Benefits

[mashman]

Now there's a weasle-word.

It suits you.

a weasle-word ... uck foff, it's their choice to use their income in any way they choose

[BoristheBiter]

a weasle-word ... uck foff, it's their choice to use their income in any way they choose

I wouldn't call it a weasel word, just a poor choice of word.

[Winston001]

Ahh, now, that's a simple one. Charities are not about servicing the needs of them people they claim to be servicing. They are simply there to service their administrative overheads. If a tenth of the money collected to help the people a charity claims they are collecting for got to the people that need it in the form of services or money to enable access to services the world would be a better place.

As it stands the bastards need to be taxed into oblivion. Maybe then we'd be able to introduce some sort of support structure into the education system for the disabled thanks to an increased tax take that was ring fenced for the health and education requirements of the disabled.

That's a surprisingly disconsonant view from you Jim, I have to assume you have personal experience in mind.

I've been involved with charities for decades (unpaid) and its always hand to mouth. The bigger charities need to be run like a business these days in order to survive and that means employing staff. Trust me, volunteers just won't take on the risk and commitment anymore.

One charity I chair and do volunteer work for spends half its money on wages and administration. Initially this looked off until I learned of the amount of work involved keeping the accounts, organising projects, managing a second hand shop, bloody auditors etc. Not only that but we provide employment for people who would struggle to get a job elsewhere. Low literacy, health problems. Its humbling actually.

The point is that charities provide an unseen social service that most do not know about. For example severely disabled people in wheelchairs doing work that no-one else will give them a chance at.

[avgas]

What do you guys think if we changed from a benefit system to a scholarship one?

[Banditbandit]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
You say that tax dodgers (working but not paying tax) are bludgers but them on the dole (not working but taking money) aren't.

I thought you had a fucked up out look but that takes the cake.

Now .. where did I say those on the dole were not bludgers?

In some cases, yes, I think they are. There will be abusers in any ststrem. In other caes, no they are not ... they are between jobs and need a liottle help ...

But I don't believe I have ever stated that people on the dole are not bludgers ...

[Banditbandit]

Been away for a few weeks on urgent family business .. won't try to catch up ...

Regarding communism up until a few posts ago you were arguing that all workers were entitled to the same wage regardless of what job they were doing, now you say its not part of a communist system?

Hmmm . I am not a communist .. I share Marx' analysis, but not his solutions ... I'm a classic Anarchist (For those of you who want to read .. Rocker, Proudhon and Malatesta are my favourities)

I do think "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" .. now that does not mean that each person gets THE SAME ... nor is it necessarily part of a communist system that each person gets paid the same regardless of what job they do ... Marx never conceived that at all ...

I am actually attacking most of what people here believe communism is ... Like Avgas I would not live under such a system and given a violent communist revolution I would almost certainly take up arms against it ...

But most of you here are sucked in by the Capitalist propoganda about what Communism is ... you are just as enslaved as China .. just by a different mechanism ...

Free your minds people .. or you will never be truly free

[mashman]

What do you guys think if we changed from a benefit system to a scholarship one?

Vas? +chars

[Coolz]

I once read a book called The Mountain Men of Borneo. Written by an anthropologist who lived with the tribe for a couple of years. These people had a good social structure,high moral standards and respect for each other.They were all healthy and prosperous and lived in harmony untill one season the rain never came and the crops died. The tribe grew hungry and started quarrelling and disrespecting each other.Some got sick and were not cared for by the others. Stealing and other petty crime, previously unheard of, started to happen. Soon it turned to major crime, robbery,murder, leading to a complete deteriation of all social and moral standards.When the rain finally came and the soil was again furtile, nobody returned to work, they had fallen to far into decline. This was a true story. What I take from this is that it is easy to hold the moral high ground when you have a job and a few dollars in the bank. What would happen if you took all the beneficiaries and made them millionares, and made all the millionares beneficiaries? I think the newly rich would become honest respected members of society and the newly poor would conive,steal and backstab to survive. What we need in this country is one hundred percent employment. Everyone has the right to work. We need to cut profits and raise wages. Create jobs and train people for them. And stop bringing in imigrants to do the menial jobs for pay less than the dole. Surely this is achievable in the twentyfirst century in Godzone.

[Winston001]

Everyone has the right to work. We need to cut profits and raise wages. Create jobs and train people for them. And stop bringing in immigrants to do the menial jobs for pay less than the dole.

Good post and just picking up one piece.

In a social democracy such as NZ (and most of the 40 OECD countries) every citizen has the right to work. Not so in Islamic nations where women are subservient etc.

Cut profits? Honestly? New Zealand businesses struggle even in the good times. Cutting profits would simply encourage people to shut down and work for wages. Or emigrate to Australia.

