Welfare state spending and imprisonment rates

I was reading a paper which claims a negative correlation between welfare state spending and imprisonment rates ie the less spent on the welfare state as a % of gdp the higher the imprisonment rate. They plotted NZ as having 144 per 10,000 people in prison in 1998 with welfare spending at 21% of gdp.

In defiance of their theory both have increased in the past ten years.

Personally I don't think one can draw concrete conclusions about the relationship by comparing countries because there are just too many variables at play.

But while I was looking at imprisonment rates for NZ I came across this rather sobering fact. On any given day of the year 3.2 percent of male Maori 23 year-olds are in prison.

If welfare is 'hush money ' it doesn't work

Suggestions of radically reforming welfare are typically met with claims that crime will increase (like crime hasn't increased throughout the expansion of the welfare state?)

Now a study has revealed that individuals receiving welfare commit crimes anyway, usually after they have quickly exhausted the assistance received.

This is one of those 'if you didn't laugh' stories. The authors recommend that welfare payments get issued weekly instead of monthly "which will smooth patterns in crimes."

Families Commission is the problem; not the solution

More earth-shattering research from the Families Commission;

New Zealanders are delaying having children, as increasing living costs, debt and work demands begin to take their toll on family life, a study says.

A Families Commission report, made public today, says people are delaying having children as increasing numbers of working families struggle to make ends meet.

The report charts the change in families and conditions since the end of World War II, and shows the standard of family life has dropped dramatically since the post-war baby boom.

In 1970, before the DPB, most families were self-supporting. Let's say 97% with the other 3% relying on a sickness, invalid or widow's benefit.

Today only 80 percent of families with dependent children are 'self-supporting'(and many of those are net recipients receiving WFF assistance).

Simple maths tells us that all will be worse off as a result. If seven families are trying to earn enough productive income to support themselves and three others it stands to reason.

"If families thrive and both produce and nurture future generations, then the workforce, the economy and the social fabric of New Zealand will also thrive."

But many families are not thriving and nurturing which is exactly why the social fabric is looking somewhat worn and tattered.

Welcome to the twenty first century. This is what a socialist 'caring and sharing' society looks like.

And before you start feeling optimistic that maybe at last a government agency is 'on to it' look at their recommendations.

"If we want to maintain the population and help people to successfully balance their work and family life, then it's important to look at policies that would support parents to have children or to have more children."

Paid parental leave should be extended and workplaces made more "family friendly".

More redistribution and more central planning. I don't know how long or how much hardship New Zealanders are going to have to endure before the lesson is learnt. Government is not the cure. It is the problem.

'Church on Sunday' thinking contributes to crime?

Not PC has a post about how to cure what is going on in South Auckland (and many other areas of low decile suburban NZ). Most of it I can agree with but not this;

Perhaps most important of all is this, which is much, much harder: work towards the abandonment of the 'church-on-Sundays' thinking that infests South Auckland more than any other part of the country -- which imparts a superstitious hope that someone else will come along and can solve all one's problems...

In my experience the church-goers are not committing crime - except when they reject the church and go back to drug and alcohol abuse. In my experience the church-goers are not fond of welfare. I related some time back the story of the church-goers who came and worked on our property throughout what remained of their Sunday in order to raise money for a rehab unit in their community. They weren't holding their hands out to government and they weren't sitting on their bums.

In fact the party I would most strongly associate with South Auckland "churchies" is one of the few parties prepared to look dispassionately at welfare.

The Family Party is extremely concerned at a prevailing attitude amongst young girls who view the Domestic Purposes Benefit as a valid career choice; not understanding the detrimental affects such a lifestyle has on their children.

If Not PC wants his next suggestion to ever gain traction he might find more support from South Auckland churchgoers than most other groups.

Stop paying no-hopers to breed. We are forced by government to pay people to have children they don't want. The result of all those unwanted children appears on the front page of our newspapers nearly every day.

I am an atheist but I am also tolerant of people with religious faith. It is their business and to presume their faith somehow turns them into potentially dangerous, psychologically-malleable dependants is somewhat far-fetched.

