by Catherine Delahunty
In the past two days, two significant reports have come out about welfare. I’d like to say that together they provide a comprehensive picture of the welfare debate and the options for reform, but sadly that’s not the case.
The reports are the Welfare Working Group’s “Options Paper”, which essentially gives the Government a smorgasbord of punitive welfare reform options to choose from (with one or two slightly more palatable ones thrown in for good measure), and the Alternative Welfare Working Group’s “What We Heard” summary of submissions received in their parallel welfare review process.
The two could very well have been written on different planets.
As I pointed out when the Welfare Working Group’s report came out, it was a missed opportunity to genuinely address ways to support people out of poverty. Instead, the majority of the options are punitive, ideological, and punish beneficiaries and their children for the lack of appropriate, flexible work in the current economic climate. Some are downright scary, like the suggestion that sole parents should be required to return to work when their youngest child is just one year old, or, worse, that the age at which they should return to work should be determined by the oldest child, not the youngest. This is (not even thinly) veiled social engineering.
The report has a “relentless focus on paid work”, based on the assumption that being in work provides people with the best opportunities to achieve social and economic wellbeing. This “work at all costs” focus fails to address the reality that there simply aren’t jobs for people to go to in the current climate. We just heard that the number of new jobs created in September was the lowest since 1999.
It’s also a flawed approach because it’s based on some very dodgy uses of facts and figures. The report says that most people on one of the four main benefits (Unemployment, Domestic Purposes, Sickness or Invalids’ Benefit) would be up to $120 per week better off if they worked full time on the minimum wage. Sounds ok, except this assumes that they manage to find work for 40 hours per week. In fact, WINZ considers full time work to be 30 hours per week, and abates the benefit accordingly. If you do the same calculation for 30 hours per week, as economist Paul Dalziel has done, 40 percent of people would actually be worse off taking a minimum wage job than staying on the benefit!
[As an interesting aside, economist Susan St John told a seminar at lunchtime today that she ran a search of the document. The phrase "paid work" occurs more than 400 times; the word "inclusion" not once.]
The Alternative Welfare Working Group’s report is more robust, though not all of it is happy reading. It presents the views of submitters to the group, largely in their own words, about their experiences engaging with the welfare system, and their perspectives on welfare reform. Some is grim, like the sections on what it’s like to deal with an increasingly menacing WINZ culture; some is hopeful.
Most importantly, the Alternative Welfare Working Group’s report brings the voices of beneficiaries into the welfare debate, in a way that the Welfare Working Group has failed to do. At the seminar today, many people commented that their submissions to the Welfare Working Group weren’t reflected in the report’s “summary of submissions”, so the “What We Heard” document is even more valuable. It’s worth is perhaps best summarised by this submission:
Remind them that we are PEOPLE. Welfare changes work best if we have the opportunity to be well and energetic and find out ourselves what we are built to do. To be supported until then is essential. When we achieve it we feel too alive to stand still and not work.
Both groups are yet to deliver their final reports with recommendations to the Government. The Alternative Welfare Working Group’s final report comes out on 9 December, and the Welfare Working Group’s in February.
Until then, you still have a chance to tell the Welfare Working Group what you think – one easy way is via this online discussion board they’ve set up. The voices of the people may not have been heard so far, but the louder they are, the harder they are to ignore!
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Health & Wellbeing by Catherine Delahunty on Fri, November 26th, 2010
Tags: Alternative Welfare Working Group, Catherine Delahunty, Paul Dalziel, Susan St John, Welfare, welfare reform, Welfare working group, Work and Income
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Vicky
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“Some are downright scary, like the suggestion that sole parents should be required to return to work when their youngest child is just one year old, or, worse, that the age at which they should return to work should be determined by the oldest child, not the youngest. This is (not even thinly) veiled social engineering.”
Working parents get one year’s parental leave. Thereafter many mothers return to their jobs. One of the WWG options was aligning the expectations of the benefit system with the expectations of the non-beneficiary population. Your “downright scary” description ignores that.
Paying people to have children is social engineering. Not paying them is not.
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Some of the questions are very loaded, but it is important people who support a fair and compassionate welfare system respond, and point out the deficiencies of the loaded questions, because the likes of David Farrar are trying to whip up the redneck beneficiary bashing brigade to support the very worst proposals the Welfare Working Group have put forward.
Submissions can also be emailed to welfareworkinggroup@vuw.ac.nz. The deadline is a short one – 24 December.
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I just went and did that, Toad… Not just some of the questions were loaded, they all were!
Last night, for the first time ever, I got a call from a research company, UMR, about politics and not soap powder! I had a lot of fun expressing my views, for instance, when she asked “What’s needed to improve the health/education systems” I was able to say “there’s nothing needs improving!” (I work (when I can) in education, my son in health, we know…)
I got the impression the caller (a young Indian woman) agreed with me, although of course she couldn’t say so.
Vicky
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Waiting lists exist for non-essential (elective) surgery, but for anything remotely life-threatening, you’re in like Flynn! The waiting lists for basic care are as much a myth as the falling education standards.
)
New Zealand compares very favourably with other OECD countries as far as literacy and numeracy are concerned. I have put two sons through the state system, and both did very well, and are now working in professional positions (and I was a solo mother, Lindsay!
Tolley is doing her best to wreck the public education system in favour of a private one, but she thank God, is not winning.
Vicky
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(in some regions health professionals have stated that half of all children are born directly into poverty – the lowest 20% of earners).
It seems that if you act responsibly and decide you will only have two children, when you would really like three or four, you will be paying for three of four anyway – it’s just the third and fourth won’t be yours. They’ll be someones who can’t afford so many children, but has them anyway – because someone else will pay for them via taxes.
How do you propose to fix this problem Catherine?
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Guess this is your solution then photonz1:
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Unless Deborah is being facetious, I would have to agree with you for once john-ston.
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All in the name of profits before people. Although I agree with you… Tolley is a complete lod! Our failing health and education system is represented with negative statistics across the board. Not to say that what National propose is any better.
Gee! Frogblog is a bit slow to update sometimes.
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Slipping education standards. Who says?
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I would contend that although many graphs show improving NCEA standards, this does not equate to an improvement to education in that people with practical life skills and suitable training for employment, are on the decrease.
The fact of the matter is that the student loan scheme is a disaster and the only solution National has is to restrict the amount of people who can receive an education, which is not going help the issue at all.
I guess things work OK for the wealthy and privately educated though huh!
Without proper education, we cannot expect a reduction in beneficiaries. Without proper health care, we cannot expect Invalid or Sickness beneficiaries to become well enough to work. Without jobs we cannot expect people to become employed. Fix the problems, not the consequences.
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@Lindsay Mitchell 8:30 PM
Yeah, probably fair call, although photonz1 has a bit of a history here of making unsubstantiated comments and allegations without evidence to back them and generally being a bit of a troll. Hence my response with the video clip.
Happy to debate this issue at an evidence-based level over the weekend (as you know i have in the past), but not tonight. Been a long week, and have more enoyable things to do tonight.
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“This “work at all costs” focus fails to address the reality that there simply aren’t jobs for people to go to in the current climate.”
So there are not enough jobs for people in the current climate … then change the climate. OK, that’s much easier said than done, and even if one was to suddenly make enough jobs for everyone there would still be the effects of 30+ years of entrenched unemployment to deal with. Not a trivial thing to do. However, until society decides to make full employment a priority (and I don’t mean work for the dole), we’ll continue to condemn generations of people to the “underclass”, and we’ll reap all the problems associated with this.
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Although this question was directed at Catherine, Lindsay has requested Toad answer further than his excellent and substantial tongue in cheek video has answered, which outlines photonz1 mentality exactly. Therefore I hope it is appropriate that I attempt to answer the question:
What would be your answer to poor people not having children because they cannot afford to? Am I to believe that you think the poor aren’t meant to have children because they are poor? You seem to be developing into more of a fascist every day photonz1.
The dynamic of New Zealand requiring a comprehensive immigration policy to maintain our economy because New Zealanders aren’t breeding enough is one that you should be aware of. In effect a paradox of bigotry is upon you.
Stating that the posed scenario of poor families breeding like rabbits is the norm is factually incorrect to begin with. Then we have implications of elitism whereby only rich taxpayers are smart enough not to have lots of children. Perhaps even racist undertones as the target group photonz1 is singling out again would be perceived as ethnic.
In some regions half the population is impoverished. Clearly photonz1 has a bad case of blame the victims again. The social condition of impoverishment should not disparage people from having children. Poverty does in fact limit the ability of families but that is not their fault. Nor is it realistic to say your tax dollar is going directly to those families, far more is going to build roads than that small percentage of impoverished large families that you’re singling out. Try adjusting your aperture once in a while photonz1.
Children are a gift. Many people realise the value of the young in more than just dollar terms. There is no doubt that New Zealand can meet its obligations to families no matter how many children they might have. The answer to your question is to properly fund and educate children who from impoverished families so that they develop into well-rounded and contributing citizens.
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A fair enough criticism to what I just wrote about full employment would be “how do you intend to achieve this?”
Here are some suggestions:
1) Make a 32 hour working week standard, with the legal requirement to pay overtime rates for working beyond 32 hours. This would increase the number of people required to do the same amount of work, sopping up some unemployment. Of course it would probably mean some belt tightening by everyone moving from 40+ hours per week to 32 hours per week.
2) Increase the progressiveness of the taxation system; maintain the same tax revenue but lower tax rates for those at the bottom and increase them for those at the top. The welfare money saved from measures such as (1) could be transferred to providing fully funded services such as health care and education.
3) Get rid of WFF … better to target assistance to low income people through reduced taxation than hand outs. Again, the money saved could also be channeled into services, so it wouldn’t be necessary to shell out as much to see the doctor, send your kids to school etc.
4) As an interim measure, require unemployed people who cannot find a job to work on government funded infrastructure projects (building railways, roads or whatever). But importantly, pay them a wage at the same level as anyone else with comparable skills, not the dole. If skills are lacking, provide compulsory training in useful work skills. Now obviously projects such as these will be expensive … but the whole idea is to invest in the people as much as the actual infrastructure (or whatever) being built. In any case, the cost of such projects could be partially funded by reduced welfare costs, and there would be a long term benefit to all involved, something which does not happen by letting people sit around and collect welfare for not doing anything.
I’m sure people will point out problems with my suggestions … good … that’s how ideas are improved. The point is, something needs to be done, and providing concrete ideas for how to do it is surely a start?
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If you think about earnings improving with skill and experience acquisition, and the small detail that parents have their children when they are able to and not when they are approaching retirement (when their earnings are often highest), it is only logical that the children are born by people on lower incomes. Then if you consider that some areas have a high number of people on low incomes, this statistic is really only to be expected.
Trevor.
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Catherine; was this the same Welfare Working Group that uninvited you a few months back?
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Samuiela, something like that was tried in France (the 35 hour working week), and it failed miserably. Even before the recession, their unemployment rate was in the high single digits and I am almost certain that it has hit double digits.
Personally, I am in favour of this sort of approach for the following benefits
Unemployment Benefit: You are given twelve months in which to find suitable employment on your own. If you cannot find suitable employment, then you are provided with possible options which you are expected to apply for – if they do not hire you, then you are required to conduct an aptitude test and are placed into a suitable training scheme. The training schemes would be related to areas in which there are shortages of workers. If at any stage you refuse to engage with that part of the process, then your unemployment benefit is immediately cut off.
Domestic Purposes Benefit: You would only be eligible to claim per child for up to nine months after the application (i.e. to cover pregnancies at the time). This would prevent any “breeding for benefits” as has been suggested happens. Five years and nine months after the application, you would be put through the same process as the unemployment beneficiary. Again, if at any stage you refuse to engage with the process, then your benefit is cut off.
Sickness/Invalids Benefit: You are immediately placed into testing to deem your suitability for various types of employment. Like the unemployment beneficiary, if you cannot get employment, then you are placed into a suitable training programme considering both your condition as well as the employment needs of the nation. Obviously, considerations would need to be made for the various types of illnesses, and I do not see all sickness and invalids beneficiaries being suitable for any type of employment.
Prior to the current recession, we had a shortage of certain types of workers, and I feel that we cannot have people sitting on benefits when we have employers crying out for workers.
We might compare favourably with other OECD countries, but standards have slipped over the years. We have people who are leaving school who cannot read, who cannot use grammar properly, who cannot do basic arithmetic. We have people at upper secondary level who would have failed tests that their grandparents were expected to pass at age eleven and twelve.
If you really want to look at slippage, look at the rankings of our Universities. Only four years ago, the University of Auckland was in the top 50 in the world – now it is only in the top 100.
And what good is that to an elderly person who needs the surgery to have a decent quality of life?
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“Unemployment Benefit: You are given twelve months in which to find suitable employment on your own. If you cannot find suitable employment, then you are provided with possible options which you are expected to apply for – if they do not hire you, then you are required to conduct an aptitude test and are placed into a suitable training scheme. The training schemes would be related to areas in which there are shortages of workers. If at any stage you refuse to engage with that part of the process, then your unemployment benefit is immediately cut off.”
How on earth does this bizarre suggestion help if the jobs don’t exist? I have been on UB for over 12 months, despite having trained, and re-trained (the last time, only a year ago.)
I make 10 applications a day. I hear back from one of those on average. In May I had 11 interviews, in November I have had one. I have worked as a relieving teacher approx one week every month this year, and I do that despite the fact that I lose most of what I earn. Frankly, you are an ignorant twit – who listens to too much talkback.
“Sickness/Invalids Benefit: You are immediately placed into testing to deem your suitability for various types of employment. Like the unemployment beneficiary, if you cannot get employment, then you are placed into a suitable training programme considering both your condition as well as the employment needs of the nation. Obviously, considerations would need to be made for the various types of illnesses, and I do not see all sickness and invalids beneficiaries being suitable for any type of employment.”
It’s called sickness benefit for a reason. Because duh, people on it are sick, not unemployed. If you like Rebstock, think that health professionals are giving people fake certificates, then you don’t live in the real world, and my health professional son would like a chat with you.
“Prior to the current recession, we had a shortage of certain types of workers, and I feel that we cannot have people sitting on benefits when we have employers crying out for workers.”
What types? Laborers and nannies?
“We might compare favourably with other OECD countries, but standards have slipped over the years.”
You know that how? I’d guess you’re quite an old guy, so your kids if any, would have gone through the system 20 or 30 years ago. In my case, only 5…
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toad – It was probably a bit optimistic of me to think you’d have an intelligent solutrion to a real problem.
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Trevor29 – the point is people are not having the number of children they can support. They are having the number that other taxpayers will support, which is as many as you want.
So we have a system where the people LEAST able to look after children are encouraged to have the most.
And we have useless polititians from all parties with no ideas of what to do about this problem.
Worse – some are so blind they don’t even see it as a problem.
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Photonz, you’re talking nonsense. Fascistic nonsense at that. As Mike Moore pointed out years ago, most women on the DPB are formerly married women in their 30s, with a maximum of 2 children. Have a look at the real figures, then apologise.
Do you even know what benefit rates are? Anyone who can raise a child on a benefit deserves a bleeding medal, let alone more than one!
You don’t get to choose who can have children, thank God. Your assumption that “the people LEAST able to look after children are encouraged to have the most” is utter sh1te! I raised two sons on a DPB with no help from spiteful upper class men like you and my ex, and in all those years, the only people who met your description – too many children, and no idea how to raise them, were ‘married ladies’ with hubbies and nice cars, and yes, solo Daddies who got themselves girlfriends to function as serial step-mothers.
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As someone who has had the welfare of others progeny forced upon him (largely by blackmail) I have recently become a supporter of abortion, euthanasia. capital punishment and exporting armies of our poor.
Terminal imprisonment, population culling and preventative abortion.
Bed-check Charlie believes in reasonable Homicide – knife and fork!
Let the Parents pay their own bills?
Hope
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I was taught the moral authenticity of such by homegrown on chtiyion
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It is no longer true that most were married although MSD keeps no solid current data on what the previous relationship status was prior to going on a benefit. Even in 2000 only about 43 percent were separated or divorced. There is some useful recent research here;
http://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/research/sole-parenting/index.html
As far as I can tell a question was asked about previous relationship status but the results are not included in the paper.
I do not, however, agree that Photonz1 is “fascistic” for asking why one group of people are made to pay for other people’s choices. This discussion is not about stopping poor people from having babies. It’s about expecting people to exercise individual responsibility for their actions. Even when we had the lowest unemployment in the OECD (briefly) the numbers on the DPB dropped only slightly. Never before has it been easier to control one’s own fertility, or to combine motherhood with work.
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So what training have you engaged in? Have you trained in a field where there is a worker shortage? The idea behind that proposal is to get the unemployed to retain in fields where we actually need people, because often enough, it is a simple matter of their skills not being relevant to the modern workforce.
Yes, they are sick, but what sort of work would be suitable for them – can they even work? I am not suggesting that fake certificates are being handed out, but what I am suggesting is that if these people can work in an occupation, then they should be directed in that direction. If they cannot, then obviously, the sickness and invalids benefit is the most suitable.
Deborah, in case you forgot, the demand was out there for virtually every type of worker – we had companies that were crying out for staff and not being able to get them.
I actually went through the system only a few years ago (not quite at the children stage yet), and when one compares the standards of what I went through, and what my parents and grandparents went through, you can see that they have slipped – grammar is poor, we have people who cannot read or write. As I said, we have people who are doing NCEA or Cambridge who would not have been able to pass the tests that their grandparents were expected to pass at age 11 and 12.
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Here-we-go-again….
Photonz has a point… not applicable to most people but definitely applicable to a group of “so called” parents who are enabled by a policy which gives children’s benefits as cash money to the adults who produce them.
Their behavior undermines the entire system.
Changing this is a matter of making sure that the support for children is not given in cash but in kind.
Not reduced… it can even be increased, but it is provided in the form of clothing and food and computer access in libraries and care through the school system and other agencies. I have made this point often enough.
It is EASY to get someone like Photonz to support the children. He is identifying an issue of where the support is actually going, which we discount at our peril.
It is far too likely for people who produce children without being parents to them, to get into the news. Their abuses of the children who provide their “paychecks” are bloody indictments of the way the current system fails for some children and their “parents” and the fact that most recipients of such benefits are NOT abusive, is no match for the visibility of the failures.
So why not make the cash-up-front a lot smaller and the support-in-kind the rule rather than the exception? This would fix the PROBLEM, shut down our most vociferous critics, and would not disadvantage any child.
All supported equally and well… Which is what we really want, isn’t it?
respectfully
BJ
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John-ston
Then you are advocating further education to raise intelligence and thus job prospects.
Again I take the inference that you’re advocating further education and perhaps apprentice training as a solution. You can’t expect a poor person to become indebted sometimes forever to pay for that training.
Culling benefits by removing beneficiaries from receiving a legally binding entitlement is going to cause untold social disorder and crime. Don’t you idiots understand that?
Photonz1
Poor families are encouraged to have more children… I agree with Deborah, you’re talking sh!t again photonz1. I did ask you some direct questions photonz1, why haven’t you answered them? So what is a bigot to do, allow the poor to bread or limit immigration, what a conundrum!
Mark
Ah! The radical right solution… Why not death camps, public execution and torture as well? That will create lots of jobs.
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Todd… Mark was engaging in satire… ( grimace ).
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“employers crying out for workers.”
That has always been a sick joke. The employers crying out for workers were, and are ones that wanted to pay minimum wages, treat their workers like interchangeable cogs and keep them on contracts were they had casual work at the employers convenience..
Any half way decent job always had more applicants than they could handle.
Punishing the unemployed is not going to make more real jobs.
Sending solo mums to work to pay for childcare workers may help GDP, but is not going to make for well bought up kids.
Beneficiaries should have access to higher education if they are capable.
The principle that you can get assistance for useless 3 month pretending to get you in work courses while on a benefit, but not to get a real tertiary education, is just short sighted and stupid.
The immigration department was persuaded by underpaying employers to bring in many people, on the basis of shortages, when the only shortage was of skilled people who would work for low wages.
If they economy does pick up they will be moaning again because they have not trained any one and every one else with skills has gone to Oz.
Those who complain about having to support other peoples kids are going to be consistent and refuse a pension or services provided by the same kids when they are too old to work. NOT!
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The principle that you can get assistance for useless 3 month pretending to get you in work courses while on a benefit, but not to get a real tertiary education, is just short sighted and stupid.
Tertiary isn’t the real answer, though it does not make sense to leave it off for those who can do it. We aren’t generating jobs that require tertiary skills.
Part of this is an economic problem that is expressing itself as a beneficiary problem because there is a substantial section of our economy we’ve shipped off to Oz because of “comparative advantage”.
BJ
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This mantra is endlessly repeated by teacher bashers and the right wing who want to destroy public education. It has been repeated so often that it is now considered gospel by those who should know better.
Research and international comparisons show that our system is one of the best.
Their grandparents were only expected to do the basics at school.
Kids these days are taught to find out things for themselves, analysis and research as well as the 3 R’s. Their grandparents did not need all the extra skills required to survive and thrive in our world.
Grammar has improved since my day. When I went to school in the 60′s and 70′s it was not fashionable to teach grammar. I still feel the lack of real knowledge of grammar.
Universities have been complaining about the quality of their intake for thousands of years. Elders have been complaining about the quality of the younger generation since the dawn of written language.
We also teach the 80% who do not go to University so expecting us to teach only academic skills to uni requirements is not going to happen.
Our schools do very well and with the new curriculum based on years of research, consultation and international best practice they will do even better.
Every country has a tail of kids who struggle. The answer has proven to be give them more help and deal with inequality that removes hope for many children.
If the 30mil plus, wasted on confirming what we already know, had been spent instead on extending the reading recovery and other proven programms beyound 6 months per child then we would see real improvement in the performance of the tail.
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Clearly there is no evidence that people are having children to receive a small amount in benefit increase, although I do not contend that it is not happening on a small scale. Even if this were the case, it would point to social disintegration because of other factors*, which requires far more attention and input from our leaders because of the harm caused across the board. Singling one dynamic out because of that social disorder is not ever going to solve the problem.
*Homelessness, joblessness, drug addiction, historical abuse etc.
Photonz1 is purporting that this scenario is the norm when it is not. Therefore his bigoted “point” veiled with fascist ideals is not valid. Most parents care for their children even if they are poor. Further stigmatising the poor is not a helpful practice, albeit the easy option for people with other agendas than helping poor children. The proposed solution to the dysfunction highlighted would discriminate against those families that actually do care for their children, which is by far the majority of poor families. In essence, it is not the public perception that needs addressing, but the actuality of the problem and more to the point the causes of that problem.
The problem: Abuse of children (I do not factor in the small amount of funds that are given to parents who do not look after their children, because it is not the main problem we should be concerned with). There are many reasons for the horrible abuse of children that make our headlines all too often. I would contend that parents receiving benefits, is not one of them. We have seen a systematic decrease in funding for nearly all of our institutions that intervene in social dysfunction of this type. There is always a cost to such cuts, often far greater than any savings made. The abuse of children is not due to your supposition, but rather a dysfunctional dynamic of society and our under funded intervention system, which has been failing for a long time now.
The various incentives we will term “kindness” for children that you pose should already be in place if you ask me. This cannot be a substitute for a financial payment to the parents of children. Insuring that children are properly cared for, both in a financial sense and a family sense is not going to be achieved by removing finances from the equation.
The state must not overreach in situations such as this. In fact the current social engineering going on would point to the fact that the “family dynamic” is of utmost importance to the manipulators. The restrictions imposed in WWF to create the perfect family dynamic would certainly make me believe so. However I digress, there should be reinvestment and redevelopment of institutions that can intervene and are there to assist families to become “families” in the true sense of the word.
We must move away from the feudal system, with all of its damaging dysfunction. Until the blame the victim mentality does not pervade our reasoning, no real change is achievable.
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Mark
Ah! The radical right solution… Why not death camps, public execution and torture as well? That will create lots of jobs.
BJ
So was I… (grimace).
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Photonz1 is purporting that this scenario is the norm when it is not.
Whether it is or not, it is the norm presented in the news.
The proposed solution to the dysfunction highlighted would discriminate against those families that actually do care for their children,
How??? ALL children would get the same support. WFF would be, with respect to child support, neutral. Number of children would not come into that rebate scheme.
