by frog
We have more than our share of beneficiary bashers here at frogblog. They just love to point out how all those ‘bludgers’ are bilking them out of their hard earned dollars. This is a deluded viewpoint. While there is no doubt that some benefit abuse occurs, (and will always occur under any system), the vast majority of the people collecting benefits are worthy of the helping hand. I for one am proud to live in a country that makes a genuine effort to look after its own.
I am glad that my taxes are going to help those who are recently unemployed, who are ill, or who are permanently disabled in some way. I am also proud to live in a country that will pay a solo mother to look after and raise her child. That child is the future of New Zealand. My country, my people, my future. I want to invest in her/him. I don’t let any judgements I may have about the parents, both mother and father, cloud my concern for the welfare of that kid.
Where do many of these beneficiaries come from? Most are falling off the bottom of our low wage economy. Foodbanks across the country are apealling – no, begging, for more donations as requests at foodbanks soar. The Council of Christian Social Services (NZCSS) issued a report yesterday calling for Working for Families (WFF) to be extended to support all low-income people, including beneficiaries and single people without children. Where have I heard that before? Oh, right. It’s been Green Party policy since WFF was invented. We said then and still assert that many of the most vulnerable had been left behind. Labour wouldn’t listen. I guess that those folks don’t vote Labour. The NZCSS also called for a linking of benefits to food prices rather than the CPI – another Green policy.
The crisis that is quietly unfolding is reported in the back pages of today’s weekend Herald, page A10. This should be front page news. Hardworking families – we are talking about people with jobs here – unable to feed themselves on what they earn. The NZCSS survey found that housing costs now eat up from 30-50 percent of net incomes for the majority of clients at the four foodbanks surveyed. Some working families still cannot make ends meet even when they get a bit of help from WINZ.
Like the slow inexorable collapse of the finance industry here in NZ, the conditions faced by our poorest citizens is slowly going from bad to worse. We are standing quietly by as spectators while our middle class savings are wiped out and while our less well off neighbours begin to starve. Shouldn’t we be doing something now, before these trends overwhelm our ability to cope?
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Alright, here is my view on things. I believe that Working for Families should be scrapped, one time. It is completely illogical to tax a person, and then give the tax back to them after it has been through the wasteful process of bureaucracy. I would replace Working for Families with a 0% tax threshold up to $20,000 – that would ensure that beneficiaries and so on would get a slice of the cake as well.
Furthermore, how do you propose to get these beneficiaries into work. The way I was always taught is that you went onto the benefit due to a tough patch, you had lost your job, or your husband had left you, or you had been ill for some reason, and then you would get yourself back on your feet and then leave. What is concerning me is that we are having inter-generational welfare dependency; we need to make sure that the benefit system goes back to what it was intended to be – a helping hand to help people get back on their feet.
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I fully admit to there being a slice of inter-generational welfare dependency. But that is not the way the majority of the system works, although that is what the National Party wants you to think. In fact, the majority of recipients are passing through the system just as you hope they would. Some come back through a number of times, like that National Party MP who was on telly yesterday – a DPB Mum – but who eventually shake it off. Why do we need to shake up and punish the whole system for the exceptions? The Nats love to pick one bad exemplar and claim that it represents the whole system. Then they bash away.
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Of course, I understand where you are coming from frog, and I do agree that most beneficiaries are of the passing through variety. What does concern me is that is still a significant portion of those who have been on the benefit for the long term (I believe that about 10,000 of unemployment beneficiaries have been there for longer than six months), and there is not enough stick to encourage them off it (not that there are many carrots either). I do feel that we need a work/training approach, like what National is advocating.
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frog there is more than just one bad example
Whole suburbs are beneficiary dependant
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Perhaps someone with an accurate knowledge of current benefit policy will correct me – I thought, I think, that the need to be actively seeking work/work training is already part of the unemployment benefit requirement.
Panda _ if there are “whole suburbs” beneficiary dependent (which types of benefits are you refering to?) maybe that has more to do with cheaper or available housing.
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I cant beleive that I am saying this but you decrease tax and borrow to fund infrastructure, in doing so creating more jobs. you then offer a part subsidy of wages in the initial three months up to a certain limit and have new jobs which are not filled reported to WINZ, they then assign them to the long term benificiarys based on skill-sets and ease of access and if the benificiaries refuse to take the job you cut the benifit entirly so long as the job is seen as ‘morally acceptable’.
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Present a problem and then assume the offered solution is the only way of solving the problem. The slightly more crafty people offer two options, one they want people to take and the other something that stacks up as an obvious failure.
Our challenge constantly is to separate the solution from the problem and put that through critical analysis. That process needs to be done with WFF and the whole tax structure. It’s one that needs to be lead by both Labour and National because the minor parties can suggest anything without worrying about the total costs and social impact – although I see the minor parties having a vital role to introduce more radical ideas to consider – the Greens Eco-tax and ACT flat tax are two examples of tax reform important to the overall discussion.
