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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (216574)	2/10/2013 3:51:09 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542134

NZ benefits here: workandincome.govt.nz There are heaps and heaps of them. WINZ has hordes of 'clients'. It's the biggest industry in NZ. The person longest on the dole is currently an east coast man going for 25 years. nzherald.co.nz The pay rate isn't high, but the job is very nice. "Clients" just have to go to WINZ now and then to give the WINZ people something to do and keep them in a job too: <Twelve New Zealanders receiving benefit for more than 15 years and four for more than 20, figures show. An East Coast man on the dole for 25 years is the longest unemployment beneficiary in the country and has been paid more than $260,000 in taxpayer money. > There's a tax in NZ called GST = Goods and Services Tax When our son used to be a snow-boarder, many of his friends were on what they amusingly called "the GST" [Government Snowboard Team]. I believe the WINZ people tried to reduce the number of able-bodied people who just wanted time off work to go snow-boarding. Life is so pleasant out in the hinterlands of NZ that it became very tempting for people to be on the dole while going fishing, gardening, doing odd jobs [for cash] for friends and family and whatnot. 35 years ago, very few were on the dole, but it became a cultural norm and growth industry, quite well paid compared with working. A decade before that [and even now] there were claims that NZ needed swarms more people to boost the economy. If that was true, Luxembourg, Singapore, Hong Kong and Switzerland would be poor and Calcutta would be a boom town. Economic refugees are heading to Australia in droves. Mqurice