The “systematic decrease” is possible because it is popularly supported. It is popularly supported because the BAD parents get into the media, because that perception that Photonz has is not an uncommon perception. Addressing that perception is NOT unimportant to the funding of assistance. It is critical to the acceptance on the part of the population that the people being assisted are not buying dope with the money and beating the kids to death… because the stories in the press are about the ones who are doing just that.
Want to fix things more? Cancel the war-on-drugs.
The abuse of children is not due to your supposition, but rather a dysfunctional dynamic of society and our under funded intervention system, which has been failing for a long time now.
I don’t agree but then I doubt we’d agree on the nature of the abuse. I have only a few more moments and must go.
This cannot be a substitute for a financial payment to the parents of children.
I think that in a very large part it CAN be substituted. Having children should be a decision that is largely INDEPENDENT of financial resources.
Gotta go, more later
respectfully
BJ
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That is because their prospects, otherwise, are so miserable that DPB, prostitution or crime look like their best choices.
The answer is not punishing them or their kids, but to give them better options.
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BJ
Hm! War on drugs… what war on drugs? War on beneficiaries, ah now you’re talking.
Point taken. However you are getting into trying to change media misrepresentation of social dynamics and the perception of the easily fooled like photonz1. Not such an easy task. The Politicians requiring such change before being able to implement policy and funding that actually helps the situation instead of nothing or pandering to bigoted ideals is not a solution either. Another rock and hard place huh!
Until society returns to bartering or develops a cashless system, financial resources to ensure a child is housed, fed and clothed is the only option. Restructuring society in the way you propose will be problematic and expensive, if achievable at all in the current climate.
Unfortunately having children is not independent of financial resources, in that many do not have children because they cannot afford to and a very small percentage have children to receive a small increase to their benefits. Both dysfunctional dynamics will not be rectified by what the WWG or people like photonz1 propose.
I wouldn’t have expected you to defend their positions BJ.
Kerry
Well said Kerry.
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The policy change here is one that would be about a single sentence in Green Party policy on support of children.
Until society returns to bartering or develops a cashless system, financial resources to ensure a child is housed, fed and clothed is the only option.
I do not agree. The notion that it takes a lot of dollars handed to the parents, either through their being beneficiaries or through a WFF tax rebate scheme to those of us on 90K salaries… to raise a child, is entirely escapable. It is possible to imagine if we consider the points where the resources are applied, a support structure through school based services, library based services, the GP and other non-cash oriented credits that offer services that the child gets. Consider the current provision of dental services through the schools as a model for other services.
Kerry’s point is better, that the opportunities at the bottom of the ladder are so dismal that this looks like a reasonable choice, and that the answer is not to make this life choice less attractive, but to make others more attractive.
We will have NO power to do so if we do not get elected, and we will not get elected through tilting at this windmill without addressing the media focus on the few bad parents in the mix. They will continue to point and the rest of NZ will continue to draw obvious (and wrong) conclusions from insufficient data…. or we address the issue, and we can do that without eroding any principles… and we get elected and this debate becomes meaningful and we can resolve all the issues that we know are real.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ
Drug addiction is an epidemic in New Zealand that affects all areas of our society. I do not agree that it is only low social economic tiered people (the impoverished underclass) who are drug addicts. Ending the drug epidemic is not as easy as cutting support for poor people with children, indiscriminately and across the board. You would be adversely affecting those that you wish to help and those that are not drug addicts.
Surely you’re not including marijuana in this equation? In effect I believe you’re talking about thousand dollar a day addictions. Somebody would have to have ten children and not feed or clothe them at all to come anywhere near meeting the financial requirements of such a drug addiction. Such conduct would be quickly interceded even with our lacking services. Drug cooks who are also parents require police intervention, such a small amount as we’re concerned with here would be laughable to them
Thinking that removing payments for children of beneficiaries, having any impact at all on the drug problem is rather naive of the realities of the black market that funds drug addiction. Such a move would make things worse for those children and despite the sadist’s viewpoints, is not a realistic or applicable solution. It is also not practical to punish all solo parents for the detrimental choices of a few.
However the cost of undertaking such a comprehensive scheme that you propose would be restrictive. You’re expecting strangers to care for children more than the parents would; in general this is not as effective as proper parenting. I do agree that such systems would be advantageous, in that the community would be required to ensure the safety and care of children. This should not be a replacement to funding parents properly though, so that they can look after their children with dignity and without relying on health and education professional to supply the required support, which in my mind is not a realistic expectation.
Thinking that the state can do a better job has been proven incorrect in the past. The particular problem you highlight, although not common is a difficult issue to have effective policy for. Currently beneficiaries’ diets are one of the areas they make cuts so that they can meet other costs. The only thing I can think of that might ensure children do not go without food so that the parent can buy drugs etc, is for that particular percentage of the minimal amount they are given for food, be placed on the WINZ payment card. Then those funds could not be used to purchase P or other drugs by the parents. This system could also be utilised for other requirements and would not be disadvantageous to poor parents who already look after their children properly, the vast majority of parents who require assistance.
I disagree that the Greens need to be in power to have any positive effect on policy concerning the issues we’re discussing.
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Todd
I do not agree that it is only low social economic tiered people (the impoverished underclass) who are drug addicts.
Nor did I say so. What I said was that they get locked up for it. That as a percentage of their disposable income, they spend more on it. As a percentage of the prison population, they are more likely to be in jail for use and trafficking. They are more likely to find themselves in a gang which lives off the drug trafficking.
Someplace along the line you have made a bad connection. Several in fact.
Ending the drug epidemic is not as easy as cutting support for poor people with children, indiscriminately and across the board.
I have repeatedly and explicitly made it clear that support WOULD be there, but not in monetary terms. It is so easy to pay, rather than to pay attention. We do it all the time.
Thinking that removing payments for children of beneficiaries, having any impact at all on the drug problem is rather naive of the realities of the black market that funds drug addiction.
Huh? Where did I offer that? I don’t even understand what you imagine I might have said that would bring this on.
First: My point was to end the “war on drugs” would benefit the lower classes more as they are the most frequent victims of that war.
Second: You again are speaking of removing payments for children, when the payments go to the adults, without acknowledging that I have required that there must be support in kind to replace it.
Third: I did not make it a matter just of beneficiaries but required virtually ALL support for children, whether of beneficiaries or taxpayers, to pass as something other than a round sum handed over by WINZ or WFF.
It is also not practical to punish all solo parents for the detrimental choices of a few.
How is it a punishment to know that your children are looked after and have an equal chance as everyone else’s no matter what YOUR financial situation?
However the cost of undertaking such a comprehensive scheme that you propose would be restrictive.
More than would be saved by ending the war on drugs? More than the cost of dealing with the inequality that the scheme we currently use fosters? More than the difficulty of overcoming the popular resistance to actually funding these children’s future properly? I think that overall the benefits vastly outweigh the additional costs.
To the point where people with kids would feel more free to “risk it all”, get better educated, start new businesses, as “going bust” would no longer punish their kids so much, only themselves.
This should not be a replacement to funding parents properly though, so that they can look after their children with dignity and without relying on health and education professional to supply the required support, which in my mind is not a realistic expectation.
The dignity argument is one that I have considered and it is important that the parent be able to provide things like Christmas and Birthday gifts and presents, and the little things that help with that bond. Some actual money would still have to be provided. I think I used the word “most” above, but I have certainly made it clear in previous, very similar, threads.
This is not the same as the money required to actually support the child by a long stretch.
I am expecting good parents to use the services provided. I am not expecting the health and education professionals to provide all parenting, but I AM expecting them to pick up the load to a far greater extent when parents are not doing their job. It means more of them are needed to be sure. It is easier to just give money and pay no attention to bad results when they occur. That doesn’t make it right.
Thinking that the state can do a better job has been proven incorrect in the past. The particular problem you highlight, although not common is a difficult issue to have effective policy for.
The State doesn’t have to do a better job than most parents, those parents get to do it themselves through the provided services and goods… it just has to make things more fair for the children of the worst ones. We raise the floor and help them to stand on it.
The problems are not difficult, they just can’t be solved by handing someone a bigger check, and they can’t be avoided by putting the credit on the WINZ card. Cheating around that is not difficult. Done all the time back in LA.
Moreover, while the problems exist you will NEVER get the majority of New Zealanders to agree to handing over that bigger check… while they would probably welcome the opportunity to provide more direct support to children.
I disagree that the Greens need to be in power to have any positive effect on policy concerning the issues we’re discussing.
How do you expect to achieve this?
respectfully
BJ
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Substandard education is better than no education.
Why not? Everyone else is expected to get indebted sometimes forever to pay for their own training. In saying that, if someone is indebted forever because of their training, then I would question whether they trained in the correct field.
Of course, apprentice training involves no debt, and that would be the more suitable option for the ranks of the unemployed. Of course, prior to the last recession, it was the trades where there were plenty of job shortages, so we can fill up the ranks of electricians, plumbers, &c. from the ranks of the long term unemployed.
And allowing them to remain on those benefits indefinitely is better how? Of course, they would only lose their benefit if they refused to engage in the process, and that is their own fault purely and simply.
I highly doubt that was the case; when you had owners of trades based companies actively going overseas to hire people, then that is the sign of a shortage. My mother works as an administrator in a plumbing firm where the employer does not treat his employees as interchangeable cogs, and they had trouble getting suitable staff at the height of the last economic boom.
If there aren’t any real jobs out there, then the unemployed would not be punished as there would be no suitable avenues for training.
And how will mothers whose sole source of income is the Domestic Purposes Benefit result in well brought up kids? I would also note that a lot of hard working New Zealand families have both parents working, so this is absolutely no different than what exists throughout the country at the moment.
Kerry, if you had a selection of droppings to choose from, and one was better than the others, that does not change the fact that it is still a dropping and thus completely inedible. Similarly, our education might be one of the best in the world today, but given that standards have slipped globally, that doesn’t say much. When you compare education across time, then you get a different story. Like I said, an upper secondary student would not be able to pass the tests that their grandparents were expected to pass at age eleven and twelve.
The other thing I would note is that I am not out there to destroy public education, I am out there to see it improved – and we need to start off by improving standards to something along the lines of what they were back in the 19th and early 20th Centuries when even a basic primary school education was superior to what most students leave secondary school with today.
And yet our Universities need to teach people how to write a formal letter? We see text language being used as a substitute for proper English, with poor grammar all around. If you cannot communicate properly, then you cannot survive in our world – period!
Grammar has not improved all that much; I was never taught any of the finer details of grammar at school, and I have been reliant on basic knowledge that I have gleaned along the way.
Everyone needs to be able to read, write and do basic arithmetic – it doesn’t matter if you are going to be a doctor, or spend the rest of your life behind the checkout. Given the number of illiterates that are being churned out of the system, there is something wrong with it.
And yet our 16 and 17 year olds would fail tests that their grandparents were expected to pass at age 11 and 12.
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I think BJ might be arguing for something similar to what I argue for (BJ will correct me if I’m wrong). Here are some of my views:
* If schools are fully funded (with a free school lunch scheme), parents will not need to find money for school fees and so on. This will be of immediate benefit to low income people (and will guarantee that all children have access to quality education services, irrespective of what their parents do or don’t do). Furthermore, get someone like Jamie Oliver to design the school lunch menu, and there will probably be some great health benefits.
* Fully tax funded public health services will mean that even if a person has no money (for whatever reason), they’ll still get to see the nurse or doctor and get any prescriptions they need. Extend the funding to dental care, and there will be additional (probably very significant) benefits to low income people.
and so on.
These sorts of measures can be funded through two routes: reducing direct monetary welfare payments and increased taxation. The net financial effect on most individuals is likely to be neutral: instead of paying for the doctor yourself (or with a welfare payment), the doctor is paid by the government (which gets the money from increased taxation and reduced direct welfare payments). Of course there will be winners and losers; those with genuine need (chronic illnesses and so on) will benefit greatly, those who are fortunate to have good health will probably be worse off. The whole beauty of directly funding services rather than providing extra money in a welfare payment is that the money goes where it is intended: schools, health care and so on, not to SkyCity or British American Tobacco et al.
Now on the dignity issue which was raised earlier. Instead of a beneficiary, consider a low income worker. Which has more dignity:
1) paying less for services such as health and education; or
2) getting a WFF payment, but then being dependent on the welfare payment to pay school and doctors fees?
OK, it might not make much difference in the end in dollars and cents (provided the money actually gets spent on what it was intended for), but I for one would take option (1) any day, and would feel a lot more dignified in knowing I was not reliant on direct welfare payments to support my family. If you argue that fully funded schools and health care is just welfare in different clothes, I would point out that it is universally available welfare, so the rich would be taking advantage of it just as much as the poor (though they would be footing a bigger portion of the bill, which is only fair given that they can afford it more).
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Samiuela
That’s a good chunk of it, but I’d take it further.
The school provides breakfast as well as lunch.
The library is open until 8 or 9 or even 10 pm every day, with computer access and supervision for the kids.
Day-care arrangements are fully funded. Free.
Clothing: School Uniforms come back. These are available FREE through a school shop. Clothing is tougher than some of the other things as kids are very sensitive to their appearance before their classmates. An arrangement that gives families an ability to purchase new from commercial shops has to be considered. That dignity issue comes in here.
School uniforms are definitely back.
Housing – rental adjustments in public housing and partial direct credits to landlords or to mortgage holding banks.
Heating and Electricity – Similar in arrangement to housing.
We’ve handled some meals but need to manage the rest. We also do need to provide SOME direct payment, so that even an impoverished parent can be a Parent.
The greatly expanded role of library and school would provide kids with a place and people to nurture them even when their parents fail to do so. Parental involvement in these places is voluntary but welcome. Television is not.
Scouts and Guides and Sports teams would be in the mix as well. Their role I am not sure of but the need to keep the kids moving and doing stuff is very real and therefore so is community funding, public funding or other support (facilities) to help these organizations handle and provide for greater participation.
There may be other ways to do these things and I am open to suggestions. I have neglected entirely the Maori component for instance. All that is REQUIRED is to set the playing field more level for the kids, no matter what their parent’s resources are beforehand. There would have to be more hands-on management of families before the kids get to school. The first 5 years in which the child is most vulnerable, need to be dealt with as well. Basing this support out of the local schools as well might make sense, but the Plunkett model and meals-on-wheels and diaper delivery arrangements might be useful. I don’t know all the ways to do these things but I DO know that we can do them if we decide they need doing.
Just Say No to the war on drugs.
1. Drug related expenditures drop
2. Gangs have less money available, become a less attractive option.
3. The likelihood of Dad being hauled off to jail is reduced.
4. The community as a whole becomes healthier as addicts are treated.
Phil is better on this topic than I am, but the health and welfare of folks who have least is most affected by the war, and the benefit to them of ending it will be large.
A very different model from the present laissez-faire, buy-them-off and devil-take-the-hintermost arrangements. Giving Money is not a good substitute for Taking Care.
respectfully
BJ
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…and no, I do NOT expect it to all cost less.
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BJ,
I totally agree with those things you list. The only difference I would have is that I disagree with direct credits to private landlords. If the government wants to help out with housing, it should be building state houses and renting them at affordable rates.
What happens with rent assistance in the private sector is this: suppose a house is rented for $300 per week. Then the government offers $100 per week assistance,paid directly to the landlord (or to the tenant). Then mysteriously the rent increases to almost $400 per week, with the landlord pocketing the government assistance, not the tenant. The extra $100 per week the landlord takes does not result in better maintenance of the property, or better fittings inside it; its just extra money for the landlord.
You might say I’m too cynical; but I’ve been living in private rental properties for 20 years now, and have personally seen every trick in the landlord’s book. There are good landlords (some very good), but there are a much larger number who are simply out to maximise the return on their investment, and will jump at every opportunity to increase the rent without doing anything extra.
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Fair observation Samiuela.
I accept that arrangement as being suitable… but was looking at ways to cope with children of employed parents, who are subsidized now through WFF.
The reasoning being that a One-Size-Fits-All approach to supporting the child’s housing needs is less subject to class identification. That gain is not worth the risk of rorting you just pointed out.
Maybe we can think of something better.
respectfully
BJ
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“My mother works as an administrator in a plumbing firm where the employer does not treat his employees as interchangeable cogs, and they had trouble getting suitable staff at the height of the last economic boom”.
And how many people did her company train over the last few decades?
There is a reason why tradesmen have an average age of 59.
“And yet our 16 and 17 year olds would fail tests that their grandparents were expected to pass at age 11 and 12″.
Do you think if you repeat RWNJ mantra’s often enough they will become fact.
I will simplify it to your level of modern education.
Lets see. What proportion of our Grandparents were still at full time school at 11 and 12? Of them what was the percentage who passed those tests.
What percentage of children now would fail those tests? Is it greater or less?
My father left school at 15. Was he better or worse educated than children today. His grammar, art, Latin and mental arithmetic are better than mine. My skills in research, technical drawing, computing, using the net and funnily enough, my spelling are better than his.
We both went to University later in life. He took sociology and struggled with the basic skills (3 r’s) he learn,t at school. I took engineering and teaching without much problem with my school learning..
The research does not agree with you. I suggest you do your own and answer some of my questions.
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Our Grandparents at 15 would be totally incapable of passing the level of calculus, trigonometry and other mathematics tests that many 15 year olds today pass every year.
And I do have evidence for that. They were not in the pre tertiary syllabus at that level until new maths in the 60′s.
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BJ
I have used a few generalizations that were not specific to your argument to make my point. Cutting or deferring support for children of poor people will have no impact on the black market that funds the drug trade. It will not rehabilitate any drug addicts.
Ending the war on drugs, as I understand it would mean not incarcerating people for drug addiction. Although this might help children of drug addicts I’m unsure how it relates to people paying for their drug habits. Surely you don’t believe that the $83.92 a solo parent receives to look after their child each week, is not going to pay for their drug addiction? You have stated previously that this is a misconception because of media bias (to use my words), but then infer that it is correct. No further contradictions please.
The actual dynamic is that WINZ or WFF makes a payment to parents so that they can look after the needs of their children. Most children are not yet able to navigate our society to the effect that they can undertake this themselves. In most families, these payments go to the children and in fact parents often make further contributions to their children.
There seems to be a misconception that parents, who keep this minimal payment for themselves is the norm, when it is not.
You’re presuming that it will not be used as a punishment, when in my opinion cutting benefit payments would be used as exactly that. Any conceivable replacement to direct funding parents so that they can look after their children, is problematic if achievable at all. It cannot replace the positive family dynamic of a parent providing for a child.
Thinking that the state can do a better job than parents is simply wrong. I’m still unsure how “the war on drugs” applies to the situation? The inequality that placing the power in the hands of people who have less interest in the wellbeing of children than parents would be more expensive. Overcoming impoverishment and a lack of funding for children will not be achieved by removing payments to parents. I think that the benefits also outweigh additional costs but not by implementing cuts in any established area. Certainly even contemplating cuts until the new system is established and proven effective would be foolish.
Presently there are laws governing welfare. Giving power to the state without further (costly) legislation would allow Governments total control of funding without recourse, which is not a good scenario.
Shifting responsibility has been shown to be problematic. The cost factor in training existing providers and finding further qualified and suitable providers would be considerable. However I do understand the expectation that our society has more care of children, even if there is no financial incentive. Clearly there is responsibility placed on all of us for the social dysfunction highlighted here.
You’re expecting impoverished people to have a different system to everybody else, with additional expense to set up and maintain. It is my understanding that going to a food bank to get the food for your children would not only cause resentment of the parents towards their children, create another cost for parents and generally be degrading but also further remove the impoverished from society. The class distinction between the haves and the have-nots does not need further entrenching.
Increasing funding for impoverished children via their parents would help reduce impoverishment. It is a fact that the amounts we’re discussing are not enough to properly provide for your children anymore. That is the real issue, not the small percentage of people who abuse the system and will continue to abuse even with the changes you propose.
It is my understanding that most drug dealers will not accept food as payment for their drugs. Could you please let me know how exactly beneficiaries cheat using the WINZ payment card, as I’m unaware of any “cheating” with this system?
You presume that the Government requires the majority of New Zealanders to agree with Governmental policy. Clearly you have not been keeping up with what National has been implementing. I disagree that New Zealander’s in general would not want more funding for impoverished children so that they do not add to negative statistics. Providing direct support to children is best done through parents who have the most vested interest in bringing their children up well.
In much the same way the Greens have been undertaking changes already. Please don’t believe that the Greens haven’t had any victories, just because they have not been in power. We need to be realistic. My expectation that the Greens will get 19% of the vote next year is probably optimistic.
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John-ston
The requirement for trained people to maintain civilization and further develop systems that make our lives better should not be placed on the individual. It is a requirement of our Government to ensure that the dynamic of furthering education is maintained. Is placement after training really the sole concern of the individual? I would contend that there is a need for planning in this area so that individuals do not inadvertently train for work that is not required.
Must I point out that many Politicians did not pay for their training. They received a free education without having a debt that many trained people today spend the rest of their lives paying for in more ways than one. Why should the children of today pay for the wealth of yesterday?
Wow! That is a total fascist statement, purely and simply. It is a persons right to not engage in a process that is not beneficial to them if they choose not to. You are placing the rights of a misdirected government department over the individual. Saying that people will be punished (which also punishes society) because they resist being degraded is not going to solve the problems apparent in our communities. There not being enough productive jobs being a major concern within this context.
You presume that people are not trained for non-existent jobs. At this point I’m wondering if you know what you’re talking about?
Many parents who receive the DBP bring up well-rounded children. It is a misconception that all poor families do not care for their children.
Comparing our education system as a dropping is going a bit far john-ston.
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samiuela
I did not take that inference from BJ’s statement. I would agree that such changes would be beneficial. The small issue of diet choice is inconsequential to the fact that every child would be fed and thus able to learn. I would surmise that the cost would be outweighed by the benefits in this instance. Whether this creates institutionalization is another question.
Again I would surmise that the cost would be outweighed by the benefits.
I would solely put the cost of such implementation onto the taxpayer. Presently beneficiaries don’t go to the doctor because benefits do not readily allow this. That is the nature on inflation.
I have not argued that fully funded schools and health care is just welfare in different clothes, just that it is problematic in the proposed format and not as effective as a proper functioning family dynamic. People who do not require assistance (the rich and fully employed) should not receive it. If you can pay you should, if you can’t then you shouldn’t go without. However the tax perspective would mean that the wealthy would still effectively pay for the services they receive, so it could be acceptable to be across the board so to speak. Effectively de-engineering the privatisation and lack of funding of these public institutions is difficult. Making such a debate rather pointless in the current political climate.
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Todd
Again. I never said that this would happen.
Doesn’t have to fund a whole addiction, just has to be spent on it instead of on the child. Multiply times 3 or 4 as the number of children increases and it runs to a fair sum, and it needn’t go to pay for a full-fledged addiction.
…and it only has to happen once for it to be in the news and tarring every beneficiary with the same ugly brush.
The only contradiction here is the one you insist on creating.
What in the hell is this positive family dynamic of a parent providing for a child. in terms of housing and heating and computer access? I can understand it in terms of food but it isn’t like breakfast is the most “together” moment in family life… and in those cases where the parent IS doing something else with the money, in your scenario the child is COMPLETELY unsupported. It may not be as common as the news makes you think, but it does happen.
Thinking that the state can do a better job than parents is simply wrong.
Where did I say that the state could do that? Yet there is no question that the state can do a better job than BAD parents. Failing to make any distinction as you do, makes it far too easy to miss the dangers that their abuse creates for the system as a whole.
I have made it clear repeatedly that there should be as little difference between haves and have-nots in their resources and treatment as is possible. To the point of taking the money out of WFF and making equivalent services available to all children equally.
What food bank was that? it is YOUR work bringing this in… and why is that? So you would have something to argue against, because you’re basically making stuff up here.
Yes, it would.
…and you are not going to get the people of NZ to vote one thin dime of increased funding unless you deal with the few who abuse the system and wind up in the newspapers. The children are the casualties. That isn’t anything but an observation of reality.
Can’t describe it in terms of WINZ, my familiarity is with the scams in the USA, as people would buy goods at the local store and resell them, or almost as often, work out a deal with the store owners, turning the goods into cash through a faked transaction. Did it with food stamps and did it with cards.
No, I presume that a government that goes against the will of the people often enough and large enough, is going to be in opposition after the next election. This is one of those places where the rubber meets the road.
Clearly you have not been keeping up with the coverage of our current account deficit and every deadly incident like the death of Nia Glassie or the Kahui twins that makes people suspicious of where the money really goes.
