so you had some self indulgent teenage angsty type thing and manged to convince a doctor to throw some drugs at you.

well she probably gave you some good advice, such as our 'depression' being more of a mockery to those who really have something to be depressed about. You had friends, a life, but that wasn't good enough... what I wouldn't give for a non-work related conversation with another human being. In fact in the last 7 years you could probably count the number of (non family member) conversations I've had on my fingers and toes..... and Jesuscrux could have friends if he weren't an obnoxious religo bore, so really the both of you suck arse

Once again the forums are backed up with with your long boring posts on your political views. You're doing a great job of converting us all to your point of view. Thanks bro.

it sounds like the antidepressants worked for you, which is good. and that's why i asked for other people's thoughts, otherwise i wouldn't have asked

well your view on that fitting in with ACT's philosophy shows you're ignorant of it, since ACT is all about empowering individuals and for people/families to be able to look after one another, so that they don't have to be dependant on the government to be the breadwinner. FYI i was eligible for subsidies for my sessions with the psychologist but as an ACT supporter declined it

WHO seems to think NZ's health is better than USA and UK anyway.

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I find it hilarious that you (and Dr Newman) use Singapore as an example.

Paying some sort of compulsory money for medical care etc., is simply TAX by another name. And when you have multiple health providers competing, you don't eliminate bureaucracy, you have a separate bureaucracy for each provider. And you then you have the marketing budgets, and on it goes. My, how efficient that sounds.

The problem with privatising the entire system is that there are no controls on how much each preovider will charge. The only thing that is supposed to keep prices down is competition, which is joke, I mean how many hospitals or doctors surgeris can you have in onw area. ACT's policy on tertiary education is the same, give evryone vouchers, but the vouchers will never come close to covering the course costs, not eveb 70% of it, because there are no price controls - they can charge what they like.

//your ignorance of private management and patient choice

When you grow up and get a real job, you might end up with one in a large business. You will then find that the level of bureaucracy has a lot more to do with organisation size than who owns it.

//that's why there are large waiting lists
Either that or the costs of treatment and available treatment are going up. Private healthcare premiums have approximately doubled in the last 10 years, and has the amount of money govt spent on health doubled? Read below for some reality.

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So continuing with a point-by-point refutal...

/'..the reason there are poor people is a result of the welfare system,

I don't really want to touch on your first sentence, but I'm going to anyway. You seem to be aserting that poverty is created by welfare systems.
Stop and think about that for a minute.
Pull it apart, and look at it closely-
'...the reason' as in, the sole contributing factor
'...there are poor people', people with trouble earning enough to provide for themselves or their families exist at all...
'...is a result,' a product,
'...of the welfare system' the taxpayer funded system whose founding philosophy is to provide support those who have trouble earning enough to provide for themselves or their families. No poor people before then, huh?

You won't be able to find a scrap of evidence to say the number of poor New Zealanders per capita since the introduction of the welfare of the system has increased. Or that per capita, the number of people fraudulently claiming the benefit, is on the up. Or anything to back up the idea that removing access to income support will 'empower' New Zealand's poorest communities and spark some kind of economic renaissance. That's because it's simply not there.
An unfortunate fact is that in some parts of NZ, poverty is a way of life, and tax cuts are pretty damn meaningless to people who can't even afford a freakin' loaf of bread... matching demonstrable need with real world support, that's all it's about dude. It's no free ride.

that's exactly what i meant. i spend time with poor people almost everyday at two non-profit organisations and they are perfectly able bodied and on the dole but spend their benefit money on alcohol and drugs, with no incentive to want to work or get ahead in life because they don't need to have any reponsibility. i also know a few people personally who are on the dole, simply because they choose it as a lifestyle not because they can't find work. i just spent the last three quarters of an hour transcribing a speech given by Muriel Newman a few years ago to explain why NZ's cycle of poverty is due to welfare dependency, and to give you the "facts" you wanted - in fact, you're the one who has babbled on without refuting some of my previous points, including why health systems in Singapore, Taiwan, European countries are better than NZ. my points regarding NZ's waiting lists and state of health bureaucracy and losing doctors to overseas still stand

