I had low expectations, but damn. Lowering the Govt’s KiwiSaver contribution, pay equity changes, income testing for Best Start child payments and 18-19 year olds on the benefit tested against their parent’s income, tax breaks for businesses, increased rebate threshold for SuperGold?
Will we ever get a Government brave enough to means test Superannuation. Boomers and businesses profit again and the younger generations have to pay for it with their futures.
I bet they haven’t thought that far ahead yet. Just increasing the hoops to jump through might be enough to stop them from trying.
It’s ridiculous isn’t it. If you commit a crime at 18 or 19 they’ll try you as an adult. You can vote, drink and join the military. But if you want to further your education or require help from jobseekers while looking for employment, nope sorry! You’re a child and your parents should be paying for you.
Idk I’m in two minds about that. When I was at university I knew plenty of people who were living rent-free in their parents’ houses. One guy was even having his mum cook meals and do laundry.
Whereas I was just out there by myself, so without an allowance my loans would have had even more of a chilling effect. In practice most suggestions for a UBI seem to involve lowering the amount poor people get. I guess the devil’s in the details.
If I were in charge I’d make tertiary free instead.
In my opinion, any kind of social safety net or financial support system will always have cases of abuse or edge cases taking advantage of it. It would be almost impossible to make it completely foolproof against abuse without having many who do need it falling through the cracks as well. Kind of like removing the benefit because some people abuse it. The vast majority that need it would ultimately suffer.
I agree on making tertiary free though.
Oh, yeah I agree with the gist of this. I think you are right. In our legal system we have the principle that jailing innocent people is worse than accidentally letting a guilty one go unpunished, and I really wish we could apply that same logic to social programmes.
The kind of witch hunting that goes on mostly affects and hurts those in need.
I think my problem is I have a mindset of scarcity and should probably study macroeconomics or something.
Sadly we can see an example of it in action with the rubbish Family Boost scheme National came up with. They’ve spent more money administering it than actually providing rebates. Poor people can’t afford to pay for ECE first and then apply and wait weeks or months for a rebate. Was the original free ECE hours perfect? No and absolutely a lot of private ECE centers were abusing it. But Labour’s plan to extend free ECE hours to two year olds would have benefited far more people.
I don’t think this is uncommon, particularly in western culture as a lot of western society places importance on individual wealth building rather than society as a whole.
I always think of this proverb:
We need to try to build a future society for those that come after us. Not just to reap the benefits in our own lifetimes.
One of my parents was very fond of that proverb. <3 Literally as well as metaphorically.
I meant more I have a mindset in terms of society’s scarcity.
The messaging drilled into me is always that the government can’t afford to give us all the things we need. So when people say the government should give everyone, say, a UBI, part of me panics thinking at that rate the day when the government decides it can, say, finally afford to help people like me to get a wheelchair, or help the homeless people up the road get shelter, or cut hospital wait times to under 12 months, will never come because all the money will go to UBIs.
But that’s a false dichotomy.
I get the impression this happens a fair bit with change to social programmes that is designed to send project an ideology. Sometimes it almost feels like there are two NZs, one that wants to help everyone become a prosperous society and one that wants to not have social support at all.
I don’t know if we’ll ever get a UBI, but we don’t have one now and is the Govt helping you right now?
I think social media, algorithms and the huge influence American media and culture has is what has driven a lot of this. It’s definitely gotten worse over time. I really do wonder what the future holds for the next few generations.
I think you are right. It’s bizarre the number of US “culture war” talking points and polarizations seem to be creeping in. I think the other thing is probably a huge number of New Zealanders now have spent their entire lives in the neoliberal economic paradigm and it’s hard for them to imagine alternatives to things like SOEs and revenue-driven media.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this question. It feels rhetorical but I’m not sure what conclusion I’m intended to come to? The answer is in some ways and not in others.
Ah sorry, it wasn’t very clear. I meant - you have some concerns about the Govt. affording to help people in the case we ever have a UBI. We don’t have one right now and are enough people currently getting helped in those ways? I guess my point is, having a UBI doesn’t rule out other assistance in the future should the need arise. Incremental progress is better than none at all. “Perfect is the enemy of good” and all that.
You could argue If there was a UBI there would be far less people requiring that kind of help as they would have some form of predictable income outside of other means of earning money.