One of the great liberal myths in this country, subscribed to by a myriad of political and lobby groups, is that "child poverty" is rampant.
The very term is a lie. So too the statistics: that 270,000 children are estimated to be living in this mythical poverty. And that's why they go to school each day, inadequately and infrequently fed and clothed.
That's why - argue Labour, Greens and their fellow travellers, we have to feed those kids at school because they are in poverty and their parent/parents cannot feed them.
The truth is that every child who arrives at school without breakfast and/or lunch is actually a victim of neglect and abuse. Their parents are not worthy of the name.
Can anyone actually define the term "child poverty", or is it one of those terms which has slipped into the lexicon, but which means a range of different things to different people?
That's not to deny that there is genuine hardship in the community; we see that ourselves through our work, and through the volunteer work we do in the local community. But does it exist on the scale suggested by some? That's a matter of debate.
Laws continues:
Last week TV3's Campbell Live provided the most graphic proof yet of the scale of neglect. It compared two year 6 classes at two Auckland schools - decile 10 Westmere and decile 1 Edmund Hillary primary - and compared their lunch boxes. The results were startling - and seriously searing current affairs television.
At Westmere, all 24 of the kids had lunch, 23 had breakfast and 22 had fruit in their lunch.
At Edmund Hillary, only 14 of the 27 kids had lunch, 22 had breakfast and zero - yes, nought - had fruit in their lunch. In fact, their lunches primarily consisted of chips, snacks and fizzy drink.
When asked if he was surprised at this outcome, the Hillary headmaster said that he was, but blamed the minimum wage for his pupils' plight.
It was the most magnificent example of Pakeha liberal blame- shifting given that 60 per cent of the school roll is Maori and 39 per cent is Pacific Islander.
No child - and I mean no child - should ever be going to any school in this country without lunch. Only a truly inept individual would allow their child to do so and it is time to blame and shame.
We don't always like the way that Michael Laws plays to his radio audience, or to elements of the community. He is an unashamed self-seeking publicist. But he raises some valid points, even though the way he expresses them is somewhat more extreme than we would. His views should not be ignored simply because it is Michael Laws expressing them.
Simply throwing money at the issue of poverty (whatever "poverty" is defined as being) hasn't worked. The more money that is spent, the greater the problem seems to become. Laws closes by suggesting an alternative approach:
It should be an instant notification to Child Youth and Family when a child arrives at school without food. The parent who approves that abuse should not be a parent.
Examine their circumstances and you will likely find other antisocial instances instantly, all blighting the innocent child.
But no. The liberals would prefer to feed the symptom and ignore the malady. They would prefer not to judge. And thereby condemn literally thousands of Kiwi kids to the same blasted existence as their parent/parents.
I'd start at Edmund Hillary School. And that year 6 class. And with a principal who thinks that he can blame lower wages for hungry kids. When responsibility rests where it must - with those who make the deliberate choice not to care, not to provide and not to be a decent parent.
We don't agree completely with what Michael Laws says in his closing paragraphs. But the issue of parental responsibility is definitely the elephant in the room, and it is something that must be addressed before New Zealand wastes more money that it does not have trying to solve a problem that is not simply a financial one.
31 comments:
If poverty isn't a large factor in child neglect then according to Laws, and suggested by youself, then it is just down to poor parenting and money management. If that is the case then we have an epidemic of shocking money management and poor parenting.
The median income in New Zealand is only $28,500 and the median household income has dropped. Maori household incomes have dropped by over $40 a week in the last four years and Pasifika families have lost over $60. While money doesn't buy happiness it does buy food, security and self respect.
It does seem as though there is the growing attitude that if you are poor then it is probably your own fault and that you should be pleased that you don't live in Africa where there is real poverty. We do seem to be condemning 1,000s of children to substandard early lives that will cost the country billions in mitigating the health, learning and behavioural consequences (it is already costing us between $6-8 billion a year).
Until there are living wages paid and enough full-time jobs available, some sort of financial intervention is necessary. What is the alternative?
The difficulty with your "living wage" bsprout, is that it will actually REDUCE the number of jobs.
I oppose the increase of the minimum wage to $15/hr. Our businesses employ over 40 staff, all of whom earn more than the minimum wage, so considerably moreso. But if there wasx an instant and arbitrary increase to the MW, we would have to pass that on to ALL of our staff to preserve the relativity of their individual rates of pay which are based on their qualifications, their experience and the value they add to our businesses. A 15% across-the-board wage increase would cost our businesses somewhere in the region of $150k per annum. We simply don't have that kind of money to play with. We would have to look at every job, and look where we could make economies.