John Key on arming the police

Talking to Mark Sainsbury on Breakfast TV this morning John Key resisted arming police. "Then we will turn into New York" he said. And what would be particularly wrong with that. New York City is a success story when it comes to crime trends.



Which is the preferable trend? NYC or Counties Manukau?




Now I've just read in the NZ Herald : Counties Manukau police, who are investigating the three homicides, say they don't believe crime is escalating.

They don't believe their own statistics. What hope.

Justice delayed is justice denied ...or is it?

It was William Gladstone who famously said, "Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Can't argue with that....unless you are the Minister for Courts Rick Barker who begs to disagree.

"Part of justice not being denied is that due process is done appropriately and not rushed."

The time before a court case reaches a resolution was not a delay, but merely part of the justice process, Mr Barker said.

That is his excuse for most jury trials taking over a year to be heard in court.

To reduce the overload on courts ACT's policy is to operate night courts, a practice employed in the US, Canada and Singapore. I don't imagine jury trials could operate outside normal working hours but other court business could be sped up thereby freeing up resource to reduce jury trial waiting times. Let's have some practical solutions to this problem instead of excuses.

Return of Sir Roger "Adds spice to election"

From the Gisborne Herald,

Re-entry of Sir Roger into active politics adds election interest

Monday, 16 June 2008
By Iain Gillies

Surprising as it seemed when first canvassed, the re-entry of Sir Roger Douglas into national politics has assumed serious proportions with his announcement that he will contest Hunua for the ACT party.

"He's on fire," proclaimed party leader Rodney Hide. "I've struggled to keep up with him."

Mr Hide's enthusiasm is understandable given Sir Roger's track record, so much so that those who may initially have written off Sir Roger as a political has-been are having second thoughts.

Those under-estimating Roger Douglas do so at their peril for there is much truth in the adage that: "No one in politics should ever be under-estimated -- until and unless there is evidence to the contrary."

For Sir Roger, no such evidence exists or ever did for that matter.

More than 20 years after his heyday in the finance portfolio he remains one of the most dominant political forces of the past generation, revered by some and poison to others, but never one to be ignored.

His legacy has been policies which have stood the test of time and never been overturned: floating the New Zealand dollar, introducing GST, halving the top tax rate, establishing state-owned enterprises to be run on business lines and making the Reserve Bank independent to control inflation.

Those who have read his book "Unfinished Business" will appreciate he has not run out of ideas, and the challenge for other parties is to judge the electorate's receptivity towards them.

With Sir Roger in the forefront, ACT has several things going for it in the lead-up to the election, one being space at the Right end of the political spectrum which John Key has seemingly overlooked in his wooing of middle New Zealand.

Another is the sheer radicalism of ACT's policies, including a 20-point pledge card with a plan to out-perform Australia by 2020 and a matching macho slogan: "The guts to do what's right".

Third is Sir Roger's undiminished drive, conviction and personal magnetism. Another is the prospect of luring former supporters back into the ACT fold.

It adds spice to the election!

Selective quoting

About the In Work payment that the Child Poverty Action Group is challenging in court, Tapu Misa writes, "There's little evidence that such incentives work. It's true the number of people on the unemployed benefit or DPB has fallen since 2000, thanks largely to a strong economy, but the proportion of children in severe and significant hardship increased 36 per cent between 2000 and 2004. As the OECD has noted, employment isn't the full solution."

Taspu Misa is possibly unaware that two OECD representatives are appearing for the government.

In 2007, on the back of extensive international research exploring the comparative effectiveness of using benefits or work to reduce child poverty, the OECD recommended to New Zealand 'reforms to reduce joblessness among families with children should be a priority.'

This paper compared the effectiveness of a 'benefit' strategy and a 'work' strategy in achieving reduction in child poverty. It concluded that a work strategy would be more effective in New Zealand. Hence I believe it is the authors of this paper that the government are going to use to defend their current strategy.

It is benefit dependence that creates child poverty. When benefits are increased, more people opt for them over work. Isn't it strange that when carbon emissions are widely accepted as contributing to global warming (rightly or wrongly) there is a clamour from the political left to reduce them yet the same logic is not applied to benefits.

Ironically Tapu Misa's chosen analogous headline, "Kids are not gambling chips" probably provoked a more direct response in many. Exactly. They are not meal tickets for feckless parents looking to increase their incomes to squander on, amongst other things, gambling.

