Category: politics

Understanding New Zealand: Demographics of the Non-Christian Religious

Although the majority of religious people in New Zealand follow some kind of Christian denomination, there are enough non-Christian religious for it to be worth looking at them as a discrete category.

The Spiritualism and New Age movement is perhaps the most interesting group of non-Christians because they are the hardest to categorise. They are like the others in many ways and unlike them in many ways.

Perhaps the most striking set of correlations relating to the non-Christian religious are those with being foreign born. The correlation between being Buddhist and being foreign born was an extremely strong 0.90, and speaks to how little immigration to New Zealand there has been from Buddhist countries until recently.

There was also a significant positive correlation between being foreign born and belonging to any of Islam (0.75), Hinduism (0.74), Judaism (0.41) or other religions (0.34).

Interestingly, though, there was a moderately strong negative correlation between being foreign born and following Spiritualism or New Age traditions – this was -0.45.

Given that it is very likely any given non-Christian religious person is an immigrant, we can also see trends that are true of immigrants replicated with the non-Christian religious. For instance, the non-Christian religious are significantly better educated, especially in the case of Buddhists and Jews.

The correlation between having a Master’s degree and being a Jew was 0.78; with being a Buddhist it was 0.68; with being a Muslim it was 0.37 and with being a Hindu it was 0.34.

However, the correlation between having a Master’s degree and following a Spiritualist or New Age tradition was negative, at -0.07. This is probably because this particular tradition appears to have its own, New Zealand-specific focus and so they are less likely to be from highly educated immigrant groups.

Again replicating the patterns, all of the foreign non-Christian traditions had significant negative correlations with being on the invalid’s benefit, in contrast to Spiritualism or New Age, which had a significant positive one.

Likewise, all of the foreign non-Christian traditions had correlations of at least 0.50 with never having smoked cigarettes, but the correlation between being a Spiritualist or New Ager and never having smoked was -0.41.

All of these five non-Christian traditions had positive correlations with being on the student allowance, which may suggest a generally higher intelligence among this group. The correlation between being on the student allowance and being Buddhist was 0.30; with being Muslim it was 0.29; with being Jewish it was 0.22; with being Hindu it was 0.19 and with being a Spiritualist or New Ager it was 0.18.

Some might be able to predict the very strong correlations being being Buddhist or Jewish and working in one of information media and telecommunications, financial and insurance services or professional, scientific or technical services. Being Buddhist had a correlation of at least 0.55 with all three of these industries and being Jewish had one of at least 0.60 with all three.

One curiosity is when it comes to how people get to work. Hindus and Muslims are significantly more likely to take a private vehicle to work; Hindus, Muslims and Jews are significantly more likely to take a bus to work; Jews, Spiritualists and New Agers are significantly more likely to walk to work and Spiritualists and New Agers are significantly more likely to bike to work.

The fact that Spiritualists and New Agers have a high incidence of being on the invalid’s benefit but are among the most likely to exercise on the way to work speaks of the large proportion of psychiatric casualties among this group.

Here’s one for the conspiracy theorists: the correlation between being a Jew and having a personal income of $150K was a very strong 0.83. The only other non-Christian tradition to have a significant positive correlation with being in this income band was Buddhism, at 0.40.

For Hinduism, Islam, and Spiritualism and New Age the correlations ranged from 0.00 to -0.12.

The main reason for this can be seen if one looks at the correlations between following a particular non-Christian religious tradition and working as a professional. This had a correlation of 0.70 with being Jewish, 0.48 with being Buddhist, 0.13 with being Muslim, 0.12 with being Hindu and 0.11 with being a Spiritualist or a New Ager.

As a general rule, people following a non-Christian religious tradition were marginally more likely to become sales workers or clerical and administrative workers.

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This article is an excerpt from Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan, published by VJM Publishing in the winter of 2017.

Soft Prohibition is Still Prohibition, and It Will Still Fail

The New Zealand Government, in its limitless beneficence, has decided that we innocent Kiwis need to be protected from the insidious horror drug that is tobacco. The means they have chosen to protect us with is by taxing us more when we purchase cigarettes. Speaking honestly, this strategy could be rightly described as soft prohibition – and it’s just as stupid as hard prohibition.

The logic goes like this. A person’s willingness to buy a good such as tobacco is a function of the price of that good. Because tobacco is not considered medicinal, its use is considered to do nothing but cause disease. So, its use costs taxpayer money in the form of healthcare. Therefore, if you increase tobacco taxes, people will use it less and tax money will be saved on dealing with the effects of the diseases tobacco causes.

The fact that this had led to the absurdity of the Government claiming to impoverish tobacco users for their own benefit hasn’t stopped them from raising the taxes anyway.

The rise in tobacco tax has, predictably, led to a spate of robberies of dairies and other places selling tobacco. As Dan McGlashan has previously written for this newspaper, the majority of regular tobacco smokers were already doing it hard, even before the tax increases.

As this column has previously argued, tobacco ought to rightly be seen as a mental health medicine. The main reason it isn’t is because of the total dominance of materialist dogma in medical and scientific circles – the same materialist dogma that has created our prehistoric mental health system.

It doesn’t take a forensic psychology degree to be able to predict that making an expensive drug even more expensive, when many desperate people rely on it to cope with the stresses of the day, is going to lead to robberies and violence.

Ridiculously, if the Police were to apply the same logic to tobacco that they apply to cannabis, they would say that tobacco itself causes crime and that the dairy robberies are evidence that tobacco should be made illegal.

