Costing issues

The trend lately has been to calculate an economic sot to NZ of various activities that some see as undesirable. We even had Jim Anderton come out and say suicides cost us $1.4 billion a year! Sure suicides are highly undesirable but not because they cost us money!

Anyway Lindsay Mitchell has added up all the costs of drinking, smoking, eating, gambling, drowning, divorce, domestic violence, crime, workplace bullying and suicde and calculates that according to all the groups which push these figures, NZ would be $0 billion a year better off.

So hey we can boost family income by $30,000 per family if we all behave better – simple!