April Fools Day Welfare ‘increases’

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
89
2633

After the knee jerk reaction to tanking Polls, the Labour Government are suddenly reminded that the $1Trillion they handed over to the wealthiest…

Wealthy nearly $1 trillion richer since Covid began – Hickey

An economic and political commentator says since the Covid-19 pandemic reached Aotearoa, the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer – in part due to the Government’s policies.

…has some unfortunate political side effects like all the poor people telling you to fuck off.

So, while Labour makes the richest amongst us $1TRILLION DOLLAR RICHER, let’s examine the crumbs they are bribing the rest of us with…

- Sponsor Promotion -

Government’s mega benefit boost has arrived: Here’s how much incomes are up

Beneficiaries and low-income earners can breathe a sigh of relief now that a raft of policies putting more money in their pockets has finally arrived. 

As of April 1, benefit rates increase by between $20 and $42 per adult per week compared to July last year, while the minimum wage rises from $20 per hour to $21.20, and Working for Families tax credits are bumped up too. 

Then in May, the Winter Energy Payment returns until October – $20.46 a week for eligible single people with no dependents and $31.82 a week for couples and people with dependent children.

…what’s never pointed out in this bullshit propaganda is that these increases barely keep up with inflation and for most beneficiaries, the MSD claws back the increases so most will get a few dollars after MSD takes its cut.

The only silver lining is the half priced public transport as that actually bypasses MSD and puts money straight into people’s pockets without MSD taking their cut.

So Labour enrich the richest with $1Trillion dollars and the rest of us get some crumbs and told to be grateful.

Is this the best we can hope for?

Norman Kirk famously said,

“there are four things that matter to people: they have to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have clothing to wear, and they have to have something to hope for,”

Is this really the best Labour can do in the shadow of those words?

This is an April Fools Day joke of a welfare announcement.

If you think this pittance is the solution, you are part of the problem.

 

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89 COMMENTS

  1. The truth is worse. We enriched the wealthiest by $1 trillion – not labour. That money has come directly out of our pockets, because when you create debt backed money it merely dilutes the existing pool of money. When that happens real assets, like houses, just compensate in price.

    If you want to know how long this has been happening just ask yourself how long house prices have been going up for. Basically since the introduction of neo liberal economics at the end of the 70s. This has historically been hidden by reducing interest rates, government measures of inflation (which are a lie), higher rents and the MSM lie that the middle classes are raking it in through house price ‘growth’.

    It’s only recently where inflation has jumped from 10% pa to 20% pa that people are starting to notice. This combined with interest rates having nowhere left to go has put inflation onto the front page. It probably helps that it finally gives the MSM something effective to hit the labour party with. Not that we care anymore – because the labour party doesn’t care anymore and hasn’t since the end of the 70s.

  2. Norman Kirk worked for a living, manual labour, had a family to support, and knew exactly what it was like to struggle. He was not a product of comfortable middle class academia.

    And here in lies the problem with Labour 2022. Out of touch, pompous, well meaning twits, who are career politicians or bureaucrats from university who think they know what it’s like for the great unwashed they apparently care about.

    They regularly demonstrate how clueless they are! The above is just another sorry example.

  3. Martin, Hickey never said of the government covid economic response “$1Trillion they handed over to the wealthiest”. He said that was the increase in asset prices etc, of which over 50% was driven by property values. That might sound picky but in terms of government debt its kind of important

    That property increase includes anyone who owns a property, does it not?. Considering the bank will own a good chunk of that for a good number of those individuals, they are not necessarily that wealthy (granted they are not “poor”). I think you will find that, for most, that unrealised gain is dropping rather quickly. Given that a large number of auctions are falling through before too long property will have dropped back to being merely ridiculous as opposed to stratospheric.

