Written By: - Date published: 4:28 pm, August 11th, 2008 - 105 comments
Categories: benefits, national, same old national -
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Wonder of wonders, the Nats’ benefits policy has an 11 page document attached to it. Oh, wait, it’s mostly just stats ripped from the MSD website and long-winded rewordings of the bullet-points, not actual detail of the Nats’ policy.
So, what have we got from the party that proclaims it wants more disciplined spending, less red-tape, and fewer bureaucrats? More spending, including an increase of more than 1% on the cost of the DPB from the higher start off point for abatements*. More red-tape with more assessments needed for Sickness Beneficiaries and greater oversight from MSD of doctors who provide medical certifies for those benefits, budget training for certain beneficiaries, new work requirements in certain circumstances for DPB, Sickness, and Invalids’ beneficiaries (which will, in turn, need exceptions in certain circumstances), and a more complex sanction process for unemployment beneficiaries who fail to look for work. More public servants to administer all of this; easily hundreds more. Most of this is tired old ideas that failed in the 1990s. So much for the public service cap. So much for National’s ambitious new vision.
All of this is silly solutions in search of a problem. Beneficiary numbers are falling, the cost of the system is falling, and the number of long-term beneficiaries is falling even faster. The DPB work requirements would not apply to the 60% of recipients caring for a child under 6, or the 20% already earning an income, or the 22% who state their child’s health is a barrier to work. The 29% who state their own health is a barrier to work might simply be shifted to the invalids’ benefit. And what of the few it does apply to? What if they can’t find work that neatly fits within school hours? Should they leave their children home alone or just keep attending taxpayer-funded training? There is no long-term DPB dependency problem: 64% of DPB recipients have been getting it less than four years and only 11% (that’s 10,000 parents) have had it for longer than 10 years (many of them will have children with severe health issues). This is not about solutions; it’s just beneficiary bashing to grab a few votes.
*(I’m in favour of that, but the issue is National’s inconsistency).
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There is a section of NZ society that is poor and becoming poorer. The lack of well paid manual labour jobs due to a decline in manufacturing coupled with rising living costs is a real problem for all New Zealanders.
I see a lot of finger pointing but no solutions from the National supporters in this thread. It makes me feel abjectly hopeless when the partisan politics being played out between our two main political parties infects the collective minds of citizens.
I have spent time collecting the dole and it isn’t really fun at all. People want hope not charity. People want real jobs that pay real wages rather than going cap in hand to paper-shuffling social service bureaucrats to receive little more than a pittance.
Didn’t Sue Bradford advocate the removal of the biological fathers’ names on birth certificates?
What a thicko bunch the kiwi’s are , eats – roots and leaves !!!
lemsip – You don’t know what you’re talking about. I was talking about something Key said last year. It wasn’t in relation to this policy.
BDTR,
Oh yes, the old, ‘let the families look after them’ misdirection.
In fact almost all functional families who have sick or disabled members provide the very best they can OUT OF LOVE AND COMPASSION. It’s not especially germane to a blog discussion, but let me assure you that my own experience of this is both intimate and profound. It is an ongoing reality in my life that is one of the reasons why I am a socialist.
But not all the sick or disabled, or plain unemployable have families who can assist them. I can do my best for my child and my brother, but tax or no tax, there are those who cannot do the same for theirs. If your before tax income is around the median, no amount of tax cutting will make any difference in that respect.
But I don’t know why I bother BDTR, your final characterisation of everyone who is on some form of benefit as ‘loosers’ is despicable. I know that word is bandied around blogs a lot and has lost much of it’s meaning, but I have until just now refrained from using it.
“Chilling, CMR? Oh yes. Last time I felt this cold it was another nice money trader, a mild-mannered bank clerk. From Austria.”
Hah hah- National Socialist Worker’s Party- see anything close to home there sonny?
Another socialist who became another totalitarian murderer- they have done it throughout history and they do it all over the world today- Castro, Chavez, Adolf, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot- all your boys AK. Around 100 million deaths by some estimates. Stop trying to stiff people with your pathetic tired old commie rhetoric. The game was up on that kind of hollow bullshit five years ago.
Maybe some solo mums can’t remember the dad’s name ?
Multiple unknown fathers = mum rolling in the cash.
Edit – Better Dead Than Red , I do like that name , do keep up the splendid work.
