Lower US housing starts; lower US consumer sentiment; Amazon enters grocery market; NZ's innovation rank slips; Macron wins big; UST 10yr yield 2.15%; oil and gold stable; NZ$1 = 72.5 US¢, TWI-5 = 76.7

What an awesome business con.

Jade originally developed the Wynyard software. Spun it of into a separate company, IPO Wynyard so they could extract value out of it. Ran Wynyard into the ground, so it's no longer liable for any business debts or contractual obligation, pickup the pieces and change full rate to fix.

Yep. How diverse is the more innovative Japan for example?

I agree. Robert Putnam's research into multiculturalism hardly paints a good picture of it in the West.

In recent years, Putnam has been engaged in a comprehensive study of the relationship between trust within communities and their ethnic diversity. His conclusion based on over 40 cases and 30,000 people within the United States is that, other things being equal, more diversity in a community is associated with less trust both between and within ethnic groups. Although limited to American data, it puts into question both the contact hypothesis and conflict theory in inter-ethnic relations. According to conflict theory, distrust between the ethnic groups will rise with diversity, but not within a group. In contrast, contact theory proposes that distrust will decline as members of different ethnic groups get to know and interact with each other. Putnam describes people of all races, sex, socioeconomic statuses, and ages as "hunkering down," avoiding engagement with their local community—both among different ethnic groups and within their own ethnic group. Even when controlling for income inequality and crime rates, two factors which conflict theory states should be the prime causal factors in declining inter-ethnic group trust, more diversity is still associated with less communal trust.

I wondered why "diverse culture" is automatically assumed to be economically beneficial. It's repeated like a mantra against most of the evidence we observe around the world where diversity is very costly.

You "observe evidence" do you? Are you an ethnographer? How do you set your benchmarks and align them with your observations?

Try another angle. This country's origins are predominantly white European, classed society. thus there is an in built element of xenophobia, and sense of superiority. Thanks to Maori political awareness this is being battered into submission somewhat, but is still there.

Cultural diversity while on one level could be argued to add to a nation's economic opportunities and performance, on another it is just seen as being achieved through immigration and is thus more competition for locals to face when trying to scale the ladder of economic opportunity. Employers take the easy way out, importing skills and experience rather than training and up-skilling locals to achieve the level of performance and achievement they need.

IMHO it is about business ignoring their role in society. Believing that they are somehow separate and above it, as opposed to being an intrinsic part of. Thus we have organisations thinking that it is somehow moral and ethical not to pay tax in countries they do business, buying off politicians to put in place laws that enable this, or using existing laws to achieve it. Thus people get forced on to lower wages, higher demands for time and results in the chase for evermore dollars for shareholders. Because we have a nice society compared to some, there are always people willing to come here to work, often at rates locals would not accept, because it gets them in the door.

Thus diversity can be argued to improve competitiveness, but this is not about for the country, it is for the company. Innovation is about how to make more money, not making more people successful. This is another underlying reason for Trump, BREXIT and Macron.

I agree.
Immigration is excellent, but there needs to be a coherency between incumbent and new cultures - something that isn't emphasized here.
Ideally, the country should be shaped into a society that integrates the best elements of it's influences.
This isn't the case with New Zealand as it is plain to see that we are fast becoming a very segregated society because we've done the opposite; we're now increasing in corruption, exploitation and inefficiency.

If you say you haven't bore witness to this, you are evidently part of the problem.

To quote (or paraphrase) a simple man, "The countries sending their people, aren't sending their best".

Cementing her place in history.