welfare

A Nation of Bludgers
When you have to turn down a pay rise because it makes you worse off, life at work can become pretty miserable....
1 December 2005 - Gareth Morgan

Blaming the Infirm for their Quandary
Blaming people for getting ill has a lot of merit and the only way the explosive growth in public health spending will be capped....
27 October 2005 - Gareth Morgan

Helen, Motherhood and Babies
Helen Clark's initiative to encourage mothers to abandon their babies and get down to the factory, reflects a long-held bias against the one-income household. There is no economic case....
10 February 2005 - Gareth Morgan

What Happened to Self-Reliance Dr Brash?
Addressing the causes of the explosion in beneficiary numbers rather than hiring more gatekeepers to shoo them away, would make Dr Brash's policy more credible....
27 January 2005 - Gareth Morgan

The Welfare State Waits for No-one
Local body elections confirm another lurch Left. Economies that live on the savings of others inevitably become higher risk propositions, have to pay more to borrow and crimp people's living standards....
13 October 2004 - Gareth Morgan

Poverty: In the Eye of the Beholder
What we call "poor" in New Zealand is by Indian standards, "comfortable". Are the "poor" bound to stay with us no matter how rich we and they become?...
29 January 2004 - Gareth Morgan

Sick or Lazy?
The growth in sickness benefit numbers is strong. It reflects government negligence on social policy....
13 March 2003 - Gareth Morgan

People's Republic of Christ College
Odd as that caption may seem, it is a more accurate description of the social-laden policies which Christchurch City Council cherish, than is their self-congratulatory "People's Republic of Christchurch" moniker. A couple of weeks ago in this column I pointed out that the subsidised rental housing that the council offers in fact benefits people who...
12 April 2000 - Gareth Morgan

Ad Hoc Local Body Welfarism Entrenches Privilege of Middle Class
One of the more repulsive aspects of the extreme state that welfarism has reached in New Zealand was brought home to me the other day. Sitting in the living room of perfectly comfortable middle-class friends, enjoying a morning cup of freshly brewed Brazilian, the topic came around to care of ageing parents. One visitor - from the famed People's Republic of...
29 March 2000 - Gareth Morgan

Welfare: Some policy options
Last week I outlined how the current state of welfare policy is so poor that it's leading to pockets of population trapped in non-viable towns across the provincial landscape of New Zealand - becoming ever more dependant on their welfare cheques for a future. Locked out of the economy real, these folk are spawning offspring who are similarly denied...
16 June 1999 - Gareth Morgan

Damn the dam
Recently in the headlines for reasons tragic, Mangakino does highlight the destruction wrought by a social welfare structure out of control. The town shouldn't exist. Out of control - why? Because it matters not whether the recipients of state assistance have a realistic chance of employment or not, they are entitled to receive the State's...
9 June 1999 - Gareth Morgan

The Mean Kiwi
The employment figures due out on Thursday will again show fewer jobs out there. The public will blame the government who will wring their hands with ineffectual concern, blame Asia and suggest the worst is over. All politicians not in power will blame those who hold the jobs they covet. It's all pretty superficial really - the latest statistics being...
3 November 1998 - Gareth Morgan

The Hikoi for handouts
One of the more quaint spectacles of 1998 has been the march of the well-meaning but misguided from Bluff and Kaitaia to Wellington. Resplendent in their "I'm on the Hikoi" teeshirts they had their day in the sun, sung Kumbaya, passed around flax bags of stories of the down-and-out penned en route around the campfire, jeered government...
6 October 1998 - Gareth Morgan