For example, if you a medical problem (like a heart attack or a stroke) you can seek payment for a ’sickness benefit’. If the partner of the sick person is nursing the other, the benefit they jointly receive is a total of $278.22 per week.

This amount is not sufficient to live and certainly not enough to pay the rent.

If you agree with me, I’d appreciate your comments.

And there we go again. “You dont understand what it is like to be poor.” Bullshit. I know perfectly well. But that doesnt change the fact that you said that beneficiaries are beyond help and time shouldnt be wasted on getting them off the benefit.

“… the career DPBers will just churn out a baby every 5 or 6 years or so until they are in their 50’s…”

That is complete bullshit. Even if there are people who would do such a thing their numbers would be so small that it isnt even worth addressing.

“You obviously were not one of those who lost their job then dime.”

And toad, this is just as moronic as anything Kent had to say. Do you think that the only people who see the “truth” about the reforms in the 1980’s and 90’s are those that were temporarily out of work? You are completely ignoring the jobs that would not have been created without those reforms.

You guys need to learn what creative destruction is.

# PhilBest (2181) Add karma Subtract karma +6 Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

From the tail end of the earlier thread: I’d like to toss this in here now.

# PhilBest (2174) +0 Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

Redbaiter (3332) Add karma Subtract karma +2 Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 10:52 am

(Quoting Dr Robotnik) “I’d love more kids, really. I just can’t afford them.”

“Lots of parents feel the same. The reason they can’t afford them is because they’re paying for the offspring of all the Philus all over the country as well- all Labour voters, and there are thousands of them taking money shamelessly from working families….”.

Yep, AND can ANY of our morally liberal leaders get their heads around the idea that there might be people who have spent years working and saving money and having NO children “until they can afford them”, and their goal has only gotten steadily further away from them thanks to “income redistribution” and rises in housing costs?

FFS.

How dare you have kids, money and a job.

Let’s face it. The only people who are going to really moan about this are lazy cunts who don’t want to work.

The “safety net” is still there. The cripples and coffin dodgers are still going to be “cared for”. Be fucking grateful. Some may be in a situation not of their choice or making, but fuck me with a strap on, aren’t we all to some degree?

All the fucking lefties and bleeding heart liberals want “society” to care for everyone, shit, don’t they have families? Charity begins at home. Unfortunately the only charity that my family can afford to support right now is the “Red Cross Dressers”, and those commie wankers don’t give us a choice.

Piss and moan all you want about the level of welfare available to you but at least have the decency to be grateful that there is any. And those who are too proud to work in a job that is “beneath them”? Stop their benefits straight away.

“wasn’t sustainable under Douglas, and isn’t sustainable now.”

Proof please Toad, and real proof please not a regurgitation of the climate change con and peak oil.

Single mothers with good earning capacity are normally anxious to return to paid work as soon as child care allows. National’s efforts will be felt mainly by those with few skills and poor earning capacity and, frankly, Mr Key ought to have more important things to do. This policy does more to stroke the shibboleths of party supporters than meet any pressing social need. He should return to topics that count.

Nice try, but trying to link my argument to something as irrelevant as the war in Iraq just reeks of desperation. You havent exactly taken me on about what I said, you have just focussed on a single word and ignored the rest. You have nothing, Parker, no argument, no point, no justifiable opinion, no spine. You lied and instead of standing behind your words you are running scared. You lose.

Umm, Kimble, I’m not clear on what you are saying here:

And it is about all you can expect from a moron that is still trotting out the “Key wants to lower wages!” lie, and sees nothing wrong with putting forward the argument that “if those on the benefit were worth anything as employees, they would be employed by now”. Or to put it another way, “will always be outliers, … who are extremely unsuccessful and in many ways unfit to serve in society” and “it is equally unwise to force the unwilling and unfit to partake in employment.”

The argument is that tinkering with the free market system, by forcing people into work when the jobs don’t exist is likely to have a downward trend on wages. Key has been unwittingly captured saying he supports a decrease in wages (probably taken out of context by the media) just has he has been caught out saying he will lead the ‘Labour Government’ into victory. So 1+1=2: This policy definitely supports lowered wages.

