Social support for the elderly vs. social support for the infirm

In recent days I've had cause to spend some time on the WINZ website.  Whilst there, I was confronted with something I've been shocked by before:

1. A married couple who both have health conditions that render them permanently unable to work, but who happen to be under the age of 65, will be given $558.26 to live on by the government;
2. A married couple who are fit and healthy but happen to be aged 65 or older, will be given $638.46 per week to live on.

Around $80 a week is a big difference.

If the older couple have health problems of their own, the discrepancy becomes greater:

1. A married couple who both have health conditions that render them permanently unable to work, but who happen to be under the age of 65, will be given $558.26 to live on;
2. A married couple who both have health conditions that render them permanently incapacitated, but who happen to be aged 65 or over, will be given up to $761.22 to live on.

Around $200 a week is a huge difference!

Similarly, if the two couples needed assistance with housing costs, the help offered to the older couple would be a lot more generous than that offered to the infirm couple.

The data I'm working from is all on this pdf.

Note that benefits for people with permanent health conditions are known as "Supported Living Payments" these days, not Invalids Benefits).

This seems to me blatantly unjust.  I'm OK with the unemployment benefit (known these days as "Jobseeker Support") being at a lower rate than Superannuation: you're not expected to be unemployed for the rest of your life so it's not so important that it's at a long-term liveable rate.  But I'm not OK with those who are unable to work being treated worse than those who are simply old.  After all, the only reason we give financial support to older people is because we consider them too old to be able to work!

What would I like to see done?

I'd like these Superannuation and Supported Living Payments to be set at the same level.  People who won't be able to work again for the rest of their lives and people who are too old to work again have the same needs and so should receive the same support.  I don't hugely mind which level the two benefits are set at (i.e. at the current rate of Super, the current rate of the Supported Living Allowance or somewhere in between), but I strongly feel the rate should be the same.

If it's considered politically impossible to lower the rate of Super then this proposal would increase the government's costs.  In that case, I'd propose raising the age of entitlement to Super to 70 (in order to make the change fiscally neutral) but with one proviso.  Anyone aged between 65 and 70 who was assessed as unfit to work due to their physical or mental health, and who is assessed as being likely to stay that way for at least 6 months, would receive a Supported Living Payment.  Once assessed as eligible, they would remain eligible until they turned 70, without periodic reviews.  This would mean that, in effect, between the ages of 65 and 70 Super would be needs-assessed, and from the age of 70 it would be a universal entitlement.

Why?  With increasing life expectancies, many people are staying healthy and able to work well past 65.  It makes sense to me to increase the age at which we say that you are probably no longer fit to work in order to give money to those who have actually been assessed unfit to work.  However, some people (e.g. people who've done physical work like shearing or people who just have bad genes) get 'old' at a much younger age.  It seems harsh to force those people to either continue trying to work or to perpetually prove their incapacity once they've demonstrated their working days are done.  Not requiring regular reviews would also save money, and I doubt it would result in many people fraudulently receiving this special Supported Living Allowance at any time as you could only receive it for a maximum of 5 years anyway.

If life expectancy continues to increase, I'd want to periodically increase the cut-offs for eligibility both for Super and for this special Supported Living Allowance.

I'm not sure what to do with my idea.  Does anyone know?  I know that John Key has emphatically stated that he's not going to increase the age of entitlement to Super so long as he's Prime Minister, plus his government has really tightened up entitlement to other benefits, so it's probably not worth talking to him.  I guess that means I should try and lobby Labour or the Greens, but I don't know how to go about getting their attention on an issue that's not one of current debate.  Any ideas (or any feedback on my solution to the current unjust system) would be appreciated!

Fair trade knickers!!

The other day, I was delighted to receive my first ever fair trade knickers!  They come from PACT, one of only two companies I've found that do fair trade underwear (the other is Pants to Poverty, sold in Australia by Etiko).
Why was this so exciting?  It means that I'm able to buy more of my clothing from higher in our buying hierarchy.

