benefits

Categories under benefits

welfare (366)

All in the game

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 10:10 am, May 9th, 2012 - 77 comments

Everyone’s leaped on the Nats’ contraceptives for benies bid to distract from banks.com. Guess I’ll jump in too. Capitalist morality goes: the world/God rewards the good, which is why capitalists are rich – so, the poor, like beneficiaries, must be morally bad – the world would be better without bad people. Eugenics has been and remains a logical endpoint of capitalist morality.

Birth Control

Written By: Bunji - Date published: 8:38 pm, May 8th, 2012 - 83 comments

At first glance it seems strange to have Sue Bradford, a former Green MP, against what is a very ‘green’ policy – free contraception. But she has a point when she talks about beneficiaries feeling forced into sterility they don’t want. Meanwhile, what’s with the right’s obsession with targeting women having babies while on a benefit?

Contraception debate

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 1:48 pm, May 8th, 2012 - 96 comments

The Government is planning to offer free long-term contraception for beneficiaries and their daughters. At one level its a sensible idea. But it comes with too much baggage attached. The Nats have already made such a mess of it that they can’t make this proposal with any credibility.

Cutting holes in the safety net

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 9:35 am, May 8th, 2012 - 11 comments

The Nats’ welfare cuts will cost $500m over 4 years. Supposedly save a billion. Net saving: $125m a year. 1% of benefit costs. 1/8th of the cost of extra beneficiaries under National. Won’t really save even that little. No jobs. Unemployment rising. National’s problem is it tries to save costs of the welfare safety net by cutting holes in the net. The real solution is to stop people falling in. Best welfare policy is a jobs policy.

Choices, choices: pointless boot camps

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 7:25 am, April 17th, 2012 - 65 comments

The government has splurged $20m putting 3,300 unemployed people through 6 week-long military ‘boot camps’ ($6K each). Result: up to 3 years later, only 19% have jobs. Compares to the typical stint of unemployment of 12 weeks. Looks a lot like the Nats are pouring money into a programme that makes unemployment worse. out of sheer ideological idiocy.

Choices, choices: parental leave too expensive?

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 6:40 am, April 11th, 2012 - 190 comments

The Rightwhingers are saying extending parental leave is too expensive. We’re talking about a tiny sliver of government spending – 0.2% to be precise. And a tiny fraction of what the government is borrowing. If money is really so tight, there’s plenty of poor quality decisions that National could reverse first.

Participate: Stop Asset Sales and Welfare Reform

Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 11:02 am, March 30th, 2012 - 54 comments

Friday 13th (April) – a scary day as submissions close on 2 major government bills. Make sure you get your submissions in on the Mixed Ownership Model Bill and the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill.

Private Welfare to Work – how well does that work?

Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:15 am, March 24th, 2012 - 42 comments

The government has introduced their welfare changes to parliament. In addition to making mums of 1 year-olds seek paid work in addition to raising children, it introduces private companies profiting from unemployment misery with welfare to work schemes. The UK has been trying this for a couple of years – let’s look at how that’s going…

Bathwater and babies

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 9:42 pm, March 19th, 2012 - 31 comments

Tapu Misa has an excellent article in today’s Herald. She hopes those predicting the demise of Labour’s pre-election promise to extend Working to Families to the children of beneficiaries are wrong. So do I. Labour will be defined by what it does for our children. Let’s not throw out what was a very very good policy.

We used to be better at this

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 11:48 am, March 19th, 2012 - 68 comments

Reining in student loans

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 2:28 pm, March 13th, 2012 - 133 comments

Student loans will remain interest free, but the Nats are planning to rein them in “in a big way”. I guess that means that typical Nat slash-and-burn thinking will result in damaging restrictions to educational access in due course.

Lazy thinking

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 8:10 am, March 5th, 2012 - 70 comments

Anyone saying there are plenty of jobs, people are just to snobby (ie lazy) to take them, has to explain why 90,000 people suddenly got lazy between 2008 and 2009 as 80,000 jobs disappeared.

Does working pay?

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 11:02 am, February 29th, 2012 - 72 comments

Maybe it’s the influence of Bill ‘Guess’ English but National has this strange habit of only doing half the sum. Paula Bennett counts people going off the benefit, but not people going on. John Key looks at normal job creation but ignores normal job destruction. Now, he’s claiming that a mother with a 1-year old is better off working, but he’s not counting the costs of working.

Looking for solutions in all the wrong places

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 8:52 am, February 28th, 2012 - 169 comments

So, naturally, the answer is to spend a whole lot of money forcing solo mums to spend their time looking for jobs that aren’t there.

No solutions, more bashing

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:33 am, February 27th, 2012 - 164 comments

332,000 people are on benefits, up by 60,000 under National. Coincidentally, there are 250,000 Kiwis who want work but can’t find it, up 82,000 under National. Probably a lot of cross-over between those two groups, eh? So, you can understand why National’s solution is to take a few bucks off a few thousand women.

