A High Priority Promise23 March 2009
Muriel Newman
In the seventies, the famous writer and philosopher Ayn Rand described the pervasive danger of the welfare state. She could have been writing about New Zealand today. Driven by power-seeking politicians, the welfare safety net has been manipulated over the years to the point where instead of alleviating hardship, it is creating unimaginable harm to some recipients, and widespread damage to society and the economy as a whole.... More >>>
Welfare Reform in a Recession
22 March 2009
Lindsay Mitchell
During a recent radio interview I was asked, is this a bad time to be talking about reforming welfare? No, I replied with little hesitation. There is no bad time to be trying to reform welfare. The period under the last Labour government would have been an ideal time to radically reform welfare because jobs were plentiful (thanks to the 1980s economic reforms, globalisation and a strong world economy). Now, with recessionary unemployment rising, job opportunities are becoming more scarce seeming to thwart the chances of moving people off welfare..... More
2 comments:
Frankly this is a better time to reform welfare - for two reasons
First, because with huge deficits looming, the imperative to reform welfare has never been stronger.
Second, because it will actually make an immediate different to tens or ideally hundreds of thousands of "people". When there are a lots of jobs, welfare reform makes no difference - it it is easy to "un-reform" when a depression and unemployment strikes.
When reform takes place in a recession, with people thrown of benefits with no state or other support, people will remember and will never increase the benefits again.
In response to your comment about birth control never being easier to access or use…..
Unfortunately, encouraging low-income families to use the contraceptive pill may increase welfare dependence. It is likely that the only form of contraception they could afford would be the subsidised options. I was speaking to someone recently who told me that, in an effort to save money, she had switched to the subsidised contraceptive. Within 3 months her life was falling apart. She was not coping with stress at work, she was tired, moody and lethargic, could not handle the demands of two energetic preschoolers, and her relationship with her husband was deteriorating. Fortunately, she realised her problems began with the drug change. Her GP was not surprised and responded with the comment that the drug was well known for that sort of reaction. She switched back to her original non-subsidised drug and came right. She mentioned problems with the drug to her antenatal mothers’ group. One mother had also had to change to a non-subsidised option due to similar problems. Another mother thanked her profusely for sharing her experience. This mother had not connected the drug as the cause of her current problems. I realise that three mothers in the same ante-natal group and one doctor’s reaction is a small sample but what if this is common? How many DPB recipients have been created when relationships came under stress as a result of this drug? How many sickness beneficiaries are on these subsidised drugs with depression? Isn’t this a false economy? Reforming the welfare system requires reference to the bigger picture of the health system.
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