ACT is concerned about the consequences of NZ's 'open-ended' welfare system. no one dependent on the state is free. if our goal is a free society where individuals are encouraged to strive for happiness and success, it is imperative that the welfare system - which has now not only created an underclass of citizens who have little chance of ever achieving their potential in life, but also spawns and nurtures criminality - is reformed.

as originally designed, welfare worked well. in 1938 NZ had just experienced a severe depression with real hardship, and people overwhelmingly voted for a vision of a society based on compassion for those who, through no fault of their own, had no income, no job, and couldn't pay for basic health services.

the architects of the welfare state made it clear: welfare was not a lifetime right. it was a safety net designed to provide a helping hand to work, independence and a better future. fundamental to its sustainability was the nation's ability to afford it.

for over 30 years, the numbers of working age beneficiaries was small in relation to the full time work force paying for them. The unemployed were known by name by the LAbour Department. There simply was no long-term unemployment. And fathers who deserted their wives and families were chased by the Justice Department, and made to face up to their responsibilities.

But from 1970, NZ began to change - slowly, steadily, irreversibly, and at such cost to so many.

In swept the Labour Government: the DPB was born, benefit levels were lifted, and new categories of benefit were created. As a result, the numbers of New Zealanders seduced into the low income - something for nothing - grew and grew.

Today, there are 400,000 working age adults supported by benefits. Of those, almost a third have been receiving a benefit for over five years. Some having been on benefits for over 20 years.

In 1970, 36,000 beneficiaries were supported by one million full time workers. Only 30 years later, 400,000 beneficiaries are supported by one and a half million full time workers.

Taking a conservative view and leaving out the partners on benefits, the 30 year dependency growth is staggering: in 1970, there were 28 full time workers for each full time benefit paid. Today, there are 4 fulltime workers for each full time beneficiary.

If we look at the bigger picture, paying for 450,000 pensions, and 400,000 benefits - that's 950,000 adults - are one and a half million fulltime workers and 400,000 part timers.

One and a half million fulltime workers and 950,000 on state incomes - that's around two people on a state benefit or pension to every three full time workers. No nation with this levl of state dependency to fund by heavily taxing a small workforce can grow as fast as, or faster than, its competitors.

of the $40 billion a year spent by this government, 14 billion goes to the welfare department for benefits and pensions., as a nation, we simply cannot hope to have the lower tax rates, high educational achievements, leading health services, strong families, and low crime rates, that we aspire to, when our welfare system prevents hundreds of thousands of working age Kiwis from contributing to the workforce.

The designers of welfare produced a system that worked well. But subsequent meddling has meant that after hundreds of billions of dollars and more than 30 years of try, our welfare system has failed to eliminate or even decrease the problems of povertyy, disadvantage and social alienation. In fact, the safety net created for those in need - providing a temporary helping hand for the able-bodied - has mutated into a monster that has trapped individuals and indeed whole families in state dependency, in some cases for generations.

That is not to say that the welfare safety net should be removed. On the contrary, ACT believes strongly that society has an obligation to take great care of the truly vulnerable in our society - children, the frail elderly, the sick, the mentally ill, and the disabled - all of those people who cannot take care of themselves. A strong, generous safety net must be provided for those in genuine need.

But for those who are able bodied and capable of fending for themselves, the welfare system should provide a hand up to work, dignity and a better life.

Work is the only way to help people out of poverty. No matter what politicians and other 'do-gooders' say, welfare, no matter how generous, will never alleviate poverty. It is individuals striving for a better life, sacrificing and dedicating themselves to getting ahead, who will rise out of poverty. By getting on the employment escalator, working hard and proving themselves, they will rise up to better things. If they sit on welfare they will get left behind.

I've been on a benefit and I can tell you that it is not easy - but then netiher is life. Life is tough, and those on benefits face a harsher day-to-day existence than many.

but not necessarily harsher than many hard working New Zealanders on low incomes, where mum and dad hold down basic jobs and struggle day to day to put food on the table, clothe the kids and pay the bills.

