Dear Santa,
Margaret Evans
I’m hoping for the greatest gift of all for all – a great big dosh of financial literacy to spread throughout this nation. Please. To conclude a year notable for the emphasis almost everywhere on dollars (mostly not enough) and PTI (percentage translation illiteracy – my term). Along with the inability of so many adults (not just children) who either can’t count or won’t.
This responds to education and health sector strikes, extraordinary executive pay rises, rates increases and power costs, high profits alongside business failures, CPI and inflation. And the mounting concern that community acceptance of illiteracy has infiltrated most sectors of our society and certainly local councils who’ve not been balancing budgets for years.
Back in 2017, new mayor Andrew King’s council gave chief executive Richard Briggs a $60,000 salary increase (up to $440,000), while a third of staff were below the adult living wage. Now, applying 3% inflation (‘rounded’ for easy reading) gives an executive on $500,000 an extra $15,000, those on the adult living wage c$1800 ($28.95/hour, $60,000/year), and on the minimum wage c$1500 ($23.50/hour, $49,000/year).
It’s definitely time to question percentage increases when life is about costs in dollars.
Today we have three new mayors (Hamilton, Waikato and Waipā) and I’m among those hoping for a new Age of Enlightenment at least on economic issues.
For Hamilton City Council, December 11 will be the big day, the first for some serious number crunching by mayor Tim Macindoe’s councillors. It’s the pre-Christmas review, looking ahead until June 2026, and then there’s the plans for 2026/27.
We’ve had a long time to do better. The ‘language of numbers’ traces back 50,000 years with finger counting and beads on sticks evolving into systems in Mesopotamia and Egypt around 3,000 BC and our modern Hindu-Arabic numerals in India in the 3rd century BC. Their key addition of zero by the 7th century AD spread as ‘Arabic numerals’ to Europe through merchants and scholars – our modern mathematics.
Numbers is a language of patterns and logic, and an important life skill that can’t be replaced with AI or smart phone calculators. Numbers is a sibling to the ‘mother tongue’, and we are wired to be bi-lingual (at least), to tune-in to finger counting at a few months old. It’s for solving problems and interpreting data, presents snapshots and images and recognises when something is ‘not right’. ‘Percents’ are just one tool.
My call is for even more push from Education Minister Erica Stanford (and associate David Seymour), and ‘support not strikes’ from all educationalists. With an extended focus on pre-schools so that all may pass through our education system over the following decades to forge a truly well-educated nation. Whose citizens can count. And businesses too.
- For those who might wonder, I’ve viewed numbers as a language since a tiny tot playing card games at home with family, then off to school proudly able to count “1,2,3…9,10, Jack, Queen, King…:
Margaret Evans at the Hamilton City Council Civic Awards with The Rocky Horror Picture Show writer Richard O’Brien. Photo: Mike Walen
