Thomas Sowell's political glossary

Thomas Sowell's political glossary

"A more positive term that is likely to be heard a lot, during election years especially, is "compassion." But what does it mean concretely? More often than not, in practice it means a willingness to spend the taxpayers' money in ways that will increase the spender's chances of getting reelected. If you are skeptical — or, worse yet, critical — of this practice, then you qualify for a different political label: "mean-spirited." A related political label is "greedy." In the political language of today, people who want to keep what they have earned are said to be "greedy," while those who wish to take their earnings from them and give it to others (who will vote for them in return) show "compassion." "

Hat tip The welfare State We're In

Painting poser

This doggie was painted posthumously. The unusual thing about him was he had a missing front leg. So I crafted the painting in such a way as to put the attention on his face rather than chest. Looked like a very appealing chap. I see it is unsigned so it might not have been finished when I took this photo. I think he was a bit hairier by the time he left.

British PM: Welfare system eroded culture of responsibility

 The following is an excerpt from a speech about welfare just delivered by British PM David Cameron:

"Now when we look at how we got into this mess, we can go back in time and see a lot of good intentions.
Why does the single mother get the council house straightaway when the hard-working couple have been waiting for years?
Because governments and local councils wanted to make sure children got a decent start in life, so mothers were given priority for council housing.
Why do we have people on big salaries living in council houses?
Because governments wanted social housing to support hard-working people, so the eligibility criteria were set wide and the tenures long.
Why has it become acceptable for many people to choose a life on benefits?
Because governments wanted to give people dignity while they are unemployed – and while this is clearly important, it led us to the wrong places…
…to job seekers being called ‘customers' instead of claimants…
…and to conditionality on benefits being set at the bare minimum.
As well as the good intentions of governments, there was that assumption of trust at the heart of the system…
...that people would naturally do the right thing…
…that they would use the system when they fell on hard times but then work their way out of it.
This may have worked when the welfare state was born, when there was a stronger culture of collective responsibility in this country.
But as I've argued for years, the welfare system has helped to erode that culture."

It's a lengthy speech and it's all there in respect of recognising the problems.

But there remains a sense of avoiding tough answers.

"Back in the 90s the Clinton administration in the US started time-limiting benefits, and they saw federal case-loads fall by over 50 per cent.
Instead of US-style time-limits – which remove entitlements altogether – we could perhaps revise the levels of benefits people receive if they are out of work for literally years on end.
It is extraordinary that there are 1.4 million people in this country who have been out of work for at least nine of the past 10 years.
So softer time-limits – that increase the incentive to work, that stop people getting stuck in that welfare trap – could be something we consider."

The US reforms were the cumulative result of many states experimenting with reform ideas. I've looked at them extensively and consider they are the best implemented. Cameron misrepresents them here by talking about the total removal of entitlements. There are exemptions from time-limits and enormous assistance-in-kind programs. And individual states/counties still have autonomy with their own funds.

Crucial however is telling able people that the state will help them to a point and beyond that they are on their own. Britain and New Zealand are still too afraid to make that call.

Welfare targets are very soft

According to the NZ Herald:  

"The Government wants Work and Income to cut the number of long-term beneficiaries on a working-age benefit by 30 per cent over five years.....Result. Reduce the number of people who have been on a working-age benefit for more than 12 months by 30 per cent by 2017."

Of the 322,951 working-age beneficiaries at March 2012 214,440 had been on a benefit for more than a year. Back to the NZ Herald: 

"That would see the number of people on working age benefits drop from 78,000 to 55,000 by 2017."

Something isn't adding up. That's because the long-term beneficiaries the government has identified are a discrete group. Those who will be transferred to the new Jobseeker Support. Within that category the government is aiming to move 23,000 into work.

That represents 7 percent of the overall current total.

"Aspirational"?

The tale of two ex MPs

What a contrast ex MPs Rodney Hide and Georgina Bayer make.

 Rodney:

I thought i'd be unemployed about now. Happily it's not turned out that way. I have spent the week up to my eyeballs in mud, knocking over a concrete wall. Who'd have guessed?.....When I was a politician I was supposed to pretend sympathy for people without a job. The truth is I never had much. I always figured there's work to be done for anyone prepared to get stuck in. I now know that's true. I got a job pushing a wheelbarrow and swinging a hammer. Why can't the so-called unemployed? We all know why. They're too picky. The jobs don't suit. It's a bit cold. It's a bit wet. It's a bit hard.

Georgina:

Former Labour MP Georgina Beyer says she is broke and living off the unemployment benefit in a one-bedroom granny flat.... Ms Beyer admits she has been told to "lower her sights", but says some jobs are off the agenda. "I do draw the line at being a crew member at McDonald's. I'm a little bit past that sort of thing."

