Why choosing a benefit is rational

The following chart is from a report called Dynamic Benefits and is based on UK data. The UK has a lone parent benefit rate similar to NZ in its generosity.



Note the statement under the figures - ...life choices other than work are realistic and even rational ones to take.

Here is a rough comparison for New Zealand. The median weekly income from working is taken from NZ Statistics Income Survey with 20 percent tax applied. The others are the result of some googling and are fairly arbitrary. The benefit incomes include other top-ups like accommodation supplement, family tax credit, etc.

Occupation/ Net income p.w. from median female wages

• Single person out of work $250 (all benefits)
• Median weekly income 15-24 year-olds $384
• Waitress/Bar staff/Cleaner $400
• Receptionist $415
• Hairdresser $418
• Single parent with one child out of work $430 (all benefits)
• Shop Assistant $448
• Typist $512
• Librarian $544
• Nurse $569

Seriously, if you had no or few school qualifications or little work ethic/inclination, why not choose motherhood?

Sue Bradford - shame about the causes

This won't be a very popular post but I am going to say something - or two if I can stretch to it - positive about Sue Bradford.

When I made submissions to the Social Services Select Committee Sue was never rude or intimidating (unlike Philip Field and Liz Gordon who could both became apoplectic). And she listened and would ask questions.

She has two strong personal attributes, courage and commitment. Shame about the causes she brought them to.

But I am glad she has resigned from Parliament. Because she is a thorn in the side of welfare reform - a particularly sharp one. She will, of course, continue to be, in some capacity. What capacity awaits to be seen.

With the extreme leftist welfare ethos gone from the Greens, Labour may be freer to look afresh at what needs doing. After all, it is more often than not that Labour is the party of reform.

The "lynch mob mentality" is just as ugly

A Palmerston North judge banned photographs of the accused and the accused is not seeking bail. The reason for both actions is the "lynch mob mentality" alive and well in the community meaning the accused and his family would not be safe if either of these things happened. Threats have been made against the accused's brother. The accused is allegedly responsible for the death of a 3 year-old girl.

Some children live in a culture of neglect and violence. It occurs to me that there can be more than one potential killer within a group of people that have contact with a child. The people brimming with retribution are quite probably just as bad as the accused. And while they are posturing and slagging off and brewing, they are no doubt doing it around children. It's a dismal picture. Clueless, valueless people in charge of young minds.

Hone on the warpath

Hone Harawira plans to slaughter tobacco industry executives when he drags them before a Maori Affairs select committee 'full inquiry' into their industry.

He says, "...tobacco companies are responsible for the murder of 100,000 New Zealand citizens in the last 25 years."

Are you comfortable with that statement? National obviously is because they have given this retributive bully session the go-ahead.

... I thank the National Party leadership and in particular Prime Minister John Key, his deputy Bill English, and Committee Chairman Tau Henare for supporting this because if they hadn’t, it would have died on the table

This inquiry will be New Zealand’s greatest opportunity to have Tobacco companies explain their actions of promoting and maintaining tobacco addiction, which leads to these horrific deaths.

It will also provide New Zealand's greatest opportunity for parliamentary representatives to explain why they support the promoting and maintenance of tobacco addiction by taking their own sizeable cut of the profits.

Perhaps Hone could appear in that capacity?

He says, "To be brutally frank Mr Speaker, I’d like to lynch these #$^&** tobacco company executives."

In which case a murder/suicide would be the most elegant solution. Which amply illustrates the hot-headed stupidity of Hone's rhetoric.

Phoney accusations of racism

A post over at Oswald's reminded me of two protest signs recently waved at the President of the US;

"The problem with Obama isn't that he's black; it's that he's red."

and

"Do I look like an ATM to you?"

Lower the age Garth George can drive until!

Garth George's column today is the work of a grumpy old man not thinking straight. It's a punitive rant against young people driving. I have showed before that the statistics for young drivers have improved considerably over the years yet people like George, who was young during a time when there was more irresponsibility and death on the roads, want to take away freedoms across the board. Put the driving age up to 18! Put the legal drinking age up to 20! Make people with fast cars pay more insurance!

Well two can play at that. Take the driving age down at the other end when the age-risk factor demonstrably climbs again. Let's campaign against the elderly on the roads. Lower the age Garth George can drive until!

Not likely. Because we are all going to be elderly one day.

Whereas we have already been young and now resent that we are no longer. So let's blame young people for as much as we can. Let's take away their freedoms and preserve our own. Because we are old and drive sensible cars at sensible speeds. Some of us get slow and doddery and, to be frank, dangerous, but why should we all suffer? Why should we all be tarred with the same brush?

Exactly.

