Does not include workers paid by the government either, so democracy in NZ is finished.

And people wonder why I despise the totalitarian left. This country is in deep shit and its all down to them.

http://www.interest.co.nz/images/workers-per-beneficiary.gif

http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/your-views/2009/6/29/should-you-be-able-get-dole-if-your-partner-stilll-working/?c_id=1501154&objectid=10581385&commentpage=1

Gads sake!, I was taking the piss.

On topic – anything which increases the cost of working (tax for instance) or reduces the cost of not working (welfare, for instance) will reduce one and increase the other. I’m pretty sure the economic problems NZ faces aren’t due to too many people working.

[DPF: ANd I stand by my position, that borrowing extra money when running a deficit, is risky and even reckless. Dr Cullen was very clear the Fund was designed to be funded out of surpluses. It was never a get rich scheme where you borrow money to invest]

How many millionaires do you know whose partners are unemployed? Any? You’re starting to sound like Michael Cullen. Remember his comment about rich pricks?

You ignore the fact that many people – few of whom are millionaries – are being made redundant and are unemployed. Why should their partners have to support them? The dole is only $190 a week. If we cannot afford to pay that to all those who are unemployed, there is something seriously wrong.

[DPF: I would rather families always live off their own income, than come running to other taxpayers. I want welfare reserved for those genuinely in need]

Who are you to judge what other people need? A busybody like you should concentrate on living your own and stop interfering with the lives of others.

Save your sanctimonious attitude for the Green blog.

Tax is on an individual basis, so is weekly compensation from ACC. So why not welfare? And it doesn’t have to be funded from borrowing. Cancel the most recent tax cut – the people on million dollar incomes don’t need that any more than they need their partners getting the unemployment benefit if they lose their jobs.

Further to my first comment, here is a snippet from the TVNZ story on the negative watch:

“The previous government started the Kiwisaver scheme and New Zealand Superannuation Fund to improve savings but it was “probably not enough”.”

If the credit agency says programs are “probably not enough,” that is not an invitation to cut them.

Alas, the comment “probably not enough” is polite code for “ineffectual” and “unlikely to succeed”.

The Kiwisaver scheme was very successful at drawing out funds from private superannuation schemes and moving them to kiwsaver. Any effect on national savings rate is at best, yet to come. At worse it was ineffective policy. But I’m relaxed about kiwisaver. I hope that it does work. We are all in ‘the same boat’ here.

The NZ Super Fund had the effect of lifting national savings at a time when private debt was soaring. Private debt is now dropping (since early 2008). And without the surpluses on hand to ‘save’, replacing falling private debt with increased public debt is again, heading nowhere. OTOH, those surpluses could have been used in other productivity-enhancing activities or at supporting reductions in private debt through more aggressive tax cuts.

I don’t think the case for the NZ Super Fund was anywhere as justifiable as that for Kiwisaver. And now, the logic of borrowing to put more into it during a period of ailing financial markets is just too dumb for words. All it says is that the Labour finance people are cretinously stupid, or opportunistic whores willing to gamble on our futures for electoral gain.

If WINZ does not know what the high income of the partner of a newly redundant person is – they cant stick it into their system as it will abate the benefit – there’s nothing stopping the beneficiary claiming Working for Families, accommodation supplements or even food grants, as explained here.

If Treasury are so smart, then rather than fund them out of the normal government budget we could cut off all funding, let them borrow as much as they like, and they can live (including staff salaries) off the difference between their investment earnings and the interest they pay. Of course Treasury staff would be happy to stand behind their analysis by being personally responsible for the debt if it all goes bad.

But then no one at Treasury predicted that the Cullen fund would, over the course of its life, actually lose money. People aren’t advocating giving Bernie Madoff or Enron more of our money on the basis that they were making good returns before they lost everything, so we’ll just assume the losses were an aberration and predict good returns for the future. But there are still people who are stupid enough to think that NZ should borrow to “invest” in a money losing Cullen Fund. Absolutely unbelievable!

The only people who profitied from the Cullen Fund were financiers, and the people who flogged overpriced assets to the Fund before they lost a lot of their value. Why you’d want the NZ Government to, essentially, subsidise these groups is a complete mystery to me.

BBTB

Well, I haven’t heard any tenuous arguments, move along nothing to see, Labour are sound.

And as for old treasury models, what discount rates were they based on? In what year? What would the IRR say now?

Goff is so off base with his welfare for the middle classes its not funny – He is insane.

And what gives credence to Cunliffes ramblings? Your half baked philsophical debates with yourself on the topic? I hope you understand what your spinning because no-one else does sunshine.

Labour are irrelevant