No time like the present

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 11:34 am, February 24th, 2012 - 84 comments

Google news has 1.5 pages of articles mentioning David Shearer to John Key’s 13 in the past week. The only ones directly about Shearer or Labour are saying ‘where’s Shearer? He’s wasting his honeymoon’. I wondered what his strategists are thinking. Then I saw they’re all the same people who just led Labour to 27% and I realised the scary part – they’re trying their best.

Super sized problem

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 10:32 am, February 6th, 2012 - 38 comments

The superannuation problem isn’t going away. The Nats will be fuming that Treasury have just dropped in their laps again.

A brighter future for Maori?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:41 am, January 25th, 2012 - 11 comments

Headline – PM to Ratana: National has made a difference

Maori unemployment under National: +15,300
Median Maori income under National: -$78 per week

Are Maori looking forward to another three years of Key’s ‘difference’?

Job system & RA in need of reform, not benefits

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 12:10 pm, January 10th, 2012 - 41 comments

Other day, Curran asked what they should do with Red Alert. Now, Mallard’s again using it, in conjunction with Pagani on his blog, to try to do an end run around his own party to promote benefit ‘reform’. Leaving aside the fact it’s the employment system, not the backstop, that’s broken, this is more strategic idiocy.

Tax-take bullshit

Written By: lprent - Date published: 11:26 am, January 2nd, 2012 - 104 comments

An earlier post by Mike Smith on inequality referred to a claim by Geoff Vincent that 12% of the taxpayers were paying 49% of the the taxes. Now this was patently a spinners interpolation on the tax data and shouldn’t be part of the debate.. A comment by DH has a look at that bullshit. […]

Your government at work

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:34 am, December 8th, 2011 - 18 comments

Paula Bennett’s staff in tomato-growing contest with MSD staff – Stuff

Benefit costs up up $2 billion pa in the last 3 years – Treasury

Nats’ cuts cause benefit overpayments to rise

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:23 am, November 22nd, 2011 - 8 comments

Checking out data matches that show beneficiaries may have moved overseas and stopping their benefit if they have. That’s back-office work, eh? Exactly the kind of ‘unsexy’ jobs National has been cutting. Well, MSD stopped data matching because its resource were stretched too thin – and overpayments doubled to $19m. Heck of a job, National.

200,000 children abandoned so already rich can get richer

Written By: the sprout - Date published: 7:31 am, November 10th, 2011 - 52 comments

How many children is 200,000 in the context of New Zealand’s population? Statistics New Zealand says between June 2008-2011 around 62-64,000 children were born each year. So 200,000 amounts to every single child born in this country since National came to power three years ago, plus another 10,000 or so.

Are we a caring country?

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:02 am, November 9th, 2011 - 125 comments

Nothing separates the political Right and Left like their attitude to welfare. The difference is very starkly highlighted in the recent policies from National and Labour. Which approach better serves the children of New Zealand? How much do we care?

Another empty promise

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:13 am, November 2nd, 2011 - 61 comments

National says it’ll get 57,000 more people off benefits and into work over 4 years. That would require 50% more job creation than Treasury projects. Unless you do something about the lack of jobs, you won’t get benefit numbers down. Promising the latter without doing the former is a fraud on New Zealand. Just another broken Nat promise waiting to happen.

National’s welfare policy

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 8:21 am, November 1st, 2011 - 48 comments

National’s got 60,000 more on benefits after 3 years. Nats’ plan: get 46,000 off in 4 years (only 11,000 into work, the rest?)
So, National’s welfare plan = 14,000 more on benefits 7 years after coming to power. Ambitious for New Zealand?
Where’s National plan to reduce corporate welfare? Like the $400m free irrigation they want to give farmers and keeping them out of the ETS.

Nats “help” with more cuts

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 2:11 pm, October 18th, 2011 - 23 comments

Amidst growing evidence of yet another broken 2008 election promise, John Key has nothing to offer except tired excuses and attacks on the poor.

The Jackal: Time for a Tax Revamp

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 11:29 am, September 14th, 2011 - 64 comments

The other day, Irish covered the odious comments from liquidator/columnist Damien Grant calling unskilled people ‘commodities’. That was in the context of a pretty flimsy attack on Gareth Morgan and Susan Guthrie’s ‘Big Kahuna’ tax plan. Yesterday, Morgan and Guthrie responded to Grant’s attacks. The Jackal says Morgan and Guthrie have it right.

Another shaming report on child poverty

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:16 am, September 13th, 2011 - 70 comments

The Child Poverty Action Group has released yet another shaming report on child poverty in NZ. The Nats’ cuts to Working for Families are making matters worse. If the election doesn’t return a Labour government, then we’re going to have three more years of inaction punctuated by brief ritual hand-wringing over each new report.

NRT: John Key’s New Zealand

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 10:30 am, September 9th, 2011 - 72 comments

I/S at NoRightTurn on the Gisborne mother and baby who were turned away by three government agencies when she sought help: “People who go to WINZ needing help should get it. Instead, this woman was told to fuck off, thanks to service cuts and a deliberate policy of limiting costs by imposing bureaucratic barriers to access.”