Tag Archive for 'beneficiaries'

Bludgin’ ain’t so easy

Published
by
Guest post
on December 18, 2008
in welfare
. 46 Comments

So, I’m out of work. I was employed on a contract and when it came up for renewal the boss told me business is too tight, have to let me go. It wasn’t their fault and they were pretty good about it. For the first few weeks I just looked for work but there’s not much going so I thought I better get on the dole. That’s what it’s there for.

I’ll tell you what though, anyone who reckons that its easy to get on the dole and there’s heaps of bludgers hasn’t ever tried it. Firstly you have to go along to this seminar about how to get a job. I had to wait 3 weeks before I could get into one of those seminars. Then I had to get a meeting with a case manager, take along all these forms and hopefully get on the benefit. But seems I’m not the only one in this situation. I was going to have to wait until February to get meeting at the nearest WINZ office. I managed to get a meeting at an office in another suburb instead just 3 weeks later. That was last week. All my papers were in order and I was accepted. Got my first dole payment. After tax, it’s $184. Not much left after $150 a week in rent. I’m lucky to have some savings to get by on but you’ve got to worry about others less fortunate.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re lucky to have benefits to keep us going when we fall on tough times. Just don’t go thinking that people like me are bludgers. It isn’t easy to get the dole and it sure isn’t easy to try to live on it. It’s great to have it while you need it but, like most other people on benefits, I’ll be keen to get work as soon as possible.

- Ben the wannabe worker

Ambitious for beneficiary-bashing

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on August 11, 2008
in benefits, john key, national and same old national
. 39 Comments

That nice man, Mr Key, the one who says the old Left/Right divide is over, that he’s a new man with a new (ambitious) vision for New Zealand has rolled out an unprecedented and exciting policy today: beneficiary bashing.

At present, we have a world-leading benefit system. By investing in staff, WINZ has become more than a cheque-issuing service, it actively helps people into training and into work when those are appropriate choices given individual circumstances - the results speak for themselves. National will abolish that and instead (in a move one could almost term ’Nanny State’) implement a one-size-fits-all programme, requiring all people on the DPB to enter work or training training once their youngest child reaches 6. A couple of issues off the top of my head: the DPB gives women the freedom to leave abusive situations - they can have the money and time to raise their children alone, National’s policy will be a barrier to that if the children are over 6; a person on the DPB doesn’t necessarily need skills training; DPB numbers are falling from 113,000 in 1998 to 96,000 today; 60% of DPB recipients are caring for a child under 6; many recipients are already in skills training or work (20% have some income on top of their DPB) .

Now, even if you do think there are legions of women who are bludgers and would rather raise a kid on $250 a week than work, there’s the rather serious problem that National’s previous attempts at beneficiary bashing have done nothing to reduce benefit numbers and expenditure. (sources: RBNZ, Stats, MSD)

It’s important to remember, this policy isn’t really about making a better benefit system, it’s about whipping up anti-beneficiary sentiment (’if it weren’t for them, I could have bigger tax cuts!’) to get votes. Like all National’s policy, at least the stuff it has made public, this beneficiary bashing is an election strategy, not a governing strategy.

[PS. It was only a matter of time before some unimaginative hack referred to the secret agenda recording as 'recorder-gate' or 'cocktail-gate'. Tracy Watkins didn't disappoint, any more than usual.]

Unemployment to 3.9%

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on August 7, 2008
in benefits, social issues and workers' rights
. 14 Comments

Unemployment rose again last quarter but remains under 4%. It has now been under 4% for 16 of the last 17 quarters. Interestingly, the number of employed people also increased last quarter but more people came into the workforce who were previously not looking for work. So, workforce participation grew faster than employment grew, meaning more people were officially unemployed, even though more people had jobs. Fun with numbers, people :)

The number of unemployment beneficiaries is at a record low. There are just 17,710 people on the unemployment benefit now and 70% have been on the UB less than a year*.

 

[source]

[* to head off the tired old claims: overall working age benefit numbers continue to fall, down 1% last year, even as the working age population grew 1%. The portion of adults on a benefit fell from 9.3% to 9.1% in the last year. It was 16% in 1999]

Report shows incomes up, inequality down

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on July 4, 2008
in labour, national, social issues and workers' rights
. 32 Comments

The MSD’s Incomes Report provides a wealth of information. For instance, here’s how the mean and median household incomes have moved since 1982.