Kids need 'free computers'

Apparently the PPTA are going to make submissions to the government regarding accessibility of computers to poor kids. Thousands of - one estimate puts it at 100,000 - kids need 'free computers'. I wonder how many homes with no computer/internet access have Sky TV? A good number.

So this is the next 'public good' argument. These children are our future and they need to be properly educated which won't happen if they can't get to the internet to research their homework.

Well actually they can get to the internet. At their local library, internet cafe, at their friends houses and when they are at school. In fact, these are possibly better places for them to be doing their research if their own home is chaotic and overcrowded.

It is the parents who have to do the prioritising. It is the parents who have to put a value on learning over leisure. It is not the job of perfect strangers. And it pains me to say so. Because education is key to raising aspirations and expectations. But what lesson is learnt when people can constantly look to others instead of themselves for solutions?

Police passing the buck

Yesterday I posted statistics showing that convictions for crime had increased by 28 percent in the last ten years and one commentor said that we need far more cops. I am not sure that we do. What we need is for cops to focus on crimes against people and property instead of a myriad other things. The writer of the following latter, spotted in the Hutt News, encapsulates the sentiment;

Kitten, anybody?

That was quick - 6 weeks old, eating solids, drinking cow's milk and house-trained.

Now they need homes - except for Geoffrey. Geoffrey stays. A most ungainly, misshapen but clever cat. A go-getter which will unfortunately probably include go-getting things we wish he hadn't gone and gotten.



Palangi (behind Geoff) is a boy. He has been the least interested in trivial matters like food but is the most interested in the outdoors. Sits at the window watching more than the others. He's a big picture boy.



Eddie likes being handled. He is the most like his mum. Small and fine featured. Not that you can tell from this shot. He's the sensitive type.



And last but not least is Tabs - another boy I think. Possibly the prettiest and knows it. He likes to watch his reflection in our highly polished piano. A self-aware sort. Sam's favourite so parting will be tricky.




David would keep the lot. I am a tad more practical. If we can find good and caring homes they will go. Kitten anybody?

Conviction and sentencing statistics

Conviction and sentencing statistics 1999 - 2008 contains lots of interesting stuff. For instance;

* Between 1999 and 2008, the number of charges prosecuted increased by 27 percent.
* From 1999 to 2008, the number of charges resulting in a conviction rose by 28 percent.
* The number of charges that were not proved increased by 29 percent from 1999 to 2008.

Consistent increase throughout. The population increased by 11 percent over the same time - the 15-40 year-old age group, from which most crime hails, increased by only 8 percent.

Between 2003 and 2008, the number of convictions for violent offences rose by 40 percent and the number of convictions for traffic offences rose by 29 percent.

Yet during the 2008 election campaign I constantly heard that crime, including violent crime, was decreasing. Yet every measure - victimisation reports through to conviction rates show the opposite.

# The prosecution rate was higher than average in many rural North Island areas (Figure 3). In 2008, rates ranged from less than 170 per 10,000 residents in Kaikoura, Te Awamutu, Waipukurau, Feilding, and Gore to over 450 per 10,000 residents in Rotorua, Kaikohe, Gisborne, Whangarei, and Taupo.

Ethnicity and gang factors. Not surprising but unsettling that some of NZ's most popular tourist destinations are relatively dangerous places.



Total prosecutions look like this;



The number of people sentenced to imprisonment increased by 32 percent between 1999 and 2006. From 2006 to 2008 however, this number has decreased by 17 percent.

And yet the prison muster has just reached an all-time high. This must be due to longer sentencing/rejection of parole.

The number of offenders receiving deferment rose by 74 percent from 1999 to 2008.

The ONLY type of sentencing that is decreasing is imprisonment. But in 2008 2,479 convictions resulted in home detention sentences.

Overall, nothing to write home about.

Drink/driving and tougher penalties

Some discussion on talkback about two recent deaths due to drink/driving highlighted in the DomPost, prompted me to look at a country where penalties are tougher.

According to the Singapore police these are the current penalties for drink driving. (Their limits are the same as in NZ by the way);

First Time – Drink driver will be fined between $1000 and $5000 or six months imprisonment.

Second Time – Drink driver will be fined between $3000 and $10,000 fine and imprisonment for a term of up to one year.

Repeated Time – Drink Driver will face enhanced punishment up to 3 times the penalty, a maximum of $30,000 fine and three years' imprisonment.

Offenders causing death or serious injuries can also be caned up to 6 strokes.

All those convicted will be disqualified from driving for at least 1 year, even if they have not caused any traffic accidents.

Is it working? The police say:

The significant rise in drink-driving arrests is a worrying trend – recording a 7% rise from 3,733 cases in 2006, to 4,009 cases in 2007. The total number of drink-driving cases in 2007 has also been the highest for the last 10 years.