Like the slow inexorable collapse of the finance industry here in NZ, the conditions faced by our poorest citizens is slowly going from bad to worse. We are standing quietly by as spectators while our middle class savings are wiped out and while our less well off neighbours begin to starve. Shouldn’t we be doing something now, before these trends overwhelm our ability to cope?
Yes, but doing the wrong thing will actually make things worse. Describing the problem twice doesn’t automatically mean we should double WFF and change the benefit structure.
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Joy,
I think you are right.
I know that unemployed sole parents (who may also be seeking work) are automatically put on the DPB because it is the only Benefit with the child-friendly add ons.
I’m not sure about the disabled or sick (who may also be seeking work … often “part time” or with “special conditions”). I think they stay on the Sickness Benefit ?
Presumably both these groups are entitled to attend Work-Ready courses as well, but without the pressure attached.
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Lets just give people more money but no mention of fighting the Elephant in the room, Inflation.
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I don’t think people should Starve or freeze but giving CASH to loser families
is not the answer
how about food vouchers and electricity vouchers so the money I give can only be spent where it is needed
IE no smokes sky TV or booze
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Re: what john-ston originally said, isn’t it Green policy for 0% tax up to a certain point anyway? Extending WFF to all those other demographics would cost about $500m – where would that come from?
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“Re: what john-ston originally said, isn’t it Green policy for 0% tax up to a certain point anyway? Extending WFF to all those other demographics would cost about $500m – where would that come from?”
I believe that a zero tax bracket is Green policy, and is one of the few that I agree with. My honest opinion is that WFF was an attempt by Labour to lock the middle classes into a cycle of quasi-welfare dependency and therefore marry their votes to the Labour Party.
That has always been a weakness of the National Party – because they encourage people standing on their own two feet, they don’t have a guaranteed voter base. Labour does, in the form of the welfare dependent who wouldn’t want to vote National, lest they be attempted to be pulled out of the dependency trap.
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I agree with Jon-ston about the tax threshold up to $20,000. A less extreme version of this is actually green party policy. But as someone who was on a benefit myself for more than 6 months, his analysis of long term beneficiaries does not make sense . In my case I have fairly specific skill sets, and I am also so strongly antipathetic to the money making capitalistic system that I find it hard even to pretend enthusiasm for a great many of the jobs out there in both government and industry. I am good at reading technical data, understanding it and summarising it in a way people can understand, which gives me the skill sets for policy advisers. But i do not have the right temperament for a job that has less to do with technical competence, and more to do with telling bosses what you want them to hear.
From my experience, most of the long term unemployed are like me in having problems fitting in to the type of society that employers want, rather than being lazy, incompetent or unemployable. I attended a work session with WINZ, and I was impressed with my peers, many of them long term beneficiaries, who were intelligent, hard working and competent, but who for one reason or another (political beliefs, shyness, modesty) had difficulties fitting into the employment system. I ‘was also impressed with the WINZ facilitator who did not buy into the normal “get a job as soon as possible” mould, but who encouraged us to find work that fitted in with our value systems.
I am doing work I enjoy teaching at a tertiary institute and have consistently high student evaluations, so i am certainly making a valuable contribution to society. From societies viewpoint it was certainly worth their investment in my benefits for me to wait for a suitable job, rather than find the first dead end job pumping petrol or serving at McDonalds that I could find. While i was on the benefit I was busy looking for work (which is actually quite time consuming if you do it properly) and helping with community education projects.
I recently took my students on a field trip to an IHC bottle recycling plant, and I was impressed with the way these long term beneficiaries, all with severe mental disabilities, had decided that they did not want to spend their time sitting around in sheltered workshops and watching DVDs, but wanted to give something back to the society that was supporting them. these people worked hard collecting bottles, taking off the tops and aluminium around the tops, crushing them and sorting them, and all were volunteers. They would all be totally unemployable under the current work system, but under an alternative system that encourages community involvement, they all lead productive lives.
So yes there are a few beneficiaries out there who exploit the system (as there are people who exploit any system based on trust and honesty) but in general they are no more lazy or dishonest than the general population.
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Try bringing up teenage daughters on $14,499.59 a year on the invalids benefit. Yeah right. This country has developed a us and them mind set and the consequences are going to be horrific when the people say enough is enough. I am not lazy and want to gain meaningful employment but bias government agendas block my every attempt.
What a sick, sad country when countless primary schools must feed the kids each school day. Meanwhile, the privileged them politicians jet set around drinking socialist champagne on the ski slopes.
You deserve what’s coming New Zealand !!
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Oh, by the way. I am extremely thankful for assistance from the nanny state, you know, food grants from WINZ so my daughter can eat food.
How much do you get a year Sue B ?
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>>We are standing quietly by as spectators while our middle class savings are wiped out and while our less well off neighbours begin to starve.
And you’ve enabled those conditions for the past nine years.
