Indiscriminate charity does not help anyone
By DAVID ROUND
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`Human rights' are now the enemy of democracy, hard work and responsible living. They have inherently socialist tendencies. They are instruments of oppression and theft, in the service of laziness and parasitism. They sound the death-knell of a healthy society.
Such, at least, is the logical conclusion of a claim currently before the Human Rights Review Tribunal. That splendid body, established under the Human Rights Act 1993, is considering a claim brought by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).
CPAG alleges that the Government's Working For Families package is discriminatory and improper. Under Working For Families, only families (including single-parent families), where a parent or parents work so many hours a week are eligible for a tax credit of $60 per week.
Beneficiaries who do not work, or do not work enough hours, are ineligible. CPAG (supported by the Human Rights Commission) alleges that this is a breach of beneficiaries' human rights. The Human Rights Act forbids discrimination on the ground of "employment status" and that includes the status of being unemployed or receiving a benefit or ACC payment.
CPAG says that in consequence, 150,000 children of beneficiaries live in "serious or severe hardship".
No-one would condemn hapless children to poverty. But just as we object to children being dragged along to political demonstrations on subjects they cannot understand, we are also entitled to resent children being used as pawns in a political argument for yet another extension of the social welfare system.
CPAG's argument might have some merit if it were clear that benefits relieved poverty. But poverty and extensions to the social welfare system have grown together. Whatever poverty's root causes may be, it is certainly clear that simply continuing and extending present welfare policies will not solve them. That is not to say that we should have no system of social security.
But any doctor who continued prescribing stronger doses of a medicine which he knew to be, at best, ineffective, would rightly be struck off. CPAG's pursuit of a policy with a proven record of failure shows more evidence of a socialist agenda than of imagination or intelligence.
Its complaint is not that some people receive no benefits, but that not all benefits are exactly the same. They consider human rights to require absolute equality of income. (Likewise they reject income splitting for taxation purposes, not because it would not benefit poorer households but because it might benefit better-off ones more.)
There is also, of course, absolutely no legal requirement for beneficiaries to spend any of such a tax credit on their children. We can, alas, be confident that many children in most need would not benefit at all.
The Government argues that the tax credit is an incentive to get that worthwhile thing, a job. Having a job also involves expenses - childcare, for example - which beneficiaries do not incur. Extending the credit to beneficiaries would remove that incentive. It would in effect be an incentive not to get a job.
Two centuries ago human rights were very simple freedom of speech, of religion and so on. Then it was realised that such fine liberties were of limited use to those "free" to be starving and homeless. Later lists of rights therefore included "economic rights" such as the right to work. Full employment is certainly desirable, but making it a human right does not, of course, automatically create jobs.
But lists no longer stop there. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes even the right to paid holidays, social security and adequate living standards. "Universal" rights now presuppose a complex welfare state which inevitably impinges in increasingly intrusive ways on the lives of ordinary citizens in order to provide these "rights" for all.
Democracy is not allowed to over-rule these vital rights. If a democratically elected government considers that prosperity and social health require incentives to work, that is just too bad. A caste of activist judges and human rights lawyers is ready to over-rule democratic decisions. You wish to keep and enjoy the results of your own hard work?
Sorry. Despite lip-service about respect for private property, more pressing rights entitle the feckless, lazy and irresponsible to plunge their hands into the pockets of the increasingly hard-pressed productive classes. Once it was considered irresponsible to marry unless one could support one's offspring. Now there is a human right not just to breed indiscriminately but to be supported by taxpayers for doing so.
Completely indiscriminate charity (it must be indiscriminate if it is one's human right) reduces the incentive to improve one's lot. It encourages the growth of an uneducated, unhealthy, criminal underclass. We are paying to cut our own throats.
- © Fairfax NZ News
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I'm going to take a bet that CPAG doesn't want you to feel guilty. I think that they'd be more impressed if you managed to think through what's going to happen when these kids grow up, and they spill out of the containment of their decile 10 suburbs. You shouldn't feel guilty, you should feel worried about what those angry kids, whose only view of a possible better life comes from the youth gangs.
The first paragraph in this story is now one of my all time favourite quotes.
It's all so true.
"Hey! I do nothing! But I DESERVE what that guy over there paying tax gets!!"
GIVE ME A BREAK!!!
We won't have equality until we are rid of The Ministry of Womens Affairs (and I AM a woman), All the Maori seats AND the Ministry or Maori Affairs, and when we STOP giving money to unproductive people.