Households suffered a massive erosion of income during the rightwing revolution from 1984 to the late 1990s. The leftwing governments since 1999 put that to a stop that. Now, incomes have regained and grown rapidly past those 1982 levels.

And during the period of increased incomes since 2001, most of the benefit has gone to middle and low income families. As you can see, it is the 4 lower-income deciles with the largest % increase in income (although the lowest decile, beneficiaries, has been left behind).

Compare that to what happened to incomes between 1988 and 2001. Under National, the poor really did get poorer and a few at the top got much richer, thanks to lower taxes on the rich, stagnant wages, and slashed benefits.

This graph shows how many times larger the 80th percentile income is than the 20th percentile. The higher the number - the wider the gap between rich and poor. (AHC and BHC are just two different ways of calculating the gap). As you can see the gap between rich and poor exploded during the rightwing revolution and it took some time before policies countering that took effect but we are now moving, slowly, back towards a more equitable situation.

But, remember, it’s still far from equal, here is the portion of total national income, by income deciles. The top 10% have a combined income higher than the bottom 45% combined. Not exactly a socialist utopia.

(Full size graphs)

Poverty falls, more to be done

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on July 4, 2008
in labour and social issues
. 34 Comments

13% of people are living in poverty in New Zealand (defined as less than 60% of the median income, less than $40K a year for a household, $16K for an individual) compared with 17% in 2004 and 23% in 1994.

Child poverty dropped 7% between 2004 and 2007. Since the Government came to power it has reduced the percentage of children living in poverty fell from nearly 36% in 1994 to 16%.

Working for Families is the main reason for the decrease since 2004 because it significantly increases after-tax incomes for low-income families with children where the parents work. Now, virtually the only children living in poverty are the children of beneficiaries. Labour must act to lift incomes for those families if it is to eliminate child poverty in New Zealand, which is this Government’s laudable goal.

Unquestionably, Labour has done well on poverty and incomes, restoring poverty to the low levels that existed before the disaster of the rightwing revolution in the 1980s and 1990s. A full employment policy, higher minimum wage, and Working for Families have made a real difference to hundreds of thousands of our poorer families. The worry is that all this progress will be undone, as it was in the 1990s, if National wins the election.

[Update: thanks to the alert reader helped raise the standard of The Standard by emailing us after noticing I'd accidently used the BHC numbers for the child poverty graph but quoted the AHC numbers in the text. I've fixed the graph.]

Know your Nat: Judith Collins

Published
by
Steve Pierson
on April 30, 2008
in families and same old national
. 44 Comments

If National were the Government, Judith Collins would be Social Services Minister. That should be enough to send shudders down the spine of anyone who is worried about ensuring there is a safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society. Collins is rabidly anti the welfare state and a nasty piece of work. Whereas her predecessor as National’s Welfare spokesperson, Katherine Rich said “I’m not your DPB-bashing sort of person…most of the people I meet on the DPB are pretty motivated people who have the same dreams and aspirations as the rest of us. Beneficiary bashing is a most unsatisfactory practice. It doesn’t really take you anywhere”, Collins agrees with Key who spoke of women “breeding for a business”

Collins’ latest attack on our most vulnerable citizens, “Labour gives up on long-term jobless”, claims 60,000 people have been getting benefits for being “jobless” for more than ten years. She’s being deceptive and she knows it. Yes, 60,000 people, 2.3% of adults, have been getting benefits for 10 or more years. But 38,000 of them are invalids – that is, they have an ongoing physical or mental disability that prevents them from being part of the workforce. Of the rest, 16,000 are parents raising kids on the DPB, that’s not a task that’s over within a couple of years. 5,000 have a long-term sickness. Only 1,000 are on the unemployment benefit, and less than 300 have been on the unemployment benefit for the whole 10 years [data here].

What Collins doesn’t want you to know, because it wrecks her anti-welfare state argument, is that the number of long-term beneficiaries is decreasing rapidly (down 20% since December 2003).


A day after a report reveals that the only children left living in poverty in New Zealand are in beneficiary households and the Minister says we should aim to eliminate child poverty, all National can come up with is more hollow beneficiary bashing. Pathetic.