Anti-poverty groups calling on Govt to wipe all MSD debt
A coalition of anti-poverty groups is calling for the Government to wipe all debt owed to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).
About bloody time we started focusing on the Left to wiping beneficiary debt!
I have written many posts highly critical of the culture of MSD.
Their malice, their spite, their abuse of power over the most vulnerable.
This latest story manages to sum up all that is wrong with MSD, they are lending money to the poorest people to buy essentials.
How corrupt is that as a social policy…
Beneficiaries owe record $2.1b to Govt as cost of living soars
Low income New Zealanders now owe more than $2 billion to the Ministry of Social Development as they continue to have to borrow money to survive.
…this is the neoliberal welfare industry for you.
The madness is that MSD sees this debt as an asset!
They have a vested interest in loading more debt up on beneficiaries! We have loaded up billions in debt to the poorest amongst us creating debt slaves.
The state are acting like a drug dealer peddling desperation and entrapping people into literal debt coffins.
When MSD aren’t dealing in desperation loans, they are using vast mass surveillance powers to trawl through beneficiary social media accounts to catch them out in what MSD decides as ‘relationships’, and then claim beneficiaries are committing benefit fraud and then put them in debt to MSD!
MSD don’t tell beneficiaries what exactly amounts to a relationship and they do so on purpose to trap beneficiaries into a never ending debt cycle that makes them debt slaves until death, and this is all fine according to Labour.
461,000 Kiwis are struggling with MSD debt, this is a disgrace for Labour and another reason why Carmel Sepuloni is such a failed politician for the values of the Left.
Where are all those woke media who were championing Carmel becoming Deputy like The Spinoff and Stuff now?
Wipe the debt!
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A campaign that will get wide support if organised well. The 2 bill is a rough gauge of what MSD should have paid out in the first place! Claw backs and demonisation of vulnerable people with very little or no resources is appalling.
The middle classes who got their second tier COVID benefits (partner allowed to be working, hundreds more than a standard job seeker benefit) of course will not understand it at all. Some working class people resent those getting MSD assistance too–but hello–anyone notice the billions in COVID aid to business? or the millions so far to business re Cyclone/Flood aid? The only bright spot in the millions doled out so far is a 15 mill grant to Iwi agencies whose Marae have been the backbone of flood assistance to Māori and Pākehā alike in many communities.
Wipe the Debt!
The levels of dependency have steadily climbed near lock step with the level of benefits available.
This is not a coincidence. Welfare rewards specific behaviors such as having more children than you could possibly support on your own.
People who scream for bigger benefits have no concept nor capacity for 2nd or 3rd order thinking.
If this country was really serious about reducing poverty, it would steadily ramp down benefits until they no longer exist.
It would absolutely hurt like hell, but the pain of removing these benefits was created by the act of instituting them in the first place.
Unfortunately the world is full of well meaning imbeciles like Adern who think the answer to poverty is more benefits, when in fact it is one of the biggest causes.
I do realize that this will not be popular on this board and will be perceived as hating beneficiaries and certainly I do detest those who commit crime with the spare time the taxpayers have gifted them.
However you cannot remotely simultaneously be a humanist and support benefits, you cannot.
Abolishing the Full Employment Policy was a total disaster for the living conditions of working people.
If they were paid properly in the first place, people wouldn’t have such high debt levels and low levels of personal assets (something which had previously been eradicated).
I believe there is a precedent for this. There was an amnesty in the mid 1990s. I understand that , and I stand to be corrected, that as there was concern people had not been fully upfront about their circumstances, they were encouraged to “come clean” to ensure correct access to entitlements. Any existing debt was wiped, and any debt created as a result of recalculation of entitlements, was also wiped.
A similar situation ought to occur again. We all know people on welfare who go to great lengths to hide their relationships (and why shouldnt they? Welfare is not sustainable for 1 person, let alone 2 people to pay bills, rent, and all the rest).