So now the police are trying something different;

Apart from maintaining regular enforcement efforts against drink driving, Traffic Police also collaborated with entertainment outlet operators in 2008 to launch several new Anti Drink Drive (ADD) initiatives. For example, the distribution of complimentary taxi vouchers and the provision of a complimentary chauffeur service to escort drunken patrons home.

Result?

A drop of 10.5 percent in arrests for drink/driving from 2007 to 2008.

Perhaps NZ has to start thinking beyond penalties.

What will break the bias?

Historian, David Thompson, wrote an essay in 1990 about the scholarship surrounding the New Zealand welfare state. He described it as uncritical, laudatory, containing a distinct left-wing bias, overwhelmingly political, naive, riddled with jargon. About the available critiques he wrote;

The superficial, shadow-boxing nature of many of these critiques should also be noted. At one level they are valid and trenchant counterblasts to the more familiar litanies of increase and success. At a deeper level, however, they stem from and serve to reinforce widely shared assumptions about the correct and inevitable nature of the welfare state. What is criticised is not the welfare state itself, but the failure to make ours more of a welfare state - more munificent, more redistributive, more dominant. Evidence of failure does not lead to a querying of the goals and ideals of the welfare state, or a search for other ways of organising a modern society. New Zealand lacks, perhaps most strikingly by contrast with North America, a parallel scholarship built on opposition to the welfare state. It is possible to oppose the welfare state in important aspects and yet be human, civilised and thoughtful, though one might doubt it reading the New Zealand literature. If one of the duties of scholars is to keep alive and develop alternative, unfashionable modes of thought, then it must be said that our intellectual traditions have been impoverished by an unwillingness or inability to reflect upon core assumptions - in short, to question ourselves.

And really, not much has changed.

A couple of books that criticised the welfare system were published by the NZ Business Roundtable during the 1990s, but neither were by New Zealand writers. This century, now nearly nine years old, has seen a continuation of dominance by left-leaning academia and policy analysts whose criticism of the welfare state extends only as far as changing delivery mechanisms, levels and targets. Margaret McClure's extensive work spanning one hundred years of social security is a mine of useful information but her language is full of loathing for private charity. Her approval of the welfare state is signalled in the title of her work, A Civilised Community.

The reform landscape is barren. There is absolutely nothing that would indicate National wants to have a debate about "the way a modern society organises itself." What will it take to break the uncritical bias towards the welfare state?

Or, is it already broken and just not reflected among the lofty elites, political leaders and sentinel civil servants?

Children in workless HOUSEHOLDS

A commentor has taken issue with my post about the number of NZ children living in workless families. Apparently the European statistics were for households - not families. That was how the chart was labelled unfortunately. I didn't label it.

Here is another chart which is based on households. The data is not as up-to-date but shows essentially the same thing. The NZ proportion is high compared to many other European countries;

The National/Act government - to the left of Sweden's

How depressing.

The National/Act government can't even keep up with the Swedish government, which is reducing taxes to cope with the recession. From their budget for 2009;

To strengthen the work-first principle and increase the labour supply, the Government proposes a third step in the in-work tax credit and a reduction in total state income tax. The proposals have an overall scope of SEK 15 billion. The three steps combined mean that approximately 97 per cent of all people in full-time work will have received tax reductions of more than SEK 1 000 a month.

The Government also presents a tax package for businesses that will lower their taxes by nearly SEK 16 billion in 2009. The aim is to strengthen incentives for companies to invest and take on new employees. The corporate tax rate will be reduced from 28 to just over 26 per cent and employers' social security contributions will be reduced by one percentage point. In addition, the administrative burden on businesses will be eased by a number of simplifications, as a step towards the Government's target of reducing the administrative burden on businesses by 25 per cent by 2010.

Till unemployment do us part

Unemployment and children

The Summitt I attended on Wednesday was a hand-wringing hui about children affected by recession and what the government should be doing for them. My contention was child poverty in NZ is fairly constant. The recession has only broadened it.

According to the NZ Christian Council for Social Services, at June 2009 there were 219,627 children relying on benefits. 13.5 percent of working age beneficiaries have a current earnings declaration meaning they had participated in work throughout or at some point during the previous 12 months. A crude calculation taking 13.5 percent off the total to get the lowest possible number of children with non-working parents produces 189,977.

There are an estimated 1,083,690 children aged under 18 (NZ Statistics).

The percentage of children in workless families is therefore 17.5 percent.

So how does that compare to Europe?



NZ is higher than any.

But when unemployment rates are laid alongside these countries, the picture changes.



This strikingly illustrates the effect of the DPB.

Summit delegate disagrees with benefit recommendations

Media Release

SUMMIT DELEGATE DISAGREES WITH BENEFIT RECOMMENDATIONS
Thursday, 17 September, 2009

A Child Poverty Summit convened by the Every Child Counts organisation has recommended higher core benefit levels.

