It is staggering how pervasive welfare has become since its very first inception as the stringently policed old-age pension. A prospective recipient had to make application to a magistrate with proof of age, citizenship and good character. The names of those granted a pension were published in daily newspapers.
Until the 1960s clauses remained in benefit legislation to the effect that the applicant had to be sober and of good character and must not have caused their own incapacity to work. These disappeared as gate-keeping became increasingly difficult and society adopted a more 'progressive' attitude to need.
From then numbers exploded.
While Davidson is effectively saying it doesn't matter if you make yourself unemployable, actually she is only giving voice to the current state of affairs anyway. Thousands of addicts, and criminals - past and present - have their livelihoods paid for by the law-abiding. Thousands of parents chose to rely on the taxpayer instead of a partner to raise their children. Thousands of individuals have become inter-generational dependents as a result.
Are we a better country for the Green's (current political manifestation) brand of liberalism and non-judgementalism?
We may be. But if I was going to bat for children I'd say 'no'.
(It is one thing to extend kindness and care working one-on-one with beneficiaries and prisoners. A personal relationship includes personal knowledge about circumstances. But it does not follow that a society should apply a blanket approach of unquestioning and uncritical 'compassion'.)
7 comments:
Hi Lindsay, Very useful (and frightening) graph. What's the source?
Cheers,
PC
Welfare Working Group under National 2011
https://media.nzherald.co.nz/webcontent/document/pdf/20119/Bluestar%20WWG%20Recommendations%20Report%20180211.pdf
p43
I asked whether the welfare advisory group looked overseas to see what they were doing on defining a relationship for benefit purposes. They didn't ask to be briefed.
The real purpose of the group was to work out how to define a relationship doesn't involve slightly grubby sneaking on people. Obviously, a line must be drawn somewhere.
Jim
What they really want is individualisation of benefits (with no downward scaling). Fair enough. But it would cost a fortune. Michael Fletcher was commissioned by Superu to investigate individualising entitlements in New Zealand’s benefit system. In his report he cited forthcoming work from Anderson and Chapple that estimates individualisation would cost several billion dollars per annum. I emailed Simon Chapple chasing the work but got no answer.
Individualising the benefit is only expensive if you keep it at its current level. If you are living with someone else you don't need it at the current level. So individualise it but cut its value. The people who would be badly hit by such a policy are single mothers. Such a policy would encourage them to find a stable partner. Not altogether a bad thing. In fact that's the problem with all needs based assistance - it creates perverse incentives.
Exactly. When Gareth Morgan made his election plan for such - a UBI - he had to admit that single parents and pensioners would be worse off. The Greens would almost certainly want to bring all individuals up to the highest basic benefit rate.
What the greens want to do is something else again, but thinking about practicalities, you might think about grandfathering some existing benefits to ease the scheme in. I have always been attracted to UBI. Welfare is broken and the only solution is abolition or universalisation. Abolition is a nice idea but it wont fly. Universalisation at the level the greens want is financially infeasible. But maybe a really survival level UBI with top ups through charitable organisations might work.
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