And they have to work so hard to keep their heads above water that i find it difficult to understand how we can accept as a nation, that it is OK that in our country we can have a family working long hours on $20,000 a year, while next door we pay a working age person the same, and ask for nothing in return - nothing.

It is wrong. We are born to work. work is a fundamentla part of who we are. Work brings meaning and purpose to our days. Work makes us feel important, needed by our employers and colleagues.

To give people money for nothing - so they can waste their days and their lives - is immoral. It sends a message to working age beneficiaries that society thinks so little of them that they can be tossed a pittance and forgotten. Well, I say that's not good enough. It's an indignity to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders; we hav to do better.

Open-ended welfare has now fundamentally distorted the natural order of society, with the state relentlessly intruding into our lives to an even greater degree. Not only has it become father to some 185,000 children and husband to almost 110,000 sole mothers, but it has also subsumed the role of civil society, where individuals, families and community networks once took responsibility for caring in a compassionate manner for their own.

ACT believes it is time to assist those able-bodied people who are locked out of participation in society at the moment - through the largesse of the welfare system - to gain a stake in New Zealand's future. We need them to help build our nation's prosperity. It is only by supporting the disadvantaged to become independent and equal participants, with an opportunity to move ahead, that we will create a truly fair society.

That is why welfare reform is at the heart of ACT's vision for the future. Re-creating a welfare system based on individual responsibility is fundamental to building the prosperous society that New Zealanders deserve and can achieve.

To be blunt, our entrenched welfare system is now so different from that conceived by its creators, that without a completely new philosophy, we simply cannot recapture the society of strong families, high average incomes, low crime, quality health and education services, that only 40 years ago made us the world's most prosperous nation.

Not only that, but our social democratic Labour government - with its agenda of expanding the welfare state - is enduring the challenge becomes daily greater. Government forecasts show that the numbers of people receiving all benefits - Unemployment, DPB, Invalid and Sickness Benefits - are set to continue their inexorable rise significantly increasing the tax burden on remaining working New Zealanders.

Labour's 'soft' approach to welfare essentially removes the requirement for able-bodied beneficiaries to need to find work. This is in spite of the fact that overwhelmingly research, both here and overseas, shows that across all social indicators adults and children who are dependent on a benefit fail, in the long-term, to do as well as those who work.

The human cost is considerable. The Labour Government knows this as two important research papers by the Knowledge Group of the Ministry of Social Development examined the impact of persistent low incomes on children.

The first piece of research - the Prevalence and persistence of law income among New Zealand Children: indicative measures from benefit dynamic data - followed a cohort of children for seven years. The results found that more than half of the children born in the mid to late 1990s may have been exposed to the benefit system. at least a fifth of the 59,000 children born in 1993 spent five or more of their first seven years of life in benefit-led families. One in twenty spent the whole seven years in such families.

Low parental income, as a result of benefit dependency, was shown to be associated with poorer outcomes and worse life chances for children. These included higher mortality rates, lower cognitive development and poorer future employment prospects.

The paper identified sole parenthood and the DPB as key risk factors for children and warned that failing to support these families to improve their incomes could result in the ability of a large minority of the current generation of children to reach their potential being compromised.

The second paper, Children in Poor Families: Does the source of family income change the picture? Examined the living standards of children in families below the poverty threshold in order to determine whether the source of that income - from benefits or wages - made a difference.

The findings showed that poor children whose parents worked fared better than poor children whose parents were on welfare.

Poor children in families on welfare were more liekly to be in sole parent families and to have a principle income earner who was young, had no occupational or formal qualifications, was Maori or Pacific Islander, and lived in a rented dwelling. Caregivers were more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety or other psychological problems, physical health problems, low cognitive skills, drug or alcohol abuse or other problems. They were less likely to provide consistent, nurturing parenting.

The report concluded that children in poor families reliant on welfare rather than work have lower living standards and were at far greater risk of long-term disadvnatages. In other words, the DPB was also identified as a significant risk factor for children.

In light of the findings of this and other New Zealand research, it is clear that the best way to help children to achieve their potential in life is to make sure that their parents are in the workforce. Having effective programmes to assist families to move from welfare to work should be a national priority.