I agree in all those cases where the parent can be trusted, which is most of them. However, the instances when this is NOT true are impossible to ignore. The news media won’t ignore them, if it bleeds it leads. So the people of NZ will not ignore them. That means that WE cannot ignore them.
The alternative is taking the kids AND the payments away from the bad parents, and I leave you to guess how easy that will be.
I am astonished to hear that our agenda has been moved in parliament and accepted by the majority there… because it hasn’t. I have a pretty good idea how hard we work to get anywhere at all with any issue of ours, and getting 19% this coming election is going to depend a great deal on how much we bring to the table in terms of fiscal responsibility.
All you have said boils down to… let the parents keep their dignity and we have to ignore the ones who abuse our generosity and their own children.
We cannot do the latter at all.
My method of maintaining that dignity involves changing things so that when in school there is no difference to speak of and so that when out of school there is very little difference in opportunities. One cannot completely erase the difference between wealth and poverty. However, It is also the case that I prefer the community model of child-rearing to the nuclear family model. We have abandoned the community to our great detriment.
If you want more money applied to this sector I think you will find that the majority of the population will require that the abuses be stopped first.
BJ
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BJ, are YOU prepared to wear a uniform?
Children have the same freedom of expression rights as adults under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and also under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Why do you think it is OK to deny children their rights?
Too Chairman Mao for me mate!
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BJ
I’m unsure of what you mean? I’m unaware of creating any contradiction.
The tarring of every beneficiary because of the actions of a few is not a reason for policy development. The actualities of the issues are what should drive policy. What exactly is the percentage of beneficiaries that abuse the system (and their children) in the manour you describe? Drug addicts that don’t look after their children will continue to be bad parents, even with the social engineering you propose.
Beneficiaries having other income (whether used to support a drug habit or not) does not discount that the income of around $80 a week from WINZ to look after a child does not come anywhere near what a drug habit costs, or in fact a proper amount to raise a child in this day and age. That was the pretext of that argument and the facts do not stack up.
Hm! My scenario? I’m not God or a politician you know, so cannot take credit for this particular “scenario”. Presuming that there is total social dysfunction because of a lack of infrastructure there BJ. Simply… the negative social dynamic will not be resolved by reducing beneficiaries’ incomes. It might be resolved if organizations that intervened in such scenarios did not have their funding cut.
You implied that the state could do a better job at rasing children than beneficiary families could. Giving justification for such changes because of a mistaken belief of society concerning those families driven by a biased media. I can’t help but feel you have overlooked things there BJ.
How exactly do you propose to meet the requirement of sustenance then if a food bank or funds placed onto a WINZ payment card are not to replace funds going to the parents? Please don’t say soup kitchens. I am not making things up, you’re avoiding addressing the realities of your and others supposition.
Again you assume the people are the ones who have power in this scenario to make effective change. I’m sorry but that is an incorrect assumption as has been proven time and again. Although intertwined, “Dealing” with people who abuse the system and addressing childhood poverty are two separate issues. You cannot deny one group of people assistance for the actions of another. That is called a fascist dictatorship.
You cannot develop systems that are so comprehensive as to stop fraud completely. The reality of the New Zealand WINZ payment card system is that it is reasonably robust. We are not concerned with Americas extensive failings. Nor should we follow their reasoning which has been proven disastrous for the American poor.
A presumption that is not consistent with the reality of governance in New Zealand*, nor consistent with New Zealanders overall wish that impoverishment was not an issue by addressing the actual cause, lack of funding in the first instance. Most people realise that people are poor because they don’t get enough, not because some might misuse that small amount.
* Not in that governments loss elections for going against the peoples will as befits a democracy, but that they do in fact go against that will without concern for the consequences, both politically and/or socially.
I keep reasonable informed concerning such matters. However your deficit argument would work better against your reasons for state run schemes to provide for the impoverished. I believe you envision, all children being included making it a very costly undertaking indeed. I make such statements because I’m aware of the large amount of funds this would require.
My point exactly!
Again you would inflict policy on all beneficiary parents and their children because of the actions of a few. I am not arguing that the media’s reporting and the subsequent belief of people should be ignored. But rather that ignorance of crime such as that outlined is not best solved through further denigration by a lack of funding of a particular social class.
I’m not advocating that this crime should be ignored, but rather that it should be resolved through education and further funding of institutions that can assist families (often not beneficiary) to resolve horrendous things such as child abuse and drug dependency.
So you argue that the Greens have had no victories while not in power. Must I go into detail?
By “bring to the table” do you mean selling out like so many other parties have done? Fiscal responsibility is all about ensuring that people can remain dignified no matter what their circumstances. If you argue that there is not enough money to fund the unemployed, then you argue against your own proposals. An argument that should be used to not bail out all those failed businesses at the moment I might add.
I’m unsure of your position in the Greens BJ, but I would determine that if the Greens were to advocate beneficiaries not receiving a suitable income as to properly provide for themselves and their families, “you” would lose a lot of your voters.
That must be the worst summing up of my ideas… ever!
Have I said we should?
We can totally erase the disadvantages a system that creates poverty inflicts upon people. To believe otherwise is limiting the human spirit. I have not abandoned my community and I would argue that most New Zealanders have not either. I believe that both models are required to raise children. But how that dynamic is achieved for best results is debatable.
My contention is that much of the abuse occurs because “this sector” is not properly funded in the first instance, is disenfranchised by negative social ideals (social engineering the nuclear family being one) and subjected to short sighted electioneering (including Greens policy if you’re to be believed BJ). Saying that the public is generally blind is not the answer I was seeking. Until these negative aspects are resolved, you cannot expect a reduction in abuse, you can only expect that abuse to continue and even get worse.
Respectfully,
Todd.
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” or to combine motherhood with work.”
Have you ever tried it? Getting work is the first problem, and then being a sole parent who is the only one available to rush to the school or day care if the child(ren) have an accident or illness, make keeping any job a solo mother manages to get, problematic.
I have done it, as AFAIK you have not. Combining motherhood with work is a game for the married ladies, who can afford nannies, or who have a hubby who rush to the school/day care for them – but who, above all, don’t have to if they don’t want to!
Years ago, I read an article in Metro by Rosemary McLeod who theorised that the married ladies are simply jealous of women on the DPB, because DPB women have sole discretion over the family’s spending and who don’t have to deal with daddy p1ssing the family’s pay packet up against a wall outside the pub, or at the other end of the social scale, a daddy who wants the family’s income spent on risky share trading instead of food and clothing for the children.
I’d add that the second group of jealous women comprises second and third wives whose husbands all say “we can’t afford children, because I have to pay liable parent contribution for the children of my previous wives/de factos…
When I worked at Soc Wel in the 80s there was a man living on Waiheke who managed to not pay any LPC because for 20 years he had moved from woman to woman and claimed that he couldn’t afford to pay LPC for the children of previous women as he was supporting the current woman and her child(ren.
Vicky
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“So what training have you engaged in?”
I am an ESOL teacher. I also have training and experience in Admin work.
I already had ESOL training, but a year ago, got tricked into paying $1700.00 to do another ESOL course to make me “more employable”.
I don’t believe the “crying out for worker” nonsense – when exactly are you talking about?
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“my familiarity is with the scams in the USA, as people would buy goods at the local store and resell them, or almost as often, work out a deal with the store owners, turning the goods into cash through a faked transaction. Did it with food stamps and did it with cards.”
That says a lot, does that! It’s my observation that a lot of the beneficiary-bashing is American in origin, and many of the RWNJs here are American (to judge by their spelling, grammar and lexis.)
Vicky
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The best estimate of drug use among beneficiaries is pretty poor
…but you continue to go at this as though it is funding an addiction… again something I never said. All I am saying is that it is money drained from the family account, money pumped into the gangs, and money that goes to what the right wing paints as a lifestyle “choice”.
…and it gets them locked up.
http://www.justice.govt.nz/publications/publications-archived/1998/census-of-prisoninmates-1997/source-of-income-prior-to-entering-prison
This shows up nicely in the book “The Spirit Level” but the implications seem to be something you want to ignore. Half the jail population of NZ appears to be people on DPB. I have looked for stats on drug offenses relating to the prison population. Not found much
Beckley Report
Hm! My scenario? I’m not God or a politician you know, so cannot take credit for this particular “scenario”.
Ah, so you are NOT advocating giving the poor more money and ignoring those who abuse the generosity and their kids?
Go on with you Todd. Are you interested in resolving the problem for those kids? …or simply in increasing the benefits paid? I’m telling you that you can’t get the second without addressing the first.
‘m perfectly willing to work through and adjust the machinery to make it look the same for every child, from the point of view of the child. I never said ALL money had to be pushed through the non-cash system either. It is true that most should be, but “most” has to do with money for heat and electricity and housing and school clothing.
Yes Soltka, Uniforms. This is necessary to keep the CHILDREN from being separated by the access to top-end shopping for the wealthy and not having a whole hell of a lot of choices for the poorest. Uniforms for school. Had I been given them as a child I would not even have noticed provided they were clothing and everyone else was in the same uniform.
Solves gang colours problems too.
________________________________
Well, since I didn’t say that it is hard to answer except to point out that you are making up the position. Especially since I clarified it and you are still on the case. You really need to pay attention to what I actually SAY Todd.
What I SAID:
So why not make the cash-up-front a lot smaller and the support-in-kind the rule rather than the exception?
We’ve handled some meals but need to manage the rest. We also do need to provide SOME direct payment, so that even an impoverished parent can be a Parent.
The problems are not difficult, they just can’t be solved by handing someone a bigger check, and they can’t be avoided by putting the credit on the WINZ card. Cheating around that is not difficult. Done all the time back in LA.
Todd, you really need to pay attention to the things I ACTUALLY say, not what you think I have implied somehow.
True and True.. something we agree on. However, the lessons from the US include the one that says you can’t just pump in more money. You have to control the flow of support, not just put money in.. because putting more money in gets you more people on benefits. Putting money into poverty gets you more poverty, putting it into education gets you more education, putting it into “defense” gets you more wars…. money itself is like energy and people around it don’t often behave the way you’re expecting.
bullshit
Not denying people assistance. Changing the form of it so that it is more difficult to abuse. More even-handed. Changing the environment so abuse is less costly to the family. Changing what is obviously a failed arrangement… and confusing this with “fascism” … kindly look up what the word means. You fling it around with reckless abandon, but it means something quite specific.
This is difficult to parse. The first bit is true. However, rewriting – “Most people realize that people are not poor because some might misuse that small amount.” That would be a false statement. Most people do not have any notion that “some” is a smallish number and most would not attribute the poverty of others to that abuse.
In fairness I think you were trying to say something else and would prefer that you rewrite it yourself.
______________________________
Y’know, I am sure I described spending MORE on this particular social class as part of my policy. I know for a fact that I have discussed this as being a path that would allow us to get more funding for such assistance. So where are you getting your further denigration by a lack of funding from? Really?
Todd, I was at the table telling the committee that the changes to the ETS were little less than criminal and they did exactly what they wanted. We won on insulation. We lost most of what we really wanted. I despise this government and I wasn’t real fond of the last one… because we do not get a lot of what we know the country and the planet need, through the parliament as it is currently constituted. You go into detail if you like. Just remember to list the things that are our policies that were left off.
That’s one of the worst definitions of fiscal responsibility I’ve ever encountered. People’s dignity has stuff all to do with making sure that the gozintas match the gozoutas. What comes out has to first go in. Balanced books. Also an engineering concept.
Since this gets into the broader economic questions that I have been addressing through arguments about protecting NZ manufacturing (which means more jobs HERE), and changing our money and our banks, I’ll just point out that I have been addressing that issue elsewhere.
What I am arguing in terms of fiscal responsibility coming to the table however, is that the policy would stifle the most common criticism of us which is related to the press distortion, would help some kids who are currently getting abused, would permit us to increase funding overall, and would shift assistance from checkbooks to communities.
Ain’t got one. I am a Green. I have opinions and I have a bit more patience than most… and if we advocated what YOU just said, we’d deserve that outcome. Since that isn’t what *I* have been saying your remark is remarkably irrelevant.
I think I had better add this disclaimer. What I am proposing is MY proposal, it is not and I do not make, official Green policy. Green policy is defined through internal debate within the whole party… and our policy on children can be found on our website. My proposal to modify that policy to render the additional support in kind rather than in cash as a preference, is mine alone.
Is this sort of like the French concept of “elan” which was supposed to defeat German tanks? I deal in a reality based world. Human spirit does not put food on the plate, petrol in the car, clothes on the back or money in the bank.
That may very well be so. I would certainly not reject that hypothesis out of hand. However, I retain my observation around the behaviour of people where money is being spent.
How to correct it is a whole ‘nother problem.
When handed a list of policies without knowledge of which party is promoting them, the list of GREEN party policies get positive responses from more voters than either of the two major parties. Yet we poll in single digits and are shut out of government.
It may not be the answer you were looking for, but it is an answer you would do well not to ignore.
respectfully
BJ
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Y’know we really need to have shorter posts. Subtopics.
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Since I am not beneficiary bashing I won’t apologize for being American… but I would agree that many of the ideas and ideals of the bashers seem directly inspired by the American right wing.
respectfully
BJ
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so bj..to sum up yr missive..(i speed-read..)
…because a few sole-parents abuse their children…(got any stats/data…?
..or are you just plucking this all from that orifice nearest the back of yr kness…?)..
..because of these ‘bad’ parents .. all other sole parents should be denied the lift out of poverty…?
..or infantalised by being given food stamps..and the like..?
…phil(whoar.co.nz)
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BJ, uniforms do not increase choice they decrease it. School uniforms cost about three times the market value of ugly plastic clothing. We have a situation now where some beneficiaries are getting into hundreds of dollars debt to WINZ to pay for this.
And as you have no experience of being forced to wear a uniform as a child, then you have no place voicing an opinion on the subjectivity of children who ARE forced to do so.
I work in ECE and I can tell as a fact that young children are very expressive with their clothing and very much do care what they wear.
Our school has been attempting to implement a uniform policy for the last several years. Voluntary uptake of the uniform was less than 5%, and even now after a year of ‘compulsory’ uniform there is in excess of 25% non-compliance.
I usually have a lot respect for and agree with your opinions, but on the matter of children’s rights your ideas are incongruent. Black people and women now get to be people, when children?
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Soltka
Someplace in the thread I mentioned that the uniforms were paid for, not by the students or their parents.
When all students wear the same, none can be singled out for the poverty or wealth of their dress.
I seek equality among the children not more choices. To make them equal in their dress makes it less difficult to give them equal chance to succeed on merit, to the poor and wealthy alike.
respectfully
BJ
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so bj..to sum up yr missive..(i speed-read..) …
..because of these ‘bad’ parents .. all other sole parents should be denied the lift out of poverty…?
..or infantalised by being given food stamps..and the like..?
Not well apparently.
1. I was discussing children, not their parents. Lifting the parents out of poverty is another issue.
2. I was discussing increasing support.
3. I was not describing “food stamps”… though that last point is the nearest to the truth, it still misses the mark.
respectfully
BJ
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Solkta,
I had to wear a uniform as a kid. Quite frankly, it wasn’t an issue. Indeed, I used to dread non-uniform days when I was at high school; just blending in and looking like the rest of the kids can actually be beneficial for lots of kids at a certain age.
Cost isn’t an argument either. My daughter’s primary school uniform is no more expensive than other clothes (its basically just a T-shirt and stretchy pants, or a checked blue cotton dress). There are second hand uniform sales, just as there are second hand clothes shops, so its easy to clothe the kids in cheaper than new uniforms as well.
I’ve heard the other arguments about uniforms being used as a form of control, and making kids conform and so on. Maybe thats a role some adults would like them to have, but I don’t think its much of an issue for the kids.
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BJ
You were referring to the current climate being “My scenario” BJ. I’m unsure how you got the inference that I’m not advocating further funding for beneficiaries or ignoring the problems raised.
I would not be contributing to the thread otherwise. Resolving the issue for those children who have abusive parents would require more funding. That is one of the reasons we see such abuse, a lack of funds.
I pay what you say BJ as much attention as it deserves. I must admit that I’m quickly loosing interest. If you’re not advocating that the state take over much of the care of children, which is again the inference I take from your previous paragraph “It is true that most should be, but “most” has to do with money for heat and electricity and housing and school clothing” then what exactly are you advocating for?
BJ, I answered nearly all of the paragraphs that you had written. Again you say that I should pay attention. I undertook the logical reasoning in providing a solution with the WINZ payment card and the food banks to your initial vision and subsequent dismissal of my solution. You have not iterated anything new. Why are you going around in circles?
There’s no lesson to learn from America, as their circumstances are not those in New Zealand. The same principles simply do not apply. Probably one of the reasons some policies borrowed from America have failed here in the past.
Welfare does require more money, even with the shift in responsibility scenario you propose. Giving more money to people who are struggling to meet their required rent, bills, food and health costs etc is the only way to ensure that those people that require assistance, do not fall further into debt or become unhealthy or trapped in those things that you purport to want to change: drug addiction, child abuse, crime, gangs and many other social disorders. Putting money into poverty is the only solution to solving poverty; properly funding people does not increase the numbers of beneficiaries. Cutting benefits will just create more social dysfunction.
You seem to view poverty as a quantitative figure instead of a human condition. That is a bit like claiming that there is less poverty because there are less people on welfare, or that less is being paid to the impoverished so they’re less impoverished. I may have taken this mentality further than it needed to, but that is the dynamic fully considered.
I do not believe that the changes you have outlined will help families to reduce child abuse. It is a far harder thing to legislate for than just shifting responsibility and funding onto an area of the community that already has difficulty in meeting its obligations.
I understand fully what fascism is and have used the word in the proper context. To change funding to what I can only see will punish one section of the community who already have difficulties meeting their financial requirements because of the actions of a few, is discrimination. Just as fascist in many forms have used public manipulation (brainwashing) to further their discrimination, the scenario is similar enough for me to draw comparisons. Saying that I do not understand a concept when I obviously do is a bit insulting.
Most people realise that people are poor because they don’t get enough, not because some might misuse that small amount.
I have no need to rewrite this paragraph. It is easily understandable and within context of the discussion. People are usually poor because they do not receive enough to meet their requirements. Simple as that!
My position has not changed. I do not think that the changes you have posed are workable or would be effective in remedying the reason given for their implementation. Removing funding from parents and giving those funds to others who do not have a vested interest in rasing their children will result in denigration. It will also result in further expense and not resolve the issues.
You must understand that the “there’s not enough money” ruse has been utilized to implement socially damaging cuts to our countries infrastructure on many occasions. There is a real problem when people’s dignity is ignored when allocating expenditure. By dignity I mean a person having the ability to clothe, feed, house and generally look after themselves and their families. I’m sure you have heard but “A society is ultimately judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members”. In effect a dignified society that has fiscal responsibility looks after the impoverished, it does not look for excuses to further denigrate and stigmatise them.
You cannot bypass the money equation (please don’t say “I didn’t say that”). Even if you presume that communities are better equipped to look after children’s needs, this will take considerable funding. Such a scheme is not a replacement to families raising children and having “control” over funds to do so or the institutions that are meant to look after the interests of our children, ensuring that they are safe and well looked after.
Fixing the existing system is preferable to developing another one.
I’m not familiar with the history you highlight. I would contend that the human spirit has done all of those things. I’m a realist as well, I don’t like to limit my own abilities and I certainly put no limit on the abilities of the human race, in both its creativity and destructiveness. It is the human spirit that developed horticulture; it is the human spirit that found science and creates technology and it’s the human spirit that has helped us to achieve a system that should by all rights make poverty a thing of the past.
1. I was discussing children, not their parents. Lifting the parents out of poverty is another issue.
Lifting parents out of poverty is the same thing as lifting children out of poverty.
A uniform is a precursor to uniformity, allowing students to wear what they want develops a sense of self. Do we want submissive sheep or empowered individuals?
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Again the head in the sand stuff of trowing more money a the problem will fix everything.
Perhaps the Greens should do a shadow budget and explain how much money will be destributed to the beneficiaries (some such as a frequent contributor here have been a beneficiary for more then 15 years with no hope ever of looking for work).
I suspect that even people like Catherine Delahunty realise that we have a problem raising enough taxes to distribute and hence have set up the ALTERNATIVE wellfare groups options.
So while BJ has come up with alternatives others are simply scoffing at his ideas without any better alternatives except to trow more money around.
More money has not solved one iota of the problem.
BJ proposals are fascist/socialist in nature because it is a state problem solved easily by autocratic means.
All fascist/socialist states have to do is remove the need for parents to provide a bed at night and the state has full control over the child.
The ALTERNATIVE to state control is total self responsibility and freedom.
But as a society we cannot achieve that so we need to go with a fascist/socialist model. A state autocrats’ wet dream come true.
All we can decide is how far we will let the state control our childrens lives and the method of beneficiary distribution, either by goods and services as BJ suggested or by money as other have.
Arguing about school uniforms is pointless unless you make a decision on the best and SUSTAINABLE distribution method.
Money distribution is not sustainable so ALTERNATIVES must be investigated such as information and infastructure help to set up communal vegetable and fruit growing operations.
Have raised the issue before and do so again here, if you want to distribute money then in return it would not be out of the question for the recipient to help in the communal garden and orchard for maybe 2 hours per day in exchange for fresh fruit and vegetables.
The “working” in communal programmes will bring FAR more dignity to a beneficiary than simple hand outs of more money.
I know it would for me.
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“..1. I was discussing children, not their parents. Lifting the parents out of poverty is another issue…’
i’m going to strike you a special semantics/dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin award…
..for that one…
(um..!..the two are related..eh..?..that child and parent poverty…
…fix one..you fix the other..)
and plse…when have americans given more money…and this proven to be a failure…?
..or is this just another near-knee-orifice-grab…?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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But BJ, you want to take away my WFF to pay for it. You would take from my daughter more than we spend in total on all her cloths just to pay for a plastic uniform.
And you seem to miss the point that clothing is an expression of cultural wealth as well as material wealth.
Give parents vouchers to buy kids cloths by all means, but allow them the freedom of choice rather the freedom from choice of ugly uniformity.
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Samiuela, I can’t see how uniforms can be as cheap as regular clothing. Most clothing sold here is made in China in large production runs, while uniforms are made locally in very short production runs. Unless you are talking about all kids wearing the same uniform, a very scary thought!
Your other comments remind me of the pro-smacking people with their “it didn’t do me any harm”, or pro-Islamic dress people with “women actually want to wear the veil”.
Children aren’t really that different to older people. They just don’t know as much, yet.
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There are two sides here, one is “more money” and the other is “required rent, bills, food and health costs” and solving their problems can be done by reducing the latter as well as increasing the former. The advantage to doing it through “reduction” is that there is little possibility that the money can be diverted and as a result there is a far greater likelihood that we can persuade the rest of the country to make it available.
Since when did PAYING for things become “care” Todd?
The unfortunate bit was the part after the part you just repeated. The “not because” part. I had to rewrite it to try to work out what you were saying and I am still not sure… since you leave it off now, perhaps it is not important at all. Yes?
——————————-
That is much better as an argument. You don’t think it will work as aid to the poor, nor discourage people from having kids to get more money nor affect the reporting of the people who do. The parents are to be have primacy.
Yet children of low SES families are often hurt by their parent’s problems.
http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/2515/5947
…and kids have grown up in more community based situations all through history, and quite successfully grown to adulthood. The “It takes a village” meme that comes from Africa speaks to the community being a far more important part of our upbringing than it once was.
When I was young ANY adult in my town could stop and admonish me for doing something wrong. I saw that diminish and eventually the behaviour was completely quenched. Only parents are permitted to do that now. I am afraid that this was one of the basic mistakes made in American culture… and you are following that lesson without knowing it. The Maori culture understands that failing better than we apparently do.
Children are NOT little adults. They cannot be given the same rights as adults, and those rights must be gradually vested in them as they grow to adulthood.
When (as in some of the worst cases) the parents of the child are themselves still children, what then? This is the thing you are not making any effort to resolve. Poor parenting skills, inadequate life experience and maturity, lack of education… all those things affect the parent, and the difficulty of raising them out of the mire of previous failed policies (which is what causes their problems, not a inherent failing on their part) is immense, but making their children better equipped for the world is more possible, we can reach them at a younger age.
