April Fools Day Welfare ‘increases’

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
89
2625

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…

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. 

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

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. But but, it is nice window dressing and thye are seen to be trickling some cheap piss down on the unwashed and poor masses. Labour, thy generosity kills.

  2. 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.

    • You do realize that labour didn’t print 1 trillion dollars don’t you. The Trillion Martyn’s talking about included house price inflation not govt spending.. Just saying. Not that i’m suggesting Labour isn’t responsible for that inflation.. Its just not govt created debt like you suggest.

    • If you rolled up sleeves you have lost your right to turn around and be cynical over anything politicians do or say from hereon in. You passed the loyalty test. So your job now is to keep aligning with power and not criticize your benevolent masters. They care about you and are faultless and never lie. Be grateful for your ‘freebies’ and Obey

  3. 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.

    • Beware I am an extreme rightwinger/nationalist but I admire Kirk and I will add Lange. Norm Kirk had scars on his arms from cleaning out gutters as a teenager. He knew hard graft and would stand a round at the pub. There wasn’t a bad bone in his body and he was the guy that literally would give you the shirt off his back.
      This lot we have in the moment are not of his ilk they are clones of us Nationalists and this why we will have trouble trying to oust them at the ballot box.

  4. OK Martyn….let’s here what you would do if PM, what would you make the welfare payments and minimum wage hrly rate?
    What would you increase/tax rates to and at what thresholds?

    Then let us know, when calculated, what the costs would come to.
    Then tell us what you would cut in Govt services to help pay for your policies!

    NOTE: Taxing the ‘rich’ more just means more work for tax lawyers, and not forgetting the old nugget of debt reduction/increase….which you have posted numerous times when National were in charge, so one would expect a neutral outcome from your ‘policies’.
    Also taxing Google/Facebook etc is a loooong court court case so if that’s one of your ways to make money for Govt think again.

      • This TDB post laid out well what needs to be done.

        As for MSD, they are a malevolent and very powerful bunch of nasty bastards-from the top down to the underlings (PSA members too a number of them).

        The full WEAG report should be implemented immediately, incl. all debt to be written off, and no more accrued for housing, food or health care-wait, what does that leave then? Exactly.

        Benefits really should be retired and replaced by a basic income paid to all citizens by IRD.

          • Venezuela was destroyed by having the screws put on it by capitalists, most of them foreign ones who saw threats to their exploitative business models.

            • LOL! Oh yeah, cos trebling the number of people employed by the state petrochemical company and expropriation of private businesses had NOTHING to do with it!
              Every time communism fails, you lot find a reason for why it will be better next time.
              If we can only remove self interest out of the system as if it’s possible to wave a magic ideological wand and millions of years of evolution will be rolled back in an instant.
              If you want to see this in action, just look at Venezuela and notice that the only people NOT on the Maduro diet are Maduro and his cadre.
              Just stop it. You are embarrassing yourself with your ignorance and stupidity.

            • and biden has had to go to them snivelling on his knees and cap in hand for oil now….the venuzuelans must be pissing themselves laughing

              • Oh yeah!
                Crime and poverty are through the roof and their biggest export are people.
                They are laughing their arses off.

                • Another good example of why sanctions don’t work.

                  If you do a google search all you see is far right propaganda against Venezuela. The censorship in the west is getting worse.

                  As for increased poverty, well the right wing in Venezuela crushed the poor so bad, getting a decent standard of living has been hard yakka. The have rationing, so the poor don’t stave. Also free heath care, and free education. Which the opposition will remove if they take power.

                  Funny how the right wing keep losing election after election on a platform of austerity and removing even the basics from peoples.

                  It’s almost as if they have a free press in Venezuela keeping the public informed…

        • Agreed on MSD they really are. They have had years to cultivate the perfect staff full of pricks it’s all part of the master plan.

          • pricks and incompetents don’t underestimate the viciousness of the inept who know they are inept and take it out on the public.

            also it has to be said and I’m loath to because our resident rightards will be on it like flies on a turd but winz is a dumping ground for ‘box ticked’ no marks unable to count to 20 without taking their socks off. this combined with self importance and arrogance as psychological props doesn’t make for a well functioning workplace…but..hey
            quotas have been met HUZZAH

    • Hi Im right – if you’re interested in costings I can provide you the following.
      With 2022 economic settings – A Universal Basic Income of $13K a year (about $250 per week) paid to every citizen regardless of age, income or existing wealth will cost around $35 Billion per year. Think of this as a state pension paid to ever single person in the country including children from birth.
      This is detailed in The Opportunity Party website here https://www.top.org.nz/universal_basic_income
      This would be paid for by raising taxes on the middle class and businesses and introducing a yearly land tax.