If there was a similar amnesty, perhaps the true picture of assistance actually required for welfare recipients might come clear.
And then stop beneficiaries from being docked 25% of their benefits to pay for ’emergency housing’. that too would help.
No way, if we wipe this dept they will just start running up more debt.
That dept is tax payers money and it isnt free money.
Ah some sense!
bit like people who over leverage mortgages and build on flood plains yet expect the state to save them andrew those kind of debts?
Can’t be done @ Martyn. The Neo-libs, often dressed up in drag as 3rd way’ers currently hold sway.
It’ll be another half decade at least before they come to their senses. As things stand, most of them think their fartings smell better than their lower class specimens. They’ve truly become Mother Earth’s ………
Their smell lingers and will do so until the yeah/nah sussoiighty of lil ‘ole Nu Zull that punches above its weight wakes the fuck up, and realises that it ekshully isn’t when it comes to shit that matters
Considering that of the $23b of the Welfare budget, less than $6b actually is given directly to a beneficiary as ‘income’ for 359,000 people.
The debt to income ratio created by this ‘income’ imbalance which is deliberate is disproportionate.
Raising benefits by at least 60% to adjust for the 25 years it wasnt and hasnt been accounted for. Would probably eliminate poverty for young and old.
Income test people receiving Superannuation. Like, Wealthy politicians with the Golden Superannuation scheme from being a polly for 10 years shouldn’t be receiving super, as well as many other wealthy pricks.
That should carve off $4b from the Super bill that is $14b of the Welfare Budget!!
This Labour Government will not wipe the debt for fear of losing votes,particularly Chirpy Chippy.
They are simply inept.
This is the perfect time to do it! Knowing that they could lose the election. They still have a majority government! Bang it through the house asap and then call an election! 359,000 people, many of them can vote.
Going by the way beneficiaries have been treated over the last 30 years I doubt there will be any change to the current situation. We have too many overpaid politicians who don’t have a clue what doing it hard actually means
Reward those who waste money, while punishing those who struggle to live with their means. Sounds a Labour Party policy.
Labour policy through and through, current Labour Government in particular.
Promise better deliver worse.
National and Ruth Richardson’s Mother of All Budgets–MOAB–in 1991 cut benefit rates, against even officials advice, to levels below what was needed for adequate nutrition and those cuts have never been fully reinstated.
Loans from MSD are taken because of inadequate benefit levels and high abatement rates on part time work. No amount of budgeting can stretch not enough money. Poverty above all else is about lack of money.
Wipe debt if it cannot be accrued again. Otherwise there is the risk that debt will be taken on again. But, most importantly, look at what is necessary and what is not necessary.
Additionally, a lot of debt is mounted up because beneficiaries work part time and have to “repay” money to MSD. Raise the threshold. Or why have a threshold.
I was thinking the other day actually, that the benefit is still such a low amount. There’s no reason why beneficiaries cannot receive a comparable income to those who are working full time, and receiving the minimum wage. In fact, such a measure would act as a stimulus to the New Zealand economy. Unfortunately it would probably be unaffordable, at least in the short and medium terms.
an all round increase in benifits and pensions would be more in order…or does inflation by some magical process not effect those groups…?
Any increase in anything in this country is going to have to come from taxation.
Its lack of taxation as to why this country is so broken.
Don’t expect politicians to change anything though, I mean National dished out a tax cut which left us with run down infrastructure but along comes Labour who doesnt change that, in other words they too were happy with tax cuts for the rich while the increase in GST affecting the poor is acceptable to them too. We need tax increases on the rich, not cuts
The owner of the property did not decide to build on a flood plain they decided to buy a house that was built by a developer who had been given permission by the council. The same think occurred in Chch where homes were placed in areas that in reflection was not a good call . The Chch people were lucky they had a government in charge that put action over a talk fest and created a Red Zone so people got money quickly and moved on with life .It was tough on some individuals but most were happy .
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