Yet, the point that all parents on benefits, good or bad, are affected by changes is real and you regard the dignity of the good ones to be damaged by the changes I proposed… however, I did not limit the changes to children of beneficiaries – I applied them to the entire population of the country. Children of the wealthy are, to the extent possible, indistinguishable from the children of poverty, once they enter the school, or library. Applying rules to all takes discrimination out of the
“Not enough money” is not a ruse in the current economic milieu. The mess the banks and previous governments have led New Zealand (and the world) into, means that for NZ the notion of “not enough money” is quite real. We borrow like mad, and we pay ridiculous amounts for houses and we have created ever increasing inequality as measurable through the GINI coefficient.
Changing that is a requirement, heavier taxes might be a minimum requirement but the change I regard as necessary runs far deeper than that and makes us far less dependent on foreign banks… not just redistributing wealth, but also altering the means by which it is defined and obtained.
________________________________
The French elan …did not defeat the German artillery.
Parents are not the same as children. This sentence is false on its face.
respectfully
BJ
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Soltka
Hardly just a plastic uniform. A morning breakfast, subsidies on heating and electricity bills, computer access… you’d get many of the same things everyone else with children gets. Considering – It is likely on the WFF side that the housing subsidy would remain a monetary payment… and why on earth MUST the uniform be plastic? We export wool, don’t we?
The point to doing things this way is to ensure that children of people who are in greatest need are not stigmatized by having to accept charity, not so recognizable in the school environment, among their peers, as being in different social classes. It is of course, impossible to remove all the differences, but it is IMO quite reasonable to try.
respectfully
BJ
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Children aren’t really that different to older people. They just don’t know as much, yet.
Recall that this is a continuum. The brain development process is such that your statement does not contain much truth at all. However, what is missing perhaps is the notion of developmental stages and perhaps a different set of rules for teenagers than for primary school students would make you feel more comfortable. I am flexible about it BUT…
Remember that as soon as you have the situation where the kids are buying their own clothes and setting the styles at school, the rich folks will take their kids to the mall to get the latest stuff, and the poor folks CANNOT. This isn’t going to do much for the equality of opportunity that we are trying to promote… but perhaps they are becoming more capable of overcoming such situations at that point. After all, teenagers don’t commit suicide because they get picked on for how they look, do they?
…and if you think that the taxpayer is going to happily pick up the tab for the most stylish clothing at Jay-Jays – for everyone – well that’s a hard sell as well.
respectfully
BJ
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Phil
You remember the “war on poverty” ? We lost that one too.
As for parents being the same as children, that is nonsense in one sentence.
The parent IS NOT the child. The problems of the parent ARE NOT solved the same way as the problems for the child.
If you do not make that distinction you WILL make horrible errors in policy.
respectfully
BJ
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“..You remember the “war on poverty” ? We lost that one too. ..”
oh..so we should just give-up..?…curl up in a ball..?
..this is as good as it’s gonna get…?
..eh..?…f.f.s..!
“…As for parents being the same as children, that is nonsense in one sentence…”
could you be more obtuse/strawman…?…
..who said that..?
i just noted that giving the parents of children living in poverty more resources..
..must..help lift those children out of poverty..
..that is it..nothing more…simple economic-fact..no ‘same as’..
once again..f.f.s..!
..are you the green partys’ don brash..?..there..bj..?..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Don Brash made a very good point in his recent speech.
Hat Tip Linsay Mitchell http://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/2010/11/don-brash-delivers-national-few-home.html
He rightly calls that every few years a correction is required in the size of government and expenditure. It simply becomes unsustainable to continue in its present form.
Hence the need for welfare reform.
The shape of which is up for discussion but it seems that those who have recieved the most and continue to receive, shout the loudest for more of the unsustainable same.
As much as I disagree with the Welfare Working Groups recommendations and look forward to the alternative report (which judging by contributions to their web site http://wwgissuespaper.wikispaces.com/ will not amount to much).
The question is basic, what resources do we have, who are the recipients, how can we better utilise the resources available in a sustainable manner.
The sustainable part is required otherwise a “correction” is required every few years and we go through this whole process again.
First of we need to raise the age of superannuation entitlement to 70.
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This discussion should really run in tandem with the Sustainable Economy one.
One is not possible without the other.
So come on all the Green commentators and MP’s.
What steps do we take to achieve a sustainable economy and a sustainable welfare system?
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YOU did Phil… now maybe you meant something else by the dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin remark but it was pretty fncking clear.
“…fix one..you fix the other..”
Simply not so. I can fix one and leave the other. Take the child and put him/her in the care of someone who has money… or leave the child and hand the parents money. They are legally separate entities.
respectfully
BJ
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Gerrit!
Lets put it in terms you might understand Gerrit! If you throw loose change at a beggar in the street he will by some food so that he doesn’t starve. If you give that same beggar folding he will buy food, clothes house himself and contribute positively to the community. If you throw fruit at that beggar you will have to call the police.
BJ might have come up with some alternatives and I have definitely not been scoffing at them. I have merely been giving them the same inspection that he gave my Direct Representation idea. He has not answered the difficulties we have raised and therefore we must conclude that many of the “alternatives” are not applicable.
Working for the dole is not very effective at creating dignity for beneficiaries. It is my observation that the opposite applies.
I would like to make a slight correction to my last post: There is something we can learn from the Americans… what not to do.
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Gerrit
I do not agree that the welfare system is a cause of the “size of government” issue. The equitable distribution/redistribution efforts of groups like the greens are not of themselves, any reason for government to grow. The logical/causal connection Brash is asserting, doesn’t exist. A right wing government will grow… just not in the same places the left wing government grows.
Government ALWAYS grows.
That observation was one of Jefferson’s key triumphs, failing to understand it was one of Marx’s great errors. The dynamics that cause it… well if I though I understood it once I was in error and I don’t think Jefferson knew the reason either.
So trimming back “government” is a perennial occupation for those who prefer the democracy functional.
In other words, don’t blame “welfare” for “big government”.
Surely taking the banking system back into government and controlling the currency is not “reducing” the size of government… it is however, taking government functions away from the private sector. I suspect that the definition of “government” suffers some ambiguity in this.
respectfully
BJ
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He has not answered the difficulties we have raised
In truth I think I HAVE answered the difficulties you raised, where they were in fact related to something I suggested.
The problem you face here is that I never did make this any more than a fuzzy preference for payment in kind vs payment in cash.
Your chief objection is that I am penalizing all because of a few. I have pointed out repeatedly that it is not a penalty to make every child equal, and I have shown you at least one paper that describes the deficiencies in the low SES households.
Breaking the cycle of poverty is not going to happen by throwing more money at poor people. That can help the poor who are temporarily out of work and out of funds, but not the multi-generational poverty that is endemic in our society.
The key to helping children is to help CHILDREN. Parents may do what they will and the good ones will always do better by their kids than the bad ones, but enabling the children to do better than their parents? That requires intervention by the community.
The problem with the community intervention is that it DOES create a stigma for those who are singled out for it… which is where the notion of a single policy of child assistance comes from . Not that the wealthy must rely on the assistance that is provided, but it is provided as assistance rather than money (for the most part) to them as well.
Since we are not taking the children out of the families, and we are making the cost of supporting the children far less, the money that is actually required to be presented as cash is less. In essence the effort is to neutralize the COSTS of having and raising kids… just as much for the person on 90K as for the person on a benefit.
The sole objection raised is that this somehow damages the relationship between good parents and their children.
BJ
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Another thing Soltka… I am not looking forward to explaining school uniforms to my 11 year old daughter
– but it would at least put a bandaid on the hemorrhage into the till at JayJays.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ
In this day and age, care costs money. You cannot care for yourself or others without it.
Are you trying to confuse the issue? Perhaps you’re referring to this paragraph (which includes the current Governments thinking on the issue I might add):
You seem to view poverty as a quantitative figure instead of a human condition. That is a bit like claiming that there is less poverty because there are less people on welfare, or that less is being paid to the impoverished so they’re less impoverished. I may have taken this mentality further than it needed to, but that is the dynamic fully considered.
Command paste: Most people realise that people are poor because they don’t get enough, not because some might misuse that small amount.
I have not placed the needs of one part of a family above another. I have said nothing in context of your ideas stopping poor people breeding (a Freudian slip perhaps?) as that would be unconstitutional and abhorrent. We don’t want to try and control this factor; we do want to control poverty, which is far more realistic.
Children of parents, from high socio economic statuses; are also hurt by their parents. Developing an applicable plan that helps one class would hopefully help the other.
That dynamic does not apply to New Zealand. I’ve lived in some of the richest areas of New Zealand and I would still prefer to retain “control” for upbringing my children than relent that “control” to those communities.
However it’s priorities that I was talking about BJ. If there is no money to adequately feed, clothe and house the poor, then there is not enough money to bail out banks, investment companies and give every rich CEO a humongous pay rise. We do have the money to implement the changes you propose, whether or not they are effective is another question.
Surely fixing the main issue here of underlying poverty is preferable and probably more cost effective than giving every child a meal ticket. I’m not dismissing your other ideas, just belittling you slightly BJ, you don’t mind do you? In most cases a well rounding child or teenager does not commit suicide for being teased for how they look. There are greater problems that add to this statistic.
We’re not talking about that. We are talking about allowing every child to have a choice in what they wear and having that choice not be a single choice between wearing rags or a plastic uniform.
Phil u is right to assert that helping the parents out of poverty also helps the children out of poverty. Helping the child maintain a semblance of normality with their school life as you advise, does not help the parent out of poverty.
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Gerrit!
FFS! What a pile of right wing rubbish!
Pray tell me why the current benefit system is not sustainable? Perhaps because the ones at the top want a bigger share, of the taxpayer dollar to invest overseas. Perhaps because beneficiary bashing will win National a few more votes. Perhaps because the haves only feel superior when there are have-nots. Perhaps because of a multitude of reasons not relevant to balancing the books.
My god! You wouldn’t be Roger Douglas would you? Tell me again why the manipulated “crises”, that was instigated by the banks and duplicitous politicians should be foisted onto the poor to resolve, absolving the perpetrators of their crime? What you propose is not even a solution; it is a stop bank of money that will become eroded by a tide of overseas wolves. Once those funds have gone from our economy, our poor are even further disenfranchised and the statistics of child abuse keep rising, what then… Sell our country or perhaps even our souls?
You advocate the removal of what small dignity remains to the poor and old with an excuse that has worn out the wheel. In fact there is no tread left and you need to stop and think for a while and get some roadside assistance before proceeding along a road that could take us all to utopia or hell.
I’ve also lived in poor areas. Unlike the rich fascists who often extol the virtues of discrimination, I do not think that New Zealand needs to follow other countries down the hole. When a poor family purchases a good vehicle I don’t say “they are ripping off the system”, I say they are “ensuring their children” from having an accident and have prioritised their funds to do so. It would seem that the unhappy rich are often more consumed with keeping people subjugated than creating real wealth for all.
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BJ @ 10:03 AM. This seems like a much more reasonable argument. However there are still issues concerning intervention and separating the family purse strings etc. It would be advantageous to try and resolve the issues instead of bickering further.
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That’s true enough. You make absolutely no distinction between children and parents, though the ability to influence the course of lives already led is vastly different from the ability to influence those which have not yet been experienced. The Woody Allen quote comes to mind. “Society attacks early when the organism is defenseless” – something like that.
your ideas stopping poor people breeding – right.. again off to the “where did I say that?” races. I am not pleased with the manner in which you argue your case… the problem being that you do not seem to be arguing with MY ideas, as much as with inventions of your own.
I am glad that you see the point that treating all the CHILDREN the same as my efforts do, is useful.
Quite true. I am still hoping to see the officers of Goldman-Sachs abridged… in the sense that Ambrose Bierce used the word, though I do not expect to see it. A great deal of the “shortage of money” is in their accounts.
That does not mean that the money is available… the money that bailed them out was borrowed from future generations too… the actual accounts for most of the world are in so massive a deficit as to make it difficult to see how to afford things on a global basis. Here we are in somewhat better shape, especially if we undertake serious monetary and banking reforms. Priorities might be more effective for NZ but the changes are not small, even here.
“The poor will always be with us”. Fixing the main issue, underlying poverty, has a great deal of idealism wrapped up in it.
We can, of a certainty , diminish the distance between rich and poor, and this country used to have a lot less distance there. The issue transforms into the economic shape that the country takes at this point. Our right-wing-inspired worship of “comparative advantage” has left us with scant scope for any sort of working-class dignity. We have conceived a competition with the most numerous and least advantaged people on the planet and as they will always work cheaper, our people will always be out of work, out of luck, out of hope. So we want to fix that… and that will fix the inequality here to a larger extent.
However, having said that, there will ALWAYS be people who are disadvantaged. Whatever the reason. The important thing is to make the disadvantage something that is not passed on from one generation to the next… the situation we have now. How we help the disadvantaged is an issue of no small importance, but I wasn’t really addressing them at all, I have ONLY been addressing the poverty of their children.
Talk about not looking at the implications…
Where will the poor kids shop?
Where will the rich kids shop?
Will the kids be able to tell the difference?
_____________________________________
Philu is not right, and I pointed out the reasons.
Helping the child maintain normalcy in their school life is quite different from helping the parents, and if you think that just handing people money-for-nothing to lift them out of poverty, is the right way to deal with people who have never had any life outside the poverty cycle, never had any hope of identity outside a gang, never had any opportunity to work except as little more than a slave… well I have to say you are mistaken in that. Most of NZ would tell you so as well. For those who are temporarily out of pocket, if the child’s care is managed in spite of the straitened circumstance that is a HUGE relief for the responsible parent. For the irresponsible parent it just turns into a HUGE relief for the child.
Helping the PARENT out of poverty is another question, different from the kids, and doing that probably does require more money at that level… better training not the 3 month make-us-feel-good cr@p on offer too… and should NOT be dependent on how many children are presented.
Employability is important. but more importantly, the jobs have to be there. Hence the need to change the economic environment in which we are trying to resolve things. Right now the right-wing has seen to it that the environment, both economic and ecological, sucks. Changing that is no small task. The need to alter the money and the banking system, to avoid the traps in the TPP and all the rest, all play into this problem as well.
It is an integrated whole. I don’t see just one part of it. I’m not built that way.
It is all connected and it is important to understand that pushing on the definition of the NZ dollar affects the dignity of a family in Cannon’s Creek.
respectfully
BJ
respectfully
BJ
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The full quote is this
.
A correct interpretation is that the right wing party (National) is violating its own constitution.
Nothing to do with NZL constitution.
Selective reading without the interpretation switch on.
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Todd
I am going to wait at least another 3 hours before I post again on this topic with you.
We’ve already crossed posts, large ones, and doing it again will only muddy things more.
I may answer others in the meantime but we need to catch up on one another. This means I am shutting up until then. I suspect that we have been arguing somewhat at cross purposes, as our somewhat different emphasis reveals.
So – 1500 or later.
Thanks
BJ
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Thats actually a really easy question to answer.
We have a first world benefits system without the first world income to support it.
The other day Brash said (headline version only) it’ll take 50 years to catch up with the Ozzies. I think he’s being highly optimistic, I don’t think we can ever get there. But the 50 years number is interesting; for something like that New Zealand has been dropping back in the standard of living world whilst other countries have forged ahead.
Our position is dropping year on year, and therefore our government expenditure should be dropping realatively year on year. Thats what it takes to have sustainable government expenditure, including benefits.
What New Zealand needs to do, as I’m bored noting, it to accept that tourism and farming will be the end of New Zealand, and we need to do things that are more economically productive. That’ll give us more money to spend on more things, including benefits.
Perhaps you could explain what is wrong with that aspiration?
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” I was not describing “food stamps”… ”
Yeah, cause food stamps work so well in the USA! (Not!!!!!!!!!!)
Vicky
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BJ
You are correct in that I make no distinction from raising parents out of poverty to also raising children out of poverty at the same time. Clearly there is a distinction between parents and children though. We’re not talking about changing the behaviour of children through the growing up dynamic. Everybody can change irrespective of their past or circumstances. We’re talking about changing behaviour by allowing all families a dignified existence.
Wasn’t he a child molester?
I understood your meaning to be this by what you had previously written…
It is in fact almost exactly the same thing, just written slightly differently.
You do not discount that such reasoning is used as an excuse to further impoverish the poor. There is no reasonable excuse for such things, even in a negative economic situation. The funds will always be available in New Zealand to house, feed, clothe and educate. Believing they are not is a government/media driven lie.
So the poor are going to be poor forever huh! That is a very narrow-minded viewpoint BJ. If the poor are given the resources, skills and encouragement to work themselves, out of poverty they will. Your reasoning reminds me of the ideals given for poverty being maintained. Which oppose the real ideals, which are: that of control, continuation of a feudal system and elitism. They are unsustainable factors and the real reasons for a dysfunction dynamic, not the welfare system.
Although picking on those that cannot readily defend themselves is easier than addressing the real reasons isn’t it? (A generalised and non-personal statement btw BJ).
I believe that it is best achieved by raising all impoverished peoples quality of life, not just one segment of the poor.
Talk about not looking at the implications… By implications do you mean; developing a sense of self and expression by having clothes that suit you and you feel comfortable in? Where will the poor kids shop? In shops. Where will the rich kids shop? In shops. Will the kids be able to tell the difference? Probably but that is not the issue. There is often little difference between children’s (and parents) income in most areas making such a consideration slightly inconsequential. The main concern you are overlooking is that of cost of uniforms being far greater than even fashionable items of clothing. It’s somewhat a consideration of quality.
But it’s only a semblance of normalcy. The Childs home life could still be dysfunctional because the parent is impoverished. It is not therefore an effective overall solution. You say “money for nothing” and then follow up with “to lift them out of poverty”. Clearly money that lifts people out of poverty is worthwhile. You should not view it as nothing!
Again you imply that all impoverished people are criminals. You cannot fit policy that would rectify the “problems” you pose by implementing it across the board. It would appear that you’ve swallowed the tar ball, which is conveniently regurgitated in front of you most nights on the news.
Speak for all of New Zealanders do we American? I don’t mean to be rude but god damn it BJ! Most New Zealander’s would welcome funding that lifted people out of poverty. Just as most New Zealanders would like to see every New Zealander (not to mention the world) housed appropriately and wouldn’t mind tax money to achieve a just civilisation.
It would seem that we’re arguing for the same thing: alleviation of social disorder/dysfunction because of impoverishment. You believe that it is state intervention in families who are impoverished that will solve the issues. I believe it is about equipping those families with the right skills and tools (money, education etc) to achieve freedom from poverty. In reality both aspects apply in different circumstances. We cannot look at one dynamic and create a solution that will easily rectify all the dysfunction. Therefore fixing the broken system that used to work would be advantageous. Applying a new system to the old broken one would be problematic and expensive. Applying some aspects of what you propose would be advantageous. But you need to fully outline those plans before people give them relevance. Having a “fuzzy idea” is not helpful.
I often like to apply a car scenario to the dynamic. A reduction in welfare funding has meant that the beneficiary cannot afford to get a WOF, WINZ removed the breaks, the Government bolted the accelerator to the floor and the bank turned up to reposes all your possessions (including your kids) because you hadn’t been making payments on the car. The cops waive some tickets in your face while the politicians and rich do wheelies on your lawn in their brand new Mercedes while laughing at you. But all of that is the beneficiaries fault huh!
Is it any wonder the impoverished have “accidents”? Who exactly pays for those accidents? Even discounting the human cost, are the initial savings made worth more than the cost of those accidents? The answer is no!
We need to have sympathy and understanding instead of blaming and further entrenchment of discrimination. Again: that is a generalised statement BJ. Please don’t pluck a single instance out of the media morass as a reason to not have sympathy. It is such a dirge of reasoning that will continue to keep the debate centred around an argument that does not solve the issues your ideas raise or the current governments myopia concerning our dysfunctional society.
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Damn…
This is just intolerable.
No… you forgot to bold the to get more money part of the sentence.
Which changes the meaning entirely… and you KNOW it.
Try working on the honest disagreement parts rather than the raise BJ’s blood pressure distortions. Eh?
BJ
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“The funds will always be available in New Zealand to house, feed, clothe and educate. Believing they are not is a government/media driven lie”.
There is no excuse for people to be made to go hungry and lack shelter in a country that has the resources to feed and house many times the population we have.
If the financial system is preventing this then it must be changed.
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Gerrit!
How exactly does following the will of the people violate the National parties constitution Gerrit? You are confusing issues here: one of political dynamics and one of welfare reform. The way in which welfare reform has been implemented in the past has been unconstitutional and in breach of human rights. The United Nations has said as much, the worsening social dysfunction says as much and the statistics say as much. We’ve tried it your way and it doesn’t work.
I would determine that I correctly interpret your statement for the fascist idealism that it is.
Re pasting to win an argument is trivial:
Tell me again why the manipulated “crises”, that was instigated by the banks and duplicitous politicians should be foisted onto the poor to resolve, absolving the perpetrators of their crime? What you propose is not even a solution; it is a stop bank of money that will become eroded by a tide of overseas wolves. Once those funds have gone from our economy, our poor are even further disenfranchised and the statistics of child abuse keep rising, what then… Sell our country or perhaps even our souls?
No answer huh! Who’s really guilty of “Selective reading without the interpretation switch on”?
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Not sure where you guys are getting all these multi-generational beneficiaries.
When there was enough work there was 1700 unemployment beneficiaries. Most are on the benefit for a short period. Less than two years.
There are some multi-generational beneficiaries, but they are only a few compared with the total number.
Equally most DPB recipients are divorced older women. Most DPB recipients are on it for a short time also. Only a few are teenagers and only a proportion of that few are deliberately having children to get the DPB.
We should look at who the real bludgers are. Two women I did teacher training with, were separated from very wealthy husbands who, because of tax dodges and trusts, only paid minimal, if any child support.
Paula Bennet when on the DPB was contributing to society by bringing up children. Now! she is a bludger. Doing a job which is totally beyound her capabilities.
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dbuckley
A first world benefits system huh! Then tell me why do we have all the social dysfunction going on that the “political right” have been utilizing to further undermine the welfare state? You seem to be of the belief that the beneficiary who buys a safe car to drive is the norm when it is by far the minority. Would your “idea” to have safer roads mean the removal of beneficiaries from having transport? We have a first world economic income, it is just being utilized ineffectively.
It is not an aspiration; it is an economic dynamic happening right now. The area where this goes wrong is when insecure investments are made which cause New Zealand to loose tons of money or where investment in businesses which are unconstitutional or go against human rights occur. This has been known to happen. You should be aware that the taxpayer who funds the investment, does not see any appreciation of their investment. Still think it’s such a good idea?
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Selectively posting someone elses comments and attributing them to me is selective interpretation. (Tell me again why the manipulated “crises”….)
Your answers are what again?
There are none.
Selective interpretation but I guess you always have the fallback position of labelling people as “fascists”.
Foresakes any argument if you can label someone escepcially if you have no answers yourself.
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BJ
You’re still implying that there needs to be; discouragement of poor people from having kids, something that was not even hinted at in my paragraph you are referring to. Saying that the reason for them to have more kids, is a financial incentive, does not discount what you have written and the “meaning” people will take from it.
I contest that it probably was a Freudian slip so to speak, one that you’re now regretting.
Got to watch that blood pressure huh!
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Todd
You’re still implying that there needs to be; discouragement of poor people from having kids
The statement correctly parsed means that there should be no financial encouragement of them to have kids.
I know you are capable of understanding this without imputing false motives… or implying that I do not understand what I am saying.
It was perfectly clear when I said it the first time.
If you haven’t the wit to argue with me honestly, then don’t try.
You do well enough when you aren’t being insulting… but my patience is not without limit.
BJ
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Gerrit!
Refering to blog posted November 29, 2010 at 10:47 AM:
Tell me again why the manipulated “crises”, that was instigated by the banks and duplicitous politicians should be foisted onto the poor to resolve, absolving the perpetrators of their crime? What you propose is not even a solution; it is a stop bank of money that will become eroded by a tide of overseas wolves. Once those funds have gone from our economy, our poor are even further disenfranchised and the statistics of child abuse keep rising, what then… Sell our country or perhaps even our souls?
That particular post of mine was directed at you Gerrit! Ignorance is bliss huh!
Please refer to the previous posts above. Saying that I have no argument because I have no solution is rather childish. It hurts my brain to even try and decipher such thought processes.
1. It might be resolved if organizations that intervened in such scenarios did not have their funding cut.
2. The reality of the New Zealand WINZ payment card system is that it is reasonably robust.
3. But rather that ignorance of crime such as that outlined is not best solved through further denigration by a lack of funding of a particular social class.