    • First thing that I would do, is set all the salaries including that of the PM to min wage + housing allowance + any of the benefit that would apply – this of course is to be decided in taken into account the wages/salaries their partner bring in.
      KPIs would have to be made public and at the end of the year would be decided by the public if the PM or any of the empty suits have achieved, failed, needs help getting better etc. IF they fail, no bonus.
      No allowances for lunches, please pack a sandwich. No fancy dinners/lunches, unless it is an official feed for a foreign offical.

      Lets see how many of the empty suits in parliament would still be in parliament or run for a seat if they would not get their 6 figure wage + lifelong perks.
      I can literally see the entire Green Party disband within five minutes to find a better paying job somewhere else. Ditto for Labour/N/A/M etc.

    • what I WILL say is give a dollar to a poor person (whether in benefit or min wage) it gets spent immediately in the actual real economy outside your front door helping NZ business…give a dollar to a rich person it goes to overseas wealth management funds or property speculation and doesn’t touch the NZ economy much less help NZ small business.

    • ” Taxing the ‘rich’ more just means more work for tax lawyers,”

      lols, that can’t be anything but good. At least make the rich work for and pay for their searching out dodgy tax loopholes and let them take the associated legal risks should they indulge. At the moment we just roll over and let them help themselves anyway.

    • Im Right taxing capital gains instead of just hammering PAYE sources will provide more balance to the tax system and make it easier to increase the lower tax thresholds before PAYE kicks in. It is utter rubbish to say it’s too hard and will only make tax lawyers rich. You don’t have to be “rich” to make capital gains now.

  5. 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

    • as the saying goes….remember investments can go down as well as up
      should we cover their debts from the ponies as well?

      • Not suggesting covering anything, just pointing out that the quoted figure is passed its use by date.

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

  7. 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.

  8. Remove, exempt beneficiaries from income tax.

    Build more houses.

    Pro-rata power, rent to a scale that reflects the differential between the standard cost of utilities and rent to the beneficiaries adjusted rate of -63% of the minimum wage which the benefit is.

    Free Public Transport for all!

    Build more houses.

    Remove all business subsidies.

    Build some more houses

    Put in place a CGT, stamp duty, and remove secondary income tax.

    Increase social housing builds from the current limit of 1600 homes per year to 10,000 builds per year!

    Print Mo Monet! Increase taxes (CGT) wherever the excess profits turn up in the economy and also if profits go offshore! Like $6b from the banking sector!

    And user pays full price for tourists for public services, healthcare, travel packages and accommodation.

    Less than 15% of the $24b welfare budget is akshully spent on welfare.
    M.M.T.

  9. the fact that most of the paltry increase will be clawed back via higher rents or decreases in other benefits (ie acc suppliment) being cut by winz, which the govt knows full well demonstrates a monumental level of actual contempt for kiwis through the expectation that no one will notice the deception…
    simply give with one hand take with another all this does is create work for paper shufflers moving 20 bucks from govt to people and back to msd then back to govt…big fuckin whoop whoops

    ps cutting public transport costs for 2 months whilst welcome is just another ‘photo op’.. be honest cut it permanently or not at all