Time for a laugh

How do these people survive?


ONE Recently, when I went to Mc Donald's I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets. 'We don't have half dozen nuggets,' said the teenager at the counter. 'You don't?' I replied. 'We only have six, nine, or twelve,' was the reply. 'So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?' 'That's right.' So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets

TWO I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those 'dividers' that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed. After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the 'divider', looking i t all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the code she said to me, 'Do you know how much this is?' I said to her 'I've changed my mind, I don't think I'll buy that today.' She said 'OK,' and I paid her for the things and left. She had no clue to what had just happened.

THREE A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM 'thingy.'

FOUR I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. 'Do you need some help?' I asked. She replied, 'I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door un-locker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?' 'Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?' I asked. 'No, just this remote thingy,' she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, 'Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries. It's a long walk.'

FIVE Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, 'I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?' 'Just use copier machine paper,' the secretary told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five 'blank' copies.

SIX A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs to take her kid to the emergency room, the kid was eating ants. The dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and should be fine, the mother says, I just gave him some ant killer..... Dispatcher: Rush him in to emergency!

Life is tough...
it's tougher if you're stupid.'

You can go too

I have seen no media reports about this. (Details here)
If Dyson wanted it in the news, it would be there.

Almost looks as if the government are trying to keep it quiet. Even NZ First hasn't been jumping up and down claiming credit. Perhaps they haven't been told. Or they aren't sharp enough to pick it up.

Perhaps the government is keeping it low key because they don't want superannuitants living overseas to start lodging claims for their increased entitlement.

But they should be making a big noise. If more superannuitants retired overseas the taxpayer could save a fortune on health and care services!

Seriously, with the rate young New Zealanders are leaving at, their parents will probably jump at the chance to follow them. Perhaps that's the political implication the government is trying to avoid being splashed all over the media.

"You can bugger off too!"

Vouchers villified. But why?

In Washington DC teacher unions are trying to stop a voucher system for the poorest black and Hispanic children. Yet 90 percent of parents are apparently very happy with the scheme. What's the problem?

Opponents claim there is no evidence that the D.C. scholarship program is raising academic achievement. The only study so far, funded by the federal Department of Education, found positive but "not statistically significant" improvements in reading and math scores after the first year. But education experts agree it takes a few years for results to start showing up. In other places that have vouchers, such as Milwaukee and Florida, test scores show notable improvement. A new study on charter schools in Los Angeles County finds big academic gains when families have expanded choices for educating their kids.

Does it cost more?

The $7,500 voucher is a bargain for taxpayers because it costs the public schools about 50% more, or $13,000 a year, to educate a child in the public schools.

Does it prevent choice?

Many of the parents we interviewed describe the vouchers as a "Godsend" or a "lifeline" for their sons and daughters. "Most of the politicians have choices on where to send their kids to school," says William Rush, Jr., who has two boys in the program. "Why do they want to take our choices away?"

Because just like New Zealand's teacher union and New Zealand's political left, the US unions are frightened that success in the private sector will mean parents abandon public schools. It's not about children and it's not about parents.

The teachers unions have put out the word to Congress that they want all vouchers for private schools that compete with their monopoly system shut down.

It's about unions protecting their patch, whether it grows weeds or prize winning pumpkins. ACT's education vouchers policy is anathema to monopolists (including National?). We will be pushing it with passion.

Just desserts on both sides

A troublesome 16 year-old schoolboy promises to "shit on" his teacher's lawn and waits outside his home to ostensibly do just that. He waits on hour. The teacher arrives home and first checks his own children are OK. Then an argument develops between the two and the teacher punches the kid eight times. The teacher is prosecuted, given diversion and sent on an anger management course. He was demoted and ultimately fined by the Teacher's Council.

When I try to think about such a case, acknowledging all I know is what the media discloses (How badly hurt was the boy? What were his previous misdemeanours?), I find it useful to put my own players in the picture. My 14 year-old and a teacher for instance. Notwithstanding I am finding it almost impossible to imagine him in this scenario (but teenagers can go off the rails very quickly and kind, patient teachers can be pushed beyond their limits) I feel some sympathy with both parties.