4. I’m not advocating that this crime should be ignored, but rather that it should be resolved through education and further funding of institutions that can assist families (often not beneficiary) to resolve horrendous things such as child abuse and drug dependency.
5. etc…
To those who cannot reason there are none.
I think you’re a fascist Gerrit, because you spout stupid fascist ideals on this blog all the time. It is not falling back on a position; it is merely pointing out an observation, one that I would assume is not mine alone.
BJ mistakenly thought I was referring to him when I was referring to a social dynamic that I highlighted. I do not think BJ is a fascist!
Again you assume the people are the ones who have power in this scenario to make effective change. I’m sorry but that is an incorrect assumption as has been proven time and again. Although intertwined, “Dealing” with people who abuse the system and addressing childhood poverty are two separate issues. You cannot deny one group of people assistance for the actions of another. That is called a fascist dictatorship.
You’ve not instigated any proper argument that I have not answered. You’re welcome to label me Gerrit, it will not discount my argument. You old lemon!
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Kerry
Not sure where you guys are getting all these multi-generational beneficiaries.
.
.
.
There are some multi-generational beneficiaries, but they are only a few compared with the total number.
Not a lot of them overall, but they tend to be overly visible and in the current economic climate the jobs are not available. Which is what gives us 150000 unemployed now, and little chance of doing any better.
Only a few are teenagers and only a proportion of that few are deliberately having children to get the DPB.
Again, not a lot of them overall, but they tend to be overly visible.
The necessity of dealing with the exceptions is real because their children are the ones who wind up in the newspapers, setting the agenda and setting back the effort to actually help the rest.
Two women I did teacher training with, were separated from very wealthy husbands who, because of tax dodges and trusts, only paid minimal, if any child support.
Yes! …and very seldom in the news either, as there is no tiny dead body to enhance the readership. This would be a very good and likely popular, target for Green policy/adverts going through into the election though.
I am arguing that we can remove a target for our adversaries… and assist those children who are NOT going to get assistance through their parents… and as few as they are, it is clear from the our dismal child abuse statistics that they do exist.
The dismal child poverty statistics tell us that it is also true that this sector has to get more money overall… and the media bias towards sensationalism means that that can’t happen without addressing the exceptions.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ
I’m actually using the confusion concerning this as a tool to highlight the problem. The statement also reads ”we will stop poor people having more kids by withholding funding”. It all depends on which way you wish to read such a statement.
I’m not being contentious because I have misread your paragraph; I’m being contentious because there are different ways of viewing such a statement. The way I chose to view it, used to draw upon the extreme of what such foolish idealism would entail.
I meant no personal disrespect by debating your ideas BJ.
I disagree; the paragraph was difficult to interpret your meaning from. It did not have good flow so to speak, particularly the last line:
Over and above the argument concerning what you mean… why exactly do we want to stop people from having more kids again?
Ah! The old you’re not debating fair so go away stance. Ha ha ha! In terms of “wit” I think I’m very witty! Please refer to the Book of Lod, Chapter 101, which I wrote entirely myself.
Misinterpreting or removing a particular sentence out of context and then arguing against that one sentence to try and discredit a debaters points of view is something you’ve been guilty of more than once BJ. I usually find utilising a persons debating style against them to be most effective in making my argument audible above the din.
Now I’m not going to debate with you guys anymore cause you don’t play fair…
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I don’t know the exact numbers, but as a proportion of their total staff, they have trained a large number.
I don’t disagree there (although I would point out that trades companies have no incentive to train employees, since they can simply leave after they have engaged in the three year training process without providing the company with any real benefits), however, while we have these shortages, would you not agree that we need to address them and getting these people from the ranks of the long term unemployed would be a good idea?
My own grandparents didn’t do their schooling here, but as I understand it, back in the 1920s and 1930s, the age of leaving school in New Zealand was fifteen, so all of that generation would still have been at full time school at ages 11 and 12. Even taking 1950s education, I recall seeing a show from Britain involving high grade students from today being given a month’s education in the 1950s style, and on the first day, they took a 1950s era test that had been meant for 11 and 12 year olds – and all the modern students failed that test.
Whilst I agree that the range of subjects might have changed, we still have a disturbing number of people who cannot read, write or do basic arithmetic. If you cannot do any of those three, then you are doomed to fail in our modern world – period!
And yet, fifty to a hundred years ago, you didn’t need a University education except for a few high ranking professions. Even as recently as the 1970s, you could get School Certificate, leave and have a reasonable job. Now for virtually any decent occupation, you need some sort of tertiary education – have the standards of employers increased, or have the standards of schools decreased?
Kerry, and yet modern high performing secondary students in Britain managed to fail a 1950s era test designed for 11 year olds – does that not suggest something? If that experiment were repeated in New Zealand, what is the likelihood that something similar would occur?
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John-ston
Where the Government is spending too much money is not on welfare. We have already seen a multitude of cost saving measures that have done nothing to actually alleviate the problem. You also cannot blame welfare for our decreasing standard of living. There were clear and precise circumstances that created our current economic crises. Welfare dependency has just been one of the “results” of our circumstances in that we have not had effective governance that has the countries best interest at heart for many years. Pining for the good old days is not helpful.
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Todd, so where are the government spending too much money then?
Also, would it be possible for one of the mods to please edit my comment of 15:44 – I mucked up the HTML coding and only realised it now.
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True, everyone CAN change. However, I do not place so high a value on “dignity” as on results… and change is easier for children than for the adults… and the older I get the better I understand this.
I am far more concerned that the children not be disadvantaged by their situation, that they have equal chances no matter what their circumstances (good slogan, if I do say so myself), than that I correct a situation for an adult. Making good on the child’s welfare helps the adult’s peace of mind, and if it does not, the parental relationship isn’t going to help the child at all.
http://www.helium.com/items/549625-why-the-poor-will-always-be-with-us
No, it is the truth that there will always be people who need our assistance to survive and to succeed.
Of course it does not refer to individuals who are never going to be able to break the yoke of poverty no matter what we do… as you imply. I suspect such people also exist, the human condition is infinitely varied, but have never seen an example of one.
The remainder of that paragraph is such nonsense as to be utterly ignorable.
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The difference between the Salvation Army shops and the fashionable shops at the mall are not insignificant, and the school for our zone has deciles 2-10 represented… which makes it your bland assertion of “not much difference” a bit difficult to maintain… or is the de-facto segregation and school quality differences that exist as a result, acceptable?
Where it will work… but it only works where the parents are good parents, and I put that in the context of what happens when it does NOT work, a context you separated from the statement…
, is the right way to deal with people who have never had any life outside the poverty cycle, never had any hope of identity outside a gang, never had any opportunity to work except as little more than a slave… well I have to say you are mistaken in that.
Which clearly does not describe all of the people in poverty but a very visible minority of them. Nor does it imply that all impoverished people are criminals.
That may be the inference you would LIKE to draw from it, but it isn’t actually there to be drawn.
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Enough. I have a day job.
I will be back with the rest
BJ
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“if you are brought up in an environment where employment is not a normal part of family life, then that does not result in certain expectations being understood by the children. That can cause problems later on.”
Such as? Be specific or risk being a patronising berk. Would you apply the same reasoning to “respectable widows?” When I was a child there was a woman living in our street, a woman my father (from England) called “the Widow Bain”. This woman had five sons, the youngest about 5 years old, and her husband had died just before he was born. She raised all those children on a widow’s benefit, and didn’t “work” as you would define work. (She worked of course much harder than many of the men around her, but raising 5 sons on a benefit isn’t defined as work for some insane reason.
Not too many years later, my father died and my Mum ended raising two children on a widow’s benefit. My father had been ill and unable to work for years before his death.
Those nine children, raised on benefits and without “working” role models all turned out to be good dedicated students and workers.
I don’t believe the “crying out for worker” nonsense – when exactly are you talking about?
“Prior to this last recession, there was a significant shortage of workers, especially in the trades. Part of the reason why unemployment hasn’t gone up so high is that employers are scared that when the good times return, they will be faced with shortages again.”
That doesn’t make any sense. Why should employers be scared of shortages ahead if they employ people now?
Vicky
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It seems to me I managed to do exactly that.
Then you would explain the election of the current NACT government as temporary insanity on the part of most New Zealanders? It isn’t actually a bad theory, but we’re in a democracy for better or worse. I am pretty sure I understand the attitude of the National voters. I encountered enough of them during my Mana by-election door-knocking… hence my impression that temporary insanity isn’t a bad explanation.. but it doesn’t change the case that we have to change perceptions.
Except for the fact that I don’t believe that state intervention in the impoverished families is the answer. This is a false statement of the nature of the change I am promoting.
I believe that providing support in forms that reduce the expense of supporting children to near zero rather than giving cash, is more appropriate to lifting children out of poverty and that such support is appropriate to both the WFF taxpayer and the sole-parent beneficiary, and when applied that way it reduces the inequality experienced by the children.
When it comes to their parents, the need to make their benefits and their programs more appropriate both in scale and in kind is important but just as important is the need to alter the economy so that there are appropriate jobs for them to work in.
If you had had the time to read the Greens policy on children you would understand that the provision of that “fuzzy concept” of preference is entirely appropriate… and I think that I have been able to answer you on every point.
Which is to say, it is a valid answer.
It isn’t the only possible answer, but it is valid… and if it were in our policies it would serve the purposes of getting us into government and getting more assistance for the poor. Which are things that flatly demanding more money for beneficiaries is absolutely not going to accomplish.
BJ
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John-ston
Not enough money? Then why not tax the wealthy the same way they were taxed when we DID have enough money?
?
BJ
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I could write a novel on these issues and it might create more understanding than policy arguments. Some commentators have a view of childrens rights and needs that I find frighteneing as if children were not the responsibility of all of us – as former children we might remember this. I applaud the great parents I know who have made the DPB work, loved their kids, retrained, survived and brought up a generation of young people who we can be proud of -despite the lack of a living wage. If you want a good reason for a decent well funded welfare system go back to the Royal Commission on Social Policy or the Alternative Welfare Working Group submissions. Lets invest in green jobs not rhetoric. The full report of the Alternative Welfare Working Group comes out on Dec 9 and good on them for all their (unpaid) work.
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BJ,
As mentioned to kerry in another blog post.
Sure close taxation loopholes, follow up tax avoidence and increase taxation.
Would be nice though to see a Greens shadow budget on the volume of taxation expected to be collected and once collected, where it will be spent in the welfare budget.
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BJ
The remainder you are referring to:
If the poor are given the resources, skills and encouragement to work themselves, out of poverty they will. Your reasoning reminds me of the ideals given for poverty being maintained. Which oppose the real ideals, which are: that of control, continuation of a feudal system and elitism. They are unsustainable factors and the real reasons for a dysfunction dynamic, not the welfare system.
I fail to see why this is nonsense BJ?
So instead of giving the poor the resources and skills to work themselves out of poverty to lets say; build a house, make some clothes, fix their car or look after the health concerns of their children, you would shift that responsibility onto the state with all of its additional expense and mismanagement. That is real nonsense!
My assertion that power and control, continuation of a feudal system and elitism are the causes of the current dysfunction; shifts responsibility away from the poor, and onto those that have created the impoverished. Most poor people do try to better themselves. We cannot expect the poor to pay for such “mistakes” and you certainly cannot punish the poor further for the failings of the powers that be (Generalized statement).
Working from a viewpoint that the welfare system does not work, would result in a policy that would throw all beneficiaries to the wolves. Further disempowering the impoverished is not a realistic solution. We must consider the addition social expense in such policy.
‘Not much difference’ does not mean none at all. Properly funding the impoverished so that they can clothe themselves properly is a fundamental human right if you ask me. We are not talking about high fashion… We’re talking about appropriate attire. Putting everybody in the same uniform does not diminish discrimination in schools and it will not save money. Therefore there is no reason for it.
You cannot fit policy that would rectify the “problems” you pose by implementing it across the board.
The practicalities of what you propose are expensive if achievable at all. Patting yourself on the back before having any real success, even in this debate; is somewhat premature.
How exactly would having a couple of meals and a free uniform help a child that gets molested by their father every day, or sold to by drugs, help that child? What exactly is the result of having somebody not interested in the wellbeing of a child being in charge of managing the warmth, sustenance and clothing of that child? What exactly is the cost of the wealthy receiving services that they do not require? Where is this extra funding going to come from when the Government is adamant there is no money available? Just a few of the questions you have not answered effectively BJ. Shall I continue?
I’m unsure how this really relates to my assertion that most New Zealander’s would welcome funding that lifted people out of poverty.
However… I would determine that National is in power because the alternative was weak and that campaigning utilised false promises which tricked many right thinking New Zealanders into voting National. The insane component of National and Act supporters is well known, this does not discount my assertion.
You’re advocating state funding for school meals, household heating, clothing, etc. If that is not state intervention in the lives of beneficiaries, then I don’t know what is. You’re also talking about setting up a huge management system to do all the things a parent would normally do. There is a great deal of work involved in running a house these days. What argument will you make (apparently on behalf of the Greens) for additional state sector employees and the millions of additional dollars that are required for a job that is currently being done for free by parents?
In effect this is the answer… Give the unemployed jobs so that they have enough money to properly look after their families. It’s about empowering people, not diminishing or shifting responsibility.
Presuming that I have not read Greens policy huh! It was your reference to a “fuzzy concept” that I was highlighting; there wasn’t any Green policy involved.
Answer me this then: If an unemployed adult is properly funded so that he/she is no longer impoverished, does this generally have a positive impact on their children?
You have categorically said that it does not BJ. How can you say you’ve answered every question when you do not even concede the reality of most beneficiaries’ situations?
It is confusing when you keep mistaking your ideas for Green’s policy.
My concern is not with getting the Greens into power, I’m concerned with childhood impoverishment, which is a far greater problem. Often a political agenda is detrimental to resolving social dysfunction. I very much doubt that your “policy” will find support just as requesting that the impoverished are properly helped will probably not achieve adequate funding; considering the current political climate.
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Where is this extra funding going to come from when the Government is adamant there is no money available?
I do not expect the Government to implement any of the measures you have previously proposed to meet the additional expense of a state run system.
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First of all, your sentence/paragraph construction sucks syntax. The “Which oppose” phrase implies that the ideals for poverty being maintained (and I wish to know from whence you draw this conclusion at all given that I am trying as hard as you are to reduce poverty) stand against control, continuation of a feudal system and elitism. Try not writing so fast. I am going to respond to what I THINK you meant… but again YOU should rewrite.
Your reasoning reminds me of the ideals given for poverty being maintained, which are but masks for the real ideals of control, continuation of a feudal system and elitism.
My reasoning should remind you of the real world, in which SOME people are always going to encounter problems that throw them on the mercy of the state, such as it is. Very idealistic to “end poverty” but it isn’t something any human society has ever done.
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No, it would result in a policy that fixes it so that it does work.
You tell that to your 14 or 15 year old daughter when her classmates are dressed in new clothes in the current fashion and she is clothed from the second hand shops. Have you ANY notion of what you are talking about here? It isn’t rational, it is teen-aged fashion, and it is by no means fair to the kids who are living anywhere near the edge of poverty.
When did I claim this was a panacea for all the possible problems of youth? It is supposed to help with bullying and discrimination between children… and failures to properly feed and clothe the child. Actual child molestation by Dad is one of the rarest of all crimes. If it is solely the parent’s responsibility you have almost no chance to detect it. With greater community involvement it may be more likely detected.
What the hell does sold-to-by-drugs mean? Incoherency in thought is reflected in your words.
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No, but there is no way to back it up either. I am far less confident that you could get a majority. Not in the context of the current account deficit, the pricetag and the media beat-ups. It remains an assertion and I do not agree with it.
Lets see. The school meals are at school, what was removed was the price. The morning meals replace the most hurried and impersonal meal of the day, and are also free. The household heating is something that gets paid once a month. The power bill likewise. The school uniforms aren’t interfering with any individual any differently, whether they are beneficiaries or not. The MD and Dental we already mostly do anyway, how is making them free to kids a problem? So where is the state sitting at the dinner table Todd? Where is it telling your kids what to watch on TV? Yes, I am encouraging the library in PLACE of the TV… by making it useful to the kids even “after hours”, but I find it hard to reckon that a bad thing.
Eh? What are these things now?
The most expensive bit would (I think) be keeping the libraries open and providing the computer access there. WFF already exists, the modifications that directly credit the power and heat would not be large. Schools already have lunch programs, setting up breakfasts would be little different. Uniforms should I think, be NZ made. The costs recycle into the economy unlike some other “investments” we make. As for the cost, why it will be the savings we reap from the well publicized abuses… turning that same media distortion against the people who have lied so long and hard to keep us from being taken seriously. They can hardly repudiate their positions without being seen for the fools they are.
NO! I have categorically said that IT DOES NOT HAVE TO The fact that you bring the adult out of poverty does NOT guarantee anything reaches the child. There are (as Kerry points out) parents who have plenty and deny it to their children, having moved on to another partner and not paying their child-support. The financial health of the parent is ALWAYS separable from that of the child.
I answered you, this same way, several times now. You continue to fail to differentiate between parent and child in those instances when it must be done.
It would find considerable support outside the Green Party if it were adopted. It is the Greens themselves who might find it difficult, but if adopted? We’d get that 19% and maybe more.
That would mean a lot of other policy wins in the long run.
.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ
You inferred that your “policies” would rectify the problems posed concerning childhood poverty. The few situations I highlighted are directly related to impoverishment, which is what we are concerned with. Alleviating bullying is another matter. You now say that your ideas would not help, so I wonder why you continue to defend them? I feel that you’re developing these ideas to best suit your own situation BJ.
I’m interested to know why you keep saying that I’m not understandable? If somebody is being “sold to buy drugs” what do you think I mean? Their bodies are being sold for sex, the payment is drugs or money to buy drugs. How is reducing payments to beneficiaries who would conduct such behaviour effective then? If you say that this does not happen, you’re even blinder to the realities of impoverishment than I thought.
You believe that your policy which would require additional infrastructure, changing peoples lifestyles, convincing beneficiaries to give the state control of many aspects of their children’s lives (in effect giving them less money), finding additional funding to pay for all those meals, uniforms and people to administer them would be more likely to meet favour and Governmental acceptance than my idea of increasing funding for the impoverished so that it keeps up with inflation? Come now BJ, we’re interested in facts here.
You’re imposing upon what people eat, wear and utilize in the way of services such as power and telecommunications. Do you really think such changes are trivial? How does the “house manager” if I may suggest they are titled, regulate consumption? In your house, the state apparently sits at the head of the table… In my house, the state doesn’t get in the door.
Most television is state programming.
Haven’t thought it out properly huh! Who will take on the workload of organising and cooking all those meals? Who will organise uniforms suitable that fit properly? Who is going to manage payment for all the additional services? How is it going to be achieved BJ?
As far as I can tell BJ, your system would not reduce child abuse or underlying poverty at all. It does not address the underlying cause of most abuse or poverty. Your ideas are simply a panacea on the effects of poverty, and a bad one at that. They will not rectify media distortion either. I’m wondering how you could imagine otherwise.
“Savings we reap from well publicized abuses”? Um! What exactly do you mean by that?
In most cases bringing the adult out of poverty does in fact bring the child out of poverty. You’re relying on the example of a few instances to disregard the overriding dynamic. Why exactly would parents who had nothing to do with their children receive funding again?
The reality of most beneficiaries’ situations I was referring to, is that of an impoverished situation in the home which will not be helped by giving children more services and disregarding the parent. It is families we need to be concerned with, not individuals.
Yes! You do seem to repeat yourself a bit. Is it my understanding that you would help the child become prosperous while leaving the parent impoverished? That is a differentiation that I would prefer not to make.
I hardly think that the Greens adopting such an ill-conceived policy as the one you have presented which places more control (and expense) in the hands of the state would mean any change to the percentage of the vote they will receive, other than it being less than it could be.
My coherent syntax (which I take time to conceive) is easily understandable by those who follow logic and reason.
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The problem is in fact the end of full employment in national economies with globalisation.
Welfare reform is just part of the cover up.
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When you dragged in the objection that it did nothing to prevent a man from molesting his own child.
It was fairly ridiculous to do that.
BJ
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The difference between sold-to-by and sold-to-buy is that I can understand the LATTER just fine.
…and if I had stared at that until the blood oozed from my forehead it might have finally occurred to me that you’d mis-spelled a word. I don’t do clairvoyance. Say what you mean… and the same objection applies to that scenario…. except that the removal of the war on drugs, which WAS part of my program, would make that particular abuse unnecessary to the superbad parent.
The point that it is ridiculous remains.
BJ
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How is a father molesting his child every day a poverty issue Todd. THAT is what is ridiculous. You are bringing in crap from further and further afield.
BJ
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Lets go over it again. The most intrusive thing I’ve required them to do is send their kids to school for breakfast, and put uniforms on ALL the kids, not just theirs. Didn’t tell them who their power company was, didn’t tell them who provides gas for heating (if they use it), didn’t tell them where they had to live, we don’t have enough State Houses to house ‘em all anyhow, and didn’t tell them what to drive, or eat for supper. What I changed was how much it cost them. What I changed was to make their kids more equal in the competition with all the other kids.
The cost of this is a reduction in the direct per-child subsidy, which comes from both the beneficiary and from the WFF taxpayer, and the compensations have to more than match the reductions to rectify current inequities… and given the lack of understanding of some people here, it is going to be impossible to explain except by example.
BJ
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Hmmm… adjustments to accounting procedures for WFF and MOH covering Power, Housing and MD procedures for kids… just how much management is entailed here really? It isn’t rocket science. We’re employing some extra people to fit the uniforms and make the meals. That employs some people… gives them some dignity, or do you object to that notion?
It looks to me like a bit of extra work for WINZ to manage it. The basic mechanisms for some of it already exists.
How different and difficult is breakfast from lunch? You have “invented” a huge management issue… I see some extra people on the payroll making sure that the kids get fed and proper fitting uniforms, and making sure the library stays open longer than the mall or the school.
I don’t get the “huge management load. Just a change in the way we think about things.
BJ
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A child who exists because Momma didn’t have any better life choice than to have kids and collect money is abused Todd. Abused in a way I would not wish on my worst enemy. I warned you that you would not understand me about this.
As far as eliminating poverty, I am only working on the CHILD poverty issue.
There are two ways that a person can have enough money. The first is to have a lot of money and the second is to be able to get the things they need without using money. The principle applied is to put the things we need for having kids into the second category.
…because raising children well is expensive and we don’t fund them nearly well enough to have a fair break. However, the public perception is that some parents are using their kids to live large at the taxpayer’s expense… even though this is in all likelihood, a relatively rare occurrence. The result is that we can’t get increases for those kids…. because the ones who do this are not inclined to take care of the children, their kids wind up in Starship and they wind up on the front page of the Dom-Post. That’s abuse. It gets reported.
Using payment in kind however, we can support the kids and show the “fiscal responsibility” card, that we aren’t letting people take advantage of the dole to “live large at the taxpayer’s expense”. The fact that so many corporations and politicians do that without anything like this scrutiny is somewhat off-putting, but that’s the way it is.
You want to solve this by doing something (I have no idea how), to get more MONEY for the kid’s parents out of the taxpayers (the government).
Politics however, is the art of the possible. We can almost certainly get more money as long as we don’t hand it over to parents, and that is where my method becomes appropriate.
So I am indeed addressing poverty -and- abuse. You just don’t wish to admit it.
BJ
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Why indeed Todd, yet some have the children and at BEST ignore them. I don’t know how many such parents exist, but it is enough to keep them on the front pages at least a couple of months out of every year. Too many.
It is enough to keep some women in poverty because their former husbands don’t care enough to send anything, much less what they are supposed to send, to support their kids. How many would that be I wonder. Might be a useful statistic, as indicates to a degree the size of the “I don’t care for my kids” dynamics.
Why they receive funding? Because it’s THEIR child… Mom had baby, the usual way.
When the child is not cared for he/she becomes a casualty. This can be fatal in the early years, and is merely damning after school has started.
The “few instances” exist. You cannot wave your arms and have them disappear. They invalidate the principle of just handing over increasing amounts of money, and they make it next to impossible to get people to vote for handing over any amount of money.
BJ
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No… if we are to do it right we must deal with each individual in the family separately. There are reasons for this.
If you consider the adult beneficiary, increasing payments to him or her has the single purpose of assisting him or her. He/She is an adult capable of succeeding or going to hell on his/her own responsibility. Treating this person as an adult and offering simple assistance has no other effects and there is no objection to increasing that assistance.