In general, Martin and I try to buy clothes (and other textiles) in the following order of preference:

1. Second-hand.  Second-hand goods don't require the use of any new resources, so they're a gift to people whose lives are endangered by resource extraction/forest clearance for farming etc.  Practically all my outer clothes are second hand, as is much of our linen.  Much fewer of Martins' clothes are, though - it seems that guys are more likely to keep wearing their stuff till it's worn out :-)
2. Fair Trade (ideally certified fair trade, but also goods from companies that make a plausible claim to be 'under fair trade conditions').  The people who make these goods work under decent conditions and there's no slavery/indentured labour or child labour (both of which are very common in Uzebikistan in particular).  And it's not just the people in the factories who get good jobs: to be fair trade certified, everyone in the production chain (farmers, spinners, dye-ers etc.) has to be working in fair trade conditions.  By buying fair trade and encouraging others to do so, we're expanding the pool of good jobs available in the Majority World.  In practise, though, I've actually bought very little fair trade clothing for myself (as I've only needed to buy underclothes and socks new, and I couldn't find those) and Martin's only bought a few T-shirts and one cotton shirt.  Fair trade clothing for adults is hard to find in NZ, although I've earlier listed a few online options here.
3. Organic cotton or alternate fibres, made in the Majority World.  I don't like buying 'conventional' cotton.  There's a lot of evidence that the conventional cotton industry forces Indian cotton farmers into such crushing debt that it's estimated 270,000 of them have killed themselves in the last 20 years.  They also often have little choice but to use pesticides without proper protective clothing, leading to poisoning from chemical exposure.  By buying organic cotton, I'm expanding the number of farmers who can farm more safely.  If I can't do this, I'll choose alternative fibres: either synthetics or other natural fibres like wool, bamboo or hemp.  Martin has a great sturdy hemp T-shirt and I love my snuggly warm rabbit/wool blend socks :-)
4. Anything else made in the Majority World.  If it doesn't say it wasn't made in a sweatshop, I assume that it was.  I'd rather buy clothing made in a sweatshop than clothing made in New Zealand.  In the vast majority of cases, people are working in sweatshops because it's the best option available to them.  Take, for example, the story of Shumi and Minu, two sisters in Bangladesh making T-shirts for the Western market.  They (along with Minu's husband) live in a single room with a concrete floor, cook on a single gas ring outside and work crazy hours at a not-wonderfully-safe factory.  They're so happy to be doing so!  The factory has gotten them away from cooking over a smoky open fire in a mud hut back in the village, where the hours were just as crazy, safety was also poor and everyone else had a say in their business to boot!  I don't want to take that option away from women like Shumi and Minu just because their sweatshop conditions don't look great to me.
5. Clothing made in the West, whatever it's made of.  I'm conscious that, in leaving this to last, I'm doing a woman in my church out of a job.  She's in her late 50s or early 60s and trained as a seamstress.  She's a great seamstress and loves the work, but she's recently had to retrain because there aren't many jobs in dress-making any more.  It makes me sad because I know how hard this has been for her and I know that my choices contribute to her situation  But I'm not going to change my choices.  After all, she's been able to retrain and get another decent job (even if she doesn't much like it).  But if all the work at Bangladeshi sweatshops dried up, there's nothing else that Shumi and Minu could train to do: they'd have to return to the village and lose all the advantages their sweatshop jobs have brought them.

How high in this hierarchy we buy depends on what we can afford as well as what we can find in the time we have available to look for it.  I'm delighted to have been able to buy knickers from higher up than we've previously managed.  They're also super-soft and comfortable :-)

PACT is based in the US, and shipping to NZ starts at US$25 (or get a US friend to onship them for you - shipping within the US is free if you spend more than $25).  Pants to Poverty ships to NZ for £25 (although they offered to halve that for me if I bought 5 pairs or more).  If you buy their products from Etiko, shipping starts at Aust$18 and is free if you spend Aust $200 or more.

If you intend to buy anything from PACT, could you let me know before you do?  They'll give me a reward for having referred a friend :-)  Thanks!

