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@Godder said in Universal income:
@jegga said in Universal income:
You can't declare bankruptcy on a student loan but is it fair to be paying a loan on a qualification for a job that doesn't exist anymore?
Bankruptcy wipes student loans in NZ (but not in USA). Lesser cousins don't however e.g. No Asset Procedures (NAPs). The only tax-related debt not wiped by bankruptcy is child support.
On the subject, I'm all for it at a subsistence level. The Big Kahuna (Gareth Morgan's book on a Universal Basic Income) has a sustainable scheme, for example, with a flat tax rate of around 30% and payments of $11000 p.a. which is about the same as the dole + accommodation supplement. With technology and automation removing jobs at a great rate, and the gig economy getting bigger and bigger, having this as a backstop will make more and more sense.
Another way of looking at it is as a Citizen's Dividend - basically, the government runs as a business (of sorts), and the annual surplus is divided up equally and paid to the citizens living here on the basis of 1 citizen = 1 share. That would be more variable, but could be planned to generally pay a minimum amount.
What happens if there's no surplus?
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Universal income:
@Godder said in Universal income:
@jegga said in Universal income:
You can't declare bankruptcy on a student loan but is it fair to be paying a loan on a qualification for a job that doesn't exist anymore?
Bankruptcy wipes student loans in NZ (but not in USA). Lesser cousins don't however e.g. No Asset Procedures (NAPs). The only tax-related debt not wiped by bankruptcy is child support.
On the subject, I'm all for it at a subsistence level. The Big Kahuna (Gareth Morgan's book on a Universal Basic Income) has a sustainable scheme, for example, with a flat tax rate of around 30% and payments of $11000 p.a. which is about the same as the dole + accommodation supplement. With technology and automation removing jobs at a great rate, and the gig economy getting bigger and bigger, having this as a backstop will make more and more sense.
Another way of looking at it is as a Citizen's Dividend - basically, the government runs as a business (of sorts), and the annual surplus is divided up equally and paid to the citizens living here on the basis of 1 citizen = 1 share. That would be more variable, but could be planned to generally pay a minimum amount.
What happens if there's no surplus?
If it's being run on that model, either no payment is made, payments are made out of cash reserves, the country sells assets to pay for it or the country borrows money to pay it. Obviously all of those have different pros and cons.
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I'd be in interested in seeing the figures with scrapping most social welfare payments and replacing it with universal income.
If it's basically a wash then you could save money with less red tape and free up access to help those that need help. The flip side would be personal responsibility and no further handouts.
Can't help but think we are at the beginning of a permanent underclass.
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@Kirwan said in Universal income:
I'd be in interested in seeing the figures with scrapping most social welfare payments and replacing it with universal income.
If it's basically a wash then you could save money with less red tape and free up access to help those that need help. The flip side would be personal responsibility and no further handouts.
Can't help but think we are at the beginning of a permanent underclass.
All part of the neoliberal agenda apparently.
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@Kirwan said in Universal income:
I'd be in interested in seeing the figures with scrapping most social welfare payments and replacing it with universal income.
If it's basically a wash then you could save money with less red tape and free up access to help those that need help. The flip side would be personal responsibility and no further handouts.
Can't help but think we are at the beginning of a permanent underclass.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11784536
This article here really sums up the "underclass" situation for me
When I was in the Police, we used to deal quite a lot with some of the homeless people, or people who were living on that fringe. They were responsible for an enormous amount of crime in the city, and not just some sort of Robin Hood stealing from the rich to get some food.
Breaking into cars, sexual assaults of females walking alone home from town, violent and indiscriminate beatings, homicides etc. Most of them had at some point been blacklisted from Housing NZ homes for trashing them, not paying rent, making drugs in them etc. It's not like they hadn't been offered help, they had just thrown it back in the face of the relevant agency. Plenty of them were trespassed from WINZ offices and/or the City Mission because of abuse/violence they had directed at them.
I could imagine a universal income being given to these people would result in it just being wasted the exact same way their welfare payments are, and then hands going out again asking for more money and complaints that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
I'd rather see some sort of incentive offered for people to get sterilised once they've decided that they've had enough kids. A lump sum payment for someone getting the snip, or their tubes tied might stop a homeless woman like this winding up 12 weeks pregnant. It'll also stop a bleeding heart story from the Herald or Stuff in 27 weeks time about how she is on the streets with a newborn baby.
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It is staggering that given her living situation she has decided to keep that baby. Its effectively emotional blackmail, and we need to find a way to stop it. While I am not in favour of sterilisation I am in favor of benefits being conditional of a contraceptive implant.
I also would be fully in support of whoever handles child protection in NZ to be waiting at the birth to remove that child from her immediately. There can be no argument that she is fit to have a baby making a decision like that.
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@Kirwan said in Universal income:
I'd be in interested in seeing the figures with scrapping most social welfare payments and replacing it with universal income.
If it's basically a wash then you could save money with less red tape and free up access to help those that need help. The flip side would be personal responsibility and no further handouts.
