Posted by Phil Andrews
The city's Community and Social Services Committee is advancing the proposal that the city increase its spending on social services funeral rates by 20 per cent retroactive to Jan. 1, to align with the County of Wellington's funeral directors fees.
This would see the civic subsidies received for such funerals "more closely reflect the actual costs for (such) funeral services," according to a new city staff report.
the sad thing about this is that the people who need social assistance the most, do not benefit. While the only people that do are the bureaucrats and managers in the system. They live high off the hog of tax money, while the poor get a few miserable crumbs spit out the back end of the machine.
There is a far better solution. Lets save the cost by sacking these overpaid, often under-qualified bureaucrats (many welfare workers were "grandfathered" into the system and as such, do not even have university degrees!) and replace the whole system with something more efficient:
a guaranteed annual income.
And no, this is not a left-wing socialist position. The idea comes from Milton Friedman, who called it, initially, a "negative income tax". Now its actually (real, old-school) conservatives that are promoting this the idea the most:
http://bit.ly/gKkEct
Posted by: ernie | February 25, 2012 at 02:29 PM
"And no, this is not a left-wing socialist position."
Yes, it is.
My question: what's wrong with that?
Posted by: John | February 25, 2012 at 07:48 PM
John: nothing really, IMO :)
Just the optics of it make it a difficult sell in this particular zeitgest, which is all characterized by a neo-liberal trend in tax/government reduction. Although this idea is not really a welfare program, its a hard sell with the typical "small c conservative" voter.
Posted by: ernie | February 28, 2012 at 11:49 AM