Eric The IWTC is a small part of WFF. The two are conflated in what you write. The main point of WFF was to reduce child poverty. And as I have explained elsewhere it would be hard for an economist to design a worse work incentive than the IWTC. The courts said very clearly the IWTC is a payment for children and by excluding the worst of 270,000 they are harmed. The way that it worked out was not to incentivise work but to punish families who lost work. We have 140,000 children under the lowest poverty line of 40% AHC – their exclusion from the IWTC is a big factor.
Do you as an economist still support the IWTC as a work incentive at a cost of $6-700m pa that goes right up the income scale and is paid to partnered caregivers even though they are not in paid work ?

Alex
Many people over 65 work or have substantial assets. WFF is not welfare for working people- it is a weekly payment for children paid to the caregiver not to the worker.

Stobhan
Sure because children need housing along with everything else that makes it more expensive to have kids. WFF is a payment for children

The In Work Tax Credit in Working for Families works to boost the incomes of those in employment on low incomes if they are in households with children. That helps encourage labour force participation of those who’d face higher barriers to participation: single parents. I always understood that to be the point of the Clark government’s reforms: to reduce the benefit count by making work relatively more attractive.

What’s with your aversion to the words family and parent? It”s not offence I felt when receiving it it was more like feeling hopeless and demoralised at not be able to make any headway. I don’t think support to elderly people who can’t work anymore is the same as welfare for working people.

If you take out the workers with children in any workplace you further limit the number of workers motivated to take action.
Even in the fast food industry, which employs largely young childless people, you tend to look to the older workers for encouragement and strength in dealing with the bosses or even contacting the Union. The older workers…ie those with, usually, children.
WFF pays the rent. I know this, because that’s what we used it for. As did most of our friends. Those with mortgages used it for paying the mortgage.
But that’s a pointless conversation, all the money a family receives, wages, wff, accommodation payments, it all goes into the same pot. And if you are a low wage earner, half of that money will go on rent. That’s just a fact. For people on low income..rent is the most important cost, it comes before food and warmth every time.

We have people in countries like NZ Inc expect at least a ‘liveable wage’ and also some state support that enables people to survive. The minimum wage is the bare minimum that a worker must be paid, but even that does not provide for some.

We have some contract workers, or so called ‘self employed’, who work hours that result in per hour earnings, after costs, that do not even match the minimum wage in some situations.

We have a middle class ‘earn’ from property speculation, and other ‘investments’, expecting ‘returns’ that are either lowly taxed or tax exempt.

And we have people here consume goods made in virtual slave working conditions in Bangla Desh, China, Vietnam and other places, and sold in retail shops that do operate a bit like import cartels, so they ensure themselves to get their cut out of the supply chain deals. Prices for clothes for instance are relatively high in NZ Inc, while the manufacturing of these cost a mere fraction of the end price at the shop.

So many dealers, middle men and women, so many getting their cuts out of endless deals, so many ‘landlords’ and ‘investors’ who own property, or shares in residential or commercial real estate, earning high lease incomes, and so many greedy at the top, having a top tax rate of only 33 percent on incomes.

Some have trusts and so constructed to keep themselves lowly paid, even as ’employee’ in their own limited companies, so they never pay much tax, using various ways to protect their wealth.

How about offering people in Bangla Desh WWF then, how about giving all humans a decent living situation? It is not talked about, because we are all lamenting our individual circumstances, our national circumstances and our frustration about not achieving our aspirations.

We grow food, like many other nations, export this, export raw materials and resources, low value added primary production goods, logs, fish and so forth, only some higher end tech products.

We compete, we trade, we import nice, shiny SUVs from countries where they are made, and expect apples, kiwifruit, milkpowder and so pay for that. Hence the speculation in real estate, hence the immigration scan, the Ponzi Scheme called ‘Kiwi Dream’ we sell to new migrants, giving hope, but exploiting many, to pay for the future, that comes also with debt and strings attached.

WWF is just a small part of the whole equation, I guess, perhaps worth and necessary having, but are there not other issues, and other ways of dealing with the problems we have?