Are benefits protection money?

I heard Kim Workman expressing a view this morning that withholding benefits from gangs would result in more crime.

He may well be right.

But is that what Mickey Savage's grand and noble idea has come to? That benefits are now paid as protection money to some individuals or groups to ward off violence and lawbreaking?

Maybe a society could live with such an arrangement if it worked.

But it doesn't. The crime gets committed anyway.

If we want to reduce crime, by Mr Workman's logic, gang members should be paid more.

The tragic thing is that many current politicians actually believe and want that. If we just pay the unemployed and the unemployable more, Aotearoa will become some sort of nirvana. A shining beacon of social justice.

They are dangerous delusionists.

"Welfare crackdown"

Couple of quick points.

Stuff is reporting that Labour abolished the sanction for not naming the father of a child on a benefit and that National would reverse this.

The removal of the sanction does not kick in till April 2020. Hasn't happened yet.

Also reported is National's plan to apply "money management " to beneficiaries under 20. This already happens. Introduced under the last National government.

The idea to withhold benefits from non-vaccinaters has been proposed repeatedly in the past. The problem seems to be if something untoward happens to a child post a vaccination received purely because the parent needed to retain their benefit, 'enforced' by the state, what responsibility does the state bear? This could be argued much further re what is and isn't a 'choice.'

But from a philosophical viewpoint, anti-vaxers rely on the herd immunity without contributing to it. Should they be allowed to rely on the herd's financial safety net without making that contribution?

Towards a Code of Social and Family Responsibility - Mark II

National is revisiting the past with its 'Social Services - Discussion Document.'

When Jenny Shipley was Prime Minister,

"...in February 1998 the Department [of Social Welfare] distributed copies of a discussion document to all 1.4 million households in the country. Towards a Code of Social and Family Responsibility described current laws and the role of government in relation to eleven issues, and posed questions that were intended to prompt discussion and stimulate feedback... John Angus and Maree Brown, the senior DSW officials responsible for analysing much of the public reaction to the Code, concluded that many of the negative responses were related less to the content of the proposal than to distrust of the government's motives. "

It is wearisome when you have followed political responses to social problems for so long.  The politicians come and go. The issues remain.

Can't help but conclude that working groups and public consultations are not much more than avoidance tactics.

Gangs are not good for children

If National comes out promising to attack gang welfare dependency you can bet your bottom dollar the Left will counter with, "But what about the children?"

The Left is as prone to manipulating children as pawns in their pro-welfare arguments as the gangs are in using them as meal tickets.

Just remember when you start hearing the objections:

The vast majority of adult gang members have received a main benefit. 62 percent for 5 or more years. Over half (59 percent or 2,337) of all gang members had benefit spells that included dependent children, either with or without a partner.

This will not include those children on a sole parent benefit whose mother is the main recipient.

Sixty percent of the 5,890 children of gang members have been abused or neglected. The alleged perpetrator of abuse or neglect was more often recorded as the children’s mother than the gang member.

How can anyone advance an argument that the taxpayer should continue to fund an environment that is so bad for children?

Statistical source

Why you can't trust RNZ

Last week I blogged about RNZ skewing benefit numbers.

Now they have just posted a report about National criticising the rise in Jobseeker numbers.

Spot the problem?