Remind me which one belonged to Labour - the party for the workers?

Will The Greens supplant Labour?

My Friday June 15 column from The Truth is now on-line.

When last in power Labour introduced an incentive to entice parents on welfare into jobs, the In Work Tax Credit (IWTC). 


The Child Poverty Action Group decided this constituted discrimination against children of beneficiaries and took a case to the Human Rights Tribunal. They lost. 


The Tribunal found that while discrimination was occurring, the government was justified in applying it. 

The Labour government stood firmly behind its policy, bringing in overseas experts to argue their corner.

More

Other columns here

Scottish doctors strike over plans to increase pension age and contributions

This is apparently the first time in 37 years doctors in the UK have gone on strike.

It surprises me that given the various European crises essentially caused by the welfare state, the 'privileged' in Scotland are so strenuously fighting austerity measures, and I wonder how much public sympathy there is for them. I'm no envier but there are highly paid public employees throughout the western world with far more capacity to tighten their belts than most.

Rules about work-testing the DPB

When parents on a benefit face work-testing as their youngest child turns five, some will attempt to avoid this eventuality by adding another baby. In recognition of this the government is introducing a rule that says the work-testing will only be waived till the subsequent child is one year-old.

It seems to me that there will still be grey areas, for instance, what if a subsequent child is born during a brief period off benefit? On re-application for a benefit does the caregiver get 5 years free from work-testing?

So in an attempt to find out what  attention had been given to this scenario I sent the following question to MSD:

In respect of the DPB welfare reforms which will introduce part-time work-testing when the youngest dependent child turns one if that child was been added to an existing benefit, has any official advice or correspondence occurred between cabinet and MSD discussing how the new rule will apply if the beneficiary has a period off benefit and returns?

The reply:

"In response to part four of your request, I refer you to recommendation six of the welfare Reform Cabinet paper, Paper C Parents on Benefit Who Have Subsequent Children"

This is what recommendation six says:

Agree that in implementing and maintaining this policy intent the Chief Executive should have discretion to consider application and, on occasion, exemption in the full range of circumstances where a subsequent child is added to a benefit dependent household.

Is that any kind of answer? Perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly.

I'm not talking about a subsequent child added to a benefit dependent household. I'm talking about a second, third, fourth child born between benefits. What rules will apply to their caregivers? Because as it stands a caregiver could have a child every five years and never reach work-testing so long as that child is not added to a benefit.

And if they could physically manage to add a baby a year to a benefit, that would also exempt them from work-testing.

These 'loopholes' demonstrate why it would be much better to have simple time-limits.

Under the regime about to be implemented I think we will see a pattern developing of repeated DPB-dependent spells in five year clusters (except it won't be DPB spells - it'll be SPS Sole Parent Support spells.)

Stat of the week

The Statistics Department of the University of Auckland awarded me Stat of the Week  at their Stats Chat site for which I receive a $20 iTunes voucher. Ta very much. Don't know what I do with such a thing. But probably one of my kids will take care of that.

The Stat?

That's the big lie.

(Thanks to Eric Crampton for alerting me to the site and competition).

Writing a good story

According to the NZ Herald:

Many young Aucklanders face having to pay for previously free sexual health consultations because of the Government's squeeze on health dollars.

This is expected to contribute to an increase in New Zealand's already internationally high rates of teenage pregnancy and some sexually transmitted infections, including chlamydia.

So I read on to see who is making this claim.

 [ProCare CE] Mr Hooton acknowledged that under ProCare's move "it is possible that teen pregnancy, abortion and STI rates could increase".

 So it appears to be the journalist's suggestion which, put to the 'expert', couldn't be ruled out.

That's a good trick for making attention-grabbing copy.

The subject of the story, limiting health funding in certain areas, seems to be in line with the general trend of more targeted spending, which on one hand is inequitable, but on the other tackles the problems where they are worst.

Asians too single-minded and smart

Have a read of Rodney's column today. It's based on an interview with Ranginui Walker which I happened to hear. I've commented at the site to the effect that I don't care what colour my GP is. But I do want them to be smart and capable, something Ranginui Walker seems to have somewhere down his list of prerequisites.

When Professor Ranginui Walker rang radio recently to argue the case for increasing the number of Maori in medical training in New Zealand, I hardly expected to finish with the view that too many Pakeha are being allowed to become doctors.

More

Super sense of inevitability

It's my view that New Zealanders have a strong sense of inevitability about the eligibility age for Super going up.

So for the life of me I cannot understand the political football it has developed into.

