If having 290 000 kids in poverty is a ‘success’ I’d hate to see failure in NZ

Because of our 30 year neoliberal cultural myth that success is an individual victory and poverty is a personal choice, our media generated hatred towards the poor and beneficiaries means levels of poverty are tolerated rather than genuine social policies that help.

Why do we always talk about ‘children’ in poverty? Because property speculating middle NZ doesn’t care about adults in poverty and have to have their compassion switched on by thinking of the kids

How grim and accepting of poverty in New Zealand have we become when 290 00 kids living in poverty can be considered any kind of ‘success‘…

The report of the latest Child Poverty Monitor showed 12 per cent of children, or 135,000, were living in material hardship – in households without seven or more items, from a total list of 17, which are considered necessary for their wellbeing. That was down from 14 per cent or 155,000 in 2016.

There were 70,000 New Zealand children – or six per cent – who were experiencing the worst material hardship, with households missing out on 9 or more items from the list of 17 – down from 8 per cent or 85,000 last year.

A one per cent drop of the number of children living in low income homes saw 27 per cent – 290,000 – in homes where money was tight and were considered to be in income poverty.

….one of the most important cultural developments National have managed to infect and mutate the debate with is this pretence of attempting to seperate the truly materially poor from just the usual poor.

There are 290 000 children in poverty, but separating out the material hardship and the worst material hardship is a clever way of destroying universal provision of social services to just teose worst case examples.

It’s a magnificent and deceptive way for National to impose neoliberal culture into social welfare provision. They destroy universal provision of welfare in favour of targeted welfare using big data.

Instead of paying for an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, the neoliberal system just wants to pay for the hearse.

We need to reject this attempt to differentiate the poor from the utterly destitute because it’s a mere political illusion that pretends to be doing something when in reality it is only allowing the problem to get more damaged.

Rescuing 10 children from homelessness while ignoring the 100 children in State houses that can’t be fed is not a solution, it is a twisted sick lie used to ease middle class pretensions of equality without threatening their illusion of wealth from grotesquely over inflated house prices with a capital gains tax to truly pay for a proper social welfare network.