Teen Mothers and Positive Results

Intelligent Welfare, Prudent Interventions

And now for some good news.  One of the outstanding successes of the present NZ Government is the way it has been able to reduce welfare rolls.  Here is the latest success:  

The number of teen mothers on welfare has more than halved since 2009, the Government says.  There were 1836 teenage mums on "main" benefits at the end of last year, down from 4263 in 2009 - a fall of 57 per cent.

Social Development Minister Anne Tolley said teen parents had some of the highest lifetime costs of any group on welfare. On average, they spent more than 17 years on welfare.  "If we can give young mums opportunities to be independent and successful then that will mean better lives for their children," she said.  "We know that kids who grow up in benefit-dependent homes are more likely to go on to a benefit, are more likely to be notified to CYF and are less likely to achieve NCEA Level 2."

Tolley credited the reduction to the Government's Youth Service, which supports young solo parents in job training, education, budgeting and parenting.  An additional $41 million was invested in the service last year to extend it to 19-year-olds.  [NZ Herald]

There have been some remarkable effects demonstrated in countries where a concerted effort has been made to reduce people on welfare rolls.

A Quiet Revolution

Good News Day

It's not very often you see press releases like the one below.  We suggest a good dose of savouring the moment might be in order.

5,000 More People Independent of Benefits

Thursday, 21 July 2016, 10:19 am
Press Release: New Zealand Government

Hon Jo Goodhew
Acting Minister for Social Development 21 July 2016

Acting Social Development Minister Jo Goodhew says the number of people receiving a main benefit has continued to fall year on year, with the latest figures the lowest for any June quarter since 2008. “The number of people receiving a main benefit has fallen by 5,172 (or 1.8 per cent) in the last 12 months, with those on Sole Parent Support continuing to drive the strong downward trend,” Mrs Goodhew says.  [Emphasis, ours]

“This is the first quarter since the $790 million Child Hardship Package came into effect, raising benefit rates by $25 a week after tax for those with dependent children, and increasing obligations for sole parents.  [Emphasis, ours]   “Sole Parents have shown they are willing and able to move into independence, with a reduction of 965 in the last quarter, or 3,818 in the last year in the numbers receiving Sole Parent Support.

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.

You Get More of What You Pay For

Subsidising Criminal Gangs

Gangs, criminal gangs, are a real problem in New Zealand.  They have now been around long enough that they are creating inter-generational problems.  Officials have started  researching the cycle of violence and criminal behaviour that moves from one generation to another.  Most of this stuff is what everyone really suspected or expected, but measuring and quantifying is very useful.

Firstly, it shows that the taxpayers subsidise gangs and virtually fund their continuing existence.  The old adage has it, What you pay for, you get more of.  To the extent that society (the taxpayer) funds and supports gangs and gang members is the extent to which gangs and gang culture will always be with us.

Scepticism Over Poverty Measures

Poverty is A Wax Nose

Every few months we in New Zealand are confronted with the "reality" of poverty in New Zealand.  The latest is a report from the Child Commissioner on the rates of child poverty--that is, children living in poverty.   It's got to the stage where few people take such confrontations seriously any more.  

We are pretty confident that actual poverty exists in New Zealand.  We are very confident that child poverty most certainly exists.  Here is a case in point:

An Auckland mother who kept her toddlers in a cockroach-infested house has pleaded guilty to failing to keep a safe and hygienic living environment for her children.  The woman appeared for sentence on Monday though she was granted a discharge without conviction after a judge found a criminal record would prevent her from seeing her children again.

The North Shore woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her children, earlier pleaded guilty to two charges of failing to discharge a legal duty, namely keeping a safe and hygienic living environment for her children. . . . Police arrived to find dozens of dirty nappies on the floor, hundreds of cockroaches, rancid dishes, only one working light, and little food- some which had been left to rot and was covered in maggots.  By way of explanation, the mother had told police that she knew the house was a mess but that she was too busy to clean it because she spent nights at a local hospital, where Judge Philippa Cunningham said "ironically" she worked as a cleaner.

What we are deeply sceptical about, however, is relative measures of poverty.

NZ Welfare Reforms Roll On

More, Please . . .

In the realm of social welfare, there are some good things happening in New Zealand.  Whilst it will probably not survive the inevitable return of the Left to government in New Zealand, the following report makes very encouraging reading.  If only we could have thirty years of this, many of our present social problems and ills would be ameliorated.

A Cautionary Tale

Obese on the Taxpayers' Dime

They say that sunlight is the best disinfectant.  Sadly the sunlight is not found too often on the pages and screens of the archaic media.  So, letting the searchlight shine has become a responsibility of the new media.  Here is the latest thrust and parry.

