An article appeared in the DomPost on Thursday, Feb 14.
My response.
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The welfare state is unsustainable economically, socially and morally.
Our prosperity is fairly shared
The past five years have seen increasing prosperity for most New Zealanders and a very modest narrowing of income inequalities. Those living on welfare benefits remain economically excluded, however.
... the numbers of working-age adults receiving a benefit remains constant around 285,000, and this is despite the official unemployment rate in September 2018 sinking to a 10-year low of 3.7% of the workforce. The core of those receiving a benefit, around 150,000 adults, do so for health or disability reasons and so are paid the Supported Living payment or the Jobseeker/Health Condition payment. Their needs and this number of people are unlikely to change even in times of low unemployment. This permanence, alongside the economic exclusion suffered by those reliantThis final recommendation will undoubtedly be a feature of the Welfare Working Group's report due end of this month.
on welfare payments, suggest that a radical re-think is required for setting benefit levels. Such a re-think should look at avoiding the need for top-up and supplementary payments, and could consider indexing benefit levels to changes in wages and salaries as we already do for New Zealand Superannuation.