  10. An important thing to remember, and pardon me for repeating myself, is that what we think of as our Labour Party, isn’t.
    Think of [it] as more a stoat wearing chicken feathers. Today’s Labour Party is a head growing from the same Hydra comprised of National, ACT, The Green Party and I have no doubt at all that the Maori Party are also infected with the same parasite known as ‘neoliberalism’.
    And what is ‘Neoliberalism’ anyway? We know what it is by the effect it’s having on our democracy and clearly, from that, it’s hugely damaging to everyone who isn’t either an atom of neoliberalism or has directly profited by neoliberalism’s influence. For the rest of us, however, and that’s the majority of us, must watch on in grim fascination as neoliberalism literally destroys our societies, our democracy and by extension, us lot.
    It’s not enough to merely tut-tut that silly old rogernomics seemed like a good idea at the time then go out into a crumbling Paradise to try and make do. That’s not good enough and I’m personally not happy with that at all.
    So, what to do? Rather than breathlessly point at the problem, we must take proper and decisive action.
    But how, and what? There needs to be a branch of The Daily Blog that exclusively addresses that conundrum I think. It should be more like a forum where ideas can be expressed then the best ideas, decided by a vote, can be acted upon.
    No violence, no pain, no property damage etc… just effective change through proper financial management.
    And that means… enter the filthy fama dahlings.
    Our farmers hold the solution to all of AO/NZ’s problems. They’re the primary industry, therefore they hold the power and that power is financial. And because they’re the people who earn their money, and most of that disappears before they even see it, from the land and water they’d work best in harmony with the Green Party, but of course, James Shaw is a corporate-neoliberal ex HSBC bankster and God only knows what Marama Davidson does so there’s that idea coming with lead weights tied to it.
    If our farmers could collectively realise just how powerful they were and act on that, we’d see a transformation of our AO/NZ’s economy never seen before. And all our farmers need to do is stay in bed and wait for the phone to start ringing.
    Allow me to fantasise for a moment would you?
    ( ring-ring…)
    Farmer ” Yeah/Nah gidday? ”
    Supermarket duopoly ” Ah, yeah, gidday…? Ah, look? We’re the supermarket duopoly and, ah… we don’t seem to have any food to sell…? Is everything ok? We don’t have any milk, cheeses, ice cream, bacon, bread, chicken, beef, ham, eggs, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, apples, fruits generally actually, we don’t have any fish or wine. We only have sugar and starch in packets and because we import that we don’t have any of the cheap money the banks steal from you to buy even that with.
    Farmer “Yeah….nah. Everything’s not ok Mate. Everything’s a bit not ok at all. You went too far and now we’re all still in bed watching Netflix. You fucked it mate. You got too greedy and fucked it up didn’t ya? Here’s some advice. Dig up that fancy little designer lawn in front of that plasti-box you call a multi million dollar house and chuck in a row of spuds. That should get you by for a year. You know that labridoodlespoodle you paid $5 grand for on Trademe? Edible. Did ya know that? Right! Gotta go. The Mrs is back with a cuppa. ”
    Farmers? You will likely never understand just how important that little story above is to you and that is why will you work until you die in a crippled heap at the feet of the banks.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

      • There’s plenty money amongst the left. But if Labour were given 1.8mil you would insist they give it back. No? That’s what we all thought.

      • There’s plenty money amongst the left. It’s just not being given, so ask youself why. It would be a bad investment that’s why. But if Labour were given 1.8mil you would insist they give it back. No? That’s what we all thought. What a tosser.

        • Wow, back to the game of insulting, you are pathetic. Actually the deputy leader of the opposition said that if you cant put a name to a blog and hide behind a moniker then you’re a coward and gutless. This best sums you up alongside your need for greed. You certainly don’t like a level playing field. National have always had big business/businessmen donations behind them and have always had the highest total donations.

        • Where is this money you talk about, are you in the know? Or is this just another ” I plucked this out of my arse” statement you’re so famous for you tosser?
          You are such a coward with your comments as Mike Judge highlights.

          • OK, say I’ll donate 1.8mil to Labour then. Will you send it back…speaking of begging for crumbs…?

            • They wouldn’t accept your filthy donation. Your “dirty politics ” money. I know your a closet Paula Bennett fan who pulled up the ladder after her fee “free” days of education whilst on the benefit. Now bedding multimillionaires to “win” an election with money, after all their policies are only for the elite. So no, keep your filthy money, happy for the everyday ordinary New Zealander to make small donations, those of us that don’t idolise money like your cowardly self. Are you brave enough to post your real name or are you a gutless coward like the young Nat?
              That’s what we all thought. What a tosser.

              • Oh yes they, that’s your Jacinda and Co, would so accept my money sorry to tell you….dreamer. unless you know something we don’t know. Enlighten us.

                • No coward, you only fool yourself with your disinformation. You make the claim, now prove it coward, tosser.

                • Well Karen she took a salary freeze during Covid when your friend Johnny Ponytail gave himself an increase.
                  So when you wet dream over Johnny Ponytail in the middle of the night take your right hand off it and be thankful of the left…dreamer.

  14. “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

  15. 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?

    • thing is education no longer guarantees entry to the professions but a lifetime of debt servitude servicing a student loan….
      cannibal capitalism is starting to eat it’s own or least their offspring….now it starts to get interesting.

      • The middle classes haven’t realised yet that they are now indentured servants. Working till the day they die to pay banks for the privilege of owning a house. Their children will become adults with debt hanging around their necks, and then accrue more as they look to become home owners.

        Cannibal capitalism more and more resembles feudalism.