The teacher's reaction is over the top but it is a rare man or woman who hasn't "snapped" at some point in their personal or professional lives. The problem lies in how the explosion manifests. In my younger days, I clearly remember hitting a bathroom wall so hard once I bruised by fist. I have never hit a person. And there seems to be something "missing" when a person hits someone repeatedly rather than taking their enormous anger and frustration out on something inanimate or simply turning their back and walking away. The teacher may have tried the second and been further provoked. We don't know.

As for the youth, if my son was carrying on like this I would think he was off his trolley. That he was in need of help possibly beyond that I could provide. I don't accept threats of that nature and waiting outside someone's home are just "infantile" pranks.

What I really, really, really want to know is, did the teacher's actions make an impression on this boy? Did they make his behaviour better or worse? I suspect that the father may have nullified any positive effect. I would have been very "agitated" if my son had been punched eight times but I wouldn't be making excuses for him. I would be telling him that he just learned a valuable lesson about human nature. Based on the degree of provocation I probably wouldn't have pressed assault charges. But no account seems to be taken of provocation these days. Especially if it is female provocation of a male.

Based on what we do know I am happy that the teacher was allowed to continue in his job. Violence is never desirable but if it had been 'horrendous' I doubt the man would still be teaching. We need all the male teachers we can get.

Silly advice

From the NZ Herald editorial today,

Act, however, must campaign in a way that does not make life difficult for National. Sir Roger and his economic programme may be its chief branding weapon, but it must recognise that every vote lost by National diminishes its own chances of being in government.

What bollocks. ACT has to campaign hard on its ideas and plans. National can take care of itself. Winning matters. This is an election campaign. It isn't kiddies sport where it's the "taking part that counts". ACT doesn't exist to be a bit-player to National. Increasingly the two parties have less in common but it isn't ACT that has moved away from its founding principles. The most important message ACT has for New Zealanders is that a mere change in government will not change the direction of this country. The more MPs ACT has, the more real change we can effect.

Reality

A comment from yesterday,

The rate of crime is a function of the profits divided by the chance of being caught or killed.

Also yesterday my mother rang to tell me that whilst he is in hospital recovering from open heart surgery, my brother's house has been burgled.

The police have not attended and there is nobody available yet to take fingerprints.

Fooling fools

Yesterday I had just read a piece by Roger Kerr in the Dominion Post about the futility of Cullen's tax cuts - "Clayton's cuts" - when I glanced down and saw this.

What followed was one of those 'pass me a bucket' moments.



"The Inland Revenue plays a critical role in improving the economic and social well being of all New Zealanders."

Since when??? The role of the IRD is to collect tax - no more, no less.

Oh get with it Lindsay. The IRD is now a key player in redistributing income to 'needy' families. It is the WINZ of the middle class. And we all know how much Work and Income contributes to well being by the number of security men they employ.

But this is an ad for an Investigator. Not a plunket nurse.

"Serving as an Investigator is highly rewarding through the contribution it makes to improve our customers' understanding of, and compliance with tax and social policy laws."

Seriously now, this is disgusting and scary stuff. If you ever struggle to envisage big government, this is it. First the IRD has recast itself into a so-called social organisation with one of the "largest workforces in New Zealand," when all it should be doing it collecting tax. If we had flat tax most of this workforce could be doing something productive instead of being the monkeys on the back of the engine house.

But almost worse than the size of this monolith is the language it uses to fool itself and the public into regarding it as a bastion of beneficence. In truth most people would behold the visit of an Investigator with great trepidation. We wouldn't be putting on the kettle in anticipation of a nice chat.

We've got to wake up in this country. All big government is good for is producing make-work jobs and make-believe descriptions. Voting National won't put an end to this sort of nonsense.

What now?

Can anybody imagine the grief or anger of the relatives of Navtej Singh.

In the Dominion Post there are pictures of the family of the polish tramper who lost his life just over the hills from us last week. Their pain is palpable; their faces crumple. But he lost his life because of an accident. He was pursuing his passion.

