Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Voice of experience

A self-explanatory letter sent from a good friend of mine to the DomPost. I reproduce it here because there is no guarantee the DomPost will publish what contains some unpalatable truths.

Dear Sir

The Kahui tragedy led to two points of view in the Dompost: the 29/6 editorial "Blame welfare, not colonialism" and Chris Trotter's column the next day: "Playing the Blame Game"

When I worked as a Plunketnurse from 1975 -1985, the corrosive effects of welfarism were blindingly obvious and predictable even then. Poor Pakeha as well as poor Maori women were living on the dole as single mums and continued to give birth to fatherless children. The dole was their meal ticket.

These women were no advertisement for their respective races, and, happily, neither did they represent the majority. Single Pakeha women could not claim colonialism for their plight, but what they did have in common with Maori single mums was an unshakeable feeling of entitlement to taxpayer funded support and make no mistake about it: they insisted on being given larger flats or statehouses for their growing FATHERLESS families

Just how to end or even change a "lifestyle" that has become so ingrained over several generations is far from clear to me.

Yours sincerely,

Eneka Odinot

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What we have done, can be undone. But not without effort and sacrifice. And gnashing of teeth from the "entitled".

It is this firmly held sense of entitlement that I find the hardest to understand. I have had numerous conversations with "the entitled", and they keep thinking I am heartless and greedy for wanting to have a CHOICE as to who gets my hard earned money, and yes, even the choice not to give any of it away at all.

They can not see the basic problem of having me work so they can live. They see me as "privileged" to have work, skills and abilities (like risk taking and investment and denying my own children until the risk passes)

And what is most concerning to me, is that they do not de-conceptualise the "magic" of money appearing out of nowhere as money that had to be made the hard way by working neighbours, friends and family. They seem to conceptualise it as just "some money" that is given to they, completely disconnected from its original source.

I suspect many of these people are also childish or have a victim view of life (or both), which compounds the problem.

The interesting thing is that they do NOT control the supply of the magic money, and we - as non career beneficiaries - can turn this supply down, or even off. And there is little recourse other than to return to work or to the support of the larger family, as has been done in the past, and continues to be done world-wide.

When I see 16 or 17 year olds push $900 prams with about $150 worth of brand name toys hanging off it, and then hear they are on the DPB, I realise that not only are they taking our money, they also have no sense on how to spend it wisely.

It's a dreadful situation, I I very much hope there is a groundswell of feeling with enough people for some positive change in this area, as the alternative is to delay it until the problem is so big it comes to get us whether we like it or not.

Or are we there already?

Unknown said...

belt - unfortunatly we are not there already (as evidenced by the last election), and the sad truth is unless we reach that point soon the ratios will be against us being able to recover sufficiently.

The concept of choice tends to confuse both Socialists and Beneficiaries alike. The former can'tunderstand that given the choice you might actually be charitable, the last can't understand that investing and denying oneself instant gratification is actually a viable choice.