That is why the changes LAbour has made to the DPB - removing work-testing and relaxing restrictions - are so incomprehensible. Work-testing has been effective in supporting people on welfare into work. it was particularly effective in helping women on the DPB to move into the workforce and improve their living standarsd. Treasury advised against its removal, estimating that removing work testing will increase numbers on the DPB by over a thousand a year, at a cost of some $18 million annually.

The recent changes will essentially make the DPB far more accessible: the 13 week stand down period has been removed so a person on a low-paying job can get more money by quitting work one day and going on the DPB the next. Someone on the DPB will now be able to go on a month's overseas holiday and still get paid. By scrapping work testing, those on the DPB will no longer be required to take a job until their youngest child is 18 years old.

This sends a message to women with children: if you split up your family, don't work, don't marry and don't let the father of your children see his kids for more than 40 per cent of the time, then the state will give you a secure income for life.

It is a message that resonates with Maori in particular: at the present time half of Maori families with children have no dads, and more than 80 per cent of those are on the DPB. If those trends continue, byu the year 2010, three quarters of all Maori children will be growing up in families where there are no fathers.

The reason for the growing trend to 'fatherlessness' is that the present system incentivises family breakdown: by giving the DPB to the custodial parent, the state ensures that one parent is a winner, gaining financial security and custody of the child, while the othewr is a loser becoming a visitor in their child's life.

As a result of this winner=-takes-all system, a quart of all children whose parents separate or divorce lose all meaningful contact with their non-custodial parent. A further 40 percent see that parent for only a few hours every month. More children currently lose a parent through separation or divroce in New ealand every three months than lost a parent through the entire period of the Second World War.

Yet everything we know about children teaches us that it is in their best interests to maximise the involvement of both parents in their lives. By any measure, children with both parents will usually do better in life than those who have been denied a relationship with one or both. Society picks up the pieces far less often in cases where children and young people have enjoyed the fullest relationship with both their mother and their father.

Of course, that is not to say that single parents fail to try their best, but two actively involved parents provide more physical, emotional, and psychological support than one.

I recall hearing a news story from Africa some time ago about how a large group of hand-reared, orphaned bull elephants had had to be shot. The reason was that as 'teenageers' they grew to become dangerously uncontrollable. The keepers explained that while they could replace the nurturing of their mothers, it was the socialisation by their father, teaching them to control their strength and natural aggression, that couldn't be replicated.

It is no diferent for children. They need both mothers and fathers to love them, protect them, support them and teach them as they grow to be independent. The absence of one or both parents has consequences, which can so easily blight their lives. that is whuy it is so crazy that our parliament continues to pass legislation which undermines the family to an ever-increasing degree.

NZ is one of the western world's leaders in family breakdown, infant mortality, child abuse, teenage pregnancy and youth suicide. We simply cannot ignore the link between these and the fact that we currently have the most under-fathered generation in the history of the Western World.

Former Governor-General, the Rt Hon Sir Michael Hardie Boys, expressed his concerns over the rapid rise in fahterlessness in this way: "Fatherless families are more likely to give rise to the risk of being abused, of being emotionally, even physically scarred, of dropping out of school, of becoming pregnant, of living on the streets, of being hooked on alcohol or drugs, of being caught up in gangs, in crime, of being unemployable, of having no ambition, no vision, no hope, at risk of handing down hopelessness to the next generation, at risk of suicide".

It is outrageous that Labour is incentivising women to remain on the DPB at a time when there is overwhelming evidence that children raised in a family where no-one works for a living fail to do as well in all areas of life than children in families with a parent who works. What is so despicable is that it is the most vulnerable people in our society who are hearing the message and becoming enticed into the welfare system. This government is seducing them into believing that the state will look after them, that the state does care. But we know that the state can never care: what LAbour is doing is morally wrong.

There is another aspect of the DPB, which is very worrying - the rise in the number of women who say they cannot name the father of their child. It is extraordinary today that of 110,000 sole parents on the DPB, some 16,000 women - one in seven - say they cannot or will not name the father, particularly in this day and age where paternity testing through DNA hair samples is simple and inexpensive. Doubtless in many cases the refusal is so they can make private arrangements to avoid paying child support.