    This doesn’t change the fact that the poor are being left behind, and should be the focus, but the 1 trillion figure needs to be thrown in the bin

  4. So basically nothing has changed over the last forty years…
    And how is privatization working out for you now?

  5. In a democracy – who’s fault is it? Are elected politicians there to do what they believe in or are they there to fulfil the desires of the voting majority?
    The voting majority are middle NZ – employed or with passive income, property owning and imbued with strong protestant values around working hard and paying your way etc. This is a dearly held self belief despite the fact that we live in a highly re-distributive economy with an un-spoken dependence on public services and direct government support.
    To read that Jacinda is DEFENDING NOT LOWERING TAXES was a massive surprise and very unusual politically.
    Is Labour really going to grow the pair it needs to lead on the issue of taxation? Or will it resort to weak and defensive gestures as Act and National warm up the beneficiary bashing artillery and start the orchestra of violins for the overtaxed, hard working majority.
    How will Labour respond when the first artillery shells start landing in the lower class suburbs of urban NZ? How sympathetic will Adern be to the poor when middle class NZ start to feel their heart strings pulled by Nationals melodic promise of lower taxes?
    For me, as a voter, this is Labours last chance – I’ve already signed up as a volunteer for TOP – the only political party in NZ standing up for beneficiaries and unpaid workers, and advocating higher taxation on the middle class.

    • My property has increased greatly due to real estate inflation, but I don’t feel I’m part of a plutocracy sharing in a trillion dollars. It’s not cash in hand, and if I sell I have to buy somewhere else at the same bloated value.
      In the meantime the council looks at these paper gains and sticks my rates up. The high values are a liability not an asset. I’d be just as well off if my property value halved.

      • These are valid concerns John and raising taxes is always hardest on the working and middle classes who may have limited or no assets and little disposable income.
        How is it possible to convince someone like yourself that paying more in taxes is a good thing?
        I’m not really sure how to do that but I’m going to give it a shot. People seem to like the metaphor of a household so I’m going to start with that.
        For a household (this could be 2 parent or single parent family) to be successful and functional at least one of the parents needs to do whatever they can to take care of things. They might have their own personal difficulties and troubles but they still go out to a low paid job or put up with a toxic office environment and struggle financially because if they don’t their family suffer the consequences.
        This is something that is easy to identify with and relate to and makes sense in the context of taking care of a families immediate day to day needs.
        I, like many Kiwi’s, have a home, a mortgage, a job and paying more in tax would not be ideal for me at all.
        But here’s how I look at it – someone has to be that adult when it comes to taking care of our country, someone has to take responsibility for making sure that our government is funded properly because the consequences of not doing so will have negative impacts on our children and grandchildren. Just as it does in a household scenario.
        If people like me don’t step up and pay more in tax – fewer hospitals will be built, fewer doctors and nurses will be trained and education will become unaffordable. The infrastructure for water, electricity, transport and communication all needs to be maintained and extended to support the future economic growth that will provide and sustain life for future generations. All of this requires a well funded government that has that ability to borrow when it needs to and the revenue to pay down debt when it can.

  6. Living in Australia and talking to family back home in NZ is like the bombed Ukrainian talking to her Russian parent who does not believe that she is being bombed. The NZ MSM is simply a mouthpiece for HRH. You are all being fooled, she is a liar.

  7. Progressive income taxation, financial transaction tax and capital gains tax would all help. Not the wealthy much, but many of this group have more than they will ever need so tough. Of course, the right leaning amongst us will shriek about having to pay more more tax … lets get real. Does this really compare to needing to choose between paying the rent or food?

    An alternative might be a UBI and restructure of the so-called ‘welfare’ system … but people actually paying their share needs to be a proportion of their TOTAL income (including from capital gains). Because NZ is such a small country it needs regulation to correct market failure due to a lack of economy of scale larger countries enjoy.