NZ First are backing no change. Winston plays to the entitlement brigade. Key says, according to the NZ Herald:

"This is my challenge to Winston Peters - I dare him to go out there and say he will not under any conditions form a government with Labour even if Labour's policy is to raise the super age from 2020, not in the 3 year period from 2014 to 2017. I dare him to say that. He will not. He will not because he's tricky. He'll find a way around all of that stuff."

It's all so risible, really.

On gay adoption

My Friday June 8 Truth column is now on-line

What a hullabaloo the issue of gay adoption causes.

So many people theorise about its merits or otherwise. But why should anyone with the capacity to love and raise a child well be barred from doing just that? And guess what. If the gay couple were Maori, adoption would be fine.


More

Other Truth columns here.

On gay marriage

Bob McCoskrie sent me a two-pager explaining why libertarians should not support gay marriage. Full of woolly thinking. Bob and I agree on some things but this isn't ever going to be one of them. Below are the 4 assertions made by Maggie Gallagher and a response to them from another source. 

 1.  Government did not create marriage and has no business redefining it.   

1. She wants government to prevent evolution in marriage. Marriage is constantly redefined and conservatives wish to prevent that. So they do want government involvement very heavily, to the point of taxing people in 'unmarried' relationships at higher rates. Was govt. redefining marriage when it allowed divorce? Marriage is always changing and most the time government is playing catchup, it doesn't lead the charge but reluctantly brings up the rear. 

Notice also her non sequitur. She argues that marriage encourages the binding of parents to children. "If encouraging mothers and fathers for children is a key part of marriage’s public purpose, then same-sex couples simply do not fit."

There are many parts to marriage. No marriage is required to fill all of them. Certainly allowing the marriage of post-menopausal woman doesn't fit. Nor does the marriage of women, or men, who are sterile, or men who had vasectomies. There are many functions to marriage not just one.

 2.  When marriage declines, government expands. 

 2. If the decline of marriage causes government to expand, then wouldn't expanding marriage reduce the size of government, so why fight the expansion of marriage?

 3.  Gay marriage has no economic benefits. 

 3. No economic benefits to whom? She is very careful to define economic benefits in odd ways. The benefits to couples, who don't pay the higher tax rates, she seems to ignore. Marriage gives people backup, that is others who care for them. When they don't have that they rely on the state. So wouldn't allowing gays to marry eventually reduce welfare costs?

 4.  The Slope Really Is Slippery 

 4. Slippery slope arguments are mostly impossible to address. Where did the slope begin? Why is gay marriage the beginning and not interracial marriage? 

Also note she says people only have a "right to raise our natural children." Does this mean that adoptive parents do not have parental rights? Is she slipping in Catholic crap to mean no one has the right to children born through IVF? 

And Unsolicitedious has a good post on the subject here. 

Heaven forbid responsibility should be handed back to families

Gordon Campbell agrees with John Key. The qualifying age for Super should stay at 65. Here's one of the reasons why:

"...there’s no easy way of easing the costs involved in meeting the burden of care for our ageing population. If we simply raise the entitlement age and/or cut the pension – and National did both in the 1990s under the Shipley administration – while ignoring the employment context, we will simply privatise the social, psychological and financial costs of care, and hand the responsibility over to families."

Heaven forbid we should shift responsibility to individuals or their families. The welfare state has been such a successful experiment who would want a return to the ethos of personal responsibility?

What educational failure looks like

What educational failure looks like

Good luck with that

The government thinks it can get money out of a DPB recipient's partner if she (usually) is done for fraudulently claiming a single parent benefit.

Just demanding it back from the recipient causes a "gender imbalance" apparently. Paying homage at the equal rights altar now.

Like they get money for unpaid fines and money for child support debt......

And if he has to pay on the principle that he 'benefited' from the fraud, what about a live-in parent or the landlord?

As I said, good luck with that.

Running on empty

One of my all time favourites.

 Sometimes I read stuff that just riles me anew. By now I should be de-sensitised to emotive (yet essentially empty) grandiosity; ignorance of fact and shallow thinking. Sadly a section of the upcoming generation  has been schooled to repeat seductive but superficial reasons for all manner of societal maladies.

I attempted to put a response in a letter to the editor but, I don't know. I've been arguing this so long my pen-to-paper expressions feel as trite as whatever prompts them.

In Green co-leader Metiria Turei's column about protecting children from child abuse the words women, kids, mothers,  families  and midwives appear repeatedly. The word father does not feature. The only inference to men at all appears in the line, "...protecting kids and women from violence and abuse....". This type of unconscious dismissal of fathers, and worse, the perpetuation of the idea that only men abuse women and children, is disgraceful. Official child abuse statistics show that women commit around half of all abuse and neglect, and in 2010 made up 35 percent of apprehensions for child assault.

