PM Digging Herself into a Horrid Hole

Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio,tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.

The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern entered parliament vowing to reduce child poverty. She even made herself Minister of Child Poverty Reduction. A popular call.

But the PM is in trouble. Her halo is slipping. The country has turned on her covid response and  increasingly mistrusts her motives.

So today she went back to basics and promised more money for the poor children: increased Family Tax Credits and Best Start payments.

This mirrors the US where Biden has increased child benefits against a great deal of evidenced opposition. A typical critic says:

While money can help in the short run, the truth is that no country ever got out of poverty because of income redistribution (a point economist Thomas Sowell took great pains to demonstrate in his work). If such ‘redistribution’ could deliver such a happy outcome, the U.S. should have no child poverty at all.  ~ Veronique de Rugy

The thrust of US opposition is that more ‘free’ money into poor families with children reduces work effort. That could run the gamut of none-at-all to less. Workless families and children don’t mix well when risks of health, education, and safety outcomes are weighed up.

Since Labour took office the number of children dependent on a benefit has risen by 21 per cent or 36,000.

It’s a dereliction of duty to simply keep upping benefit incomes with no thought to how children in workless families fare. Many are at the bottom of the heap and will face lifelong struggles. How do parents with no work responsibilities integrate their children into that world?

But the PM is hostage to her promises and hellbent on delivering measurable income increases unrelated to work effort, while simultaneously and steadfastly ignoring the unwanted side effects. 

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