ONE RULE FOR EVERYONE. THAT IS WHEN REAL DISCRIMINATION WILL END.
Stand on your own two feet. Survival of the fittest! If you really want to win at life you can - but you gotta work for it!
Mugabe?? What an ignorant comparison!
I agree with Joe... Unless you have a valid health or other such reason for not working the Government should make you work for that money you take from the rest of us.
As far as I'm concerned the dole and related benefits are for times of need when companies go under, people are made redundant or for whatever other reason people are genuinely "between jobs", it's not a lifestyle like a lot of people seem to think it is!
On the subject of the tax benefits, they work and contribute to society and times are getting hard. I am in no way pro-family but they do need the help. I do also think these benefits should not apply to those on a benefit unless it's on the grounds of disability or something equally as unfortunate..
I believe the writer misses the point. There is a social crisis happening primarily brought on by a rampant real estate market. Had there been no change from 2003 prices (rentals and house prices) I doubt Working for Families would never have been brought into existence.
When can you do some real reporting and bring us statistics on what families spend this additional money on? I challenge you to find out...
Do I feel ashamed to work 40 hours a week? NO Do I feel wrong to have a child? NO! Do I feel guilty about people who make less money than I do? NO!!
So why do groups like CPAG insist on trying to make me feel ashamed, wrong and guilty! I'm sick of 'Dudley Do Goods' constantly telling me I should feel bad for being me. My wife and I work hard to put ffod on the table, a roof over our heads and opportunities for our son - is that wrong? We don't have SkyTV, we don't go out drinking, we barely go out for dinner. We don't by any means lead an opulent lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination because we have to pay huge mortgage interest rates, overpriced food prices, ridiculous power prices and taxes on everything. And what did "Working for Families" do for my family - absolutely NOTHING! I was told I make too much money. Should I feel sorry for "poor" people. I work a 40 hour week and still barely manage to pay the bills and keep my head above water! Just because someone works it doesn't make them RICH! WAKE UP YOU POLITICALLY CORRECT MORONS!
Cody, I think you mean "ancestors", not "descendants".
And we do live in the real world- if none of us did, it wouldn't be the "real" world. Yes, most of us don't live in poverty, but who ever said poverty was the real world?
Many beneficiaries are able to get a job, they just aren't inclined to do so. I have every sympathy for those who are forced to be on a benefit and have no choice, but many of the other beneficiaries need to do some work if they want to reap the rewards, like Working for Families. There is a reason it's called "Working" For Families.
Hmm someone has it right. When Helen decided to give those earning $40,000 with a couple of kids the equivilent as those with earning $70,000 with or without kids with, lets face it, kickbacks, it was time to leave. All incentive to aspire to earn more was reduced, have another kid you will benefit more that way. So the decision was made and for the last two years the Australian Tax office has been the beneficary of my aspirations and desire to earn more and provide for the family in a more generous manner.
These human rights are trying to ensure 'absolute equality' in a very superficial way, in fact the result is less than equal. Harder working people pay more tax and receive less benefits than those physically and mentally able people that remain on the dole. Of course, I think a country should support its citizens that are unable to work because of sickness, disability, full time study or other such legitimate reasons. But there really are people that simply don't want to work or get educated and as soon as they turn 18 they can receive a weekly income and subsidised housing and healthcare. Is this completely fair and equal? It seems there is a resentment of higher-income earners in NZ, as if they are wealthy because they are 'lucky' or of a certain race. I earn more than enough to support myself, but it's not luck - it's my own effort, through education and committing myself to work for 40 hours a week.
Inequalities, deprivation, and discrimination are built-in this Capitalistic system. And if you care to look closer, a large part of it is based on race! Leaders of human civilisation are obliged to make good of the consequences but instead they have led the greedy train. As a result look at who are suffering at the bottom, elderly, the poor, and sick. The fight for survival has given rise to killings on the streets is that right???
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David Round is either playing devils advocate or he is full of his own miserable Protestant Work Ethic that he has lost touch with his humanity. Round's argument is not unlike that of a corporation who believe it is their right to battle on with self interest at the expense of all those around it in order to secure the most benefits for the least number of individuals.
When hard working petty middle-class people see themselves as the democratic majority while at the same time having disdane for those less fortunate, then we have a tyranny of the majority - ready to justify all manner of controls even to the extreem of eugenics which Round was alluding to in his predictable polemic above.