What conditions did you think low growth, low productivity, abundant welfare, and wasteful government spending would create? Prosperity?
You’ve got exactly what we’ve been predicting all along.
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Yes blue peter, less bureaucratic public servants shuffling paper all day and more people at the coal face would benefit society, however the lefty socialists believe all the problems are solved by hot air rhetoric spurted by some academic tosser, lawyer or unionist.
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dad4justice I have difficulties knowing where you are coming from. On the one hand you are grateful to a socialist state that provides food for families in need (no arguments with you there) but on the other hand you consistently put down socialists in public office. Yes Sue B gets quite a high salary, but nowhere near as high as a great many industry and government fat cats who do not do nearly as much work for it, and who are certainly not working in the public interest.
And you are partly right about the over-stuffed public service. But as an ex-policy adviser myself I can tell you that the public servants at the coal face did a great deal of work. The reason why we had to shuffle paper and not get anything meaningful done was because everything we did had to go through about 3 levels of bosses before it got to the minister. These managers had to read through everything and make sure it was what the minister wanted to read before passing it on to the next level. One of my colleagues was an expert in molecular biology and the minister wanted some advice on GM crops. Was my colleague allowed to see the minister and explain it directly? That would be too simple and too democratic. She had to first explain it to the boss, who knew nothing about biology, who then explained it to the minister.
So yes, get rid of the parasitic government bosses, but leave hard working public servants and politicians alone.
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Kiorei1 Very well said !
… and the Public Service became the way it is now because of the big drive from those outside the Public Service to make it follow the “business model”.
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It is a basic tenet of liberal capitalism that, subject to certain legal restrictions, people should be able to do what they want – drink, gamble, smoke, fornicate or whatever (the more liberal society becomes, the longer grows the list of socially acceptable but damaging behaviours).
But when the lower classes drink, gamble, smoke or fornicate, as they may, then the more privileged strata of liberal society become understandably resentful of having to deal with the consequences.
Liberal capitalism will not act to impose consistent and comprehensive moral rules on society, and neither will it be willing to fund the social costs of the resulting moral vacuum. The solution to this conundrum will only come when the poor themselves voluntarily adopt a rigid moral code as a means out of their predicament – in other words expect to see the resurgence of militant fundamentalism among the working classes as their social and economic condition becomes more acute.
And then the champions of liberalism may wonder why they chose to make such a fuss about a few thousand solo mothers on the DPB or dope addicts living on sickness benefits.
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WFF was an attempt to correct a massive step function in effective taxation that the middle class hit as it popped over the 60K income level. It used to be that people getting an extra dollar of income in that realm, with kids, would get ten cents of improvement in their well being out of that dollar. Now it is stretched out somewhat further. I regard this as a necessary adjustment but it remains insufficient because the tax levels and brackets still force that effective marginal tax to the 60% region. While people who have graduated into 6 figure incomes have a 39% effective marginal tax no matter how much more they make.
For it to be fixed there need to be more brackets and some higher ones for those who have incomes in the stratosphere. I predict that this will happen exactly when and if I manage to achieve such an income.
respectfully
BJ
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Quite simply frog you say “Shouldn’t we be doing something now, before these trends overwhelm our ability to cope?”
I say, what’s stopping you? Why don’t you all do it, spend more of your money on helping the less well off, dedicate time to doing it, stop campaigning to force everyone else to do it, and just do it with your own money, and then fund raise. Why do you need to wait for the state to help people?
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I agree with Jon-ston about the tax threshold up to $20,000. A less extreme version of this is actually green party policy.
I disagree. You are misrepresenting Green Policy, if it is the Eco-Tax policy you are thinking of.
It was Green Party policy to exempt the first $5,000 of income from PAYE tax IN EXCHANGE for introducing a carbon tax and increasing Diesel taxes. It was meant to be tax neutral, with the vain hope that the lower incomes would be better off.
The Greens brochure for this didn’t even have any sense of urgency about this:
We will remove all income tax on the first $5000 of income, for everyone. We will do this in three stages over the next three years.
[Greens Eco-Tax Policy Review]
I haven’t caught up with any completely revised tax policy for this election, and so much has happened since this initial policy that I’m expecting significant revision.
I would like to see a tax free threshold of around $24K advanced by the major parties – it would make things interesting. It would also be the required sort of threshold (IMHO) for the Greens to advance if their Eco-Tax offset of taxing the bads were to have any significant effect.
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forcing long-term unemployed to take jobs, when we haven’t actually done anything to enhance overall employment prospects, only creates more “churn” at the bottom levels of the labour market – creating inconvenience & hardship for both those currently unemployed & those currently working.
remember the phenomenon of long-term unemployment has only existed since the phenomenon of mass unemployment – it is a symptom of that.
enhancing labour demand is the crucial issue.
incidentally i’m hearing a lot of temping/recruitment company advertisements lately – is this linked to increasing job-anxiety?
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