The leftist New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services Vulnerability Report, released today, is a regular update comprising publicly available data.
Some of the statistics they report are thoroughly misunderstood.
But I begin with this patently false statement:
Home ownership remains elusive for the vast majority of New Zealanders.(Page 4)
Census 2013 data shows,
In 2013, 64.8 percent of households owned their home or held it in a family trust, down from 66.9 percent in 2006.Source
Any reader of the report unfamiliar with NZ would believe "the vast majority of New Zealanders" rented.
Next I'm confronted with their inability to grasp benefit data.
The June 2013 DPB data reflects typical child rearing patterns - Recipients are mostly mature women (aged 25-39 years) at home caring for their child (or children) until they attend school at 5 years.
For starters, given 43 percent of DPB recipients at June 2013 were Maori, it'd be highly surprising if the DPB reflects "typical child rearing patterns".
At least a third of DPB recipients have been on benefit since becoming teenage mothers. That hardly reflects "typical child rearing patterns" when the average age of first time mothers in NZ is 30.
Back to the report:
Only a small percentage [10%] of recipients receive a DPB for ten years or more.
Square that with Paula Bennett's statement earlier this year:
...sole parents spend an average 15.8 years on benefit ...
When the NZ Council of Christian Social Services puts in the time to really get to grips with the issues I'll start respecting them.
Update.Further credentials proving economic illiteracy, a 2011 press release reported on this blog:
Celebrate Beneficiaries - The Heroes of the Recession
It is the government who is making bad life choices, not beneficiaries! In fact, Trevor McGlinchey from the NZ Council of Christian Social Services (NZCCSS) says beneficiaries are the heroes who are carrying the country through the recession.
NZCCSS Executive officer McGlinchey was speaking in response to today’s release of the third and final report from the government Welfare Working Group Report.
...“Last year’s Budget offered millions in tax assistance to those on mid to high incomes, many of whom pay relatively minimal tax because they know how to work the system. That leaves low income earners and beneficiaries to pay off the nation’s debts!”
2 comments:
Square that with Paula Bennett's statement earlier this year:
This simply shows basic ignorance of mathematics.
The majority of *people* on the bludge are on for only a couple of years - but a significant subset are on the bludge forever, and they drive the average up.
This is why 90% of Kiwis are better than the average driver (because 10% of bad drivers are really, really, bad) or why 70-80% of Kiwis earn less than the mean wage (because all the money is earned, and thus all the tax payed by 10% of actually productive people who pay for everything for everyone else).
The fact of the the matter is that welfare "reform" has been cosmetic. Changing the names of the benefits, and adding in subjective work tests change nothing. Overall, there are more people on the bludger than ever before, and they get more money than ever before.
The only way out is just to stop welfare. All benefit levels could be set to zero via an order in council. It would take about 5 minutes.
That said, I have high hopes of the National/Conservative coalition government after the next election terminating at least one benefit with no replacement or alternatives whatsoever.
Excellent fisking of the NZCCSS report, Lindsay!
Thank goodness that at least there is one person around who is willing and able to expose the nonsense in these reports. *None* of them say anything new and all of them contain lies.
Every report is the same old kind of regurgitated CLAPTRAP that is the standard fare of the bleeding-heart left-wingers.
Bleeding-heart outfits like NZCCSS actually *need* the poor! Why?
Because without the poor they'd be out of a job. They'd have nothing to moan about.
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