ACT believes that every child deserves to know who its father is: we would make the naming of the father a condition of DPB.

Limited discretionary power would of course be provided to the Chief Executive of the Welfare Department for unfortunate cases, such as rape, where the desire to not name the father is understandable, but we will not accept the increasing numbers of fathers who are either shirking their responsibilities or who are being prevented by the mother from providing fatherly support to their children.

The Heritage Foundation, over the years, has explored the strong link between family breakdown, welfare and crime. It has estimated that a 10 per cent increase in family breakdown will lead to a 17 per cent increase in violent crime. While it is not politically correct to discuss this issue, the fact remains that the welfare system incubates and nurtures criminals and crime.

I recently asked the Minster of Justice how many benefits were suspended or cancelled due to imprisonment. He replied that out of a prison population of 6,000 inmates, some 4,600 benefits were suspended due to imprisonment. In other words, someone in prison is six times more likely to have come from the welfare system of 400,000 people than the workforce of 1.8 million.

Jules Mikus, a man with 60 previous convictions including the murder of young Teresa Cormack, is one such person. He had held down a job as a welder for two years yet had been able to go on a benefit in 1983 and stay there, sponging off the taxpayer, for more than 20 years. Over that period he fathered numerous children to different women, but didn't accept the responsibility of providing for his families. The welfare system allowed him to walk away leaving the taxpayer to pick up that burden.

In other countries, men who father children and walk away are not able to shirk their responsibility to financiialy support those children. Instead they are given options - either they pay their child support dues fully, or, if they cannot do so because they are out of work, they are expected to do community work to help pay back the taxpyers who are supporting their families. If they fail to do either, they go to jail.

In NZ our child support laws tax working non-custoddial parents at exorbitant rates, while enabling fathers on benfits, like Mikus, to contribute only $12.75 a week. If the child support laws were made fair by introducing a shared parenting so that non-custodial parents have an equal responsibility in the bringing up of their children, then a regime which requires non-custodial parents to either pay up, do community work or go to jail would have merit.

Mikus was a known child sex offender and yet government agencies allowed him to have custody of children. Court files show that the attempted rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1983 - a virtual dress rehearsal for the rape and murder of Teresa Cormack - took place in his house while his 4-year-old son was in the next room. In spite of that being on public record, he continued to have custody of his children, even being granted the DPB for the sole custody of his 2-day-old baby daughter in 1998.

This case raises serious concerns about the government's child welfare agency., The Department of CYF is the statutory body with the responsibility for protecting children and keeping them safe. Yet they allowed Mikus to hav custody of children even though they knew he was a known child sex offender. I am calling for a Select Committee inquiry into this case to try to find out why the system failed so badly, where the responsibility lay, and what needs to be done to make sure this does not happen again.

The welfare system delivered to Mikus and others like him a strong and recurring message throughout his life - take no responsibility for your actions because the state will be there to mop up behind you. by seducing him into an indolent lifestyle where he was not obliged to take responsibilty for earning a living or caring for a family, the welfare system effectively nurtered a time bomb of evil.

The great majority of those on benefits are good New Zealanders, who want to work, and who are battling hard to raise their children well - often without much help and support. they are faced with a welfare system which offers them perverse incentives and which encouarges a small proportion of them to go bad.

That is why creating a system that requires people to take responsibliity for themselves and supporting them as they do so, is a key goal of welfare reform. returning welfare to what it used to be - a helpnig hand for those in need, providing temporary support while people find a job - is the objective., the result will be stabler, families and children, a more prosperous nation, and less crime.

But in order to turn the present and future bleak welfare statistics round, it is essential to create growth. Growth of over 4 percent is fundamental to creating the real jobs that are necessary to get our nation working. Lower taxes and a reduction in small business compliance costs are essential to achieving that outcome.

Recreating welfare as the temporary safety net that its creators intended is not rocket science. it invovles investing in people to help them overcome their individual barriers to work, and introducing a sense of urgency into the welfare system - replacing the view that welfare is a lifetime entitlemtn with the notion that, like savings in the bank, welfare for the able-bodied is finite.

