"Kerre, As a solo mum of two year-old twins I was recently offered a role for $96,000. I chose not to take it because the cost of living means I'd actually only be getting about a hundred extra dollars a week to what I am getting on the benefit. Something is very wrong with that scenario. Rent - and childcare if I work full-time - is $80,000 gross. So getting offered a job at $96,000 … financially, this single mum is better staying on a benefit. And what does that tell you?" *
I am assuming the texter is saying that a well-paying job, but not paying enough to attract her off a benefit, is confirmation of the extremely elevated cost of living. The answer to her rhetorical question is implicit. We are expected to agree and sympathise.
I would answer her last question rather differently. What her text tells me is this:
1/ She has no sense of gratitude or shame that other people are working so she doesn't have to
2/ She has no motivation to contribute to the economy
3/ She has no interest in 'cutting her cloth' to cope with the consequences of her personal decisions
4/ She has no apparent awareness that increasingly generous benefits are a factor fuelling inflation and the cost of living which she is currently so concerned about
Over twenty years ago now, I launched a petition to parliament asking for an inquiry into the DPB. A local newspaper wrote about the petition which provoked howls of outrage among beneficiaries. One lady took umbrage at my assertion that being raised on benefits was not good for children. She wrote to the editor saying her children had turned out fine. Indeed, her daughters were now raising their own children on the DPB!
This elicited a response I shall never forget and when in need of some sanity and solace I revisit it:
Here we are, a generation down the track, and it's not just the value of money that is subject to rampant inflation. So is the plague of entitlement.
*(NewstalkZB, Week on Demand, 30/6/23, 9:45am, at 6:00 in, https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-demand/week-on-demand/)
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE.
2/ She has no motivation to contribute to the economy
3/ She has no interest in 'cutting her cloth' to cope with the consequences of her personal decisions
4/ She has no apparent awareness that increasingly generous benefits are a factor fuelling inflation and the cost of living which she is currently so concerned about
Over twenty years ago now, I launched a petition to parliament asking for an inquiry into the DPB. A local newspaper wrote about the petition which provoked howls of outrage among beneficiaries. One lady took umbrage at my assertion that being raised on benefits was not good for children. She wrote to the editor saying her children had turned out fine. Indeed, her daughters were now raising their own children on the DPB!
This elicited a response I shall never forget and when in need of some sanity and solace I revisit it:
Here we are, a generation down the track, and it's not just the value of money that is subject to rampant inflation. So is the plague of entitlement.
*(NewstalkZB, Week on Demand, 30/6/23, 9:45am, at 6:00 in, https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-demand/week-on-demand/)
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE.
8 comments:
Don't forget, SUCCESSIVE governments have brought us to this end game.
I wonder how beneficiary expenditure compares with the typical working class family of the 1950s. I recall very plain meals, never ate out, no takewaways apart from occasional fish and chips, no bottled drinks, tee total, non smoking, an old car woefully uncapable of normal driving as then new models, vary rare trips beyond 200km return, no dog, cinema maybe 8 times a year, all home and section maintenance diy, no fridge, no washing machine. Without all the home cooking and laborious washing and with electric heating it beats me what non working solo mums do to fill the day.
But in this post Rogernomics era cannot blame persons for taking a strictly business like approach to how they spend their time.
If I had my time again I woulf come back as an attractive solo mum, provided I could gat a state house with a large workshop to while away the time in.
I was listening to a leighton smith show where he said that people should never fall into the trap of becoming dependent on the state, or something similar. He is right. Once they have you, you have lost your freedom. If they pay for everything, where is your dignity, sense of self worth and freedom of choice? Labour loves people like this woman who will have to vote for them to keep their lifestyle.
And me, Lindsay and K.White and Robert. I think a lot about what the welfare state has done for people's development. Are we stronger, more thoughtful, better related to one another? I'm not sure we are grateful- and gratitude, it has always seemed to me, is fundamental to life itself.
Successive governments trying hard to get re-elected have bribed people to vote for them by promising them easy money (welfare).
For any party to attempt to reverse this sad situation appears to be political suicide.
By giving easy money to people who can work but don't want to there is less money available to help people that do want to work but can't.
This is from Thomas Sowell and sums it up.
"In this era of fairness and social justice, what is your fair share of what someone else has worked for"?
In my family there was a strong sense of an old fashioned public service mentality combined with Christian values. Hence the quote from various sources but repeated by J.F. Kennedy was promoted. "Are you a politician (or a citizen) asking what your county can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country ? If you are the first then you are a parasite, if the second an oasis in the desert.
A parasite could be any greedy individual who uses others in society to selfishly build themselves up but contributes nothing back or actually damages others in society. This is a highly emotive and unpleasant term which I would not use to describe people but it helped me in public and private service to regulate my own behaviour.
Please note that the Dutch Govt is now apologizing for slavery by the Dutch back in the 1700s.
Where does this stop ?
Can we expect an apology anytime from the NZ bludgers who enslave us to pay for their choice of lifestyle ?
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