Who is the winner there? We are trying to do our bit; our staff has grown by around 20% this year alone. But having an arbitrary wage increase imposed on us would be very likely to cost jobs, or at the very least, put future job growth on hold.
Lack of money is one cause of poverty. Poor parenting, bad choices and a lack of motivation are others. Simply addressing the first cause will not address the other ones, and the many other circumstances that we haven't mentioned. A holistic approach is required IMHO.
The whole poverty thing is bullshit anyway. It is indexed to a magic figure. If the average income suddenly jumped to $1million a year, there would still be 270,000 kids "living in poverty".
Those kids get free education, health care, dental care and their parents get benefits, working for families, in work tax credits etc etc etc.
"But if there wasx an instant and arbitrary increase to the MW, we would have to pass that on to ALL of our staff to preserve the relativity of their individual rates of pay"
No you wouldn't. There, you have no serious objection!
So Edward; you advocate everyone else taking an effective pay cut so that the lower paid can have their pay artificially raised? Please correct me if I'm wrong, after you have had a read of this:
http://keepingstock.blogspot.co.nz/2011/10/hypothetical-questions.html
As I said to bsprout, we pay well, and in part according to the value that an employee adds to the business. We're not going to let their wages stand still; that would NOT be the action of a "godd employer" which is what Mrs Stock and I profess to be.
"So Edward; you advocate everyone else taking an effective pay cut so that the lower paid can have their pay artificially raised?"
No, I think you're struggling with what the term "pay cut" means. They'll be paid the same amount. If they're unhappy they can test their worth in the market. If you're underpaying them you'll soon find out.
Your employees must be an oddly envious lot if they're as obsessed with what their colleagues are earning as you suggest. However, I doubt that that is actually the case. It's just a handy straw man for you.
I worked for someone who ran with ETC's line of reasoning. When myself and the other HOD staked out our position as per KS 11:20, we were told: If we don't like it, we were free to Foxtrot Oscar.
So the question is what options have your staff got?
Your employees must be an oddly envious lot if they're as obsessed with what their colleagues are earning as you suggest. However, I doubt that that is actually the case. It's just a handy straw man for you.
It was very annoying for us to watch as our apperntices were given mutiple pay rises to keep them in line with the minimum wage (then being jacked up by Labour) while the seniors who were producing the product we told time and again "there's none left for you" So I can Assure you Edward it is not a straw man.
Exercise your right of exit if you're that petty, Cairon
I did. I am simply pointing out that far from being a strawman, this situation has already happened. I commend KS for his concern, it shows he has a hell of a lot more integrity than the prick I used to work for.
"Can anyone actually define the term "child poverty""
Yes, of course they can and you'd have no difficulty doing it either, if you weren't taking such a bullish approach to the very real issue when children are being disadvantaged because there is no sufficient money being used to improve their lot.
You are managing, quite effectively, to blind yourself to the obvious, and you are doing so because you feel that to agree with those who are talking this way, you personally would lose, in terms of your business interests.
there's a word for that.
Maori and Pacific Islanders are often over-represented in negative social statistics.
This is because different races and cultures have different outcomes for a variety of reasons.
These differences are a taboo subject in our liberally ruled society but for me they are important and should be discussed openly.
"I commend KS for his concern, it shows he has a hell of a lot more integrity than the prick I used to work for."
You left because you were being underpaid (unless you're saying you left for the same or lower pay elsewhere because some other people got a pay rise, which is remarkably envious and petty). It's a different issue to the straw man IV2 has constructed.
Laws is a ass.
KS, Michael Savage followed a government that supported austerity and low wages. He immediately raised wages and the result was an increase in spending in the domestic economy which benefited all. Businesses did better and could afford higher wages and the quality of life for families improved dramatically. I agree that we need to use multiple solutions but increasing wages is a substantial part of this.
We have had this discussion before but the reality is that austerity feeds further austerity and when the real incomes of families are in a downward spiral (wages aren't keeping up with increases in CPI) we are not heading to a good place.