To stop people like Jules Mikus from abusing the welfare system for 20 years, ACT would itnroduce maximum lifetime limits to the DPB and the Unemployment benefit of 5 years. This includes a maximum spell of two years for any one continuous period on those benefits.

This policy would be accompanied by guarnteed job placements for those who reach the time limit, with a small discreationary exemption for Regional Commissioners.

Extra childcare subsidies, intense individual placement support, and assistance with relocation expenses would all be available if needed, to support the individual in all possible ways, to get and keep a job.

Secondly, all Unemployment and Sole Parent Beneificairse who can work, would be required to aprticiapte in tailor-made 40 hour-a-week programmes of work, training or organised job search - acitivies such as CV writing, interview practice, adult literacy and numberacy, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, computer skills and so on. As well, they would develop the habits, skills and disciplines needed in the workforce. Further, in line with the realities of the workforce, if they didn't turn up or didn't comply, they would not be paid.

This intiative would intiially involve around 200,000 people including 150,000 on the Unemployment Benefit and 50,000 on the SOle PArent Benefit whose children are of school age. It would fundamentally change the expectations of the welfare system for the able-bodied, re-establishing benefits as temporary financial support that must be earned.

ACT's vision of society and welfare in NZ is sodiffderent from that of the govern,ment. Labour believes that welfare is a life-long right, and their policies are designed to deliver more and more working age NZers onto the benefit system.

On the other hand, ACT believes that the economic and welfare policies that we propose would deliver to NZ over 4% growth creating tens of thousands of real jobs; a huge reduction in the numbers of able-bodied working age beneficiaries as people move back into the workforce, the eventual elimination of long-term dependency, the provision of dignity and organised days for those who still need benefit support.

It is an unashamedly a tough love approach to welfare, helping people to help themselves. Benefit payment rates would not be cut, but big expectations owuld be placed on working age beneficiaries who can work to take personal responsibliity for their lives, their livelihoods and their future.

This approach would sendthe clear message that welfare is meant to provide tempolrary help in times of need. Those who deserve help would get it, but in return, they would have the same 40 hour work week as the rest of adult society. People who were in a position to work would no longer be paid to do nothing, and as a result, tens of thousands of our poorests NZers would regain control of their own future through work and higher incomes.

ACT's vision of welfare is of truly compassionate system that gives people a hand up to work, independence and a better future. ACT is the only party that places the future of our poorests and the children of our poorests, as our highest priority. Welfare reform is at the heart of that plan to build a better future and to free hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who are presently shackled to the welfare state. It will give each and every one of them and their children a chance to succeed and achieve their potential in life, in a way that is simply not possible while under the shroud of state welfarism.

// i just spent the last three quarters of an hour transcribing a speech given by Muriel Newman

wow, you didn't have to transcribe it - you could've just gone to Scoop, as they have the same speech with the same typos, put up there in 2002.

aren't ACTs welfare and employment policies really about creating a large pool of semi-to-non-skilled labour who can be employed at sub-survivable wages (ie a 'flexible' labour market, think SE Asia)? Isn't it really about reducing tax and labour costs for their voters? Isn't that the central motivation for EVERY policy they have, their very reason for existence?

Be careful JC: a really long post like that on a forum site might draw the attention of moderators. A link and perhaps a few choice quotes might be a better bet.

//We are born to work. Work is a fundamentla part of who we are. Work brings meaning and purpose to our days. Work makes us feel important, needed by our employers and colleagues.

No, it's true. I saw a quote somewhere, I'm not sure who said it, but it's really very eloquent: "work shall set you free".

//I saw a quote somewhere, I'm not sure who said it, but it's really very eloquent: "work shall set you free".

bahahahaha. That's genius. Almost up there with the Spinal Tap thread.

not in the long term, as a country's productivity increases the less low-skilled jobs are required. that was the whole point of the industrial revolution

as for work being meaningless - well it would give them more dignity than being dole bludgers. i work two minimum wage jobs and am studying, i support myself and have the opportunity to study so that in the future i don't have to be stuck in low paid jobs - this is all independently of my background. they could easily do the same, they have no excuse considering that there isn't even interest on student loans anymore, and the fact that there is always work available in the newspapers. if not at least they can give their children a chance instead of raising them on a culture of alcohol and government dependency

when i say dignity i mean the gladness of having money in your bank account, and being able to pay for food to feed yourself and your family, and having that to work towards, to be able to feel responsible for that, instead of just receiving free money and then feeling like there is no need to get ahead in life

//as for work being meaningless - well it would give them more dignity than being dole bludgers.