Like it or not, all the evidence shows (and Metiria Turei calls for evidence-based policies) that children are safest in committed two-parent families, yet social policy of the past forty years has reduced the likelihood they will grow up in those environments.

Ms Turei prides herself on being a feminist and all the gains feminism has brought. But feminist-driven government intervention is also responsible for the alienation of fathers and men from the lives of children. Therein lies a substantial factor in the child abuse problem.

OECD on raising pension age

I have written in favour of raising the Super entitlement age a number of times. I once made the suggestion that as Super is linked to the average wage and the CPI, why not life expectancy? That idea makes an appearance below.

Here's what the OECD is saying:

11/06/2012 - Governments will need to raise retirement ages gradually to address increasing life expectancy in order to ensure that their national pension systems are both affordable and adequate, according to a new OECD report. At a time of heightened global economic uncertainty, such reforms can also play a crucial role in governments’ responses to the crisis, contributing to fiscal consolidation at the same time as boosting growth.

Over the next 50 years, life expectancy at birth is expected to increase by more than 7 years in developed economies. The long-term retirement age in half of OECD countries will be 65, and in 14 countries it will be between 67 and 69. The Pensions Outlook 2012 says that increases in retirement ages are underway or planned in 28 out of the 34 OECD countries. These increases, however, are expected to keep pace with improved life expectancy only in six countries for men and in 10 countries for women. Governments should thus consider formally linking retirement ages to life expectancy, as in Denmark and Italy, and make greater efforts to promote private pensions.

“Bold action is required. Breaking down the barriers that stop older people from working beyond traditional retirement ages will be a necessity to ensure that our children and grand-children can enjoy an adequate pension at the end of their working life,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Though these reforms can sometimes be unpopular and painful, at this time of tight public finances and limited scope for fiscal and monetary policy, these reforms can also serve to boost much needed growth in ageing economies.”

The Pensions Outlook 2012 finds that reforms over the past decade have cut future public pension payouts, typically by 20 to 25 per cent. People starting work today can expect a net public pension of about half their net earnings on average in OECD countries, if they retire after a full career, at the official retirement age. But in nearly all the 13 countries that have made private pensions mandatory, pensioners can expect benefits of around 60% of earnings.

Conversely, in countries where public pensions are relatively low and private pensions voluntary, such as Germany, Ireland, Korea, Japan and the United States, large segments of the population can expect major falls in income upon retirement.

This could cause pensioner poverty to increase significantly. Later retirement and greater access to private pensions will be critical to closing this pension gap, says the OECD.

However, making private pensions compulsory is not necessarily the answer for every country. According to the report, such action could unfairly affect low earners and be perceived as an additional tax. Auto-enrolment schemes – where people are enrolled automatically and can then opt out within a certain time frame – might be a suitable alternative.

Italy and New Zealand have already introduced such schemes and the UK is set to roll one out in October 2012. However, the report finds that results are mixed, with a major expansion of coverage of private pensions in countries like New Zealand, and having only a small effect in others like Italy.

More broadly, reforming tax reliefs to encourage private pension savings is also needed, as low earners and younger workers are much less likely to have a private pension. Facilitating matching contributions or giving flat subsidies to savers, such as in Germany and New Zealand, would improve their incentives to contribute. To boost confidence in private pensions, governments also need to improve their oversight of funds to ensure that charges are kept low and risks minimised.

This inaugural edition of the Pensions Outlook also includes the first comprehensive evaluation of national Defined Contribution systems, which are now a central feature of many countries’ pension systems. Among other recommendations, the report argues that it is critical to set the minimum or default contribution rate in Defined Contribution systems at an appropriate level.

Contributions to these systems need to be high enough so that together with public pensions they generate sufficient income at retirement. While Australia is moving in the right direction by increasing its contribution rate from 9% to 12%, it remains too low in countries such as Mexico and New Zealand (6.5% and 3%, respectively).

For comment or further information, journalists should contact Juan Yermo of the OECD’s Financial Affairs division (tel. + 33 1 45 24 96 62) or Edward Whitehouse of the OECD’s Social Policy division (tel. + 33 6 25 89 56 67).

Highlights of the report are available at www.oecd.org/daf/pensions/outlook

The big lie of the day

"The vast majority of child abuse is perpetrated by men."

That's according to an editorial in this morning's Herald on Sunday.

The following statistics from 2006 clearly show that females are perpetrating a great deal of child abuse.

And just released official data shows that in 2010 35 percent of the apprehensions for assault on a child were females.

It beggars belief that such inaccurate claims from what should be  reliable commentators make print. "I read it is the newspaper - it must be true...."