Friday, May 22, 2015

Increasing benefits for political purposes

Is yesterday's decision to increase benefits a response to genuine hardship, or to political advocacy about hardship?

After all, 70 percent of respondents in the lowest decile households report that they have enough money.

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6 comments:

S. Beast said...

IMHO they have missed the people who need it most - those who are on low incomes paying private market rents (or those who are forced to move frequently), and those who have disability costs above the set rate of the maximum DA but below that of the Disability exception for TAS.

Totally political.

9:23 AM
Jigsaw said...

Well the government got no points at all from those who live off the back of those on benefits. On Red Radio the call was-nice but not NEARLY enough-$80 to $100 extra would begin to address the problem. But then they don't actually want the 'problem' solved do they-its their hobby and livelihood!
What happened to limiting the number of children you had to the number that you could afford? Wasn't the birth control pill supposed to achieve that for us?

9:43 AM
gravedodger said...

Clearly a response to the current beatup on perceived Poverty that is in reality only perceived 'hardship' predicated on want not need.
Material Girl did not need to speak yesterday her entire dribble, was it really only 20 minutes, could have been cobbled together from previous rants and posted on a blog.

Peters was a clear winner from Flavell IMHO in the reply stakes with Angry pulling up lame as the tapes went up and there must have been no vet available to administer the humane "bolt", excrutiatingly painfull is the kindest I have for a candidate for worst ever budget reply (I hesitate to label it a speech) effort.

11:52 AM
JC said...

Its a little ironic that part of the angst on some blogs about this is its *targeted* assistance.. we've gotten used to more universally applied lollypops.

The Six Monthly Ministerial Committee report you allude to above covers some of this point.. ie, it notes that people in the top half of the income ladder have received 20% more from health, education and welfare than the bottom half and says assistance to the lower incomes and benefits should not be by way of lollies for all income groups.

So there is some rationale of rebalancing to where its needed in the budget,

However, there are a couple of other points to keep things neutral..

The first being parents with three year olds must now seek work rather than when the child reaches five.

The other is my sneaky feeling that the $7.5 billion saved in long term welfare payments to date, when discounted at an appropriate discount rate and for a certain number of years might well match the new spending on benefits :)

Will the extra $25/wk add more incentive to stay on benefit?.. I'd guess only a small yes because the political tide is still running against the left and beneficiaries and at least for the present there's little chance of a reprieve from a change of Govt. I think the Govt has sufficient political capital from the increase in benefits to keep up the pressure for beneficiaries to work.

JC

12:31 PM
S.Beast said...

Why didn't they change the abatement system instead?

Tertiary benefits are deducted immediately and so those in receipt of them end up immediately worse off by working part time (because Work and Income deduct the gross amount earned instead of the net amount - an abatement rate over 100% of money earned).

6:07 PM
Anonymous said...

Matthew Hooten on RadioNZ now:

"National is well to the left of the Clarke government.

National is well to the left of the Greens"


11:13 AM

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