Welfare

In common with a lot of other countries NZ spends a significant chunk of government money on direct hand outs to some of its citizens. I refer of course to Welfare payments in the broadest sense from Unemployment benefits to Superannuation Payments. Most Superannuation recipients don’t see this as welfare as if you ask them most will tell you they “earned it” through paying their taxes while they were working, but for the purpose of this I will ignore those issues for now and the wisdom of other benefits that people worry about, for example “dole bludgers” and “professional DPB recipients”.

What I do know for an undisputable fact is it costs a lot, specifically $22.9 bn or 31% of total government expenditure with the next two biggest being health at $14.4 bn and education at $12.3 bn making it not too far off the size of those two combined.

What do we get for this huge spend, well by and large we get people trapped in poverty and dependency because despite the large sums spent as a general rule living on a benefit is hardly the life of luxury.

And it is a lot of people specifically this many

Benefit Numbers
Unemployment 60,000
Sickness 60,000
Invalids 85,000
Domestic Purposes Benefit 113,000

Then there are approx 500,000 people over the age of 65 who are entitled to and therefore the majority of whom will be drawing superannuation. It is much harder to generalise about their economic circumstances as for quite a number the superannuation they receive is a top up for other savings etc that they may have. The value of paying people who don’t need it is a much debated topic and refers us back to the “earned it” argument again.

So what’s your point I hear you ask, well for one thing 22.9bn divided by 600,000 people is about $40,000 a person and that is a long way from what they actually get which I would suggest is much closer to about $15,000 but that’s not my point either. My point is being on a benefit is generally a bad idea and has all sorts of negative outcomes. I don’t propose to back that statement up I am just going to ask you to believe me on this one but a small amount of research on your own will undoubtedly confirm this fact.

So here is what I think is the most elegant solution a single universal benefit for every working age person in the country. Yup everyone, working, not working, rich or poor, sick or healthy, with or without children.

So first off we eliminate the majority of benefit fraud as other than pretending you are two people there are no other wrinkles in the system.

No more admin costs, well very minor ones to add people to the list at age 18 and delete them when dead but a relatively small task compared to the current system.

But the key idea is it provides a strong incentive to get work as nothing gets taken off you, every dollar you earn is yours to keep, whereas at the moment you end up with a benefit reduction when you work, giving you a low effective earning rate. This will provide the right signals and incentives to get people out of that benefit trap.

How do you pay for this I hear you ask. Well assume that we pay everyone $15k per annum then at about 3 million people to pay it will cost $45 bn. First of all we can use the money we are all ready paying the $22.9 bn which is half and then we need to increase taxes, yep sorry that is the only place money comes from, but hey if you are working then you will be happy to pay $15k more in tax as effectively nothing will change for you anything less than that would be a bonus and I think the cost would be lower but don’t have the data to work it out.

Get out and promote this idea with you local politician etc, it is contained within the working parties ideas and is the best of their proposals in my opinion.

The lowest common denominator

Not my usual posting style but how could you put this any better.

What's with all the silly news.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/38776

What are you against?

Probably lots of things but why do I ask.


There is a TV show here where a psychologist ties to figure out where some murderer (usually) went off the rails and turned into such a “bad” person. The answer appears to me to be much the same each time, namely someone, usually the parents, were mean and nasty to the now mean and nasty man (it is always a man let’s face it). So learned behaviour mixed in with the mental trauma of rejection, isolation etc mixed with a few drugs and hey presto violent dangerous perp.

So during the latest programme they talked about just such an individual who was a bit lost in the world until he discovered a white power gang. The psychologist noted that given this young man was struggling to define himself in a positive fashion discovering a simple ideology that he could cling to was just what he needed (psychologically presumably) and that this group appealed because they were simply “against” things which is a very easy idea to grasp with no great thinking required.

Now in the case of any racist group this is undoubtedly so, no great world via required to be against black people, all you need are some mental flash cards to compare the person in front of you to and if they register as black then hey presto you are against them.

But this set me to thinking, this applies to most “against” debates, it tends to be a simple argument with being for things making the debate a lot more complex. For example I am against child porn, and it is one of those ideas that doesn’t seem to need much debate and therefore doesn’t get it. If I asked you why you are against it I suspect your brain does a short freeze why it tries to understand the question. I am further willing to bet some form of “because it is” is your first thought and the following arguments that you muster come a little slower. I reckon this is the same simple mindedness (in terms of debate) that drove our white power fellow.

Reframe the question, I am in favour of............ because this will help to eliminate child pornography.
So what goes in the blank? Harsher penalties for offenders? Treatment programs for consumers? Self defence lessons for children? I have to readily admit I have no idea as while the idea of child porn makes my skin crawl because of my easy default “I am against it” view I haven’t given it any further thought. I have no idea what generates the demand, I don’t know where it is made etc. etc.

So without getting lost in a debate on child porn, hopefully everyone who reads this agrees it is a bad idea and if you don’t please send me an email so I can report you to the authorities. My challenge for today is what are you against and stop framing your thinking as "against stuff" and ask yourself what are you for that will achieve your objective of eliminating that which you are against.

