"It's easy to criticise the welfare system. Beneficiaries get too much money, too many of them cheat, and it all costs too much. But the unrecognised reality is that our comprehensive health and welfare systems create freedom and security for us all......
But when we criticise people who receive welfare, we are not just imprudent. We also undermine the security of our friends and family members and fellow citizens who depend on the welfare system.
If we complain about teenage mothers, and insist that someone ought to control their income and make them stop having babies, we make every sole mother worry about interference....
Our health and welfare systems are based on need, not some notion of worthiness.More
The first thing that came to mind was Benjamin Franklin's quote, "Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither."
People are hardly free when compelled to pay tax for systems they neither approve of nor use. Those making the largest tax contribution are often also paying for private health and education and would never qualify for a welfare benefit due to means-testing. So it is farcical to claim that, " ....we are all beneficiaries of the welfare state."
Worse, many beneficiaries do not feel free; they feel trapped and forgotten. They are living at a subsistence level in substandard housing due to their safety net now being called upon by one in eight working-age New Zealanders. The welfare system has created so much contrived 'need' (consider Russell's example of teenage sole parents), real adversity and emergency cannot be adequately met.
It is not a noble idea that the welfare system is no longer based on some "notion of worthiness". It used to be. That was how the architects designed it. Otherwise the system would be open to abuse. As it now is.
But the worst aspect of this academician's position is her cautioning against criticism of the welfare system. Is this how she teaches her students?
13 comments:
I'm shocked. I completed an undergraduate accountancy degree at Massey, and my Honours there, also, but the tax lecturers stuck just to tax. I would've walked out of this woman's lectures on principle.
I really am shocked. Antonio Gramsci has done his job so very well in the schools. As a society, we don't stand a chance anymore.
Did you note at the very bottom? Deborah Russell has just joined the Labour Party. With her and Cunnliffe from 2014, all those who can, leave. Just leave.
Orwell's police state in 1984:
War is peace
Freedom is slavery.
Deborah Russell, tax lecturer 2012:
"... our comprehensive health and welfare systems create freedom and security for us all...."
The Soviets thought they had free healthcare, Deborah: it ended up costing them everything they had.
... You've got to figure Deborah will be appearing in my blog real soon.
I imagine the two men who were last week sentenced to 8 years in prison (more than most rapists) for the heinous crime of trying to stop the state getting so much of their money would agree that the system gives them, if not freedom, then at least security.
People are hardly free when compelled to pay tax for systems they neither approve of nor use. Those making the largest tax contribution are often also paying for private health and education and would never qualify for a welfare benefit due to means-testing. So it is farcical to claim that, " ....we are all beneficiaries of the welfare state."
She doesn't mean "beneficiaries" in a financial sense.
PM, There is a problem because the newspaper (where I read the column initially) used the phrase as the header which leaves it open to interpretation.
But even if financial beneficiary isn't intended, how else am I a 'beneficiary' of a system that I think has so many corrupting influences? And, as I mentioned, does such a poor job when it comes to real need? How can I benefit from a system that is preventing the evolution of something that is better?
I struggle to see how I benefit from the current welfare system in any sense of the word.
Its the left being clueless about the difference between assets and liabilities again....see their confusion over state "asset"sales....
You benefit in the ways mentioned in the article: you get to act in the knowledge that there's a safety net if your luck runs out; and you get to live in a society that isn't enduring all the unpleasantness involved in operating a policy of devil-take-the-hindmost.
I'm aware that libertarians don't consider those things benefits, but the overwhelming majority of people do - which is why no western democracy is without a welfare system.
If she thinks our health system is based on need, I must disillusion her. Our health system is based on what we can afford not on what we need, be that need merely wish-based or clinically-based.
When your healthcare provision is funded on the same basis as your welfare state (taxation), it is inevitably as basic and inadequate as welfare itself.
Every country's health system is based on what the people in it can afford.
Psycho Milt, every western nation is going broke because the welfare state always grows until it's the biggest spend in the economy. That the welfare state was always an economic illusion is proven by the fact taxation alone could never cover it; it's always been reliant on government borrowing. So our welfare states were always bound for economic bankruptcy, and a moral bankruptcy as self reliance and self responsibility were destroyed for the give-me-that-I'm-entitled-to-it society.
http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/there-is-intergenerational-theft-it.html
And:
http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/austerity-is-not-discretionary-inter.html
By joining "officially" the Labour Party one must assume that she will want to get to Parliament along with the other Labour Academics
I struggle to see how I benefit from the current welfare system in any sense of the word.
If you get divorced you can go on the DPB tomorrow.
If you & your husband are fired - and lose all your assets gambling - you could go on the dole tomorrow.
Your house is covered by EQC.
Your car & heath are covered by ACC.
You are probably getting WFF tax credits or have in the past.
Once you turn 65 you'll go on the codger-dole like everyone else.
If you are in a car accident you get "free" hospital care.
Your children either had totally or partially taxpayer subsidized education, and if partially taxpayer subsidized (e.g. in a "private" school) you had the right to remove them and place them in a fully taxpayer subsidized school at any time.
If you are burgled or murdered or suffer fraud you can request the police and courts to enforce your "rights".
That some of these are counterfactual (if X happens then Y) does not mean you accrue no benefit from them: without the state provision, your insurance premiums would certainly be higher.
The fact that - other than complete private homeschooling - you cannot educate your children in NZ, however much you love them, without a state subsidy merely proves NZ is a communist state. It does not prove you get no benefit whatsoever from that state provision welfare, not does it prove you get benefits that exceed your taxes --- indeed you almost certainly do not
And if I cut off my legs I could get better blood flow to my arms, I wouldn't call it beneficial though.
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