Benefits aren’t designed to give recipients a very good living for a very good reason – that would be a disincentive to independence and mean low income working people were little, if any better off as wage earners than they’d be on benefits.
The ones who manage a two-year holiday on the dole are the exception and even those of us with Presbyterian upbringings who’ve had some experience of living on a very low income would find it difficult to manage on a benefit for long.
Why then do some people see benefits not as temporary assistance through a bad patch, but a long term solution?
The most compelling explanation for the marked shift in the fortunes of the poor is that they continued to respond, as they always had, to the world as they found it, but that we — meaning the not-poor and un-disadvantaged — had changed the rules of their world. Not of our world, just of theirs. The first effect of the new rules was to make it profitable for the poor to behave in the short term in ways that were destructive in the long term. Their second effect was to mask these long-term losses — to subsidize irretrievable mistakes. We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape from poverty, and inadvertently built a trap. – Charles Murray, Losing Ground, p. 9
This is why the government is aiming to encourage those beneficiaries who could work to do so. It is in the best long-term interests of beneficiaries and the country to have more people independent.
That doesn’t mean it will be easy.
The job market is tight and many unemployed are unskilled. Some would find it difficult to juggle child care and work and might find the cost of child care took too much of their wages.
It might well cost more in the short term to help people into work than to have them on benefits but if it can be done it will be worth it for them, and the rest of us, in the long run.
Homepaddock 
Wonder how you can get skilled people when at the very time that many need to begin learning those skills they are disenfranchised from the work place by legislation that removes their human rights as a young person to negotiate with an employer for wages that reflect their low level of skills that go hand in hand with their age.
I am of course refering to that legislation that removed the rights of young people to enjoy the advantages of Youth Rates. As an employer of more than 40 years who has spent most of that time taking in and training young people I will never pay full adult rates to a 16 year old. Its simply not viable and so my work now goes to China. Just like everyone else’s.
Market place reality.
Now Uncle Bill is concerned about youth unemployment. Well he had his chance to out it right and voted no along with all his other whipped up sycophantic fellow travelers including the Greens and the Maori’s and the Labour Party.
Idiots in the House.
ACT were the sponsors of the Bill to put this right and were the only politicians to vote for the right thing. All young voters should vote ACT and their parents as well.
LikeLike
Unfortunately the Labour Party and their economically illiterate supporters continue with the mistaken belief that wage levels have nothing in common with the “value” or the “productive result” of the activity that gains the rewards as wages.
They cynically ignore the easily understood correlation between youth unemployment and the current minimum wage so clearly described by Robert above and one of my disappointments with the current administration was their inexplicable failure to even allow Sir Roger Douglas’s legislative attempt to even get some sunlight by allowing select committee hearings on it.
I accept that $13 dollars an hour has some negative aspects but some tasks that never get addressed can be economically
viable with low skill/training, clothing and travel costs and when payment in “kind” components are added in are very rewarding at the end of the day. For example helping busy, elderly and other time or physically challenged employers with housework,gardening, child/pet minding, driving tasks. Of course such work is seen by socialists as exploitive, menial or some other denigrating designation when in fact can be very satisfactory for both parties but at present unlawful.
LikeLike
Cost of childcare cannot be a reason for people to refuse work.
WINZ pays a childcare subsidy (to preschools, after school care providers, holiday progammes etc) for parents whose income is below certain levels, as listed below. The parent applies in the name of each child, and the subsidy is paid directly to the childcare centre.
1 child parent income less than $1200 per week
2 children parent income less than $1380 per week
3 children parent income less than $1540 per week
Subsidy is $3.77 per hour, or $188.50 for a 50 hour week
If a parent (or parents) earn more than those amounts listed above, the subsidy decreases until the cut off point at:
1 child: parent earning $1400 per week
2 children: parent earning $1600 per week
3 children: parent earning $1800 per week
I wish more people on the right knew about this subsidy, as I feel that “understanding” that childcare is a reasonable excuse not to work is not helpful, especially since it’s not even true – childcare is effectively free.
LikeLike
The problem once again is one that is caused by government. Every government funded position destroys one in the private sector. Simple concept to understand. I pay tax, rates, GST what have you, this destroys my choices & my chances of painting my roof or my fence. This is OK if I instead pay a tax collector or a policeman or soldier or a teacher, but in some cases, I help to fund the dole. So the unemployed worker goes on the dole. A very simplified example of the harm governments do. And national is a good example of Big Government. Any beneficial policy attributed to National would be too little, too late.
LikeLike
Robert & GD – I agree with the need for youth wages.
Hollyfield – thanks, child care subsidies like that would make a big difference.
Peter – National is doing its best to reduce the size, and burden, of government.
LikeLike
Peter – National is doing its best to reduce the size, and burden, of government.
No its not. It is frightened of frightening the voters.
They have no plan to do this hand in hand with building business.
Their wage subsidy is short term and I confess the making good use of it to train new workers but at the end of 6 months how many are moved on? None in my case but I now have to pay $13 per hour for work that I should get done for $10 by a Junior.
Why would yopu think Bankers and Lawyers and University grads would have any clue at all what manufacturing and science need?
They don’t and that’s the problem.
LikeLike