Lindsay Mitchell: What benefit incomes really look like

The welfare state is unsustainable economically, socially and morally.

The Green Party has just issued its election year Ending Poverty Plan. Supportive media reports tend to fixate on basic benefit rates. But these are just one component of benefit incomes. When politicians seek votes to solve a ‘problem’ their interest is always in casting it in the worst possible light. The Greens would have you believe that benefit incomes are at a meagre, barely subsistence level.

Here is data to help you make your own mind up.

Lindsay Mitchell: Benefit incomes - why it's not worth working

MSD have released a report on benefit incomes. I have long held that beneficiary advocates base their poverty pleading on the basic benefit rate, but those numbers are well under total incomes once the additional top-ups are included. Here is a selection of the graphs from the report:

Point of Order: Whoa there – the Govt’s Clean Car scheme has gone into overdrive

Leaving an unexpected fare (it seems) for taxpayers to pay

The Beehive’s on-line bulletin board today brings news of another Minister headed overseas for very important business, another Māori housing project getting under way with the help of millions of government dollars, and beneficiaries being enabled by our beneficent government to beat inflation.

The travel plans unveiled were those of Disarmament and Arms Control Minister Phil Twyford, who will lead New Zealand’s delegation to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations in New York.