When considering the child however, any MONEY offered must pass through this adult, and any failure of responsibility does not only affect the adult but also the child, who is in no position to take responsibility. Worse, it offers (to some few) the opportunity to increase the money obtained through reproduction without responsibility. Reproduction without responsibility is an abuse of the right to have children, the children themselves and the system set up to support them.
One has to consider the individuals, not just the family.
BJ
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bj..what is it with your talking apples and oranges..?
..why..in your mind…
..should we not try to end child-poverty…?
..is it because some children are abused/neglected…
..(a phenomenon not restricted to the unemployed/unwell/sole-parents..)
..following your logic..
..why aren’t you screaming for working for (some) families to be stopped to the better-off..
…on the grounds that some better-off children are abused/neglected by their parents..?
if not..(following your’logic’..)..why not…?
i mean..you really are talking utter shite..eh…?
..clogging the place up…
..and going on..and on..and on….
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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spc said:..’The problem is in fact the end of full employment in national economies with globalisation.
Welfare reform is just part of the cover up.’..
why don’t you think about/meditate on that..?…bj..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Phil
In another thread we have done so Phil. My response was to rubbish globalization and the over-zealous application of “comparative advantage” to assert the need for changing to a currency WE control, doing away with fractional reserve and providing a natural impedance at our borders, and finally asserting positive control over those borders to protect our organic industries (not meaning grown without pesticides, our internal industries) through tariffs and other measures.
That however, wasn’t part of THIS thread. SPC is right to bring it up, as was Gerrit earlier, and I also have pointed out that this is inherently tied to the lack of jobs that is a result of the globalization meme.
However, it remains not part of this thread, which has chewed up far more time than it ought to, given the simplicity of the concept presented.
BJ
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..why..in your mind…
..should we not try to end child-poverty…?
Why, in your mind, would you think that I think we should not? I certainly never said anything of the sort.
..why aren’t you screaming for working for (some) families to be stopped to the better-off..
…on the grounds that some better-off children are abused/neglected by their parents..?
Since I DID assert that this principle should replace WFF per-child payments as well I can only presume that you’re entering the debate late. Which is fair enough. The immense argumentative posts above are daunting even to me, and I wrote half of the bleeding things.
However, Todd has also put a lot of effort into presenting his side of this. Why don’t you ask him?
BJ
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a bit of selective/distorting quoting from you bj..
..here it is again..
“..bj..what is it with your talking apples and oranges..?
..why..in your mind…
..should we not try to end child-poverty…?
..is it because some children are abused/neglected…
..(a phenomenon not restricted to the unemployed/unwell/sole-parents..)
..following your logic..
..why aren’t you screaming for working for (some) families to be stopped to the better-off..
…on the grounds that some better-off children are abused/neglected by their parents..?
if not..(following your’logic’..)..why not…?..”
how about answering that..?
(and i quoted spc as an example of cutting through the crap/fog you have whipped up…)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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rebstock is on nat-rad nine to noon…
at about 9.30 am…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Phil
I somehow am missing whatever the hell you are complaining about. You asked, now twice, why I think we should not try to end child poverty.
I pointed out, now twice, that this is not my position, and that there is nothing in this thread that could be so interpreted.
Since it is not a true statement of anything like what I said Phil, it is important now for you to do something other than repeating the false accusations.
…and given that I agreed with SPC and required that WFF support be given the same way you’re already on three strikes. You haven’t described a single one of those points correctly.
… I would appreciate it if you refrained from the false descriptions. I say things pretty accurately most times, and I have a good enough recollection of what I am saying, despite my advanced years, to know you aren’t repeating any of it correctly
BJ
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BJ
Father, Son, Uncle or Brother, the scenario is not as rare as you might think. I would contend that molestation is in part an impoverishment issue, not just in wealth, but also in mind and spirit. You contend that shifting responsibility will rectify the abuse of a parent not feeding their child and using that money to buy drugs. A person who would do this would also most likely sell that child for sex to buy drugs. In effect you’re swapping one type of abuse for another. I threw the molestation factor in to see if you had any answers. Requiring that such horribleness is tackled by policy; is not ridiculous.
Child prostitution is not a ridiculous topic to discuss in terms of impoverishment. I fail to see why you’re trying to score points when I have raised difficult and important issues.
I’m also unsure why you have chosen to tackle a few perceived inconsistencies in my argument; instead of the actual questions I’ve made concerning your “policy” ideas?
1. Over and above the argument concerning what you mean… why exactly do we want to stop people from having more kids again?
2. What exactly are you advocating for?
3. I’m unsure of what you mean? I’m unaware of creating any contradiction.
4. How exactly do you propose to meet the requirement of sustenance then if a food bank or funds placed onto a WINZ payment card are not to replace funds going to the parents?
5. etc
But we do have enough houses to house everybody. How best the Government acquires them on behalf of its constituents or builds new ones is another question entirely for a different blog.
How so? They are still impoverished. Their family is impoverished. If you think kids can’t tell this just because you whack a uniform on and feed them all, you are wrong.
I’ve understood nearly everything you have posted (when it was properly presented). Claiming that the people you’re debating are naïve is rather silly… But not as silly as you thinking you’re in parliament again.
You’re asking that Government departments to undertake a huge increase in workload when they’re often overworked already. Perhaps even creating another department to administer all those handouts while keeping the entire old system that administers the reduced benefits as well. It cannot be a total replacement because we do not have a cashless society. How exactly do you envision the system working if there is no proper management of it? Remember, we are talking about millions of dollars, not just a few power bills.
Thinking about something is not the same as doing something.
It’s not just the rich who should be allowed to have children.
Who said? Do you think the Politicians believe their own propaganda or have no heart at all? There has been a large movement in New Zealand to have impoverished children funded appropriately. Although successes are limited, that does not mean we should stop trying.
I have undertaken legal action against both National and Labour to “do something” concerning Government policies that entrench childhood impoverishment. Don’t be lecturing me when all you have is an ill-conceived idea.
Wanting families to be properly funded so that they can maintain their dignity is not the same as “getting more money for dole bludgers” BJ. Until you separate the propaganda from reality there can be no hope of a realistic debate or solution.
I don’t see that you’re addressing abuse. You’re addressing the results of abuse in a small way and in actuality entrenching that causative abuse further. You’re not even addressing poverty… Your system would use up any additional funding it received in its own management. Lets not even begin to look into the ways it can be ripped off huh!
“The public doesn’t want to fund impoverished children”. Politics is presently the art of subterfuge.
We’re not interested in supposition. Developing policy on propaganda is a sure fire bet that the policy implementation into the community will fail completely.
The parent who has a child to receive an additional $83 per week from welfare (do they exist at all?) and the parent who does not pay child support are completely different issues. You cannot apply one set of statistics or remedy to the other. Come now BJ… you’re not an idiot!
Beneficiaries do actually have incremental increases to their benefits. The public does not vote on it. It’s a legally binding condition that is written into welfare legislation. That existing condition would suggest that your argument concerning the publics perceived opinion does not in fact influence the Governments policy at all. Your argument (even acknowledging public opinion) is none existent within this context. A government can properly fund welfare, the majority of New Zealanders would like to see impoverishment a thing of the past.
Whoa Nelly! Reproduction without responsibility is perhaps best administered to by education. You can teach people to be responsible; you cannot make them. The welfare system was set up to support all children, those that are cared for by responsible parents (including beneficiaries) and those that are not. Shifting responsibility from one sector (which is under funded) onto another (which will probably be under funded) is not the answer. Further funding and application of better administration and systems to tackle the issues at their source, is the answer. These systems did use to exist.
We must consider the disparity within the family home this will likely cause. In my opinion it would worsen the negative effect already felt by beneficiaries. The actual reason you have utilized to further your “policy” is under funding of the family dynamic in the first instance. Which has caused many of the negative scenarios presented.
I have to agree with you there BJ.
Policy should encourage families to be as functional as possible holistically within their homes and the wider community. Until that happens, putting responsibility into the states hands and people who do not have a vested interest in children’s welfare will not be relevant, both in repairing the damage done from welfare reform and alleviating impoverishment and abuse for parents and children alike.
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Here’s a wee scenario for you BJ: If a child becomes ill and does not go to school to get their free breakfast and dinner, what then, do they starve? Or does the parent have to go to WINZ and beg for a food grant to cover the meals for an unknown amount of time that the child is going to be sick for? Sometime weekly and indefinitely. Just as I surmised; a propaganda driven and ill-conceived policy which raises more management issues and does not change impoverishment at all.
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Steve Maharey makes a contribution to the debate in the Dom Post today.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/4404154/How-the-welfare-system-can-be-made-to-benefit-the-economy
For someone decrying the National approach as beneficiary bashing and stating a preference for investment in people to realise social development, he still adopts common cause on a social insurance approach from Work and Income, supports a 2 year period of national service for unemployed school leavers (armed forces through to environment projects) – this would replace the in work (less jobs) or education (places being capped) and if not provided with training or work experience (the line for those under 18, then those under 20 of a few years ago).
While this does not committ Labour in any way, it suggests there could be bi-partisanship on these things.
Social insurance based on his proposed two benefit categories – on the way to work or unable to work, is effectively adopting the National line that women on the DPB should be actively case managed and that many on the IB and SB should also be assessed as on the way to work. The problem with that approach is that traditionally lower payments are made to those on temporary benefits (UB) than long term ones unable to work ones (SB to a degree and especially IB) whereas all on the DPB, short term or long term receive the same amount – will social insurance “profiling” change this?
Social insurance profiling raises all sorts of BOR/HRA issues -yet of course government often claims to be exempt from this. Yet for the same ethical reasons use of DNA genetic profiling is heavily regulated in many countries.
I agree with him on making Kiwi Saver compulsory (that ends the $1Bpa and rising cost of the tax incentives) – but don’t understand how part of the savings placed with the providers could be made available for small business start-ups, unless they were required to risk a proportion of their fund (venture capital investment) in this way.
As for all children having account established for them at birth, to be called on only when they take on tertiary level study. This is not welfare reform, but an insurance scheme to increase university funding (enable higher fees) – it indicates a retreat from the public funding model.
I presume this requires compulsory savings by their parents. It only really works if parents can afford this – some parents will need help from the taxpayer. It could end tertiary loans (and interest free debt) over 20 years if the student allowance was to become universal – but if the government could afford this universities would be better funded now. Adding another tier, accounts to just cover fees, then tertiary loans for living allowances seems costly. Accounts which cover living costs would require large savings and many could not afford this and buy a home for the family (not unless housing costs fell). It might place too much expense on the family at the wrong time, it could require a real income boost to WFF.
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It’s not just the rich who should be allowed to have children.
This is because money is not an indication of a persons intellect, abilities, worthiness and work ethic. The failed financial system has bypassed Natures rule; that only the smartest, fittest and healthiest reproduce. Finances are therefore not a reason to legislate for such a fascist ideal.
I bring your attention to the likes of Rodney Hide to make my point.
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Todd says “It’s not just the rich who should be allowed to have children.”
We do have a problem in NZ with policies causing selective breeding, but it’s not in favour of the rich.
The people most able to look after their children are having the least, and the people least able to look after their children are having the most.
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Beg pardon Todd, but you are the one working in more and more ludicrous requirements… and as I pointed out in any case, ending the war on drugs was part of my answer and deals quite effectively with “child prostitution to buy drugs”.
You contend that shifting responsibility will rectify the abuse of a parent not feeding their child and using that money to buy drugs
It certainly goes a long way towards ensuring that that child is fed, which is the actual point of it.
In effect you’re swapping one type of abuse for another.
How “swapping” Todd? If he is taking the money owing to such depravity of the spirit he’ll sell the kid too. This is a false choice. Another strawman. Or do you reckon that we’re going to give him so much money he doesn’t have to sell the kid? That policy would last until about 10 femtoseconds after the press got hold of the story.
Requiring that such horribleness is tackled by policy; is not ridiculous. …and just handing over more money tackles this how? My plans included ending the war on drugs and making sure the kid is fed. Which improve the child’s condition. Actually catching pedophiles is not part of any welfare plan I am aware of.
Questions I have answered, now more than once.
1. Over and above the argument concerning what you mean… why exactly do we want to stop people from having more kids again?
Was never an objective of this. Only want to stop having an external incentive to have kids. Have ‘em if you want ‘em. The state picks up most of the tab. No money in or out as a result would be ideal. No substantial money is what is practical.
2. What exactly are you advocating for?
Getting children out of poverty, equality between children of wealthy and poor alike. Fiscal responsibility in a way that causes our detractors heads to explode.
3. I’m unsure of what you mean? I’m unaware of creating any contradiction. Been through several of them now… not sure which one I was referring to at this point and not worth the archeology to retrieve it. I see how long this post of yours is.
4. How exactly do you propose to meet the requirement of sustenance then if a food bank or funds placed onto a WINZ payment card are not to replace funds going to the parents?
SOME funds on a WINZ card are going to still be required. I have said that this is a preference not an absolute rule at least 3 times in this thread. I’m not expecting them to go to food banks. I am planning that the parent should have some ability to offer treats, gifts and the little kindnesses that make them parents. The thing is that those funds are adequate to providing supper, some clothing and some other little things, not lunch and breakfast and heating and electricity and housing and internet and school clothing and supplies and MD visits and all the rest.
5. etc
etc.
In fairness, you never did ask number 2 before.
That is enough in one post. The monster posts have to stop. OK? It is too much for anyone to follow through all the arguments. Keep it to a point or two in a post.
BJ
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Of course the kids will know who has money and who doesn’t. Who has the good cellphone and the WII attached to their television? Where do you live? That isn’t the point. The point that they will be enabled… to stand as equals while in the school. There is no pretending that the clothes are important while in school. Dunno when you were last in school but “your momma dresses you funny” can be insulting on several levels. The uniforms help end that level of discrimination, not ALL discrimination.
It also helps the teachers to see the student, not the clothes.
respectfully
BJ
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Hmmm… I’ve got a fair notion of how overworked those departments are… I wind up working inside them myself often enough. Changing a WFF payout to go in part to a designated electricity or gas provider is not exactly challenging stuff. Arranging for the MD to treat and obtain a full rather than a partial payout for the care is similarly unchallenging. WINZ has to hire people to work at the schools to cook the meals and to fit the uniforms. This is medium-skilled labor unless we are hiring gourmet chefs and well within their handling capacity.
Yes, it is in total somewhat more difficult and expensive than checkbook based care, but it is not prohibitive, and WINZ is already set up to manage the money… it might need some more people… not I think, the horde you seem to fear.
respectfully
BJ
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Thanks for the link SPC
I would just say:
The antithetical argument falls flat on its face. It’s social welfare that is a safety net required because there are not enough jobs. Welfare dependency is not created because of that safety net; it is created because there are no other choices available.
The black and white approach is likewise a bit short sighted. There are degrees to people’s ability to work, these need to be acknowledged not ignored as a cost saving measure. Using a stick to implement changes will not result in the desired outcome we want, that of less welfare dependency and less impoverishment.
Likewise working for the dole and national service does not rectify impoverishment. It just shifts responsibility and does not address the causative dynamic at all. The grist for the mill approach has failed already. Let’s not chase our own tails.
Insuring education through a bank account from birth still creates a disparity for those that cannot afford to save anything towards it. I fail to see the difference from a Government point of view if they were to make long-term contributions to funding or when it was required. Unless of course you count up the funds that are not used for training which I would presume would go to the Government, even if that were not where they originated.
In terms of the overall summing up from Steve Maharey “This nonsense has been tried and failed before. It is time to adopt an approach suited to the 21st century, not the 19th.” I would have to agree.
Photonz1
Any stats on that… Or are you just making things up again?
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BJ
What exactly are you advocating for? Is in fact a direct copy and paste from a previous post in this thread.
I’m not sure that you are aware or not; most low decile areas have schemes in schools that give food to children so that they can function and learn. What is the point in implementing more? Giving such services to private schools is not required. Properly funding the existing dynamic would be a better management of resources.
The school uniform argument is perhaps best described as inconsequential to resolving the main issues: impoverishment and welfare dependency.
You mean people who have little skill will be placed by WINZ into schools to work for minimum wage or their benefits will be cut. Yuck! No thanks.
However you discount the main issue. Whether in general WINZ can take better care of a person’s wellbeing by taking over their funds to pay for their services than that person who has a vested interest in getting it right can. History would prove the latter is more effective hence the reason for our current system. WINZ would argue harder against such a scheme than I am.
It would seem that you are a get the last word in kind of guy BJ. Good for you.
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Possibly because “rare” is not the same as non-existent and you are still refusing to address this.
we have both agreed that it is very rare I don’t remember agreeing to “very”… my POV was that it was less than the number of people who were doing the right thing, and agreeing that the folks doing the right thing needed to be considered too… or maybe I was just being too accommodating.
http://www.familyhelptrust.org.nz/aboutus-history.html#
http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/sheets/rs21/rs21.html
Assume that neglect (which crosses socio-economic status boundaries but which concentrates in the lower SES families) is 12%.
Conservatively that’s going to be 5-10% of families on the dole. Because the poor are more likely to be in that position, it might well be more, but we’re being generous here. Every possible break.
Is this or is this not something we have to address?
respectfully
BJ
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Even 2-3 % is too many to ignore IMHO.
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BJ
I’m not ignoring or refusing to address it BJ… I am unsure of how to best address it. I have provided a few answers, which Gerrit also did not comprehend properly. What I have done is argue against the affirmative in that your proposed changes will do nothing to rectify those issues; which was your initial assertion.
Please link to New Zealand information if at all possible in the future.
You have again avoided the question:
Why exactly do we want to stop people from having more kids?
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We need more New Zealanders not more immigration.
So maybe we should arrange things so that New Zealanders STAY in NZ. It isn’t the gozinta that worries me, it is the number of highly educated gozoutas that cause us strife.
That gets addressed by changing the economy though, and it is a whole other thing. As for just having more kids born here? Not that helpful. Raw material. We’re shipping out the best of our finished product and putting a lot of work into the finishing. All lost to Oz.
BJ
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A contention, that is not resolved by applying another dynamic BJ.
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Please link to New Zealand information if at all possible in the future.
Trust me, I have other things I do and I am not able to find any NZ data that is worth posting. This is probably a matter that wants numbers put against it for real, because it is widely publicized, to the extent that most naive viewers would conclude that it was the norm rather than a 2% exception (if that is the best number to use) and because it is real enough to wind up on the front pages of the papers with specifics once or twice a year.
Todd!!! Asking the same question as if I haven’t answered it 5 times now already ???? If you can’t work out that asking a “when did you stop beating your wife” style question repeatedly is going to piss people off you’d best go back and learn some manners.
The goal is not to stop people from having more kids!!! I know I have said this… repeatedly. The goal is to keep them from having kids for the wrong reasons.
BJ
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That’s actually the first time you’ve answered to question BJ…
Ah no! The goal is to ensure that all children are looked after properly, no matter what circumstances bring them into existence. Children will be born “for the wrong reasons” (according to what… Government expenditure?) no matter what fascist policy is implemented.
You’ll get as much cordiality from me as you deserve.
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Suing the government? OK… that’s something new from you. I hope it actually works.
However, you have contributed mostly repetitive misrepresentations and endless objections to things I never said. Makes me inclined to be less reasonable myself. My idea remains as good as it was when you started in on it Todd.
What you want is more money for good families to maintain their dignity, not that accepting handouts does a hell of a lot for “dignity”, I found it demeaning when I had to accept it back in the US, but it is better than nothing.
You will do nothing whatsoever about the bad families who abuse children sometimes just by having them, abuse the taxpayers who support them and abuse the children they have by neglecting them.
I am removing their incentive to have more children to abuse, making it more difficult for them to abuse the taxpayer and helping children who are being neglected with my “ill-conceived” idea Todd. You haven’t shown any of that to be untrue.
Since asking for more money to do things this way is part of the equation in any case, (we do agree that there is an underfunding happening), there is no real difference there. The difference is only in the delivery system for the assistance.
A quotation of something I never said, again, but it IS the same if you do not differentiate somehow… and the system is NOT equipped to do that little task and would find it next to impossible to do so.
Something widely resented by a lot of people.
OK… you just accused me of doing something that makes no sense at all again… and I don’t THINK you misspelled a word in there this time. Would you care to explain this?
I don’t see anything I am advocating as entrenching anything, all I am doing is altering the means of delivery of assistance to make it more certain to get to the kids it is aimed at.
You speculate that my system would use up any additional funding it received in its own management. I have pointed out the that it is not at all management intensive, and I’d wager that my way will achieve significantly more for the lower SES population than yours can.
The ways it can be ripped off ? Sam pointed out that direct subsidies to landlords might be a problem. We’d be OK with the state housing. Someone might scam some bucks selling school uniforms but they can already do that… come on, give me something here. This is where you could actually HELP, but all you say is lets not think of it.
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You asked what my goals are in your SECOND question mate.
Ah no! The goal is to ensure that all children are looked after properly, no matter what circumstances bring them into existence. Children will be born “for the wrong reasons” (according to what… Government expenditure?) no matter what fascist policy is implemented.
You’ll get as much cordiality from me as you deserve.
Which answer you are now ignoring….
2. What exactly are you advocating for?
Getting children out of poverty, equality between children of wealthy and poor alike. Fiscal responsibility in a way that causes our detractors heads to explode.
Which is to say, you are lying by omission and deserve very little cordiality yourself.
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That question was answered the first time it came up. These were my words.
nor discourage people from having kids to get more money
You deliberately repeated only the first 6 of them.
Several times.
BJ
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@BJ
Who said “The fact that you bring the adult out of poverty does NOT guarantee anything reaches the child.”
Hence your view that the child should be, effectively, taken away from the parent, and subject to a kind of ‘re-education’? (That’s what I gather your attacks of logorrhoea amount to). You seem to have a very scathing and hostile view of beneficiary parents, based perhaps on a few scare-quote shock horror stories in the media!
What on earth are you doing in the Greens? You are the kind of person who is the reason why I have yet to vote Green.
Those who feel they know better than we beneficiaries/lower orders, are unfortunately rife amongst Greens, health professionals, and other similar groups… Ladies and Lords Bountiful and Wowsers, are my names for such.
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@BJ again! You said “he goal is not to stop people from having more kids!!! I know I have said this… repeatedly. The goal is to keep them from having kids for the wrong reasons.”
Please define “wrong reasons”. I have had kids (have you?) and I had them because I was in a relationship, and having children was the next step and the logical consequences of er – other activities.
Is that a good enough reason for you? Or would you apply an income test before allowing a pregnancy to proceed to birth? Fascist.
Vicky
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BJ
Who ever said anything about me suing the government? Legal action takes many forms and mine certainly wasn’t about receiving anything myself. I undertook legal action on behalf of the many New Zealand impoverished children. It was a reasonable action, which was not successful, hence the continued impoverishment.
Wanting families to be properly funded so that they can maintain their dignity is not the same as “getting more money for dole bludgers”
If I’m to differentiate between debating your ideas, which are hopefully different to the generalisations concerning the way things work that I eloquently convey, just so you can understand what I mean, we’ll be here forever BJ.
Proof and stats BJ? Not just rhetoric and ill-conceived ideas based on propaganda.
Entrenching that causative abuse further.
Ahem…
If you remove the income from beneficiaries who (lets say for the point of argument), buy alcohol instead of food, how exactly is that parent going to pay for that dysfunction? You’re not addressing the dysfunction by only removing a component that goes towards paying for it. The dysfunction will get worse because of a stress-induced reaction. Blame will be sought and there is a likely scapegoat handy. There is nothing to address the resentment felt. There is only the fact of further abuse. The afflicted parent will not stop being an addict; they will find other (worse) ways to pay for their addiction. You’re entrenching that dysfunction without addressing the actuality of it and subjugating the affected and their children into further abuse, ensconcing the black market in their lives and generally making things worse. Either by what that parent has to do to maintain their addiction or by what the child will now be subjected to, to maintain that addiction. Removing money will not remove the addiction. The negative social condition of many addicts trying to find the money (by any means) to fund their dysfunction will be repressive and economically and socially disastrous. If you say: “removing the funds from the addict will help to get that addict to go to recovery”, you have little idea about addiction.
Phew!
Did I spell the dynamic out enough for you? Guess you didn’t consider that one either huh! The fact that the child will get a couple of meals does not discount that dynamic, it just means the child will be fed while they’re abused even more. A hollow victory if you ask me.