Obviously, alcohol prohibition failed and cannabis prohibition failed. Not only did they fail, but they did so at the cost of many billions of dollars, the destruction of many millions of lives, and the eradication of any faith that the younger generations may ever had had in the competence or good will of the Government or the Police.

So why on Earth would we want to repeat those two catastrophic errors with tobacco?

The most likely answer is that our politicians are as thick as pigshit and are either too stupid to learn anything from history or too arrogant to think that the laws of reality through which history unfolds apply to them.

Increasing the taxes on tobacco, with the intent of gradually making it prohibited, will increase the amount of violence and crime around the substance to a commensurate degree.

Just like prohibition did with alcohol. Just like prohibition does with cannabis. It will fail, just like prohibition always has done and always will do, because human nature will never concede that a bunch of old control freaks in Wellington have the right to prohibit the people from the free use of medicinal plants.

This won’t stop them from trying, of course. The politicians know that they are not affected by the consequences of the laws they pass. Thus, they know that it won’t be them getting robbed and slashed with machetes – they get their six-figure MP’s salary no matter what.

The real concern is what actions might be taken by those who are getting robbed. Already, dairy owners know that they are widely perceived as a soft target thanks to both not being armed and stocking large amounts of valuable tobacco.

The usual response to this degree of risk of violent robbery is for the dairy owners to start keeping firearms behind the counter.

Politicians in New Zealand don’t have the courage to admit that the Drug War they have conducted against the New Zealand people for 40 years has failed, so we know they will not have the courage to admit that their attempt to make tobacco illegal is also failing.

Probably they will keep raising the taxes until someone gets shot dead. After all, it’s neither them nor their families suffering.

Understanding New Zealand: Voting Patterns of Age

The electoral divide between Labour and National is usually characterised as one of wealth, and to a major extent it is. But it is also about age to a major extent, and some of the correlations between age and party allegiance are surprisingly strong.

The correlation between being in the 50-64 age group and voting for National in 2014 was a very strong 0.74. The correlation between being in this age group and voting Labour in 2014, by contrast, was also very strong but negative, at -0.68.

These correlations are especially strong if they are compared with the respective ones for the 30-49 age group. This age group is almost entirely indifferent to the mainstream parties. The correlation between being aged 30-49 and voting National in 2014 was 0.19, and for voting Labour in 2014 it was -0.04.

Really old people like to vote Conservative more than anything else. The correlation between being aged 65+ and voting Conservative in 2014 was 0.71. Even the correlation between being aged 65+ and voting National was weaker, at 0.65.

Some might be surprised to see that the correlation between being aged 65+ and voting New Zealand First was not near as strong – only 0.10. However, as mentioned in the section about the party, the association between crotchety old pensioners and New Zealand First support is mostly a fabrication.

Indeed, at the other end of the age range, support for New Zealand First was about the same level – the correlation between being aged 15-19 and voting New Zealand First in 2014 was 0.05. This suggests that the early signs of Generation Z being a conservative throwback to a previous mentality may well be replicated in New Zealand.

Young people, for their part, prefer to vote Green more than anything else. The correlation between being aged 15-19 and voting Green in 2014 was 0.22, and between being aged 20-29 and voting Green in 2014 it was 0.56.

The big two parties appear to have very little support among young people in general. The correlation between being aged 20-29 and voting National in 2014 was -0.34, and with voting Labour it was only 0.32. Worryingly for them, the correlation between being aged 20-29 and voting for a party as unlike them as ACT was 0.25.

Taking this into account alongside the strong correlation between being young and voting Green, it appears that the big two parties are fated to fall into ever weaker positions as the Greens absorb the discontents from Labour, ACT absorbs the discontents from National and New Zealand First absorbs the discontents from the entire system.

The very youngest two age brackets obviously does not tell us about the voting preferences of those aged under 15, but they do tell us about the voting preferences of their parents and therefore gives us a clue as to what influences will be at work on the next generation.

In particular, we can see the influence that the higher birth rate of Maoris has. All of the parties generally associated with a high degree of Maori support (Maori Party, Internet MANA, New Zealand First, Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and Labour) had correlations of at least 0.45 with both of the age groups of 0-4 and 5-14 years of age.

The Maori Party and the ALCP were the strongest of these, New Zealand First and Labour were the weakest, and Internet MANA was in between.

The degree of disenfranchisement that the young suffer can be seen from the fact that there is a very strong correlation of 0.77 between median age and turnout rate in the 2014 General Election. This correlation is so strong that it speaks of a widespread perception among the young that there really is no point in voting on account of that the entire system is set up specifically to serve people other than them.

The strongest negative correlation between median age and voting for any party in 2014 was with the Labour Party, which was -0.70. The reflection of this was that the strongest positive correlation was with the National Party, which was a whopping 0.81.

The only other party that generally appealed to old people was the Conservatives. The correlation between voting for them in 2014 and median age was 0.75.

Definitively underlining the fact that the stereotype of creeping swarms of pensioners voting New Zealand First every three years is totally false, the correlation between voting New Zealand First in 2014 and median age was actually negative (although not significant) at -0.08.

The Greens, despite that they are the mutual nemesis of the New Zealand First Party, appeal to a similar average age of voter. The correlation between voting Green in 2014 and median age was -0.17.

Predictably, there were significant negative correlations between median age and voting for any of the minor Maori-heavy parties. These were Maori Party (-0.66), Internet MANA (-0.65) and ALCP (-0.55).

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This article is an excerpt from Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan, published by VJM Publishing in the winter of 2017.