I suspect that you, like John Key, who has lived in the rarified atmosphere of financial institutions most of his life, have very little understanding of social issues and why people end up at the bottom of the heap. I wish him all the best in the method he has chosen to go about attempting to solve society’s problems and I wish you all the best in your attempts to ‘win’ arguments and make yourself feel better.

Anyway, I’d say Charlie Tan has got it pretty much right: the career DPBers will just churn out a baby every 5 or 6 years or so until they are in their 50’s and all the right wing social saviours will be left with their fingers burnt and the cash register empty a la George Bush (Yes, comparative arguments are relevant).

Be that as it may, at the time I admired Muldoon for his leadership (I was 12 at the time though and took my parents lead on this) but it became apparent that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. I get the same sense from this current labour administration. They hide behind bluster and are ideologically opposed to the policies that we need to put in place.

You obviously were not one of those who lost their job then dime. And Kimble, I didn’t think the country was heading down the right track under Muldoon. The economy wasn’t sustainable then, wasn’t sustainable under Douglas, and isn’t sustainable now.

BTW, I see the NZ Herald, not normally a bastion of far-left thinking, isn’t very impressed with National’s welfare policy.

That will cut the number of bludgers and public sector employees (Two sides of the same coin) at the same time.

Nice try, but trying to link my argument to something as irrelevant as the war in Iraq just reeks of desperation. You havent exactly taken me on about what I said, you have just focussed on a single word and ignored the rest. You have nothing, Parker, no argument, no point, no justifiable opinion, no spine. You lied and instead of standing behind your words you are running scared. You lose.

“holy shit, did toad just say the 1980’s labour government made things worse?”

Yep. That is the really troubling thing. There are actually people who think the country was heading down the right track with Muldoon.

“then isn’t it likely, under that set of assumptions, that those disadvantaged people will have an incentive to just pop out a kid every six years?”

Well, they will have an incentive, in the same way that saying you will pay someone $5 to hit their head against a wall also has an incentive to do so. Doesn’t mean they will do it. I think you have worded your point wrong.

worse for who???

we wouldnt have a country if it wasnt for that govt

Both social engineers like our good Helen and free market vampires like Mr. Key alike believe that people respond to economic incentives and inducements, right? So here’s a question:

If you truly believe that certain disadvantaged members of society pop out children because the state provides them with cash, and then tell them that they will have to go to some shitty, useless course if they don’t have any children under six, then isn’t it likely, under that set of assumptions, that those disadvantaged people will have an incentive to just pop out a kid every six years?.

Yes it is Kent, you are a moron if you think you can retain credibility when you blatantly lie like that.

The last person who called me a moron with as much passion as you was a Texan trying to defend the invasion of Iraq a few years back, well before it became widely accepted as a bit of a disaster. I guess that he was using the same “rational discussion” method as you. That could be prescient.

I can see where side show bob comes up with observations such as this:

but this is so very hard to do in a country that spends more time chasing it’s tail then moving foward.

This whole topic is very much a ‘rear end’ issue and moving nothing forward, but instead as Ruth Dyson suggests, chasing a tail that wagged briefly in the 1990’s.

Perhaps Southern Raider has got it right with:

Maybe National could get the DPB women to replace the current bureaucrats, they would probably do a better job and produce more meaningful output.

I continue to believe that a fundamental problem with the Green party is your focus on left wing politics rather than environmental politics. Environmentalism has a hell of a lot more votes in it than hard left politics. Like I’ve said before, no problem with your politics being hard left – my problem is the sullying of the Green brand with red politics.

Yep, but I was lucky that I already had a business to run, and could just downsize it, and go on the benefit, and declare incomeon an annual basis. And I was lucky that I could claim some of what would otherwise be my houseold costs if I were not running a business as business expenses, so they were tax deductable and exempt from Work and Income benefit abatement.

And I had the nous to go onto the Work and Income website before I went to see them, just to know exactly what I might be entitled to receive.

I pity some poor person, in the same personal circumstances I had, coming into Work and Income with no business and a life experience of 15 years working in KFC and Burger King though. They will not have the options I did.