But the problem with that is that you are pinning this entire theory on the fact that work has positive psychological effects across the board when in fact it is more often a major contributing factor to negative psychological development. Esepcially in low paid repeditive jobs.

I had a whole bundle of other stuff which I was going to bring up but to be honest I've only had 5 hours sleep and have work to do.

//but then are you saying that if people have to work in low skilled jobs, it's better for them to not work as it gives them negative psychological effects, and let them live off social welfare?

No you are trying to imply that that is what I said. Which I didn't. I simply stated that the assumption you make about work being an absolute postive influence both mentally and socially are not based in reality.

//he said his friend taught him and that he teaches other people guitar free of charge because he doesn't believe in paying money for music. i said it's not really paying for the music, but rather for the time it takes to teach someone else. but he said, yeah but i'm on the dole so it's my way of giving back to society. and i said but don't you think you have to be independent and contribute to society both through tax and music? and he said no because tax is for those people who "choose" to work, without even considering the fact that people work because they have to and that if they really had the choice, well at least me anyway, i wouldn't want my tax dollars to be going to him just so he can play music all day.

Though I despise the way you use random samples from society (who may or may not actually exist) I will follow you on this one.

- It would seem that you agree with the statement that "Work is production enforced by economic or political means" - as you said above, "the fact that people work because they have to..."
- Tax is not a contribution to society - contribution implies a choice or decision to assist, which is certainly not the case with tax (otherwise only those with a social conscious would pay it).
- You obviously don't see his teaching of guitar for free as a contribution to society, even though he has already stated that he sees it as such. So as far as I can tell if someone is not paying tax (either through their wages or through their earnings) you attatch no value to any service they may be providing society? Hell pregnant people must just get you furious - all that state funding going to them (and they have no choice about it!) and absolutley no gain to society!!

i don't need to take random samples, go down to your local City Mission when the food parcels are being distributed and ask what some of those people spend their welfare money on. the fact that it's someone else's money they receive instead of what they earned themselves makes them less responsible about how they spend it. this show that the current welfare system has big gaps in it and there is no moral, compassionate reason why there shouldn't be a time limit and training/community work programme introduced, but the current government is idealogically opposed to forcing people into work

- It would seem that you agree with the statement that "Work is production enforced by economic or political means" - as you said above, "the fact that people work because they have to..."

that's right, it's just a part of life and unless money falls out of trees nobody should have a free ride at the expense of others (except for those who are disadvantaged and don't have the same opportunities - eg. disabled - but definitely not able-bodied available but irresponsible people)

- Tax is not a contribution to society - contribution implies a choice or decision to assist, which is certainly not the case with tax (otherwise only those with a social conscious would pay it).

it's a contribution in the sense that everyone pays it, that's crap that those with a social conscious would pay it - less should be given to government spending and more to private spending. i'd prefer all the tax i pay to be given to a charity instead of the government's Left-wing economic policies that are in my opinion bad for the country

- You obviously don't see his teaching of guitar for free as a contribution to society, even though he has already stated that he sees it as such. So as far as I can tell if someone is not paying tax (either through their wages or through their earnings) you attatch no value to any service they may be providing society? Hell pregnant people must just get you furious - all that state funding going to them (and they have no choice about it!) and absolutley no gain to society!!

i'm saying, if you're gonna provide free services, do it at your own expense rather than at the expense of the taxpayers. i don't expect for example, you to work and pay my welfare through taxes and say that's ok because i teach people guitar for free and am therefore contributing. i teach my flatmate, some guy at Church, and two of my friends guitar for free regularly but it doesn't cost the taxpayer anything because i pay my own bills. anyone else who is as able-bodied as me and not constrained to a wheelchair should have to do the same