Immigrants are human beings. Shouldn't they have the right to work? Indeed, don't people in third world countries willing to earn 50c/hr have the same right to work as you and I? For 300 million in India that is way above a survivable wage.

Governments have tried to create work schemes in all sorts of guises ever since Franklin D Roosevelt introduced the New Deal in 1933. That worked but only at that time and place.

If it was easy, all jobs would be created by governments. They aren't.

[Coolz]

Goverments operate on a policy of having a 5% unemployment pool. This available labour pool keeps wages down and inflation under control. A few years ago there was a shortage of truck drivers. Instead of making wages more attractive or encouraging and training unemployed, drivers were bought in from overseas. I dont see things like this as being good for the country in the long run.

[rainman]

Cut profits? Honestly? New Zealand businesses struggle even in the good times.

More an artefact of our historical idiocy than anything else, but agree, this is one reason why the OWS stuff doesn't translate well into smaller places. The principle behind it is sound, however - capitalism destroys the commons and impoverishes the many(99%)/enriches the few(1%), by design. But maybe this belongs on the other thread...

Immigrants are human beings. Shouldn't they have the right to work?

Thanks, I certainly think so. Although at this stage, having worked every day for the last 6 weeks, I'd like the right to rest!

I'm always fascinated by this part of the broader globalism debate. Fundamentally, it's a defense of benefits and the welfare state, wider inequality, and an extra dose of race to the bottom. These tend not to be views endorsed by its proponents, however.

If we move the jobs to the poor third-worlders, then we deprive the locals of those opportunities, thereby reducing their likely income and in many cases needing to supplement it with welfare. Sure, some will find new opportunities and build new local industries but that happens anyway, and the opportunity, capacity and capability constraints implicit in any society mean that this can't fully compensate for the "loss". As you point out, it's hard to create sustainable jobs - much harder than destroying or outsourcing them.

And, let's be honest, some people just aren't entrepreneurs and won't be no matter how hard they try. Sure, we can't all be workers in a capitalist economy, but we can't all be entrepreneurs either. (And aspiring to be a amorphous mass of "free individuals" anarcho-capitalists that trade amongst ourselves is as idealistic as libertarian socialism. Not happening in any timeframe worth talking about).

But those that do outsource labour (the 1% of recent rhetoric) get the principal benefit of this mechanism. I'd love to have the time to do a rigorous comparison of weighted global consumer prices vs global wages, but I doubt the result would surprise anyone. Prices drop a little, wages a lot. Welfare bills go up. Inequality increases. (The effects of environmental impact in the third-world recipient countries also need to be built into a proper analysis, I=PAT and all that - but moving on).

This is an inescapable consequence of the system we operate - welfare dependency and inequality (and environmental destruction) happen directly because of global capitalism. These are entirely expected outcomes.

So I think you have two choices if you are to be consistent:
1. If you like the system we have, then you need to defend all of it - inequality and welfare included. No whining about lazy dole bludgers, no timid "well maybe a bit of inequality is kinda OK". No vague nods to environmental issues.
2. If you don't like the consequences, you need to change the system.

Can't have it both ways.

[rainman]

Goverments operate on a policy of having a 5% unemployment pool. This available labour pool keeps wages down and inflation under control. A few years ago there was a shortage of truck drivers. Instead of making wages more attractive or encouraging and training unemployed, drivers were bought in from overseas. I dont see things like this as being good for the country in the long run.

Likewise. Also things like this: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/indu...eign-fishermen

[Winston001]

Governments operate on a policy of having a 5% unemployment pool.

No they don't.

[FJRider]

Goverments operate on a policy of having a 5% unemployment pool. This available labour pool keeps wages down and inflation under control. A few years ago there was a shortage of truck drivers. Instead of making wages more attractive or encouraging and training unemployed, drivers were bought in from overseas. I dont see things like this as being good for the country in the long run.

Bullshit .... If wages were made "more attractive" production costs would increase ... to the point where it's cheaper to buy the same thing overseas ... even WITH shipping costs..

Oh wait ... they're there now .....

Lower the wages ... a bigger tax take ... (more than the Dole would) more money in ciculation/being spent ... everything NZ made would be cheaper ...

Just imaging the benefits (for want of a better word) we ALL would have ... if ALL the welfare money was spent on education AND medical care ...

[Winston001]

If we move the jobs to the poor third-worlders, then we deprive the locals of those opportunities, thereby reducing their likely income and in many cases needing to supplement it with welfare.

Interesting points and I particularly agree with you regarding shifting environmental degradation to poorer countries while we enjoy the clean and green.

As for the above, how do we explain Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland...and Australia?

Finland is an icebound spot of land at the top of the world and no rational person would pick it to have a strong economy. Switzerland is a mountainous land-locked country - they don't even have any shipping ports. And they don't have an annual handout of Nazi gold despite popular belief.