A commenter from yesterday disagreed with my statement that National's recent record of getting people into the workforce is worse than Labour's.
The anonymous commenter says;
Again wrong. The single best effort here is Ruth Richardson in 1990 - all else pales beside this.
There seems to be a misapprehension about what National achieved during the nineties in respect of dealing to unemployment and general welfare dependence.
For the period 1990 to 1999 (October) the unemployment benefit numbers went from 139,625 to 143,707 peaking in 1992/93 at around 170,000.
Numbers on all other benefits continued to rise through the same period.
DPB 94,823 to 110,315
Sickness 19,511 to 33,043
Invalid 27,824 to 57,127
We all know that numbers on the unemployment benefit have plunged under Labour. Yes, they have enjoyed strong economic conditions in spite of their increasing regulation and interference. Yes, their achievements in respect of the DPB have been rather pathetic. Yes, there is a very real problem with the growth in the invalid's and sickness benefit, some of which represents what the OECD calls the "medicalisation of labour market problems."
But don't try and tell me National was a world beater at reducing benefit dependence because it simply isn't true.
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1 comment:
What my quote says - on the top of this post - is that The single best effort here is Ruth Richardson in 1990 - all else pales beside this.
National's reforms in 1990 are clearly the "best effort" at such reform in NZ's history. I agree they have been undone by labour, that they did not go nearly far enough, and that ACT's policy of cancelling all benefits entitlements and replacing them with option private insurance (point 10) is the next move that is required.
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