We have more good news from the trenches. The battle against being enslaved to welfare has not only been joined, but--for the moment--is being won in New Zealand. The present government has been quietly opening up a number of fronts in the war against welfare benefits as a human right. The common theme in this battle is to reject the notion of welfare as a lifestyle choice.
As in the United States under the Clinton administration, the driver is not ideological (at least, not overtly so). Rather it is part of the wider effort to get government spending under control and bring the fiscal situation back into surplus--then, eventually, into government debt reduction. Therefore, welfare needs to be discriminatory--delivered to those who really need it, not to those who would prefer it as their chosen lifestyle. This, from the NZ Herald:
Numbers on sole parent support have plunged by 8600, or 10 per cent, in the year to March. It is the biggest drop in a single year since the benefit - previously known as the domestic purposes benefit, or DPB - was created in 1974. Sole parent support is now being paid to 75,844 sole parents, fewer than in any year in the DPB's history since 1988.Respondents in the United States have testified that the President's "you have to get a job" refrain was psychologically powerful in moving them off welfare into work. Public expectation is a powerful incentive. It can either work for you or against you. In decades and times when the "public expectation" is that you are a victim owed help, welfare rolls expand. When "official" policy and expectation is that you are obligated to get a job, the reverse happens. But it helps to have other stars aligned. A growing demand for labour and unfilled job positions help significantly.
In New Zealand we have both a government committed to reducing or removing welfare benefits when the emergency or temporary need has passed, coupled with a growing job market. The impact in twelve months has been remarkable. For time immemorial the Left has asserted there are no "bludgers" on welfare roles. Everyone on welfare deserves to be there--and stay there--by definition. This has been a theological fixation. Now, the Left has been strangely--but not surprisingly--silent. The only criticism remaining would be for the Left to argue that work is worse than welfare, a hardship or affliction, if you will, which would be guaranteed to arouse wrath amongst the electorate like nothing else. So silence, in this case, is understandable, the better part of valour.
We want to underscore how powerful the setting of official expectations, as manifest via welfare rules, is.
A single parents' group says "a complete change of mindset" has helped reduce the number of people on the sole parent benefit to the lowest level in more than 20 years. . . .Auckland Single Parents Trust founder Julie Whitehouse said tighter rules, which require sole parents to look for part-time work when their youngest child turns 5 and fulltime work when that child turns 14, had completely changed attitudes. "It's amazing," she said. "It's so good that I can't even get them to volunteer time. The whole mindset has changed."We are also aware that the government has helped create a culture of job-seeking at the welfare agencies, by requiring that beneficiaries attend courses to prepare them for work and to help them apply appropriately for jobs. This has fostered a culture of job-seeking. "Everyone" is engaged in it, so it becomes a "cool" activity. This is the carrot. The stick is that if a beneficiary does not participate, his or her benefit is reduced.
Asked how many of her 580 members now had jobs, she said: "The shift is incredible, I'm almost tempted to say 100 per cent - it really is big. All the attitudes changed. Everybody knew that when your child is 5 you have to go to work."
Work is not a curse. It is a privilege and an honour. True, work was cursed as a result of the Fall, but the Scriptures make clear this curse made the whole enterprise more difficult, not intrinsically evil. The same applied to childbearing. Work itself is no more a curse than the bearing of children. Having said that, it is not surprising that Unbelief has at times actually declared both to be intrinsically evil and harmful and degrading. But these are the Devil's lies. As always with him, the actual opposite is the truth.
The wider ramifications of people moving off beneficiary rolls into paid employment will be considerable. May it live long, and prosper.
No comments:
Post a Comment