I have posed many reasons why it will be expensive; to my knowledge you’ve countered none of them. In many instances your “policy” is not even required because such services already exist, albeit through charity in most instances.
Why would I help you to determine your ideas that will not even work in the prescribed manner to alleviate any impoverishment? You are being condescending again…
You’ve lost me on the 3:10 and 3:29 PM posts BJ. Is this going to become an “I deserve more respect than you” debate “because I’m right”… boring!
I think the terminology you might be looking for Deborah Kean, is Pseudos Green instead of fascist! Although I would not usually apply such a title to BJ, it seems apt in respect to his argument here.
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“I think the terminology you might be looking for Deborah Kean, is Pseudos Green instead of fascist! Although I would not usually apply such a title to BJ, it seems apt in respect to his argument here.”
You’re right of course, Todd…. I am not usually so intemperate, but today I am a hot cross bunny. (No aircon! Not usually a problem, but today… Sigh!)
Deb
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“..If you say:“removing the funds from the addict will help to get that addict to go to recovery”, you have little idea about addiction…’
i’d like to second that..
and as an ex-junkie i should fucken know..eh..?
..b.j loves to pontificate on this subject..
..(with his convoluted-’plans’)…
..an ‘expert’ on a subject he knows s.f.a. about…
..b.j.telling me about drugs…is like me telling him about n.a.s.a..
..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Thanks for the explanation, because I wasn’t able to understand that from “entrenching the dysfunction” – that’s a real thank you, because it helps me to understand better what your issue is with this.
…and No, I didn’t consider that particular dynamic… that I should actually support the addict’s habit in order to avoid the possibility that they might harm rather than merely neglect their child.
…and it IS a real problem.
…I am thinking that it is a logic that I cannot accept. The logic of extortion. “Gimme the dough or the kid gets it”, except that you are demanding the money on behalf of the addict… who will use it for drugs rather than for the child, and you have forgotten in this, that the end of the war on drugs means that the addict is getting drugs as required to keep him from reaching that desperate state. Once again the principle of “in kind rather than in cash” applies, only this time to the addict.
Of course in that case the addict may be so far gone that his presence in the household is no longer a positive thing in the child’s life and the CYF people need to be notified and the child taken away… for the good of that child.
Still, I had NOT thought about it, and until you brought it up I really would not have thought about it. Much more useful.
Understand me in this. I am not requiring that the adult stipend/payment/support be reduced. He/She is an individual, legitimately needs support at higher levels than available at present and AFAIK, the support level corrected for inflation has been cut severely. Adults are presumed to be responsible with their own money and if they are not they suffer their own consequences, and that’s fine. In kind rather than in cash is optional there.
When children are involved the stakes are higher and the penalty for irresponsibility falls on the kids. Not on the parent. There the rules I am proposing prevent harm.
BJ
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Deborah
Since you didn’t bother to read anything else that I wrote, you made an assumption about what I meant.
Instead of waiting for me to define “wrong reasons”.
Did you have children for money Deborah? I did not. I am sure you did not. That is a “wrong reason” to have a child.
The question is whether you will apologize. Name-calling like this is not well considered here and I am tired of having to deal with misrepresentations of my position at such length.
BJ
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You are lost Todd, because you went over the top with the misrepresentation.
I get angry when someone misrepresents what I say. You have worked really hard at misrepresenting my position and you succeeded sufficiently that a relatively innocent reader thought what YOU said I was saying, was my position.
In other words you perpetrated a lie on the board… and I do not see why I am trying still to restrain my temper and remain civil. It is a habit.
BJ
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Phil!
“..If you say:“removing the funds from the addict will help to get that addict to go to recovery”, you have little idea about addiction…’
I DID NOT SAY THIS! TODD said that I said it.
I said that it was important to end the war on drugs to solve the problems of addiction for the lower SES family, but are you really too interested in the sport of BJ bashing to notice that the person you are supporting here is making shit up?!
BJ
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Deborah
“Hence your view that the child should be, effectively, taken away from the parent, and subject to a kind of ‘re-education’?
Ah… you are also going to start making shit up? because you can’t be bothered to understand what I actually say and can’t find a valid reason to argue against it?
You seem to have a very scathing and hostile view of beneficiary parents, based perhaps on a few scare-quote shock horror stories in the media!
Shucks ma’am, I am just observing that what IS in the media is what keeps anything like a reasonable support level from reaching the beneficiary…
…and the reason for that stuff being in the media is that sometimes it actually happens that way.
…and that the media stories can be stopped by giving the kids assistance in kind rather than in cash in as much as that can be managed and ending the war on drugs (which amounts to a war on poor people).
…and that this would let us get a more socially conscious government in.
– or do you actually LIKE having NACT in control of things?
BJ
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Thanks Phil and Deborah.
You know, what’s really wrong with this country is people not doing their jobs properly… what was your day job again BJ?
I’m not demanding any money on behalf of the addicted who by the way, have no concern for your thoughts of extortion and how their addiction is viewed. They do care however about how it’s maintained. You cannot use an argument of “they’re using their benefits to buy drugs instead of feeding their children” as a reason to impose policy across the board that makes the posed scenario even worse. Can you? I’m merely pointing out one of the negative dynamics that your ideas on social engineering raise, one which you again have no answer for apart from saying “it will make things better”. I beg to differ.
Wow when did that happen?
Probably not in my lifetime.
Fitting the generalized scenario to suit your argument huh! Many drug and alcohol addicts maintain a semblance of normalcy so that CYF does not become involved. They continue to abuse their children for years and years in fact. In part due to a lack of proper funding. There is no further funding for such organizations in your plan to combat the additional problems encountered, or is there?
The stakes are high, which means we need to get it right. The “penalty” for irresponsibility is felt by society, all the family and the addict combined. There is in fact no separation to impoverishment and its effects on the human condition.
The dynamic I just highlighted that you thanked me for (albeit insincerely), breaks apart your proposed “rules” into the ill-conceived rubbish that they are. Clean up on aisle nine…
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“…Did you have children for money Deborah? ..”
gee b.j…what exactly is a wedding-contract…?
.if not..usually…a ‘deal’ to have children…
..with all sorts of financial implications…
…are you sure you weren’t party to a child-deal like that…?
…esp. when the mothering parent focuses on raising the child..
..as in not parking them in after-school care..
..or on holidays…in those chain-gangs of children you see being mustered around town…
..why is one parent doing that important job alone…
..a ‘problem’ for you to ‘solve’…?
..and here’s a thought…
…how did they end poverty amongst the aged…?
..why..!…they gave them more money…eh..?
..the ‘solution’ is that simple…b.j..
..they did not subject them to a version of your proposed convoluted-fascist-formulae…
i repeat..
they-just-gave-them a liveable -income..
our child poverty stats are a national-shame..
…lifting parental-boats will lift those children as well..
it ain’t rocket-science…n.a.s.a-man..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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What on earth are you doing in the Greens?
I am a former NASA engineer and a deep environmental green. I believe in sustainable environment and sustainable economics and making sure that kids of even the most blighted families have as equal a shot at life as the child of any wealthy person.
You are the kind of person who is the reason why I have yet to vote Green.
Good call.
BJ
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I am glad Phil, that your depravity with respect to marriage vows is able to be displayed in full here.
People get married and have children for money.
Yeah Right.
BJ
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“…I am glad Phil, that your depravity with respect to marriage vows is able to be displayed in full here.
People get married and have children for money.
Yeah Right…”
that is knee-slappingly funny…
..and kinda sweet/innocent…
..have you led a very sheltered life….?
..lotsa people do…eh..?
..the most recent example being those horsey-young-people from england..eh..?
…an almost pure contract to both reproduce..and provide a much-needed widening/deepening of the gene-pool…
…with some solid working class-stock..
..descended from miners..no less..
..with her side of the deal..decidedly-financial..
..(i wasn’t hitting too close to home there was i b.j..?
..i am kinda puzzled by yr over-reaction…
..and b.j..have you heard about those cultures that have ‘arranged-marriages’…
..what is that if not what you scoff at the very idea of..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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You cannot use an argument of “they’re using their benefits to buy drugs instead of feeding their children” as a reason to impose policy across the board that makes the posed scenario even worse. Can you?
Bullshit again Todd. Since drug policy changes are part of the measures I offered, the posed scenario is neutralized before it can even reach “annoying”, never mind “bad”.
What is the price of the legalized drug, even prescribed free in the case of genuine addiction? Where is there a pressure for money that lends itself to the abuse Todd? Since you are so bold as to say that the imposition of support in kind, rather than in cash, when applied to the support of children can make it worse, you need to tell us all HOW that can happen now.
I’m not demanding any money on behalf of the addicted
Bullshit Todd.
1. You are demanding more money for beneficiaries, and their children, a worthy cause…
2. You are NOT distinguishing between addicted and irresponsible beneficiaries and the benign and responsible majority of them.
3. You are telling us that we MUST accede to your demands or the irresponsible addict will harm his children.
…but you are not demanding money for addicts
You are as misleading here about your own position as you have been about my position… even handed in a way I had never considered before.
BJ
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*Not to say all addicts are abusive to their children.
If I may Deborah… The “wrong reason” you have given for why poor people might have children BJ, is that of an additional $83 per week. Not exactly rolling in it when you consider the cost of living and looking after that child, even in a small way.
Please don’t remove alcohol from the equation…
We’re interested in reality BJ. Not the future prospect of your idea becoming policy. Which has a slime chance in hell of actually happening I might add. Are you trying to say there’s no black market, for drugs or otherwise, and thus no pressure for money? Yawn!
I am so bold… I gave a good example as to why it is in fact a negative change. You have not presented any argument contrary to that. Apart from MAKING THINGS UP.
I’m saying that giving additional funding to the impoverished would alleviate much of the social dysfunction that a lack of funding causes. Whether the addicted are a part of the impoverished (which is not always the case) is inconsequential to the positive result that additional funding would cause on the impoverished.
I think I’ve made my point with the addiction model. Continue to denigrate addicts and beneficiaries if you wish.
I would contend that you misrepresent yourself BJ… by thinking that I’m only talking about “you” and not the overall dynamic impoverishment causes. That social dysfunction is worth far more attention than you trying to prove your ill-conceived ideas worthy.
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I’m saying that we MUST not accede to your demands in the form you present them or the irresponsible and already abusive parent could harm their children further.
Your reasons are improbable, the causative effect negative. There is no reason to implement state run families BJ.
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With the support of my rheumatologist, I resisted WINZ attempts to transfer me to the sickness benefit as this would mean $50 less per week, a stricter abatement regime and more intensive monitoring, even although I am doing as much work as I can. If I thought the move from Invalid Benefit to Sickness Benefit would be beneficial, I would welcome it. But it simply means I will have to manage on even less.
I listened to the ‘interview’ with Paula Rebstock on National Radio this morning with mounting anger and dismay. I would love to have a full-time job, but where are these caring sympathetic employers and therapeutic workplaces. The reality is that I am competing for non-existent full-time work with 150,000 ‘abled’ unemployed.
I didn’t ask to have this awful disease let alone being demonised for being unable to earn my living.
It could happen to you.
Beatie
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(yet occur often enough to be a problem)
(meaningless in this context, but sounds impressive)
…and I never have once advocated this oh master of misrepresentation.
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Yawn!
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Of course not, and yet it is there once the child is born, and there are some exquisitely dysfunctional people who appear to find this money far more important than the child (though I would be surprised if the money was a decisive factor, it being more a matter of accident and opportunity).
If you don’t care about them (as the current “partner” may not, they not being his) they are merely a too noisy source of an extra $83 per week.
Which is how they get into the “if it bleeds it leads” news.
To be exploited by those who actually DO want to give all beneficiaries the shaft.
BJ
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Todd says “Whether in general WINZ can take better care of a person’s wellbeing by taking over their funds to pay for their services than that person who has a vested interest in getting it right can”
Your arguement falls down, in the fact that there’s a group of people who don’t have a vested interest or any interest in their childrens well being.
And the less time and influence these parents have on their kids, the better the kids will turn out.
Every day my wife and her colleagues visit houses where the kids are sick and hungry – they don’t even get taken to the doctor when it’s free. There’s no money for food, but there’s plenty for smokes, alcohol, flat screen tv, sky tv, V8 car, and four dogs who shit in the house.
If the kids don’t spend long periods of time outside that environment, then there’s very little chance for them – they’re lives are stuffed permanently.
And yes, it’s a minority, but it’s a sizable minority. And there’s typically a number of kids at each of these houses – not your typical two chiold family. And it’s sucking a fortune away from other services that people need and deserve.
The cost of a teenager in a secure youth home makes $100,000 a year for a prisoner in a jail look like a bargain.
A lot of people on the DPB do a fantastic job at bringing up their children, and their hard work makes them great role models.
And some people just don’t give a toss about their own children. Another convicted of murdering their own kid in the paper today. You’d be shocked by the numbers of families like this are visited by health workers, even in small towns – and that’s just the ones that come to the notice of health workers.
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Ah, so there is to be no consideration of ALL policy which contributes to the situation of the beneficiary, just of the single factor of how much actual money they are given by the state?
Unfortunately Todd, I don’t play by those rules. I was trained to consider the most complete set of factors I can identify as participating in a problem before offering a solution. Solutions should address all contributions to a problem in so far as they can, which is why drug policy changes are part of the whole.
The positive thing you have done is helped make it clear that they are more critical than I had thought, and I did thank you for that.
The economic changes that (among other things) improve the job opportunities are part of the whole as well.
___________________________
Unfortunately, just adding more money does not prevent addiction among the parents nor ensure that the children get anything but the back of the hand from them. All the problems remain problems and will continue to be trumpeted in the news, no matter how much money you give the beneficiaries.
You are not making any changes except providing them more money.
How about a Gambling addiction Todd? How is handing the parent with one of those more MONEY going to work?
…and no, I do not have any answer for Alcohol, any more than you do. I do not however, regard the drinker as being entitled to the child’s $83 by reason of his potential threat to the children. I know from experience that there isn’t any satisfying a drunk. The best hope is that he falls asleep.
Even though in THIS case the lack of that $83 places the man under more pressure as your scenario predicts… it does not void the result that providing the child support in kind aids the child rather than supplying the drunk. Because the alcohol is dangerous even without addiction this DOES constitute a negative scenario as you predict. However, there is no compromise I can countenance. Allowing the man to steal the child’s money is simply wrong and is unlikely to avoid trouble in any case.
No satisfactory answer appears to exist for this case.
…and just in case you didn’t pay attention, I have not been addressing the amount of money given to beneficiaries as beneficiaries themselves, except to say that it was not adequate and on another point, needs to be inflation adjusted.
For the primary beneficiary, I have NEVER made objection to requesting whatever you want as a DIRECT benefit. Not once in this thread’s overwhelming flood of rhetoric.
The child’s portion (also too small) funneled through the hands of the parent however, is the problem for me. The child will suffer if the parent fails the trust… as some do so rather spectacularly. I have never stated that the child’s support should be less, always said it should be more, and simply said that it should be , as a preference, given in kind, not in cash… to avoid its being stolen by irresponsible adults.
BJ
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photonz, a minority of working parents treat their children no better than that minority of welfare recipient parents.
The only way to honour the BOR/HRA – which makes it illegal to discriminate against people based on their employment status – is to make checks of the circumstance of all parents and have equivalent systems in place to secure the well-being of children where this is required. To ensure public money being used for the purposes of the child rearing – healthy housing, power, clothing, food, medical treatment and schooling (WFF tax credits, and beneficiary eligible child payments with-held until re-compliance with good parenting).
Let middle class families volunteer themselves for the checks they would impose on others so they become universal and not based on profiling discrimination.
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Phil, oh noble king of the ellipsis…
I defer to your greater wisdom here.
Of course we all marry for money, there is no love or friendship or commitment to the future involved at all.
Then we have kids for the money…
… which strangely and unexpectedly always results in us having vastly LESS money.
Who knew?
BJ
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SPC –
I like the notion of not having to check because the money didn’t go through the parents to get to the needs of the child.
…but I agree to the requirement for equal treatment. If someone is going to be monitoring each beneficiary family with kids, they’d best be monitoring each FAMILY with kids… and there is something to be said for the approach.
respectfully
BJ
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Done with engines.
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I wonder how many people neglect their kids because they spend endless time arguing nonsense on blogs.
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Many posts earlier on this thread you wrote about me:
Your other comments remind me of the pro-smacking people with their “it didn’t do me any harm”, or pro-Islamic dress people with “women actually want to wear the veil”.
Children aren’t really that different to older people. They just don’t know as much, yet.
There is a big difference between children and adults. We don’t give children the same rights and privileges as adults because they are still growing up and learning. To take a silly example, we don’t let ten year olds drive cars, because if we did there would be crashes all over the place caused by kids who can’t see over the dashboard and whose legs don’t reach the pedals.
Now what you were writing about was wearing uniforms. As a parent, I actually don’t care too much if my children wear uniforms or not, and whether the kids care or not, I know its not going to harm them in the long run if they wear a uniform. They only need to wait until they leave school before they can be free to choose what they wear.
Indeed, if you press me on the issue of raising kids, I’d say parents should lay down the law as to what their kids can do and not do. Its about teaching self-discipline … they cannot always have their way, and sometimes they need to conform to what wider society expects. You may take this the wrong way … but imagine what would happen if we didn’t conform at least on some things. For example, how could a union operate if its members didn’t stick to majority decisions to strike … they’d be union members breaking picket lines (not to say this doesn’t happen already, but at least its somewhat contained), and the bosses would just love it.
Now on your comment about pro-Islamic dress people, I’ve got some news for you … in Western countries many (likely even the majority) Islamic women who wear veils actually want to. I don’t suppose you’re one of these authoritarians who would want to ban what adults wear (notice I’m referring to adults now, not children)? To my mind, its no one elses business what Islamic women wear.
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SPC says “The only way to honour the BOR/HRA – which makes it illegal to discriminate against people based on their employment status – is to make checks of the circumstance of all parents …”
What a load of sh.. We’ve got kids being seriously negelected, some with life threatening health issues, and their lives being totally stuffed up, and your prime concern is their deadbeat parent’s rights – the very people who are seriously damaging their own children.
A great example of completely screwed up priorities.
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“I wonder how many kids neglect their parents because they spend endless time arguing on blogs”.
My youngest likes it because he can play computer games instead of me hassling him to do his maths.
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BJ
There’s a big difference from “if you say…” to “you said”. If you don’t have the cognitive reasoning available to distinguish the difference, get some help.
You confuse me misrepresenting you with you misunderstanding me. I have tried to clarify this previously. Either way it is best if you just try to represent yourself properly.
The actions of a minority, is not a good enough reason to disrupt the lives of the majority, or to reduce what little funding they receive already.
You’re talking about dysfunctional families, which is a problem not limited to welfare. This answer also applies to photonz1 @ 9:34 AM.
A rather strange deductive process, I must say. As I said previously, the issues highlighted are difficult. Merely giving beneficiaries enough to survive on is not going to fix many of them. But it with fix the majority of them.
Having child impoverishment on such an extensive scale as New Zealand does; is a complete embarrassment. We are a prosperous nation that can look after these kids properly by giving them enough assistance to become functioning adults. It’s a clear indictment of the failings of capitalism. The fact that politicians use a minority of well-publicised cases to further their policies of child abuse is despicable.
Sorry! I must have missed the bit where you created more jobs. A bit like the part where there is no war on drugs anymore huh!
Really! It’s not about throwing more money at the problem, it’s about properly funding people so that they can live like human beings. It’s about reducing the gap between the haves and the have-nots. It’s about removing class distinction so that it does not hold our humanity at ransom. For a family that is trying to look after their children on $83 each a week, I think that an increase to keep up with inflation would ensure that those children got adequate food, clothing and health care etc etc. You’re taring the masses with a minority brush again BJ. Try painting an accurate picture for once.
Throwing implies loosing when it is in fact going to provide necessities and then into the economy. Problem implies that all beneficiaries are something to be derided and subjugated and spat on in the street. “You’re a beneficiary, that’s a problem”… One that the Government intends to further denigrate and entrench, through the same kind of welfare reform that has previously made the “problem” even worse.
Further stigmatising and discriminating people just because they’re beneficiaries is not a positive thing to do. It solves nothing. It creates ill will towards a group of people that are already downtrodden. Apart from the obvious superiority complex that many beneficiary bashers have to nourish, what exactly do the fascists intend to achieve? The answer is nothing positive.
Blinkers on again… Additional funding for education, half way houses, counselling, intervention where appropriate and of course rectifying some of the social dysfunction that leads to abuse. I think that answer applies to your accusation earlier: “You are not making any changes except providing them more money”. Open the eyes please!
Applicable to so many areas of our society.
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photonz – children with working parents are also neglected and therefore equally at risk.
Your problem with seeking to protect the well-being of all children – move from the premise that discriminating against beneficiary parents is required – indicates your primary concern is not the children at all, but promoting anecdotal evidence to legitimise the bashing of beneficiaries.
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I wonder how much time we’re wasting here instead of fixing the “problems”.
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wot beatie said at 10 45 pm last night….
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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and bj…i said..’..lotsa people do…eh..?’…
..not everyone…
..btw..you don’t give good sarcasm..eh..?
..americans usually don’t..i find…
..it’s more of a european thing..
..more finess required than available…?…
..d’yareckon..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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SPC says “children with working parents are also neglected and therefore equally at risk.”
Wrong. While there are some who are at risk, they are not “equally at risk”.
The vast majority of seriously disfunctional families visited by my wife and her colleagues have parents who don’t work. They don’t seem capable (or willing) to even feed or clean their own kids properly, let alone hold down a job.
In my book, the rights of seriously neglected children comes above the rights of parents to spend their money on whatever they want – alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, dogs etc – everything except their children.
And while that’s easier to do something about that with people on a benefit than those earning their own money, the important thing is the children’s wealfare is the top priority.
Your top priority is the equal treatment of deadbeat parents.
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“..I am a former NASA engineer and a deep environmental green..”
b.j..’tis an inaccuracy/an oxymoron…
..to both chow down on things with faces/that hurt..
..and to call oneself a ‘deep environmental green’..
..eh..?
..you are over in the blinkered-section…eh..?
..with all the others..
..your self-image/appraisal to one side..
..a ‘deep green’ you most certainly are not…
..you have the environmental-footprint of the modern-american..
..maybe just a tad less so..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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btw..photonz has been descibed to me as a total reactionary/rightwing-(rhymes with ‘more’..and ‘on’..)
..a fact that has been repeatedly proven in this forum…..
..best to just ignore..
..just too ‘silly’ to even bother about…really..
..(he specialises in anecdotes that start with ‘my wife..’..
..i think he just makes them up…eh..?)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Photonz1
What exactly is the percentage difference between beneficiary families and “normal” families that abuse their kids?
In your book the rights of law-abiding beneficiaries are non-existent.
Everybody is entitled to the same rights. You cannot discriminate against one sector of the community, that’s called fascism.
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photonz, there is no greater difficulty in holding those who receive WFF tax credits accountable than those receiving the child payment component of benefits. So why not? What’s the problem with treating people equally, or is discrimination against people on benefits more important to you than the well-being of children.
The same method – withholding those payments until compliance on child well-being. Possibly using the payment money with-held to offer direct assistance to the child. In some cases there are drug/alcohol treatment programmes that should be “applied”.
“Every day my wife and her colleagues visit houses where the kids are sick and hungry – they don’t even get taken to the doctor when it’s free. There’s no money for food, but there’s plenty for smokes, alcohol, flat screen tv, sky tv, V8 car, and four dogs who shit in the house.”
V8 cars can be decades old. Flat screen TV’s could have been purchased when working, or gifts from working rellies when they bought a new one. Sky TV aerials are left on the roof whether the householders can still afford to pay subscriptions (sometimes they are left there when old tenants move out).
And how is knowledge of whether parents are on benefits and how long determined by your wife as a “health” worker – who do they visit and why and what do they know about those they visit?
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I’m starting to think that my assertion earlier that you were not a fascist BJ and in fact a Pseudos Green should now be updated to Troll! You’re certainly starting to look like one.
photonz1 makes a good case in that he exemplifies the reactionary rightwing mentality with underlying fascist ideals… In effect giving more weight to a compassionate policy being the solution.
People who purport that the wellbeing of children is of importance and then use a few cases of abuse to try and implement further impoverishment on those same children are sick abusers and quite frankly narcissists! Despicable Fascists who hate the fact that there is a word to describe them; it reminds them that they lost.