BDTR,
Despicable. You have just employed the oldest and most morally bankrupt argument that has been routinely used by ignoramus’s and trolls on thousands of usenet and blog threads since the day the internet was born. (And I’ve been on it since 1994.)
“Are you aware that Unemployment is at a record low, down from in “excess of 130,000 in the 90′s to about 17,000 today? That is getting down to a level that is commonly regarded at pretty much an irreducible minimum in today’s economies. The sad fact is that there are some people (often the victims of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, or a mental illness, or a genetic disorder) who really cannot find useful employment.”
Are you retarded Red Logix? Full employment means just that – no unemployment. Your reference to “some people” as you like to call them is disingenuous. If they are unemployable for mental or physical health reasons they should be on a sickness or invalids benefit. The government has failed. Boo freaking hoo. Its just political spin anyway.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I was talking about something Key said last year.”
What a comeback Raven. You out flanked me there. Go have a Red Bull Ha Ha Ha
“But I don’t know why I bother BDTR, your final characterisation of everyone who is on some form of benefit as ‘loosers’ is despicable.”
Singapore gets by just fine without it. (and its “losers”- only one o) Nobody up there needs to create that sort of mentality in the citizenry. They have enough foresight to know that it is a process that will eventually bring poverty to all.
Froth the Avon – No, have a blue bottle and wash it down with a Red Bull and caustic acid.
Edit – please spell erectly – thunk pooh.
Bat Cave shut down.
“Despicable. You have just employed the oldest and most morally bankrupt argument that has been routinely used by ignoramus’s and trolls on thousands of usenet and blog threads since the day the internet was born.”
Nope. That was AK with his infantile reference to JK as AH.
Come on REd invoke the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment – that nice neoliberal slogan of the 1990′s. You know the dim dark days when the High Priests of Neoliberalism ruled New Zealand. They had the gall to suggest there would always be some level of unemployment. Of course the lefties just said that was right wing spin designed to keep people poor…
Better Dead Than Red. That’s just boring. Tired. Pointless.
Try having an original thought. Repeating other peoples thoughts and turning them into personal attacks makes you look silly and childish.
Be original. Do you really have an understanding of the political and social relevance of the names you mentioned?
dad4justice
August 11, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Didn’t Sue Bradford advocate the removal of the biological fathers’ names on birth certificates?
What a thicko bunch the kiwi’s are , eats – roots and leaves !!!
How about you post up a link to a reliable source to prove it or we will start making allegations about your possible night time barn yard exploits.
lemsip,
Quoting you above:
It is manifestly impossible in the modern economy to have absolutely zero unemployment. For two reasons:
1. Jobs tend to be more short term than in previous generations; which inevitably means a certain level of people ‘in between jobs’ ie short-term unemployed.. regardless of any other policy settings.
2. Employers require higher levels of literacy and numeracy than in previous generations. It is a simple hard reality in life that ‘some people’ will fall between the cracks, they are not readily employable, and do not readily fall into the sickness category either.
At about 3-4% unemployment NZ sits at almost the very top of the OECD ladder by this measure. This level of unemployment is generally regarded as pretty much an irreducible minimum.
Effectively full employment.
Goodnight and don’t let the red bed bugs bite.
“That’s just boring. Tired. Pointless.”
..and this is what??
“Last time I felt this cold it was another nice money trader, a mild-mannered bank clerk. From Austria.”
Get some objectivity pal.
“At about 3-4% unemployment NZ sits at almost the very top of the OECD ladder by this measure.”
Unless those workers are actually producing something, it’s a meaningless statistic. Stuffing government with regulators is hardly going to make NZ a productive country. Ask yourself why our standard of living is in steady decline. I’ll tell you. Because you, in your lust for power, have ripped the heart from this country. You have raised a generation or two who are good little lemming like socialists, but have no real idea of how important it is to be productive and globally competitive.
Singapore gets by just fine without it.
Two seconds googling: Singapore poverty
http://www.singaporedemocrat.org/poverty.html
THERE IS THIS MYTH THAT Singapore is a rich country and its citizens are well-taken care of. Nothing could be further from the truth. The 1998 United Nations Human Development Index showed that Singapore ranked 28 on the list behind countries like Barbados and Malta.
Sure the place looks clean and tidy on the surface. When I was there I for three months I took the time to poke around the back streets, the shabby tenemants and most repellent of all the conditions in which the ‘immigrant labour’, mostly single men from India, lived and worked.
