In the early 1990s the National government introduced welfare reforms that were met with enormous resistance and provoked a good deal of public sympathy for the plight of beneficiaries. The reforms featured benefit cuts which reduced most incomes by around 10 percent, with some losing as much as 25 percent. These cuts affected hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries and their children directly, and others, like retailers and landlords, indirectly. While the government needed to both save money and increase the gap between benefit incomes and wages to incentivise greater productivity, unemployment was above ten percent.More.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Welfare reform - the 1990s versus today
A column published in the NZCPD newsletter today speculates about the lack of public protest against National's current welfare reforms:
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4 comments:
Your post is a very well-reasoned, reasonable assessment of the current reforms.
Lindsay, there's a very simple reason why there are no protests. Ruth's reforms were actual reforms. Basher's so-called "reforms" just aren't.
as you say in the linked article:
The reforms featured benefit cuts which reduced most incomes by around 10 percent, with some losing as much as 25 percent. These cuts affected hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries and their children directly, and others
Basher Bennet's reforms have cut benefits by zero percent. Zero. No-one has lost anywhere near as much as 25 percent, and no child has been affected.
If Basher's reforms actually affect anyone other than headline-writers, then we'll see action on the streets. But everywhere from Greece to the US to UK to even Germany shows that real benefit reform in the welfare west always are resolved in the streets.
I think it sucks that people on a benefit because of substance abuse are exempt from work testing. Most of them are capable of doing something.
Murray
I think it sucks that people are on the bludger. full stop.
only good news is - if the bludgers & their commie friends protest or riot - this time around there should be the Whale army to deal with 'em once and for all!
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