[frog: Not helpful, Todd. Please try to debate the issues and avoid the name-calling - that goes for everyone. I'll be the one to decide when someone is trolling unacceptably.]
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then use a few cases of abuse to try and implement further impoverishment on those same children
Todd is lying… again…. as there is not, in anything I have written, any implementation or indication of a desire for “further impoverishment of children”.
BJ
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“Pablo”, an academic on “Kiwipolitico” (another blog) has explained how plumbers, engineers and doctors don’t really qualify as “ethical philosophers or political ideologists” they just look at how to get something done.
BJ has engineered a way to ensure the well-being of children by providing direct support on a universal basis away from the family home. It’s an option, I doubt it will be adopted largely because we have moved away from universal options in recent times and to fund it would mean transferring resources from other areas or more revenue (and we have existing demand for more resources as it is).
There is some irony that someone who favours universal income support to the unemployed is in conflict with someone seeking universal provision directly to children. It occurs because of the attack from the neo-right on social co-operation and the threat to our cultural values that is being made. When we defend our preferred forms of social co-operation from this threat we sometimes conflict amonst ourselves.
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“..as there is not, in anything I have written, any implementation or indication of a desire for “further impoverishment of children”. ..”
tell us again about the ‘stick’/punitive aspects of your master-plan..?
..how would you make them do what you want..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Nice summation SPC – and thanks.
I’ll try the forgive and forget one more time.
BJ
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Phil? If you can find one in what I’ve said, show it to me. I wouldn’t apply “stick” to people who don’t deserve it. You need to look at what I actually say, not at what others say I say.
BJ
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You cannot discriminate against one sector of the community, that’s called fascism.
That’s called discrimination.
Fascism is something else:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
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how would you police it..?
random house-inspections..?
officials with armbands and clipboards…?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Oh, right Phil, that’s SPC’s critique of someone ELSE’S plan. Follow the plot.
Right-wingnut somewhere calls for monitoring of beneficiaries with families.
SPC says that that’s discrimination and all families should be monitored if any are.
I agree with SPC that it should be all-if-any. Equality principle… even though I prefer a mechanism that doesn’t require it (mine).
… I casually add that there are some positive aspects to the notion (ie, the worst abuses of children are likely to be detected and prevented)…
You then mis-attribute the entire wingnut plan to me… and ask me how to enforce it. Funny almost.
Thanks for being so thorough. }}:-)
BJ
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[frog: Not helpful, Todd. Please try to debate the issues and avoid the name-calling - that goes for everyone. I'll be the one to decide when someone is trolling unacceptably.]
Thanks Frog,
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philu, as photonz is so fond of pointing out, there are health worker visits to family homes now (and not just beneficiary families). Where problems become known and identified by this follow-up, there should be the option of withholding the WFF tax credit or benefit child credit till compliance on child well-being (and this can include making drug and alcohol addictive treatment) – that can entail spending the money on behalf of the child until this is realised. It’s just adding a tool to ensure these existing interventions are more effective. I don’t see any increase in home visits resulting, just more effective interventions.
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SPC – you are right about using WFF. That could be controlled in the same way.
But then you go into a long list of excuses for deadbeat parents.
Todd says “People who purport that the wellbeing of children is of importance and then use a few cases of abuse to try and implement further impoverishment on those same children are sick abusers and quite frankly narcissists”
Except the arguement is to give MORE help to those children, and give it directly so that the abusers and deadbeats you keep sticking up for have less oportunity to neglect their children.
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phil – we currently have a significan number of deadbeat parents who spend all their money on alcohol, drugs, sky tv, dogs etc, and won’t even take their sick children for a free doctors visit.
Their children are neglected, sick, and malnourished.
You clearly don’t like intervention, and you’re big on shooting down any ideas, but you seem to have a total void of ideas yourself.
So what’s your solution?
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The reason NACT are in government is because the last Labour government put them there.
Centerist parties (as are both National and Labour) can stay in power forever, until they piss enough people off, then they get tossed out. Time will tell if key is smarter than Clark in this regard, though Clark put up a good innings as a target.
And SPC is right when he says full employment is over, and then (probably wrongly) blames it on globalisation. Full employment being history should have happened decades ago, as there is a whole strata of people who we shouldn’t be employing, but only do so because of the depth to which we allow recompense for work done to sink. Full employment isn’t a desirable target.
Of course, there remains the problem of supporting the people that shouldn’t be working, but that should be seen as a good thing not a bad. And of course, all this demands that we have vastly improved country wealth for this to happen. And that isn’t likely, so we get stuck in the loop, and welfare is the loser.
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K frog. I appreciate your administration there, but you can’t discount that the “fascist” (word of most contention) argument within a governmental context is valid. Which was the actual point I was trying to make. If using a descriptive and applicable word is against the rules, the issues will not be properly debated. I get a bit tired of the softly softly approach that discounts the strength of Green radicalism. If you can view my argument of not repeating history and additional funding for the impoverished is radicalism at all that is.
Much of the legislation that was set up after WW2 to stop that horrendous occurrence from happening again is the same legislation that the new new fascists are eroding away now. Highlighting that fact concerning the correlation between what happened then and some peoples idea of what should happen now, within this blog, should receive no rebuttal because we have freedom of speech. It is a valid argument, one that should not be closed down because some are not thick skinned enough to realise what their ideas actually mean. In other words I think my comments are appropriate considering the statements that have been made previously by others re social engineering and in light of what the National government proposses. Basically, discount my observations at your peril (Not intended as a personal threat*).
* As previously stated such clarification will become tedious and make posts unnecessarily long.
Perhaps the troll insult is going too far, but I have seen it applied by others on many occasions without any rebuttal. I do realize that the lines become blurred sometimes within my posts, but as far as I know BJ is not the government. He should not take my generalized statements as personal attacks. He has the “wit” to contemplate my posts enough to realise my meaning and that we’re essentially on the same side. I have pointed this out a few times now and he does not seem to comprehend. Wether this non-comprehension is undertaken to pursue his ideal and argument for “state run families” (social authoritarianism) is another question.
Clearly there are various definitions within the wider context of fascism. But discrimination (in the form outlined) against one sector of the community by another sector is fascism! Looks like fascism, smells like fascism and tastes like fascism. Must be fascism then huh! There’s no other way to describe it.
I’m not the only one to observe this and I direct you to some paragraphs in your own link BJ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
International surge of fascism and World War II (1929–1945) / Social interventionism / Abortion, eugenics and euthanasia / Economic policies / Nazism (National Socialism, Germany) / Criticism.
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photonz What “long list of excuses for deadbeat parents” did I make, I have not made one?
And “parents don’t “spend all their money on alcohol, drugs, sky tv, dogs etc” – most “dead-beat” parents spend most of their money the way most other people do – on housing, power, food and transport. Lets be honest here none of their children are actually starving or living in unheated homes each winter.
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photonz1
What exactly is the percentage difference between beneficiary families and “normal” families that abuse their kids?
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Todd, most social co-operation is interventionist and thus can be called authoritarian – meaning when it is opposed by someone on the left it is fascist, and when it is opposed by someone on the right it is called socialist. Of course, this is often not a true use of the terms and a use which if becoming commonplace both broadens and reduces the meanings of the words fascist and socialist.
In an age where libertarian survival of the fittest ideology which supports an exaggeration of reward for the successful and a cut back in support for the unsuccessful – this to continually improve marketplace incentives, I tend to worry about intervention that is discriminatory and generally support social co-operation if it might do some good (provided the method avoids breaching basic rights and liberties).
Universal provision directly to children is not fascism or socialism, it’s just a global village approach to raising up the next generation. Americans have school meals – most here don’t. It’s one of the few areas where they do more than we do. Advocating this here is a valid option. Of course we would have “well-meaning” fights over the appropriate level of PC in food options.
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The sociatal changes that BJ has been advocating are closer aligned with socialism and communism then fasism.
For a start there needs to be differentiation made between the different forms of fasism.
The original Italian model was far different then the Hitler german model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Fascism
Lumping all fascists into one group is then same as calling all socialist, communist.
Going by the Italian model most western democracies are some form of fascist state.
So you are right, we are all fascist. Including those who want to increase beneficiary spending.
For while BJ advocates material (as opposed to monetary) help for the fulnerable in our society anything that helps those must surely be called fascist.
Wonder if the Greens are advocating moving towards a fully communist ideal like North Korea or Cuba.
But even Cuba is moving towards a fascist state by encouraging private enterprise.
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/politics/Cubas-500000-Layoffs-Could-Lead-to-Social-Unrest-102803974.html
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Todd asks “What exactly is the percentage difference between beneficiary families and “normal” families that abuse their kids?”
From the families my wifes department visits, the answer is “significant majority”.
Have a quick look at convicions for violence in any newspapers court news, and you’ll find unemployed are represented far above their percentage in society.
What’s your percentage.
I’m for doing something about deadbeat parents. You and SPC keep trying to turn it into employed vs unemployed arguement.
SPC says “Lets be honest here none of their children are actually starving or living in unheated homes each winter.”
Utter rubbish. The main reason for home visits all winter was for sick and malnourished kids living in damp unheated houses.
There is no money for food, kids clothes and heating because it’s spend on higher priorities – the adults.
You clearly have no idea of how big the problem is.
Do you have any idea of how many notiifications there will be to CYF THIS WEEK for neglect and abuse of NZ children?
Two and a half thousand.
Next week there will be another two and a half thousand.
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Frog says “Not helpful, Todd. Please try to debate the issues and avoid the name-calling ”
Todd uses fascism so frequently for so many things he doesn’t like that it has little meaning, and therefore causes little offence.
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(ahem..!..)…speaking of ‘fascism’…
..would this be an inappropriate moment to bring up the green roots/ethos in national socialism…?
..and a good exercise for b.j..would be to take an historical stroll…
…and check out the family/health policies of that particular regime..
..he will get a shock of familiarty..
…very green/(controlled) family-oriented…
(now..i reckon i’ve skirted past godwins law there..
…i came close…but…)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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SPC
I’m not too entrenched in rhetoric, which I’m validly and correctly using as a technique of persuasion, to not see the inherent positive effects of what some of BJ’s ideas would entail (mainly feeding kids in schools). However I essentially see many shortcomings and difficulties, which he has not considered and felt that giving an inch would allow the affirmative (within this minor debate) to take a mile.
I think there is one clear distinction that needs to be made and that is; things opposed by the left are not always fascist in nature, which has a clear set of boundaries and do not define all of what the left thinks ineffective or detrimental within politics, the environment and society.
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photonz – so your response to being called on making sweeping and exaggerated statements is to make more of the same. Children are not starving, they are being left hungry (even good parents struggle to adequately feed their children on benefits) – children are not living in unheated homes, they are living in underheated homes (or homes with poor insulation) and even children with caring parents struggle in this area – as the media has reported.
It’s interesting that when questioned your attacks on beneficiaries become more pronounced and less nuanced – and by the way calling for all parents of all at risk children to be accountable for money received for children – whether WFF tax credits or child payment components of benefits is not based on a lack of concern for children of beneficiaries. It’s only something that you infer because it gets in the way of your own agenda which is clearly to legitimise an anti-beneficiary backlash and it will not likely be one that will actually improve the lot of their children.
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Photonz1
That is rhetoric and not an answer to my question. What is the actual percentage? Come on… back your argument up with some figures.
Not enough money to begin with.
Is that the total calls or new cases CYF’s was not already aware of photonz1? Are you trying to say we will have 130,000 new cases of abuse every year that CYF is made aware of? I mean FFS man… let’s work with the facts huh!
Little offense… then why complain like little (word omitted) youth when I use that word huh? It was clearly distinguishable Gerrit! There was really only one type of fascism I could have been talking about. You know… the one we all don’t like to see (well hopefully). The word fascism has as much meaning now as it ever did.
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Did I say
No.
I think one will find that photonz made that comment at 1.55pm.
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photonz trolls so predictably..’so frequently for so many things he doesn’t like that it has little meaning, and therefore causes little offence’/effect..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Gerrit
It was clearly distinguishable Gerrit! There was really only one type of fascism I could have been talking about. You know… the one we all don’t like to see (well hopefully). The word fascism has as much meaning now as it ever did.
You don’t like the little man with a funny moustache do you?
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Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism Fascism
Still has meaning.
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I know this is a very long thread and very long threads tend to wander off topic, but it is meant to be about welfare, not about fascism or trolling.
If you want to discuss those topics, there is a new General debate I’ve just posted where that would be more appropriate.
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Phil, I have to hand it to you… you are no slouch at skirting the law
BJ
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” or do you actually LIKE having NACT in control of things?”
And so, BJ, you misrepresent me, as much as you claim I mis-represent you! (Part of the problem being that as I’ve said, you’re prone to logorrhoea. Life’s too short, I admit I skim some of your lengthier rants – er posts..
You seem to have a very jaundiced view of the NZ population if you think that the shock-horror-probe stories that obsess you so much also obsess the general population to the same extent.
With unemployment as high as it is, most people actually *know* beneficiary parents these days, and are more aware than you seem to be, that the ‘baby mommas’ you deride as breeding for money, and spending their days sucking on P pipes are as fantastically fictional as in an American cop show – or maybe you think *those* are real too!
Vicky
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Logorrhoea or Logorrhea may refer to:
* Logorrhoea (linguistics), an excessive flow of words; prolixity; wordiness; tumidity
* Logorrhea (psychology), a communication disorder resulting in incoherent talkativeness.
Good call Deborah, I have to second that. The pot calling the kettle black dynamic is rather amusing as well, in a sad and pathetic kind of way.
Relevance of the word FASCISM to New Zealands welfare reform = 100%
Just checking…yes! Still retains its meaning as well.
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@ Beatie,
You have my sympathies! I have rheumatoid arthritis and have had it (probably) most of my life, although it wasn’t diagnosed until I was 19… I also do relief teaching – and I am on UB, as my disease is thanh God, not as severe as yours is..
IMO, any benefit policy should leave IB strictly alone!
Vicky
Vicky
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What about Lodorrhoea, Todd?
Oops, wrong thread!
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What about frogo…
Oops wrong blog!
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Relevance of Todd or Deborah calling anyone or anything “fascist” has dropped to zero around here. Sorry Todd… it only means something to you at this point…. and I am not interested in what.
…and Deborah? Try a word count on Todd’s posts – pot meet kettle indeed.
That’s about as nice as I plan to be if you folks can’t figure out that calling me or any other people on this blog for that matter “fascists”, is not going to contribute anything to getting NACT out of power.
[frog: OK, BJ. Let's hope that point is acknowledged by everyone here, and let's move on to organise together to politically neutralise those whom we all agree are the political opponents standing in the way of an environmentally sustainable and socially just Aotearoa/New Zealand.]
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Wow! I bet this thread takes ages to load on dialup
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BJ
Better get used to it; if Key plays his cards right he might make two decades in the drivers seat.
Now how’s that for a scary concept.
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spc says “children are not living in unheated homes, they are living in underheated homes ”
Which proves that SPC doens’t have the vaguest idea of what is happening with many NZ families.
If you put you head in the sand and (without any knowledge) point blank deny what health workers were seeing every day, then you input is rather pointless.
And we have a total failure by Phil on the challenge to come up with solutions – just more verbal abuse – what a surprise on both fronts.
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Todd says “Not enough money to begin with.”
Actually many of the houses they vist get substantially more than the average worker – thats the point. If you add a few hundred dollars more per week, it still doesn’t get spent on the children.
And you prove you have no idea of what is happeneing by questioning CYF numbers – over 5000 children removed from their parents and 2500 notifications of abuse and neglect every week.
Your attitude of “it can’t be happening” is a major part of the PROBLEM.
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photonz – do you know what the words proof and prove means? You can’t handle the word proof. Show the proof you have that there are people living in unheated homes? And please don’t cite homes with poor insulatioan and that which are underheated as a consequence – you claimed that adults and their children were living in “unheated” homes.
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photonz – you now claim that the “deadbeat parent beneficiaries” get more than the average worker. There is no evidence to support this. Anecdotes and now specious claims. Is this the special knowledge that only initiates into your world can understand.
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photonz – you are aware that a figure of 5000 childrren removed from parents each week comes to 250,000 a year. This is clearly untrue. So what is the actual figure each week on average – don’t be offended if I ask you to link the claim and or cite what report – and page number it came from.
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Ignore the last two posts – frog feel free to delete them. [frog: Done.]
CYF have about 5000 children in care each week (not new children into care each week). They receive about 230 notifications of possible abuse and or neglect each day (not 2500 a week) – most through their national call centre (possibly some are about the same children). They make about 100 family home visits each day.
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Dbuckley,
You wrote:
Full employment being history should have happened decades ago, as there is a whole strata of people who we shouldn’t be employing, but only do so because of the depth to which we allow recompense for work done to sink. Full employment isn’t a desirable target.
Why exactly isn’t full employment a desirable target? If people live in a society, surely it is a good thing for them to contribute to it? Indeed, meaningful employment is not only beneficial to society, it is very helpful to the individual; it gives them a sense of purpose and value.
If people do not have relevant skills, then provide training; don’t let the lack of work relevant skills be an excuse to throw people on the scrap heap.
I’m not saying that everyone can contribute equally, obviously there are factors which affect the type and quantity of work which individuals are capable of. However, except in cases such as severe disability or illness, most people are capable of making some sort of contribution back to society. Indeed, people should be expected to contribute to society, and in return they should expect society to fairly value their contributions (I know what is considered fair is a whole other issue).
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Samiuela – he’s right at least in terms of capitalist free market ideology – which requires a spare pool of (skilled) unemployed available to take up new positions (allow economic supply transformation to market opportunity demand).
The UB welfare problem occurs because of (educational failure at school level) under-investment in training (transfer from on the job training to institution training at public expense) and the opportunity to import skilled labour.
The only catch-up solution is investment in wage subsidy and or on the job training for the longer term unemployed.
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The problem with employment for employment’s sake (which is what the goal of full employment almost always requires) is that to make people feel good about being part of society for all the reasons noted in samiuela’s post, one does bad things for the country and the economy.
The concept of “throw[ing] people on the scrap heap” is very negative, and implies there is something wrong with those people, and they’re being discarded. There’s nothing “wrong” with them; we’re just better off if they are not working for minimum wage. It’s more cost effective in the big scheme to pay them to not work.
What they could have contributed we can do better, faster, and cheaper with technology.
This can’t work with the current levels of work remuneration, of course, and thats where this thread starts out, with a welfare system we can’t afford. But if we could replicate our best 20% over more of the work space, and dump the lousy industries, which includes agriculture, then there is a general increase in wealth, which is reflected in the tax take, which can be used for better welfare. Everyone wins.
Of course, in a country with terrible industries with below OECD average productivity like NZ’s core industries, and with the lowest premium placed on tertiary education of all OECD countries (and several others), this is all of interest only to crazy people; our entire economy is based on low wage earners, many of whom are over-skilled; all those graduates earning low wages must be working somewhere…
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It is a systemic problem… part of the long predicted and slow to appear effects of automation.
When the industrial revolution began, people expected massive unemployment, but there was movement rather than the elimination, of work… and complacency developed.
As the situation bloomed into computer and robotic replacement of humans, all the way into middle management (once upon a time spreadsheet work was essentially a manual operation), the situation that DBuckley is describing showed up… and the least skilled and capable have been dealt out of the game or handed make-work by our society.
Consider a time only a bit further in the future, when robots can enter the mine, extract the ore, put it on a train to the refinery, taken off the train, processed into ingots, then raw steel and finally out of the end of it comes finished automobiles…. maybe 3 or 4 techs/managers control the process.
What do you pay them, what do you charge for the car and how the hell can the economic model we have used forever, continue to work?
I don’t have a “right answer” to that scenario. I don’t think anyone does, but what is clear is that a basic premise underlying almost all of human social organization, is broken by this development…. and nobody is thinking about it much except on the one hand to punish the non-working people and on the other to require a great deal more from the workers.
This is a really REALLY hard problem and I submit that it is underlying a lot of our more intractable social issues already.
BJ
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“Wow! I bet this thread takes ages to load on dialup
”
Yes, Todd, sadly it does! Please note BJ, I withdrew the term fascist as applied to you…
SPC – “The UB welfare problem occurs because of (educational failure at school level) under-investment in training (transfer from on the job training to institution training at public expense) and the opportunity to import skilled labour.”
I have to add, that although all of those things are factors, there are others as well – in my case, I am over-qualified for most of the jobs I have applied for this year – and am forced to conclude that age is a part of the problem. I don’t want to be 65, obviously, but it’s beginning to look as if my chances of being properly employed in the 10 years between then and now, are pretty slim!
I know around about 10 unemployed or under-employed people between 45 and 64, and all we have in common is having lost jobs (in my case because a badly-mananged company fell over) when they were over 45 years old.
Vicky
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SPC
Because there are many various circumstances, we cannot say categorically that there are no children living in unheated homes. There will be a few beneficiaries with children who are not able to afford to heat their homes and this is not because they do not manage their funds properly. The Children’s Commissioner has a few good things to say about that and the WWG… see the link below. Interestingly the elderly not being able to afford to heat their homes was one of the main reasons their funding increase.
BJ
It is clear that mechanisation (technological advancement) which should have freed us all from drudgery has resulted in mass unemployment and mismanagement of those humans not within jobs that have not yet been mechanised. This is ultimately the reason for unemployment or created work that is not required. It is always easier to blame those who are affected than address this issue, which is not going to go away. It will just get better or worse, depending on your point of view.
Effectively the answer is a cashless society. There will become a point when mechanisation is so effective at providing what we need (if this is allowed to happen) and has made the “paid work” scenario so rare that there is no other choice. What will we do with all those ATM’s then? I know… voting booths for Direct Representation.
Photonz1
Well I wouldn’t like to try and bring up a child on $83 per week. We are talking about all beneficiaries, not just those that abuse their children.
Questioning your numbers (which you have not adequately answered) does not show any lack of knowledge. We are interested in reality photonz1.
Lets look at that 5000 figure then…That works out at 260,000 children taken off their families each year. That’s nearly a third of all the children in New Zealand, every year… Come on photonz1… stop lying!
Here’s some real info:
http://www.nzchildren.co.nz/children_reliant.php
http://www.occ.org.nz/
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BJ clearly gets it.
We have an underlying societal problem that is the elephant in the room.
In numbers terms, we have an unsustainable model right now. We can fix it in one of two ways: slash and burn, so the disadvantaged are even more disadvantaged, which can’t be good; even if if you are an extreme right wing ranter, the increasing fallout of this in terms of crime etc must be apparent.
Or we can say that the proportion of the pot we spend on welfare is acceptable, but we need a bigger pot. Then everyone wins.
So ultimately, the fate of the ‘welfared’ is not a welfare problem; its just a symptom of NZs awful economic position.
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100% correct, no amount of posturing on what welfare should looklike (or who gets what and when) can be taken seriously until we take the holistic approach to fixing both the economy AND the welfare system in tandem.
One cannot work without the other.
Looking forward to seeing the Alternative Welfare Group take on the economic conditions and, that is if they foresee any problems with the economy, how they would fix both.
Pity that one faction of the Greens (Delahunty) is not dicussing the economy with the other faction (Clendon, Hagues).
Simple equational question really
Delahunty creates and budgets the perfect welfare system, Clendon/Hagues redesign the economy to generate the cashflow required to service the welfare budget (along with ALL the other budget items) and we have the perfect platform for a Greens tilt at being the government in 2011.
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Keep in mind people…. whatever the end-game looks like in theory, it is impacted in practice by the fact that:
1. There is a transition period measured in generations, in which the most capable among us will be working and will still HAVE to work, for us to have a society.
2. Interfering with this process will (may) be energy shortages and climate change with the potential for mass-starvation and war. We have an excellent chance of never approaching this condition at all, but not for any reason we want to hear about.
3. Our system of VALUES has to change.
It isn’t just that we don’t know where we have to go, we don’t how to leave where we are. We don’t really know where we are, and we can’t stay here.
This is another important reason for learning to think about economics as a form of thermodynamics, and replacing the current monetary system with one that is not dependent on fractional reserve but is actually under control of our self-government. With current arrangements we are almost powerless to effect any change at all.
respectfully
bj
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2. Some sobering reading about food Re climate change here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iNsZ7FvZjZJbGsxX-QKJH-B-LCIw?docId=251ad989fbae41dcba6f84d5e92aee87
Sorry! A bit off topic. Kisses the frog, frog does not turn into prince cause I’m no princes
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