As one of the 70 invited delegates attending the Summit welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell says she did not agree with this proposal. "As a participant in the Social Exclusion workshop which made this particular recommendation, I argued against it. There are at least nine international research papers that show that an increase in benefit levels increases the number of children born outside of marriage or a stable relationship. This has the effect of drawing more children onto benefits, putting even more children at risk of the unintended consequences the Summit wants to reduce."

"Additionally, the figures supplied by Every Child Counts show that of the children living below the poverty threshold 65,000 were in sole parent families. I emphasised that there are currently around 165,000 children reliant on a DPB income. If the majority are not below the poverty threshold, why increase the level of the benefit across the board? Factors beyond the income level are responsible for the poverty."

Neither of these objections was dealt with indicating that the recommendation is more about ideology than enduring solutions.

Over half of adolescents spent time on a benefit

Media release

OVER HALF OF ADOLESCENTS SPENT TIME ON A BENEFIT
Thursday, September 17, 2009

As many as 55 percent of children reaching adolescence have spent time being supported by a benefit. According to Lindsay Mitchell, welfare commentator, this is the startling finding of research just published by the Ministry of Social Development

The study also found that throughout most of the 1990s around one in four children were included in a benefit at birth or very soon after. Since 2000 the proportion had declined to one in five children born in 2005 and 2006, and 18 percent of children born in 2007.

Mitchell said that although the trend had been positive it was sobering to learn just how little record low unemployment had affected child reliance on welfare. "In 2005 New Zealand had the lowest unemployment rate in the developed world, yet one in five children were still being born onto a benefit."

"The trend has now, however, reversed. A large majority of children relying on main benefits have a parent on the DPB and since 2007, the number of DPB recipients has grown from 96,467 (June 2007) to 104,400 (June 2009). Others rely on the unemployment benefit which has more than doubled from 23,159 to 50,855 over the same period."

As well as starting their lives on a benefit, large numbers of children stay there for long periods. The report says that just over half of children currently reaching adolescence have been supported by the main benefits* at some time. Specifically,

"...one in five children born in 1993 are estimated to have been supported by a main benefit for seven or more of their first 14 years of life. An estimated one in ten spent a total of 11 or more of their first 14 years of life supported by a main benefit. "

Mitchell said that growing up on welfare has become a deeply entrenched facet of life for New Zealand children, one which seems largely impervious to economic conditions.

"As long as the welfare system remains essentially unchanged, too many children are going to experience the varying degrees of disadvantage that go hand-in-hand with life on a benefit."

Subsidies will always be abused

Paula Bennett is impressed with 1,000 new subsidised jobs created after potential employers were offered $5,000 to employ a young person for six months. While I fully support the sentiment behind getting young people into jobs, distorting the value of their labour with subsidies is probably not the answer.

The rules for the Job Ops scheme were tightened after initial publicity last month about a rush of employers seeking the subsidy. The criteria now state that jobs must be "opportunities that wouldn't exist if the Job Ops subsidy wasn't available".

What a nonsense. There is no test of proof. For instance, it could be argued that a employer had previously advertised the position without subsidy. But the employer could counter, possibly truthfully, that he had changed his mind about offering a position due to the recession. Then he had changed it back when the subsidy became available. Or it could be argued that a young person is employed alongside others doing the same work unsubsidised. The employer could argue that he purposely produced one extra job that he couldn't have without the subsidy.

Whether the opportunities would or wouldn't exist without subsidy will only become evident after the subsidy runs out. Hopefully, by then, at least some of those employed will have proved themselves to be worth it.

"The case for legalising all drugs is unanswerable"

This is the first thing I read today and is probably the best thing I will read today. The title is a challenge. Those who want to keep on with prohibition should state their case as clearly and succinctly. But has anyone ever read such a treatise? Does one exist? It seems to me that prohibition continues largely because changing deep-seated but irrational convictions is just too hard.

A decade or so ago, it could be argued that the evidence was not yet in on drugs. No one has ever believed illegal drug use could be eliminated, but there was a defensible view that prohibition could prevent more harm than it caused. Drug use is not a private act without consequences for others; even when legal, it incurs medical and other costs to society. A society that adopted an attitude of laissez-faire towards the drug habits of its citizens could find itself with higher numbers of users. There could be a risk of social abandonment, with those in poor communities being left to their fates.

These dangers have not disappeared, but the fact is that the costs of drug prohibition now far outweigh any possible benefits the policy may bring. It is time for a radical shift in policy. Full-scale legalisation, with the state intervening chiefly to regulate quality and provide education on the risks of drug use and care for those who have problems with the drugs they use, should now shape the agenda of drug law reform.