In fact they go to considerable trouble to keep this side of Singapore from the view of the casual tourist.
Objectivity. I’m objective. Convince me of your point of view. Please link Pol Pot , Stalin and Hitler to the argument at hand.
How do I obtain objectivity? Are you objective? Can you please explain how you became so?
BDTR
Ask yourself why our standard of living is in steady decline. I’ll tell you.
It’s not. I’ve never been better off. Sorry if your experience is different. Are you some kind of looser?
Froth the Avon – No, have a blue bottle and wash it down with a Red Bull and caustic acid.
You can keep your Rimbaud’s and Lautreamont’s we’ve got dad4justice. Brilliant.
I think the biggest losers are the kiwi children trapped in poverty.
Well done privileged politicians – give yourselves another pay rise you useless lumps of lard!
Shut down this time, and do listen to my broadcast too the world tomorrow on Dads on Air.
Over and out , off to bed with my solo blow up lady.
All completely off the point Redillogix. Who the hell cares about clean and tidy?? We’re talking about welfare for chrissake. What’s the Singapore gummint’s expenditure on welfare and how does it compare to NZ? What’s the average wage in Singapore and how does it compare with NZ? Whats the productivity of NZ and how does it compare to Singapore? Look at the CIA Fact Book and you’ll see. Singapore has generated a culture of independence and self sufficiency among its citizens, and this is a policy that has brought it from an insignificant small economy third world island to a global economic player. While NZ under the influence of the welfare addicted socialists, has gradually slipped back. Fact.
“Please link Pol Pot , Stalin and Hitler to the argument at hand.”
Why don’t you ask your mate AK that question? Are you retarded or what?
What’s the Sweden gummit’s expenditure on welfare and how does it compare with NZ? What’s the average wage in Denmark and how does it compare with NZ? What’s the productivity of NZ and how does it compare with Norway?
“I’ve never been better off”
One of the nomenklatura no doubt. The real workers see it differently, as the polls show so clearly.
I think the biggest losers are the kiwi children trapped in poverty.
And almost ALL of them are the children of single parents on the DPB.
Mothers AND fathers.
The DPB is set a miserable and ungenerous level, that reflects the miserable and ungenerous attitudes displayed on this thread, the same streak of meanness that John Key was tapping into today.
The fact is that these kids are our future, the same kids who will be the taxpayers who support US in our old age. Some will escape their poverty, but the hard numbers tell us that many will not, that poverty in childhood is the single best predictor for underperformance as an adult.
Our failure to look after these kids will haunt us when we in OUR turn have become dependent on THEM.
Comparing a city state in the middle of Asia that sits upon one of the busiest trade routes in the world to New Zealand is really quite pointless.
What is the alternative to welfare? I’d like to hear some ideas. Let them starve? Put them in camps? Liquidate them?
Who is AK? No I’m not retarded but thanks for asking.
What?s the Sweden gummit?s expenditure on welfare and how does it compare with NZ? What?s the average wage in Denmark and how does it compare with NZ? What?s the productivity of NZ and how does it compare with Norway?
OK, so oyu can’t answer my question.
As for yours, only an idiot would try and pass off socialism as the reason for oil rich Norway’s wealth.
Interesting that you’re talking about Stalin and Hitler etc and you want to compare NZ to a country without a functioning democracy and with compulsory military service.
“What is the alternative to welfare?”
Look, I don’t have all night to bandy words here with retards. The point is Singapore DOES NOT NEED WELFARE. Welfare is a mind set encouraged by socialism. That is my point. For chrissake.
One of the nomenklatura no doubt.
No. I have worked almost all my life in the private sector, either for one of two global corporates (hence my overseas work experience) or as a self-employed contractor.
Right now I am doing this thread in between coding automation logic and optimisation for a major water treatment system on a major city bulk water supply rebuild. For this I am well paid, and along my other sources of income puts my in the top 5% or so of taxpayers.
If there is one thing blogging should teach you BDTR, is that it is absolutely unsafe to make assumptions about who you are talking to.
Singapore – Where you receive a public beating for graffiti, $1,000 fines for littering and where the state employs people to check that that you flushed the toilet in public lavatories.
This is a country to aspire to? Sounds like you have a big boner for state control there buddy.
So no ideas there then BDTR. You could make it in the National Party.
“Who is AK? No I?m not retarded but thanks for asking”
You are retarded. Look back up the thread.