The NZ government has been trying to move the delivery of social services away from bureaucrats and government ministries to the private sector.  The government is attempting to recast its role to be funder and auditor, with the delivery of services contracted out to the private sector.  The rationale behind this change is that historically government bureaucracies have failed systematically and repeatedly to deliver services efficiently.  After all, in this country we have seen  a nationalised train company employing 18,000 people, largely to shuffle paper, not trains.  But more "employees" were being added by the day to help keep the country's unemployed numbers down.  In other words, the train business had become an arm of social welfare services.  [See Richard Prebble's account in I've Been Thinking (Auckland: Seaview Publishing, 1996)]

Silver Spoons are Few and Far Between

Life is Hard

The New Zealand government has trumpeted another decline in beneficiary numbers.  This is good news.

Social Development Minister Anne Tolley said today the 309,145 people on benefit at the end of the December 2014 quarter was 12,700 fewer than last year.  "This is the lowest December quarter since 2008 and the third consecutive quarter with such record lows," Tolley says.  Numbers on the Jobseeker Support benefit had fallen by more than 5500 since last year and had declined consistently since 2010, even as the overall working age population increased. [Stuff]

There is a peculiar world-view which takes great heart from permanently increasing beneficiary numbers--and the emergence of a class of perpetually unemployed.  It celebrates this as evidence of the success of government welfare programmes and of the central importance of the government in everyones' lives.  It is offered as a hallmark of an advanced, civilised society . . . until the "house that Jack built" runs out of citizens' money and the cards tumble down.  Politicians love to be doing "good things" with your money to justify their existence and ratchet up their ratings on the meter of self-importance.  The unintended consequences, however, are inevitable and very painful.

But for the most part people see reducing welfare rolls as very positive--for all concerned.  But not all.

Deserving Poor

The Salvation Army Has Got It Right

Christians talk about helping the deserving poor.  It is true that such a qualification as "deserving" can cover up an awful lot of unkindness, coldness and uncharitable hardness of heart.  You can always find some reason or other as to why someone is not deserving of help.

Nevertheless, when not employed as a pretext for hardness of heart, the concept is helpful.  There are plenty people who believe they are owed charity by everyone else.  It is their right to get support from other people. Their job, if they think of themselves as having one, is to extract money from other people to sustain them. Deserving poor people are not like that.  They do not particularly appreciate being dependant upon others.  They strive as best they can to better the circumstances of themselves and their families so that they are not a burden upon others.  In other words, the deserving poor are those who are doing the best they can to be self-supporting.

It goes without saying that state welfare is built upon concept that welfare provision is a duty of everyone else, and a right of the recipient.  It proceeds on the idea that society "owes" me and that I have a human right to their support.

Vulcan Blessings

Moving Off Welfare Into Work

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:

Escaping the Welfare Trap

Bernie Madoff Should Have Been a Politician

The left wing Labour party has a scurrilous record on beneficiary dependence.  The bottom line for the Labour party when it comes to welfare dependants is, "more".  Not necessarily more financial support--although that cannot be ruled out necessarily--but more people receiving welfare payments.  That is partially why the previous Labour regime introduced Working for Families in 2004 in New Zealand, a welfare scheme targeted at the middle class.  The electoral impact is straightforward: when voters become reliant upon government largesse they will vote for the party which introduced it or continues to support it.  More beneficiaries, more votes.

The current government has made reducing long term beneficiary dependence a high priority.  It has introduced a comprehensive, integrated programme to get people back to work.  A core part of that programme is to expect solo mothers on the Domestic Purposes Benefit and others on the unemployment benefit to get a job.  If reasonable steps are not taken, benefits are reduced.  The early results are encouraging:

Escapees From the Welfare Trap

Progress and Accomplishment

The New Zealand government is engaged in a programmed campaign to get people off public welfare and back to work.  Opposition parties play the guilt-and-pity card constantly in the Parliament these days.  By their lights, untold suffering has fallen upon legions of victims as a result of these benighted policies.

For our part, as grass roots level, we are seeing lots of positive fruit.  Even something as simple as an official expectation of returning to work and getting off welfare is paying dividends. "You have to get a job" is a revolutionary, and liberating message at the local welfare office. Stuff carries a case study to illustrate the quiet revolution that has begun and continues to gather momentum.  In this particular case it was self-motivation that made the difference.  But the wider social and government expectations would no doubt have strengthened the resolve.

Daughter's words motivate mum to get off benefits

HARRY PEARL

Last updated 05:00 26/10/2013

A 9-year-old's comment about how "cool" it was to be on a benefit has changed a Huntly woman's life.  Until six months ago, Judy Wilson was one of about 80,000 sole parents in New Zealand receiving a benefit.  She was devoted to raising her six children but, in her own words, she was also drinking, smoking, and not doing "anything".  And she had been for close to 20 years. 

Six children being paid for by the taxpayer.  Solo-parenthood as a lifestyle choice.  These not-untypical-cases have been consigned to the very back of the closet by the welfarists.