- reducing the benefit cap further
- stopping under 25s claiming a housing benefit
- limiting tax credits to the first two children only
Items 2 and 3 could be implemented in NZ. The first is trickier.
The benefit cap applies to the total amount of benefit going into one household. There is no benefit cap in NZ so it can't be reduced.
It is interesting then, that our government - for the first time - has been exploring multi-benefit household statistics. If a benefit cap was on the cards here the first thing needed would be data. And there it was in the last Benefit System Performance Report.
126,126 main benefit clients (or 40% of main benefit clients) live in a household with two or more people receiving main benefits. 30% of the 126,126 are partners on related benefits. While some correlation between employment prospects or health status of people in the same household is expected, the extent to which there are multi-beneficiary households seems high. 35,150 main benefit clients (or 11%) live in a household with three or more people receiving benefits.
The rationale behind the benefit cap:
The government introduced a cap on the total amount of benefit that working-age households can get so that, broadly, households on out-of-work benefits will no longer get more in welfare payments than the average weekly wage for working households.That would not be a difficult policy for National to sell.
5 comments:
That would not be a difficult policy for National to sell.
Phasing out all benefits would not be a difficult policy for National to sell - but the budget did just the opposite.
Right now the Clark government record on benefits was more responsible than the Key government!
Why the average working wage? That would mean someone on welfare could get more than half of the working population which is just daft.
Surely any limit should be based on a lower threshold, say the bottom 5%
Why the average working wage? That would mean someone on welfare could get more than half of the working population which is just daft.
It's worse than that because the average (mean) working wage is about 25% bigger than the median wage (wage of more than half of the working population).
The most important thing, anyway, is to cut and to keep on cutting.
George Osbourne is cutting 10% off the welfare budget in the next month, and then continuing to cut 5% year-on-year.
Meanwhile John Key increased welfare more than Helen Clark ever did.
"Meanwhile John Key increased welfare more than Helen Clark ever did."
And more than any other govt in (IIRC) the last 40 years.
But more to the point NZ has a three year election cycle compared to 5 years in the UK. Cameron can do almost anything he likes in the first three years of his term and know he has two years to soften up the voters to attain 15 years in power. Key has an almost impossibly narrow window to achieve change to attain an almost impossible 12 years in power.
Add in MMP and NZ govts much more resemble the famous political instability of Italy than other Western govts because of the shortness of the election cycle and the designed instability of MMP.
JC
Add in MMP and NZ govts much more resemble the famous political instability of Italy than other Western govts because of the shortness of the election cycle and the designed instability of MMP.
Hard to see 9 years of strong Labour govt followed by - I dunno, 12, 15, 20? - years of National government as being unstable.
NZ's MMP is modelled on West Germany, not Italy. Closest to Scotland, actually - which also has a majority National government.
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