        • You soind wise sac; but you are not. Living a fill life, in a secure dwelling,working at something useful or perhaps decorative, making relationships, and enjoying all the things in the world and not being sick,or being destroyed by war or the unleashed over bearing passions of others, that’s altogether a marvellous adventure that you got born into. That the financial system has been set up and you can buy a house over your lifetime, while you live in it well that’s a handy system not the opposite. Systems can be manipulated but if run okay then it can work out well.

      • No one needs to study something that does not offer a job at the end of it. The debts are there because people incur them. Plenty don’t and they are thus better of just working.

        • In a sense you’re not wrong RB but the purpose of study need not ONLY be a job at the end of it. That is, if we are talking about higher education, a Bachelor degree or higher. There are some who would say aquiring critical thinking is as important as the piece of paper or the possibility of a job upon graduation, where critical thinking means something like ‘understanding the alternatives’. As important for STEM as it is for the Social Sciences and the Arts. Employable skills are fine but without critical thinking they are a bit useless. The big quesation is if good many degrees really encourage critical thinking, whether they are sufficient quality – or is the students are really up to it. Afterall Cs get degrees. Quality is even more the case with lower level tertiary quals. NZ has been a haven for such lower level quals and probally still is. But some poly courses may offer non-academic students some degree of engagement and achievement boding well for the future. Those quals with clear employment outcomes may even offer practical skills along the way. Thinking of hairdressng, garden design and the like. Better to have suceeded at something you like doing than to be stuck without any discipline to turn up for class on time, or not having any marketable skills or simply not being able to reason things through.

          But post-school education is not the answer for all and finally trades-related quals and the skills they entail are regaining credability after many were sueduced by the lure of ‘uni’ – or forced into low level quals often next to useless (although for many folk trades were the ONLY way to go – and for good reason). In a real sense trade training IS also post-school education and for some a better pathway. It will be no surpise to successful tradies however that not everyone is suited.

          I have no argument with the observation that too many students incur debts with little to show for it. Okay for those who can pay it back over time – if it is accepted that user-pays is ok in the first place – but not so good for those quals that don’t offer much, either in terms of critical thinking, personal development or practical skills.

        • yup better choices would be good but under the present bums on seats and get yer hand in your pocket system a degree in plumbing would cost just as much….now if we went back to free good quality apprenticeships that might encourage kids not to be ‘artists’

    • 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.

  16. 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.

  18. The real unemployment figures are much worse. 11.3% for the last quarter.
    The job ads are mainly for recruitment agencies. Many of these jobs have multiple agencies competing against one another for punters.
    The trick in the recruitment scam is to talk employers into casual, short term or fixed contract employment so that the agency can keep on clipping the ticket. Especially the labour-hire bs casual employment scam.

    So, with so many unemployed. What do you do? Starve them to death?

    Create an economy that creates real sustainable long term jobs?

    Or just give people a chance to moan about unemployed people?

    Remember, just one hour of work means that you’re employed.

  20. From the media, the govt upped the benefits beyond the WEAG recommendations, our gold standard. Which they long resisted.

    Some nitwit economist on Stuff has just columnized the benefit increases make work less attractive.

    You can judge a country by how the desperate are helped. Everything comes from that level, especially with our NZ ideal. That the poorest remain ‘ever’ silent is the worst sort of endorsement of the state. They are our foundation. And the 40 years of making them wait ( never said a more violent word) has undermined us.

    The Welfare State started with that principle, that the neediest came first. Imagine how, if instead of giving rich pricks freedom in 84 we’d kept with social democracy a slight 5 years more til we knew climate change was real. We would have mobilised, though given the electorate’s self-indulgence, at least have leadership.

    We’ve lacked leadership for the right and the people. And modern Labour devoted instead to fucken focus groups.

    Don’t know why I put this here, might as well talk to a hole in the ground. Like Midas in the myth (?).

    • ‘Whispering wind’. It’s a good metaphor for reality and the breakdown of communication of reality if you look up the fable further than me.

  22. 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.

  23. and the embezzled and given to mates businesses in covid relief payments which the govt are making no efforts to get back….make a mistake on your IRD return and see what happens.

  25. 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!!

  26. Cripes, I’ve never given money to the friends-of-the rich Labour. You’d have to be dim. Sneaked in to vote for Andrew Little — pure pleasure to see Jacinda screwing up her face. Then departed. Oh, actually I made some sort of membership payment. $10 I think it was.

    People aren’t as realpolitik as the ’84 pragmatic activists running Labour. It must be a great disappointment to those ‘clever-clogs’, the people letting them down.

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