When the spending power of our population shifts up to a small minority the amount of spending across the domestic economy shrinks (a wealthy family only buys one family's worth of groceries). We also end up with an economic imbalance where the economy focus on where the money is and therefore all new housing is now for the upper market (we are short of 11,000 houses in Aukland alone) and the luxury car market is now worth around $2 billion a year. The needs of the wealthy are well addressed and those on lower incomes or those with businesses serving middle and low income earners suffer.
Also if the working poor have to have their incomes supplemented to survive are we not subsidising the cost of labour for many businesses that can afford to pay more. The majority of those employed on low wages are actually employed by businesses recording good profits. http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.co.nz/2011/06/median-wage-drops-while-company-profits.html
No it's not Edward. My then employer (who is a prick, but this is secondary) was obliged by law to increase the pay rates of the least productive members of staff. This was the cited reason why, for the last two and a half years of my employment, the senior paygrades were not increased. At. all.
Our problem was entirly about fair pay for work produced. First year apprentices produced about a quarter to a third of what a senior could produce, and yet were paid 75-80% of a seniors rate. I still don't see how that is fair.
It's not a strawman at all Edward. Last year we took on a young woman who had come to us on work experience; she had a really good atttitude, and we offered her a job at more than the minimum wage, but less than other admin staff were earning. But had we been forced to put her pay up to $15/hour, we would then have had to adjust the rate of the admin people on $16.50, to maintain the two-bucks-an-hour difference. Then the office manager's pay would have needed to be adjusted upwards to protect her margin, and on it goes.
We are just coming off the back of four tough years in business where profits have been essentially non-existant; breaking even has been as good as it gets. There quite simply isn't $150k in the bank to put everyone's pay up by 15%. We'd love to, but there simply isn't the money to do it. Any profitablity has been eroded by us increasing our staff; as I noted to bsprout earlier, by 20% this year alone. Should we stop hiring? Should we lay off people so that we can pay more out to others? Those are the kind of business decisions that SME owners face every day.
So Edward; I'm presuming that you are not a business owner, or you'd understand the dilemma. But be assured; what I posted earlier is my reality, and I can assure you that no straw is involved.
Writing in the Herald Gareth Morgan delivers a stinging attack on the government's social welfare distractions:
Anyone would think these politicians and the bureaucracy implementing the latest raft of tests for benefit eligibility haven't a clue what they're doing, While it's irrelevant in terms of achieving anything apart from political populism, sadly it is very damaging for anyone in need of a Winz benefit.
Among other things, the bill replaces the current policy of cutting the benefit by 50 per cent for four weeks if a beneficiary turns down 'suitable work' to a complete forfeit for 13 weeks for some beneficiaries. And benefits will be cut for parents who fail to enrol their children in early childcare for a minimum number of hours a week or fail to register their children with a GP.
Forcing people into any job won't contribute to reducing our working age populations' reliance on income support. Those working on low paid incomes get benefits nowadays anyway, that's how absurdly disjointed benefits have become from the market value of low skilled labour.
The numbers on benefits move in line with business cycles. When the economy is growing and employers are short-staffed beneficiaries go to work - even those most maligned of beneficiaries, sole parents. National is conducting a witch hunt and it is not just disappointing in terms of the intellectual vacuum that underlies its social policy, it's a despicable display of victimising the less fortunate.
"But had we been forced to put her pay up to $15/hour, we would then have had to adjust the rate of the admin people on $16.50, to maintain the two-bucks-an-hour difference. Then the office manager's pay would have needed to be adjusted upwards to protect her margin, and on it goes."
You wouldn't have been forced to do anything. I don't understand your obsession with stratifying your salary structure like that. And if your staff worry about what each other is being paid and want to see their colleagues worse off, rather than focusing on their own affairs that's plan bizarre. So bizarre it's not really credible to suggest.
Cairon left because he hated his boss and wasn't getting paid enough. That's a different issue.
Hate might be a bit strong, but by the end I had come to dislike lining his pockets. :)
The catalyst for the situation was the artifical inflation of the base wage that in essence acted like a pay cut for the more experienced staff.
Which is exactly the same as what is being proposed again. It won't make the poor richer, it will simply make the poor more numerous as the wage ladder is effectively shortened.
I agree that there is a problem with wages in the country at the moment, but I do not think that simply and solely setting arbitrary bounds on wages will solve the problem.
"The catalyst for the situation was the artifical inflation of the base wage that in essence acted like a pay cut for the more experienced staff."
