Government to clamp down on sicknets benefits - perhaps.

Scares the pants off me. Not the general idea of it because I would like to work - the money, the self esteem, the feeling of being useful and so on. My reality at the moment though is that even coping with 'every day things' at the moment is barely possible, and some of it still impossible.

I feel the same way Maisie. I would like to work, and I feel like I'm going very stir crazy at home, but I also know I have good and bad periods, which has affected my work in the past.

I have recently been transferred from just over two years on a sickness benefit to an invalids benefit BUT the checks that were done were incredibly thorough and intrusive. The included contacting in person not only my GP but also the rheumotologist I am under and the renal specialist. They also wanted copies of ALL the tests and reports from them and other specialists I have been to with proof of costs incurred and reasons it was deemed necessary for me to have the tests and see those particular specialists. I understand from the case manager I have now, who by the way is just wonderful and treats me like a real human being, that many people are getting kicked off benefits and it is getting harder and harder to get extra support than just the basics. It seems that it is easier to get accommodation supplements and support to fund a roof over your head if you are renting. Home ownership now appears to be a luxury that only the rich can afford and it is deemed that those people rich enough to have a home can afford to pay their own mortgage out of thin air. The renters are given support to line the pockets of their landlords a lot of whom appear to be the very goverment that is giving them the money to pay the rent in the first place. Then the question is, if we don't give you enough to pay your mortgage, yet it is still getting paid you MUST be getting an additional income from somewhere yet you have said you have no other income. Do handouts from family to keep a roof over your head count as income or charity? I do beleive there may be some people on benefits who would like to work and would be great employees but they just need that extra encouragement and confidence to put themselves out there, the new harder line may well be great for them but for most, as there is so much unemployment it seems to make sense to keep those that really need a job as part of their identity and sense of well being in work and leave those that feel happier at home alone at least till a time when there are more jobs available. On the other hand there are always jobs that no one much wants to do that pay no more, or sometimes even less than a benefit. Should anyone be forced to take on those jobs if so who? Then who decides who these unfortunates will be? I am very very glad it is not up to me to make those kinds of decisions. There is just NO WAY to get it right and fair for everyone but it is also not fair to get it right for some while others are left suffering. Does anyone have any constructive, realistic answers? We can all complain as there is certainly plenty to complain about but are there any realistic answers? Ofcourse we could say we all want a minimum of 500.00 a week to live on but then who on earth is going to pay for it? I am sure we would all like to see every person, from the youngest child to the oldest pensioner get a safe, comfortable home, a reasonable education, good health care, a police force that can look after us and nourshing food to eat BUT once again who will pay? I don't think the workers would be prepared to pay 50% of their income in taxes. Although I never begrudged the tax I did pay to try and keep equity between those with an income from working and others who couldn't or wouldn't I know I wouldn't really want to pay more all the years I was working. Now I am on the other side and one side of me feels useless having to depend on a benefit, another side of me says I have paid my taxes for many years and I am entitled to what I am getting but yet another side of me says surely if I am on a benefit I should get enough to at least pay for my most basic needs. But then the circle starts again, yes I should get enough to have a roof over my head and bread and butter to eat, even a little jam on it now and again would be nice but then we go back to Who Pays? Sorry for the novel folks but the whole thing does worry me. All comments welcome and will be read with much interest.

It certainly is a horrible situation isn't it. John Key keeps rambling on about how NZ is in a bad situation and cuts need to made everywhere... has it always been this bad and I'm only now aware of it because I depend on it?

You mention that jobs are scarce - true - but is that ever going to change? I'm really not sure. I really don't know if I'm naive, or the only one who's not kidding himself but I don't see the job market ever getting better, because:
1. Technology is cutting out a lot of jobs
2. Cheaper overseas labour is also cutting out a lot of jobs.

As I said, I really don't know if my view is just bleaker than most, which is understable given that I'm depressed, or if I"m just the only one that doesn't wanna pretend that the world is turning to shit.

It seems to follow that when the economy slows down there are less jobs, I think that is a given. It also seems to be true that no matter how bad the job market is there are always some employers crying out for people to do less popular, badly paid jobs and can't understand why some of the people who say they are desperate to work don't come and work for them. I think it is blatantly apparent to the rest of us why, after all very few people would want to do some jobs for less than they get on a benefit and would prefer to spend their energy looking for a job they would get more fulfilment from. Who on earth would want to do a job they hate for peanuts when they have an alternative? We spend so much time either at work, travelling to work, planning what to wear to work or what we are going to do the next day at work that it seems to me to maintain a healthy mind it is essential to have a job that you at least don't mind too much but the thought of having a job you hate would be too awful to bear. Then again there are always some people who are perhaps not very realistic about the kind of job they are suitable for and get very down when they are constantly rejected. These people may very likely be unemployed even if we had 99% employment. After all you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear as the saying goes just as you can't fit a round peg into a square hole. I love the old cliches, if you really think about it they only became cliches because they do seem to make a lot of sense and therefore oft repeated.

Actually I think New Zealand has one of the lowest tax rates per capita in the world. And as things go you get what you pay for, compared to Australia our public services are crap.


While I was trying to find some info that I've seen, that shows how little the invalids and sickness benefit actually costs the country, I came across some interesting articles:
WINZ cost saving doesn't look at the big picture


Hmmm, I can't seem to find it. If anyone has a link to the stats showing what each social services cost please post it. Anyway, going from memory, sickness and invalids benefit were at the bottom of the pile with a very small chunk, followed by unemployment and then dpb. Which I think was almost as much as the bottom three combined. However, the biggest cost is superannuation, being almost three quarters of the welfare spend.

