So the current people on benefits (superannuation excluded) will cost $78 billion over the course of their lifetime. 5% is to people on the unemployment benefit, because National can’t organise an economy to provide jobs. But largely we’re paying for those unable to work (sickness / invalid), and those doing the most important (but worst paid) job in the world: raising small children. They deserve every penny they get because their bosses are tyrants 😉
But to get this useless $78 billion factoid, National have given an Australian company $1 million of our money.
And next year, they’ll do it again, to see if the number has changed any.
There will be different people on the benefit then – people get and lose jobs all the time, and illnesses will be fixed, and other people fall ill. So they’ll come up with a similar number then, based on different folk. But what do we learn from this number? That it costs a bit to look after people who need looking after? That a humane society costs a bit to run?
It doesn’t help us budget – we already work out how much benefits are going to cost in any given year, and this number is only for people who were on the benefit at the time of the report’s writing, not the hundreds who lost jobs in the last week or so at Tiwai, Norske Skog, Spring Creek, Port Timaru and elsewhere – or those who’ll lose their jobs next week under this government’s economic ‘management’.
According to Bill English it’s not just to justify a hard line on welfare, which would seem to a casual eye to be the only possible use of such a big number.
So what is it for?
And why is the government wasting $1 million/year to a foreign company when times are apparently so tough everything but RONs needs cutting?
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