Editorial: Leading lame horses to water

OPINION: Good money after bad.

We are told to not waste one to chase after the other. And it's a sound, if simplistic, truism and economic maxim.

But when it comes to long-term unemployment, there's another economic law that appears more apt: the law of diminishing returns.

To dispense with the jargon, in its simplest form it stipulates that spending money or expending resources in a particular activity will bring rewards, but after an optimum point there is less reward for the same effort. To the point where it becomes a waste of time – like throwing good money after bad.

It's a law that helps to explain the sense – or lack of – behind expending too much energy on our society's worst slackers. Not because we don't care. It's quite the opposite, actually. It's more because they don't care.

And deep in our heart of hearts, we have always known that there will always be a small percentage of people who, for a variety of reasons, are unemployable, lazy, good for nothing to the point where they are best occupied with lying down on the sidelines and letting the rest of us get on with it.

It's the only explanation for people who, despite nearly a decade of economic boom, have gone up to and over five years without a job.

Five years while the rest of us fed and clothed their kids, bought new tyres for the Chrysler saloon or refenced the pool on one of their properties.

For the great majority of people who claim the dole, it is a temporary leg-up until they find a new job and can stand on their own two feet.

But for that small percentage of unemployable slackers, it's a few dollars chucked their way to keep them hopefully out of trouble and out of sight; keep them reasonably healthy and clothed and away from our door to beg for money. Like the insurance we pay for through gritted teeth, knowing we may never have need for it, a consequence of the welfare state is that a small number of people will see it as the only way of life and want for nothing more than that prone position on the sidelines.

Good luck to them. If that's all they want and they are incapable of providing any more, so be it.

But let's not make it too comfortable for them. People like former gang leader Darryl Harris should not be getting more than what they need for a basic, simple life; and certainly not enough for pool fencing and stays in fancy hotels.

And they should be made to justify their circumstances and their continued inability to find work. But Social Development Minister Paula Bennett needs to be wary about chucking away good money in the pursuit of the bad; she needs to be concerned about expending too much energy on those few who apparently have so little.

The last thing we need is a new department created and shiny new bureaucrats hired at great expense for little reward, except maybe a few photo opportunities and political slaps on the back.

- © Fairfax NZ News