It saddens and amuses me that the idiots running the country are going after the two groups that actually cost the least and are unlikely to return much in the way of savings. I mean the majority of people on these two benefits are there for a reason. Sure there are people who abuse the system, but you get that in all walks of life, from corporates down to the average person. There will always be someone willing to abuse the system.

Sadly I think this will just mean more stress for the people who really, really don't need any more.

It doesn't help that there aren't a lot of jobs around at the moment.

jaffakiwi wrote:It certainly is a horrible situation isn't it. John Key keeps rambling on about how NZ is in a bad situation and cuts need to made everywhere... has it always been this bad and I'm only now aware of it because I depend on it?

You mention that jobs are scarce - true - but is that ever going to change? I'm really not sure. I really don't know if I'm naive, or the only one who's not kidding himself but I don't see the job market ever getting better, because:
1. Technology is cutting out a lot of jobs
2. Cheaper overseas labour is also cutting out a lot of jobs.

As I said, I really don't know if my view is just bleaker than most, which is understable given that I'm depressed, or if I"m just the only one that doesn't wanna pretend that the world is turning to shit.

There were many jobs available only a few years ago.

It depends on how you calculate tax DocLazy. There is certainly a lower income tax than we had in the past but then there is GST at 15% which is also a tax, quite a bit of the petrol you buy is tax, there is tax on land rates, water rates, environmental rates just to name a few. When you look at how much goes in different taxes every time a dollar changes hands there is not very much of that dolllar left. It is interesting that you think people on the dole and DPB are most vulnerable when many are very likely physically capable of working whereas people on sickness or invalids benefits very likely are not, those that are capable have already been, or about to be shifted off those benefits into either looking for work or work retraining. As for superannuitants I suspect a huge majority of them have worked hard all their lives with the expectation that they will have earned their super by the time they retire. That may not apply to the upcoming generation of people due to collect pensions 20 years or so into the future as our current social culture will have spawned many people who have been on benefits from birth to the grave and still feel a sense of entitlement for some strange reason. With the current superannuitants and those almost at that age it was said to be a done deal that there would be money for them to have a dignified retirement paid for out of the taxes they paid over their working lifetime. However over the past couple of decades the message has been given loud and clear that in the future this would not be the case no matter how much they paid in tax over the years. Therefore people of this generation have been given a very different set of expectations from governing bodies than those who were born before before the 60's and even the 70's. Do you think that the current superannuitants who are taking so much of the welfare dollar should be rounded up and put out to pasture? How should they be feeling when they have worked hard in the belief that they would have the luxury of at least an adequate standard of living upon retirement?

Bluebird i'm not sure how you got all of that from my post.

I was talking about tax amount per capita. This is the amount each person pays in total. While not the lowest we really aren't paying that much in taxes compared to the rest of the developed world.

Errr... I was talking about sickness and invalids.

No where in my post did I suggest to cancel superannuation. I was just providing some perspective, that the mouth frothers and media seem to ignore. That is, the sickness an invalids benefit is a very small spend and trying to take people off it, who are most likely there for a reason, is counter productive and likely to end up costing the country more in the long run.

Fair enough. The bulk of my post wasn't in response to your post but just another general rant. I totally agree that taking people off benefits could well cost us more in the long run. I am also appalled at the waste of resources on some and the total lack of resources available to others. I could go into invidual cases but there are just toooo many. There is one couples particular situation that has stayed with me for many years though. It all started with two productive people. One developed extreme hip problems and was put on the waiting list to a hip replacement. Because of the nature of his job he had to give up work. In due course, as the other hip was doing so much extra work that too gave out on him so his partner had to give up her job to take care of him. Now we have two people on benefits for lack of a comparatively inexpensive operation. But it goes on. They finally fixed the first hip but ofcourse that didn't help much as the second hip was now so bad their overall situation hadn't changed any. I am still wondering what can be done to make things better. In years past there was little accountability as to how money was spent, now the money counters expect every cent to be accounted for and the staff required to do this eats up huge amounts of the funding that could be used helping get people on their feet and going again. As for ACC they have elaborate procedures with numerous visits from 'professionals' and a mountain of forms to fill out before any little thing is finally approved but they have no way at all to have things returned. Even unopened boxes of things sent in error are left. As for barely used equipment such as tilt beds and stuff I have seen them just sitting out in the rain unused and rusting. Whereas ACC clients have access to the kind of equipment free people who just happen to be sick have to aquire their own. Why on earth can't someone organise to collect unused items and distribute to those in need who can't afford them? Goodness only knows how much some of this stuff costs. Another instance is a new electric hospital bed that was put on a courier to be taken to a certain address. It went missing in transit. Another was dispatched the next day and thankfully arrived. Also consumables such as pads, bandages, moisturising cream, lubricating gel all get dispatched every quarter whether they are needed or not, ACC again. I understand there is a collection point somewhere in Auckland where some considerate people who get an oversupply of these things take them so others who don't get enough or don't get any supplied can have them. DocLazy do you think anyone with any kind of authority has the brains to sort all this stuff out? I am cynical enough to think that most people who enter politics and similar fields start with good intentions but in no time at all they get swallowed up by the sausage machine that just churns out words without meaning and answers that create even more questions and people, well they just become a statistic, no face, no name no individual needs and certainly nothing that can remotely resemble a personality as that may just prick whatever conscious they have left and even bring a glimmer of memory about why they started doing the job are doing in the first place. No harm was caused to any living being during the writing of this rant and no offence intended to anyone reading it. This is all general stuff and NOT intended to be taken as a response to anyone elses posts or criticism of anyone elses points of view.