Thursday, May 03, 2007

Incapacity Benefits

Incapacity benefits are sickness and invalid's combined. The de facto dole in many cases. But never fear. The good news is the rate of growth is slowing "significantly".

That positive trend leads to this;



Disappointed?

The percentage growth rate will drop by necessity if the absolute numbers climb at a steady rate, allowing a good news story to be spun from a bad news one.

Perhaps you should bear this in mind. In 1953, when the population of New Zealand was half of what it is now, there were only 13,000 people on these benefits and some were there as a consequence of WW11. The increase since has been nearly ten-fold. With improved medical technology and the advent of ACC, who would have predicted it?

(Postnote; If you follow my posts regularly you may wonder why I have argued previously that the Minister shouldn't continue to claim the growth rate was reducing. This is because tracking December to December there was an increase during 2006).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to know how many of those people on the invalids/sickness benefits are really sick. The woman whose false rape claim wasted thousands of taxpayers money was on the sickness benefit. When I saw her, on the news, I was surprised by how confident attractive and apparently healthy she appeared.

She may have had emotional problems but you have to wonder if not having to work or not having to be support herself has allowed her to be this kind of person.

I'm sure some of the people on the invalids sickness benefit deserve to get assistance, but there are people equally I'm sure some could work. I am on what David Farrar considers a low income but I still pay $6,000 in tax.

It angers me that I have to pay so much tax and even more so when I see people who feel that they don't have to work and others should pay for them to be layabouts.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

It was the second time she had done it as well. I have no sympathy.

Anonymous said...

# toad Says:
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:09 pm

jh: you are speculating! Put up a prima facie case that a having largish family raised in a single parent home is a driving factor for family violence, and I’m sure Sue or Cindy and lots of other people will want to investigate it.

You don’t need a hell of a lot of research, just give supply some empirical, or even anecdotal, evidence that may support your assertion.

When you ask a question such as this, you need to have at least some evidential basis - otherwise it will just be dismissed as another prejudiced attack on single parents.
[from frogblog]