Really, how so? You still make the same amount and can still buy the same amount of stuff for you salary, how is that a pay cut on your planet? Is it the thought of being paid more than someone you work with that gets you out of bed in the morning?
It is a pay cut because our efforts were de-valued by the increased minimum wage. Coupled with the following claim that there was no budget left to reward us left a very bitter taste in the mouth.
I can't dumb it down for you any more than this: The apperntices were getting paid more for doing less by an external, blunt, arbitary, feel good decree. And because the employer failed to make any gesture in recognition of the skill gap (ie, the ceiling did not move relative to the floor), most of the senior staff got pissed off because they were working hard for long hours and not being rewarded on even terms with the junior employees. So we left.
Which, if I'm not mistaken is what KS fears will happen in his business if he has to give an across the board pay increase to those who generally the yield the least return.
You;'re quite right Ciaron, and Edward is completely wrong. Clearly, he has never been an employer, trying to balance fair treatment of his staff with the economic realities of doing business. Nor have most of the politicians who are pushing for a $15 minimum wage; they've come down from their ivory towers in a world of Utopian theory, and have no idea of the kinds of decisions that small and medium business owners have to make every day.
The animosity was not helped by the fact fact that at the time we were flooded with orders and our export sector was booming. It was no secret that we were the best performing franchise in the chain at that time, and yet we could not even get an inflationary increase.
Here endeth lesson 1 in crapping on your staff from on high.
Your definition of "pay cut" is ludicrous.
In any event, your argument hangs on some ridiculous theory that people are envious, bitter and grasping in that they need to keep ahead of their colleagues and so are worse off if people at the bottom get a pay rise. Ciaron obviously is, but most normal people aren't. Must be a tory trait.
Yes, of course they can and you'd have no difficulty doing it either
Curious that you don't define it yourself in that case.
The week has started badly for John Key. Yesterday we learned that National are down in the latest political poll, and today we hear that our intelligence folk may have been allegedly acting unlawfully. The last bit of news is a bit of a problem for John Key, since he's the guy in charge of that particular area of government. It's going to be difficult for him to say "oh I didn't bother to read the report."
Today Solid Energy also announced the loss of hundreds of jobs. Solid Energy is an SOE. So that's our own government throwing people onto the scrapheap. Many of these people will head over to Australia, increasing the number of New Zealanders seeking their brighter futures elsewhere.
But now is not the time to panic. National has a plan to deal with the crisis. Tomorrow will probably see another welfare crackdown, although with the number of groups left to target rapidly diminishing, could it be the turn of one-legged Dutchmen to feel Paula's wrath? Insomniac redheads maybe?
But if that plan doesn't work, National has another up its sleeve: blame Labour.
Go on, sing along.
Blame Labour
My gal gone left me and my dog done died
Blame Labour.
My house burned down and I just got fired
Blame Labour.
My kids' got no food and they're hungry at school
I can't pay the rent and the power bill's due
Blame Labour.
There's trouble in Afghanistan and problems in Iraq
Blame Labour.
My national cricket team totally suck
Blame Labour.
The neighbours with their parties are driving me mad
I can't get no girls and my ass is getting fat
Blame Labour.
No matter who, no matter what, what no matter where-er
It's all because of David F**king Shearer
Blame Labour
My car's engine performance is less that I might like
Blame Labour
My legs are sore after I went riding on my bike
Blame Labour.
The Gallipoli campaign did not go as planned
I didn't realise Dame Edna was a man
Blame Labour.
No matter who, no matter what, what no matter where-er
It's all because of David F**king Shearer
Blame Labour.
The second Star Wars trilogy was a pile of shite
Blame Labour.
There's just not enough marmite
Blame Labour.
My Google Maps don't work no more
Athens lost the Peloponnesian War
Blame Labour.
No matter who, no matter what, what no matter where-er
It's all because of David F**king Shearer
Blame Labour.
@ O Dear - if you are going to copy and paste another blogger's work in its entirety, have the decency to provide a link rather than passing it off as your own.
The Credit for O Dear's comment goes to Imperator Fish:
http://www.imperatorfish.com/2012/09/blame-labour.html
Great link IV2, thanks!
You're welcome Edward. Scott's piece was bloody funny, but it peeved me that a trolling commenter tried to pass it off as his own. I am all for credit where it's due!
It was a quiet weekend with almost everyone at my place. Now "they" are back home "they" need their fix of Keeping Stock.
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