Hard News: "Because we can"
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Do the numbers make more sense if you include sickness and/or superannuation?
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Has Lindsay Mitchell explained it in Gordon Campbell's comments section, difference between "continuous" and "average all-up duration" as she calls it ?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Do the numbers make more sense if you include sickness and/or superannuation?
Definitely not super -- that's not among the "main benefits". It possibly relates to invalid benefits, but there are only 83,000 of those, and they definitely haven't all been in receipt for 10+ years. They're also not to be subject to the sanctions the government is to pursue, so it's misleading to imply that they will.
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I'm STILL waiting to see what firm numbers there are on who is "ripping off" the welfare system. There is much talk around targeting those who breed on the system and use social welfare as their lifestyle choice but no-one, ever, to my knowledge has ever quantified just how many there are.
Bullshit politicking.
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Bennett said, "Because we can", Obama said, "Yes, we can!", but I think their meaning was different. <ashamed for NZ>
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Richard Aston, in reply to
Not really Ben - I am trying to work though them now but the answer given by the Minister... "161,000 people have been on for at least five of the last 10 (and) 139,000 for at least 10 years." was presumably in response to the questions about parents on benefits and therefore would include all main benefits except Super .
Total benefit numbers are 320,000 so this means 50% (161000) of these are both parents and have been on benefits for more than 5 yrs .
Seems really high to me and begs the question , how many actual Parents are on benefits of all kinds ( except super) ? The how many parents of young children are on benefits. -
The question I'm asking is where the hell did Paula Bennett get those numbers? Was she honestly mistaken in mixing up different sets of figures? Or...?
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I'm not the only one to think the $78bn cited in the Taylor Fry report has 'big lie' written all over it.
If worst comes to worst and tent cities or shantytowns spring up, there's already a name for them:
Bennettvilles.
And in Canada, there's another Bennett that became infamous during the Great Depression.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Bennettvilles.
Pullya Benefitville
The opposition is angry in the House today with regard Hekia Parata School closures in Chch. -
I’m trying to get a context for those numbers quoted on Nine to Noon.
Over here MSD says there are 234,632 children ( aged 0 -18 ) “dependent on recipients of a main benefit” . The average family size in NZ is around 2.2 so thats 106,600 families dependant on a benefit, in whole or part. Considering a fair portion are solo parents it would be a stretch to double that figure to get the number of parents but I’d gues its less than 150 – 170,000 parents on all main benefits. Seems like pretty well all of them have been on benefits forever . -
Russell Brown, in reply to
Considering a fair portion are solo parents it would be a stretch to double that figure to get the number of parents but I’d gues its less than 150 – 170,000 parents on all main benefits. Seems like pretty well all of them have been on benefits forever .
Which they quite clearly haven't. Has she juiced it up by counting the children of beneficiaries too? Or has she just made it up?
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For someone with more time than me: the MSD media release about the Taylor-Fry report has downloadable documents that may have some of the answers about numbers.
Or Richard, the answers should be easier for you to get than the rest of us. :)
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Bennett had her patsy question about the restructuring of categories for beneficiaries asked today in question time and she said the UB will go up to about 135,000 as she includes those on a sickness benefit and those on the dpb with youngest children 14 years or over. The new sole parent support will go down to about 88,000 because its got parents with kids 14 or younger, so totally confused as to where the ones with 14 year olds are categorized but she also got asked about benefit cuts from Jacinda Ardern and managed to add now that they wont target those who have no opening for an early childhood programme so some kids are safe... for now
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Sacha, in reply to
For instance, this from p5 of the 'Key findings and background facts' doc might be relevant - sounds a bit like cumes:
Taylor Fry uses a sum of all beneficiaries within a benefit quarter instead of the numbers at a point time within the quarter
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I can't square this circle without a Ph.D. in Cthulhuian geometry, but here's something to distract y'all. Remember: We can-can-can!
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Sacha, in reply to
where the ones with 14 year olds are categorized
I suspect beneficiaries with children over that age will be moved onto the Job-Seeker benefit.
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Definitely not super -- that's not among the "main benefits"
Super is, of course, five times more expensive than the next benefit category. But it's for old people, who are considered Us, not Them.
See, the demonization of beneficiaries serves several purposes to our rulers:
- generating an underclass such that the "mainstream" have somebody to look down on, a bit like Afrikaaners in apartheid South Africa
- enabling the government to appear on the side of the "mainstream" and against the feared and hated Other
- ensuring business owners have a pool of cheap, compliant labour who need to work or starve -
Has Lindsay Mitchell explained it in Gordon Campbell's comments section, difference between "continuous" and "average all-up duration" as she calls it ?
Maybe. MSD reported just over half of DPB recipients in a 10-year period had been supported by a main benefit for 80% of the period observed (said period apparently not being 10 years in every case). But if you call it around 8 years out of the 10, that still doesn't mean 8 continuous years, just 8 years total. I clocked up around 13 months on benefits over a 2-year period when I was younger, but was never on one for longer than a few months - so I was either on a benefit for over half the period in question, or only ever briefly on a benefit, depending on how it suits you to juke the stats.
Even taking that into account, it strains credibility that 43% of beneficiaries have been on one for 10 years continuously - that's got to be an error, surely.
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Wait so they're targeting beneficiaries because beneficiaries come into the offices all the time to get help? But... the ones who come in don't need to be targeted with sanctions, because they're coming in to get help already and being proactive. It's the mythical hordes that aren't being proactive that they keep going on about, the ones that don't come into the offices... just like WFF recipients don't.
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Richard Aston, in reply to
Or Richard, the answers should be easier for you to get than the rest of us. :)
???
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Well, that explains how the government might help. It doesn't answer the moral question of why it's proper to threaten beneficiaries with financial sanctions for the good of their children, but not WFF recipients. It would be no more difficult to make WFF support conditional in the same way as the benefits will be now. It would simply be vastly less popular.
If you are getting WFF you are not in regular contact with social welfare and you have independent sources of income, the government can't easily find out what you are doing or effectively threaten your income.
It would be much more expensive and vastly less effective.
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I vote for made it up on the basis of the evidence till this point in the thread.
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Isn't this a job for Keith Ng?
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Sacha, in reply to
it's all relative
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Alec Morgan, in reply to
Paula Bennett has acquired the most (around 15) derogative nicknames “Benefat, Pullya Benefit, Puller Benefit” etc. plus Sophie’s, for some years for any minister bar the ‘Prime Mincer’.
Can that dislike for the face of legislating away genuine support for vulnerable kiwis be turned into action? AAAP had a go today at Bennie HQ! And the rest of us should join in.
Beneficiaries of all kinds are not “others” they are kiwis, their kids are kiwi kids. What happened to “we take care of our own”? Would beneficiaries such as Nat. Super and WFF recipients like to be zapped like “prawns” in the movie “District 9” as Bennett and Rebstock seem intent on?
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