Another for example a lot of people would say they are against increased CO2 emissions, which is an easy idea to defeat (it will stifle growth, kill people in the third world, requires concerted global actions that will not happen etc). However if you are in favour of an increasing proportion of our energy needs coming from renewable sources it is a much stronger argument, what can your opponents say? Renewable energy is bad?

So accentuate the positive, eliminate being against stuff.

Let The Hindsight Begin

And a lot of hand wringing and moral outrage and some notable cheering. I am of course referring to the American execution of Osama Bin Laden. And no I didn’t choose the word execution carelessly that is in my mind what happened and frankly I don’t care that much that the chap is dead but I am interested in some of the reactions from around the world.


First let's remind ourselves that while he may have been a great friend, husband and father for all I know publicly at least he was not a nice bloke and he started the events that lead to his death. Originally by declaring war on the United States (which is probably regarded by most military experts as unwise at best). He then followed up by among other things arranging for the death of a bunch of US civilians. So perhaps we could just dismiss these folk as the casualties of war because as we know people get killed in wars. However I note that Mr Bin Laden ordered the death of his own people too (the pilots of the 911 planes were bound to die after all) and not just as a possible consequence of soldiers in battle but a guaranteed certainty. And I don’t know a huge amount about it but I suspect he wasn’t a great spokes person for Islam either and was probably corrupting the words of the Koran to suit his own ends. So all in all a lying, murdering, war lord with scant regard for human life, i.e. not a nice guy.

So why the hand wringing and moral outrage? Is it back to this whole idea that we shouldn’t kill people? Well if you care to read my Murder is Wrong? Entry I think we can put that idea to bed, we routinely kill people for all sorts of reasons, which I admit doesn’t necessarily make it right but it is a bit late to start weeping into your chardonnay over this guy of all the potential candidates.

“He didn’t get a fair trial” is another comment I have heard. Well true but let’s be serious he confessed over and over in personal taped video messages etc, would there really have been an alternative outcome? OK so OJ Simpson got off but do we really think Osama was gonna wriggle out of this one? No I didn’t think so.

“If the Americans can just go around killing people they don’t like without due process what sort of world will we end up with?” Well the one we have now as far as I can tell. Do we really think this is the first politically motivated assassination that the Americans have ever carried out? Never mind a bunch of other people and nations.

“Some people will be upset by him being killed” and variations on this theme. Well in the words of Homer Simpson “D’oh” Hopefully those same “upset” people will think twice before joining in on his game lest they suffer the same fate.

But any way why the hand wringing, after all according to Osama isn’t dying a martyrs death in the service of god the greatest thing you can do? Well this seems to be a case of “be careful what you wish for” as his wish appears to have been granted.

Left, Right, March

As they say a week is a long time in politics and recent weeks have shown the truth of this axiom with the rise from the dead of ACT and the creation of the Mana party to add a second “Maori” party to the mix.

This once again raised the whole left vs right issue in the public arena with ACT being labelled as a party of failed Neo Liberal politics and Right Wing ideologs. I think the chances of the users of those phrases having a good grasp on their meaning is likely to be low never mind the people hearing these “slogans”. But it was a clear attempt by some people to paint them as right wing extremists who would do terrible things if they ever got any power.

This right versus left debate is a constant mystery to me. Given that there are intelligent people on each side of the debate (and as much as each side would like to pretend otherwise there are) equally skilled and educated and dealing with the same set of facts (eg economic indicators or data on education etc) how do we constantly come up with such opposing views on the best way forward.

Well my first culprit is single issue ism as represented by The Mana party, their stated goal is the advancement of Maori. Which sounds fine especially when they trot out the predictable statistics about the high crime, low employment, high poverty, low educational achievement etc that ascribe to Maori. But what is unsaid is advancement at the expense of whom as by definition they don’t care about any other group. And assuming we can engineer some win win outcomes so no one is disadvantaged, what is the Mana party policy on censorship or scientific research e.g. non Maori issues. To take a more substantive issue what is the Mana policy on roading as presumably there is no advancement of Maori per se in better (or worse) roads. So without the annoying need to worry about others they can promote policy that doesn’t really make sense in a total solution, to take a silly example they could promote separate lanes for Maori on Auckland motorways to provide better transport options for Maori, over all this is silly but from a Mana party point of view perfectly fine.

I mention this as it seems to me that there is a lot of single issue ism on the left wing of politics in my mind, the criticism of ACT most often trotted out is that there policies are not good for poor people and we need to do more for the “bottom of the heap”. They of course would deny this as they have a view that their policies are good for all. So without getting into the policy argument this is another example of single issue ism, promoting the bottom of the heap is no different than a suggestion that anyone earning over $200k has probably done enough and shouldn’t pay tax. Supporting poor people is more morally justifiable and therefore has a higher feel good factor.

A recent example of this was Labour suggesting that GST be eliminated from “basic food” as a way to help the less well off make ends meet in tough economic times. So this sounds good right, a policy to help poor folk but overlooking a raft of difficulties in defining basic food, they failed to articulate where the additional revenue would come from to cover the new hole they would create in the governments revenues.

