drugs, alcohol, crime etc. Not all do this, but a fair number.
We can't have it both ways, but should think about what we a doing to our workforce.
I don't believe anybody will care two hoots about this, but those are the facts.
No economist gave this situation the slightest mention.
So much for economists. As they say, 'If you place all the economists in the world end to end, they will never reach a solution” QED As a matter of interest, China now owns most of the western world, which is why these countries are nearly bankrupt.

Cedric Sutherland, Otumoetai.