  9. “there are four things that matter to people: they have to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have clothing to wear, and they have to have something to hope for,”

    Good quote, sounds just right, but no something missing. Beyond being supplicants – modern people need to have regular information meetings and decision-making opportunities, learn to run small projects locally. It is no good having a complacent citizenry that just sits on the sidelines, chews on a stalk, and offers opinions on government without personal experience and mature understanding. We aren’t in a secure position judging the stock, we are the anxious stock milling round the yard. It has been a great mistake of working class people in politics,not to ensure philosophy and political education sufficient to enable planning for direction and trade and organisation at the local level. It has to be made interesting and compulsory.

    Everyone needs to learn and be involved not just recipients waiting at the feet of the great decision makers and their advisors. Democracy is good but.. read what some astute thinkers say about Christianity and then apply that to thoughts on a universal, working democracy.

    “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
    ― G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

    “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” ― C.S. Lewis
    The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” ― C.S. Lewis
    https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/christianity

  10. What happened to the Left? Most of them upgraded to the middle class, if not financially, at least in spirit thanks to qualification inflation and higher education industry?

    • moon-r Yes in a nutshell. Upgraded and in class and mind also. But it follows – the Chinese tried to change the MC outlook (inlook!) of the professionals by sending them off to the fields for a while. It would be a good idea for a nation-based and co-operatively founded society – where seasonally town and city workers go off to help bring in the seasonal food for storing or to export overseas while the market is there. That would require a wider vision than the narrow individualistic capitalistic one though. I

      t could become an established behaviour that was worked into the business operations of the country and give pale city dwellers a holiday with fresh air (and proper accommodation caravans) which they likely could not afford but be part of the provision to the nation’s good from business along with any tax that they can’t avoid. That would bring new people who were reliable into the locality and provide that dual town/country relationship that is missing in NZ with presently gumboot diplomacy of pretty communist from the hearties, and mean-spiritedness from the anti- physical-work, not counting marathons, of the CBD and denizens. Seen at present with noisy leaf blowers used rather than quiet leaf rakes providing a little light exercise for machine man and his mistress.

  11. The only political party in NZ standing up, explicitly and unapologetically, for beneficiaries is TOP.

    • Peter B What’s bad about the comment with TOP sentiments? Have you anything of value to discuss about the comment and its points? Perhaps meaningless jabs at supposedly unsatisfactory political and economic lines should not be ‘aloud’ on TDB.

  14. Just to put that in perspective that is $200k transferred away from each New Zealand, man, woman and child. Imagine the good that could have been done with that. A debt that will take decades for all of us to pay off yet is available right now to the richest ‘investors’ in our country.

    Step 1: Stop deliberately making things worse.
    Step 2: Don’t forget about step 1.

    • “that is $200k transferred away from each New Zealand, man, woman and child.”

      Think about it.

    • The economy is vulnerable John S – it’s like a child, checked on every morning with its temperature taken and reported on radio and print, and watchers keeping an eye on it and reporting its prognosis etc. There may be reports of people putting lolly water in the gap in the meal chain to placate empty stomachs and the disease that can generate, but the economy gets many column inches and that is traditional and we must keep on. And the precocious special child must be fed, no matter who misses out. People aren’t scarce, so economic law says that their price must be cheap.

  16. People “have to have food to eat”. (Kirk)

    AO/NZ grows and produces vast amounts of food, much of it very high quality. Obviously then, no-one here ever need go hungry. Surely in this land of plenty every child has access to the basics of life – fresh, HEALTHY foods. It would be absurd if people in other countries were eating OUR food at cheaper prices than Kiwis would have to pay.

    Yet, somewhere down the line someone in the NZ govt became greedy enough, ruthless enough, and stupid enough to TAX our own healthy foods before the children of Aotearoa ever get to eat. A huge, greedy 15%%%%% tax on our own, locally grown FOOD. And now we have hungry children and nutrient deficient children, here in the land of plenty.

    LOSE THAT GREEDY, HARMFUL, IMMORAL TAX ON OUR OWN, AO/NZ GROWN FOOD!!

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