So let’s stamp out single issue ism, which when you listen applies to a lot of things people promote, challenge them to explain the full consequences of their idea, who benefits and who pays and what behaviours might this promote. For example cereal would probably make the list for “basic food” but does this include Cafe style muesli or sugar laden coco pops (a chocolate milkshake only crunchy according to the manufacturer) If there was a 15% price advantage the manufacturers would be trying hard to ensure they were.

Teach a man to fish...

So I was listening to the radio and heard a young woman talking about eliminating poverty in the Pacific, which included in her mind all the countries that boarded the Pacific. So full marks for ambition as that is quite a bit of territory to cover and I couldn’t help admiring the energy and enthusiasm she was bringing to her project.


At this point I would like to say she is doing a lot more to help in this area than I am ever going to and all efforts to help ones fellow humans should be applauded and encouraged but........ (bet you saw that coming right)

........ she was, in general terms, talking about giving poor people stuff as the solution to the problem, she spoke of hoping she could persuade governments and others to forgive debt so that these poor nations weren’t paying “crippling” interest costs instead of using the money to better themselves. She seemed to be oblivious to the fact that the countries had presumably spent the borrowed money on something which presumably didn’t help much, not sure why giving them more money would change anything.

She talked about an “army” of volunteers giving their time and skill to complete projects within the country like building a pharmacy, or a school or a hospital. Which is a great plan to a point given that presumably there is not pharmacy etc at the location that you choose, however this is just another variation on the give the poor people stuff view of the world, not to mention potentially naive about the cost effectiveness of such an idea.

Is it effective for me to ship myself to Cambodia (for example) for a period of time in order to deliver my skills to the local people. Either I deliver my specialist skills which are likely in low demand in an under developed country (just about no matter what your skills are unless you happen to be a builder or a farmer or a doctor) or for me to be an amateur builder etc where my main claim to usefulness is that I am a willing pair of hands. Frankly if willing to help is in short supply in the group you are trying to help then give up straight away.

So one idea that did resonate was of course the building of a school(s) and presumably the associated staffing and materials that a school needs. We see time and time again that education raises all manner of outcomes and is the foundation for progress. I don’t understand why this idea is so often over looked it is after all the whole basis for the success of the human race, it is because we learned “stuff” that we progressed.

One of the really huge things we learned to do was farm, and most importantly produce enough food in an efficient manner to allow us to turn our attention to other tasks like making better weapons to wipe out the other tribe we didn’t like, but ignoring that for the moment. This is something NZ does really well (farming) so as a focus we should teach the “poor” folk to be better farmers. Now I am aware that not all poor people are rural peasants but there sure are a chunk to be making a start with. We can leave the city folk to others there are enough poor folk for us all to have plenty.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, not to mention his kids etc. So lets stop giving poor people stuff, lets trying walking beside them to help them out. Having said that the radio guest is still doing a lot more than most of us.

Hey Tiki

So it seems like a bad week for individual rights and freedoms, in the news has been the arrest of Tiki Tanne is a singer apparently of some renown, I say apparently as before he got arrested I had no idea he existed. I doubt he would be bothered by that as I don’t think I am his target demographic.

He was arrested for “disorderly behaviour likely to cause violence to start or continue” which is my first point, isn’t this a somewhat doubtful charge? The phrase “likely to cause” is a bit problematic for me as you appear to be arresting someone for something that might happen in the future. If the charge was “possessing a car likely to be driven above the speed limit” how would we feel about it. Should we be arresting someone for something they are “likely” to do.

The behaviour in question was singing a song which I believe is called and presumably has as part of the lyrics “F... the police”. Exercising what could only be termed as dubious judgement Tiki did this while some members of the police force were in the bar. Although unknown to me as I wasn’t there the likely sequence of events after that point is probably fairly obvious.

So what happened to Article 14 of the Bill or Rights? Which says, “Freedom of expression: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” What happened to Tiki’s freedom of expression?

Now as with all things there are limits to your right to Freedom of expression and although I don’t like the phrase you can’t go around spewing forth “hate speech” which is where the above charge comes in, not withstanding my disquiet about its drafting.

However the song in total is not a pleasant one and not my taste however it is talking about the experience of black Americans dealing with police officers and implies racism within the American police force and the line in question is an openly rebellious retort to what the writer perceives as injustice. In context that doesn’t really sound like something to be to bothered about. It isn’t after all even talking about the NZ Police force.

But ignoring all of that a bigger question for me is how we have ended up with a society that finds this sort of material acceptable. No matter how you dress it up it is at the very least disrespectful or impolite to be singing such a song, but I suspect it represents at least to a part of our society a disenfranchisement from the main stream as represented by police officers and other society authority figures. Isn’t that the real problem, because if they don’t respect the police who have powers I will never have then what’s the chance that the rest of us will be respected by this group. And this disconnected group is growing and not simply represented by those that listen to Rap music. This is the social ill, societal fracture and it won’t be fixed by throwing Rap singers into Jail.

To prove that we are not the only ones looking at symptoms rather than causes, France has this week outlawed Muslim women covering their faces in public. Hands up any one who can thinking of something wrong with that idea. Anyone without a hand up, I don’t think you are paying attention.