Serfdom or Oz?

The Plight of the Welfare Beneficiary

New Zealand has tentatively introduced a "responsibility" policy with respect to (some) state beneficiaries.

A tough new policy that chops off welfare benefits for people with outstanding arrest warrants has netted more than 2400 cases since it came into force in July 2013.  The Ministry of Social Development says it suspended 22 NZ superannuation and veterans' pensions, and 2411 other benefits, in the first two and a half years of the new policy up to the end of last December. Suspensions have jumped from 75 a month in the first year of the new policy to 95 a month in the latest half-year. [NZ Herald]

Incidentally, we admire the reporter being right on the cutting edge of social commentary when he or she pronounces that this policy is tough.   One has an arrest warrant; one does not turn up and surrender to the police; state payments get cut until you do.  That's really, really tough.

The policy was part of a broader tightening of beneficiary obligations in July 2013 which also included drug tests for jobseekers and requirements for beneficiaries to enrol their children in preschool from age 3, ensure they attend school from age 5 or 6, enrol them with doctors and keep up with core health checks.

The approach being taken now is that welfare payments are part of a social contract.
 One must meet and maintain certain obligations in order to continue to receive welfare payments.  And the problem with this is . . .  ?  Well, the problem is obvious, isn't it?  Such a perverse social contract reduces people to the status of a serf.  It's plain as the nose on your face--at least to our intellectual betters, the Council for Civil Liberties.

Auckland barrister and Council for Civil Liberties spokesman Graeme Minchin said the tough policy seemed to be working.  "I have had people who have gone AWOL and then turned up, and it's been because of their benefits being cut," he said.

But he said the policy gave the state too much power over beneficiaries.  "The suspension of benefits for policing purposes contradicts the purposes of the [Social Security] Act and is a dangerous step in the direction of totalitarianism," he said. "It is an example which shows that beneficiaries are on the road to serfdom."

Beneficiaries are on the road to serfdom.  Readers will be aware that the noun, "serf" once applied to people entailed to the land, who owed to the landowner part of their labour and production, in exchange for living on the land.  However, we would mildly contend that if beneficiaries in New Zealand are on the road to serfdom, or slavery, everyone must be in a similar situation.  When the average joe goes to work in the morning, he is obligated to perform certain duties, tasks and carry out a defined set of responsibilities.  If he does not, he does not get paid.  The spokesman for civil liberties implies that this situation must also represent "the road to serfdom".

If the state beneficiary has obligations to perform certain duties and expectations in exchange for receiving a state benefit, he has joined the contractual world of all working people in the country.  If that constitutes a form of slavery, or being on "the road to serfdom", so be it.  However, only the most committed, doctrinaire Marxist would hold such a view.  Naturally, this begs questions about the what particular worldview Civil Liberties spokesman, Graeme Minchin clutches to his bosom.

We are confronted with other questions.  Is it the Council's view that all employed people in New Zealand are living under the thrall of serfdom?   Is it the Council's view that to be free, and off the road to serfdom, all employees in New Zealand should be paid whether they perform any work or not?  And if the Council believes (as we surely hope it does) that employees fulfilling obligations to employers according to the terms of their contract are not enslaved but are free men and women,  would the Council for Civil Liberties please explain why beneficiaries failing to fulfil obligations in order to receive an unearned benefit are not free, but are on the road to serfdom?

For our part, we acknowledge that state welfarism is now intergenerationally embedded into our society.  It will take generations to wash its stain away.  But we have to start somewhere.

The concept of welfare benefits being tied to a social contract--an explicit social contract, signed and executed by both state and beneficiary, which spells out the duties and obligations of the beneficiary in order to receive state payments--would be a very, very positive step forward.

The effect of the introduction of the most mild obligations and requirements upon state beneficiaries has been dramatic.

In response to another Official Information Act request, District Courts general manager Tony Fisher said outstanding arrest warrants declined from 11,373 at the end of June 2013 to 9600 a year later, 9547 last June and 9445 in December.

The number of arrest warrants issued also declined. But warrants still outstanding fell even faster, from 3.28 times the number of warrants issued in the year to June 2013 to 2.67 times the number issued in the last half of 2015.

This is not the road to serfdom.  It is the yellow brick road to the Wizard of Oz--whom, you recall, had a reputation for "fixing things up".