Can't help but think we are at the beginning of a permanent underclass.
Unemployment would have to be massive for it to be a wash - targeted welfare is substantially cheaper than a UBI would be based on current figures because our unemployment-based welfare eligibility criteria are quite tight, even if Super was replaced by a UBI.
All that said, when it comes to ferals, I'd rather pay them to stay home high as a kite on weed and play on a console or watch sky, than pay to jail them (freaking expensive), or attempt to force them on employers by demanding they look for work or force them into (more) crime by refusing them welfare payments. These people are dangerous at work, and often negatively productive, and while a bullet would be cheaper, I don't believe in the death penalty either directly or by starvation/hypothermia, so that's my personal least worst solution.
Also don't agree with offering sterilisation in those circumstances, but taking the children at birth is fine.
For housing for these "charming" individuals, I recommend shipping containers with minimal furniture - if they are particularly destructive, they can have a bolted down steel frame for a bed, a blanket or two and an indestructible toilet and wash basin. If that sounds like a prison cell, that was my inspiration.
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I wonder if the herald expect us to give a shit about her? Her poor kid is never going to stand a chance with a monumental feral like that for a parent . Basically all they proved that Bob Jones was right.
When they were thrashwanking last year about homelessness they interviewed a couple that trashed their flat so no one would rent them a new one so they moved to Auckland and lived in their car with their newborn . They didn't go to Winz because they thought they might take the kid. -
@jegga said in Universal income:
@mooshld I would have assumed under normal circumstances her appearance and personality would have amounted to a fairly effective contraceptive.
Well we know that @No-Quarter wouldn't go there if the fate of the world depended on it but @mariner4life would have a crack after a few XXXXs
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@Godder said in Universal income:
Also don't agree with offering sterilisation in those circumstances, but taking the children at birth is fine.
Taking the children at birth would be fine if there was anywhere to put them. A mate at work has just taken on 3 children from a couple of ferals via permanent placement, and it's a messy process at best. The feral parents retain a huge amount of rights, of which he's had to use his lawyer to negotiate to reduce their power over the children's lives. Moving forward he has to deal with these two drop kicks on a fairly regular basis as they have the right to see their children etc. Hardly surprising people are not lining up to take these kids on.
I'm with @aucklandwarlord sterilisation is the best option for people like that.
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@No-Quarter is it an open adoption or is he just fostering them for a while ?
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@No-Quarter said in Universal income:
I'm with @aucklandwarlord sterilisation is the best option for people like that.
Free vasectomy after the third child from any mother.
Free tubal ligation for any mother after third child.
Next generation gets them after 2.
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@NTA said in Universal income:
@No-Quarter said in Universal income:
I'm with @aucklandwarlord sterilisation is the best option for people like that.
Free vasectomy after the third child from any mother.
Free tubal ligation for any mother after third child.
Next generation gets them after 2.
That's all after the fact though. Should we really wait till this lass has 3 till we say hey 4 is a bit much? She can't support one.
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@jegga said in Universal income:
@mooshld I would have assumed under normal circumstances her appearance and personality would have amounted to a fairly effective contraceptive.
Turns out a box of codys will overcome all those obstacles. You're probably just lucky you can't smell through the computer. It was always the smell that got me at work. Setting aside those who are homeless, I never got how people could live in a house with a working shower but not utilise it at least once in a while
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@jegga said in Universal income:
@No-Quarter is it an open adoption or is he just fostering them for a while ?
I'm not that familiar with the process but it started off as foster care for a couple of years after which he went for permanent placenent to ensure the kids had some stability in their lives. That also meant he lost the payments from the government for looking after them, so not a lot of incentive to take them on permanently, but it was definitely in the kids best interests.
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@No-Quarter said in Universal income:
@Godder said in Universal income:
Also don't agree with offering sterilisation in those circumstances, but taking the children at birth is fine.
Taking the children at birth would be fine if there was anywhere to put them. A mate at work has just taken on 3 children from a couple of ferals via permanent placement, and it's a messy process at best. The feral parents retain a huge amount of rights, of which he's had to use his lawyer to negotiate to reduce their power over the children's lives. Moving forward he has to deal with these two drop kicks on a fairly regular basis as they have the right to see their children etc. Hardly surprising people are not lining up to take these kids on.
I'm with @aucklandwarlord sterilisation is the best option for people like that.
Also the problem can often be that these kids are toast before they're even born because if fetal alcohol syndrome and the use of drugs like meth by the mother while pregnant.
Some extended family members of ours took a kid in from similar circumstances and from a young age he was just hugely disruptive to their family unit. Violent, antisocial etc. Even having been brought up from birth in a loving adopted family wasn't enough to overcome the hurdles he faced because of his genes and drug abuse while he was in the womb.
As someone else also mentioned, there is just a huge lack of places and foster families to put these kids with if we take them at birth. But you could bet if this woman was offered 5k to have her tubes tied she'd be queing up at the hospital tomorrow.
Universal income