What of poor Mr Singh? Only 30. Gunned down by someone who values booze more than life, or at least someone else's life. Who will step up to make excuses for the murderer? Some bleeding heart counsel will no doubt make submissions about upbringing, poverty and more generically, skin colour. There is every possibility Mr Singh also came from an impoverished background and his race have experienced disproportionate poverty. But he was a worker. He was trying to make a crust legitimately - as far as we know.

He must have thought about the possibility of violent robbery. May have even experienced it before. He must have consciously decided that he would follow police advice and submit to the violation. He took a calculated risk, not just by choosing this course of action but by the very act of living and working in what is purportedly a dangerous area. He lost the gamble. Who to blame?

Where are the liberal left who remonstrate against apportioning blame? It's not about blaming someone, they say. The problems in South Auckland are systemic, they say. It's the gap between rich and poor driving violent crime. But there wasn't much of a gap between the perpetrator and the victim, was there?

And what next for the police? Don't defend yourselves they say. Call us. Too late. But where were you anyway? A neighbourhood as dangerous as this needs a constance presence. What am I saying. If there was a constant police presence this wouldn't have happened. If the neighbours are too terrified to speak because of gang recriminations the police are probably too scared to police.

I am sick at the state of parts of this country. I am sick at poor people being victims of other poor people who have lost all traces of humanity. But mostly I am sick of our seeming inability to deal with them. RIP Navtej Singh. I am sorry.

Poor Expectations

Sometimes numbers just breeze right past me. Then I do a double-take and think twice. One such number just presented itself in a reply to a written question from Judith Collins to the Minister of Social Development.

3,099 clients aged 16-17 years receive a main benefit (excluding partners).

There are around 120,000 16-17 year-olds. That means more than 1 in 40 is on a benefit. That's like one in a large school class. Hell, that's a lot. And it doesn't auger well for the future because many are just starting on a lifetime habit.

Yesterday a friend sent me some research from the University of British Colombia which shows that availability of welfare encourages kids to leave school.

Bill Warburton had observed that the dropout rate for children at risk of receiving income assistance rose with B.C.'s welfare caseload through the early 1990s and fell when a substantial package of welfare reforms was introduced Jan. 1, 1996, which removed about 100,000 people from the welfare rolls.

Using data from the B.C. ministries of education and employment and income assistance, Warburton found that when the New Democrats began a program of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, high school dropout rates began to fall and continued to fall for several years.

Arguably the most important aspect of welfare reform is it wards off those who would otherwise have become enmeshed. It makes them consider better options.

A good chunk of those NZ 16 and 17 year-olds on welfare are either pregnant and on a sickness benefit or a teenage mum and on the emergency maintenance allowance. Until the system changes expectations the problem-producing benefit lifestyle will continue unabated.

Books

That's put me over my limit. Can I manage two whole books in one year? I can generally get through one. Last year it was Rodney Hide's highly readable biography.

But last week I purchased Bob Jones', Jones on Management which is very good. In fact I may finish it today. I read a good chunk last night whilst not watching the All Blacks.

And tomorrow I will buy Michael Bassett's latest, Working With David. This piece has further whet my appetite.

From the start, the clandestine affair between the married prime minister and his speechwriter aroused feelings of foreboding among his staff.

It was "like a crow on your shoulder all the time, because you're never quite sure when it's going to shit on you", former Lange press officer Ross Vintiner told historian Dr Michael Bassett.

Jolly good. This promises to be a book that goes deep into the ways in which relationships affect thinking. The too real overlay of human frailty on political actions that reach out across populations and time.

Street preventing choice and efficiency

The view of the author is that the privatisation process delivered benefits to:

• ACC by creating a more efficient and focused organisation,
• the overall scheme by properly defining the entitlements,
• insurers who made profits from the experience,
• employers by reducing premium rates,
• employees overall through improved rehabilitation and reduction in injury rates.

That is an excerpt from a review of the Privatisation of New Zealand
Accident Insurance Workplace Cover 1999/2000.

ACC Minister Maryan Street, who loathes the idea of competition and profit, is harassing National over any policy to re-privatise employers accounts. What caught my eye was her snide and petulant claim that National was simply "lining the pockets of their insurance company mates.”

Now that really is a fine example of the 'politics of envy' and what turns thinking people off Labour.