Bleeding heart vine

I'd like to share something that's making me smile.

For Christmas, my 'almost family' gave me a bleeding heart vine.  I'd never seen one before - turns out it's native to West Africa but can grow here as a house plant.

When it arrived, it was covered with red and white flowers, like this:

I never took a photo - image from here

 

 

Dramatic and lovely.

When we returned from holiday, all the flowers had died.  I trimmed most of them off (hoping to encourage more), but left a few by mistake.

I noticed the other day that this had happened:

As I was trimming off the dead flowers, I'd noticed a green 'knob' in the base of some of them.  In the flowers I'd left on the plant these had burst open, revealing a shiny black seed coated with orangey-red powder.  Two of the remaining flowers have these and I think they're stunning!

It also has deeply veined leaves that look beautiful with the light behind them.

All round a delightful plant :-)

I believe in universal sin

In recent months I've been pondering sin and evil.  Belief in sin and evil seems to be something that's largely lacking in the dominant worldview of my society. Here's the example that set me thinking.

Some months ago a scandal emerged in the New Zealand media: teenage boys had been getting underage girls drunk, having sex with them and posting photos and bragging messages about it online.  All the voices I heard responding to this in the media were unanimous in seeing this behaviour as a bad thing.  They were also unanimous in their solution: education.  If the boys had been taught differently (about consent and about the effect of their actions on the girls concerned) then they wouldn't have done it.  Their actions weren't really seen so much wrong (i.e. sinful) as mistaken.  They could be fixed by knowledge rather than requiring a deep and fundamental change.

But is that really the case?

Maybe.  Maybe it hadn't occurred to the boys concerned that the girls didn't like what was going on: maybe they assumed it was as fun for the girls as it was for them.  In that case, education would definitely solve the problem.

But maybe not.  Maybe they were taking their pleasure and didn't care how it affected other people.  Maybe they knew that it hurt the girls but it was too important to them to have good 'street cred' for them to allow that to change their actions.  Or maybe they actually enjoyed hurting and humiliating the girls.

In those cases, education could still be helpful (by teaching the boys that what they were doing was socially unacceptable and would incur social sanction), but it wouldn't get at root causes.  They might stop raping their peers, but they'd still take pleasure in other ways where they were indifferent to (or even enjoyed) the harm caused.

Why do I say that?  Because I see it in my own heart.  I definitely do things that I enjoy without thinking about the consequences they have on others; I do things to make myself look good at others' expense; I even sometimes do things deliberately to hurt others.  Like these boys, I'm deeply tainted by sin.

The worldview held by almost everyone who comments in our media is deeply secular.  It has no category for sin.  The response for every ill - from people raising dogs that bite people, to people breaking the speed limit, to rape - is education.

This is harmful.  It means that our society can't address the root causes of behaviour such as that I've described: the best it can do is maybe redirect or temper sinful urges within its members through education.

And yet, the dominant worldview in our society does believe in evil: it just doesn't see it as universal.  Those who sexually abuse children, for example, are frequently labelled as evil.  And here we see another harmful consequence of our society not believing in universal sin.  Because we don't see evil as something that is within us all, when someone crosses that line they are ostracised.  They are sinful and evil but we are not: we have nothing in common with them so do not see them as worthy of empathy or even (sometimes) of human dignity.

This worldview affects education itself, too.  I notice this especially in the advice I see given to parents.  Take this, for example, that I saw a while back on Facebook:

I'm OK with the first and last statements on the 'connecting words' side but not with "I know you wanted to be responsible.  Sometimes things get in our way."  That's OK if you actually know that your kid wanted to be responsible but something got in their way, but I don't think it's a very good general assumption.  On a daily basis I do things because I'm selfish or lazy or proud: I expect all kids do the same.

What would I prefer?  An acknowledgement that we are all sinful: that evil is in all of us and that all of us do things that harm others not only out of ignorance but also because we want to.  That would hopefully lead to better responses to situations like the one I started with, and also help with both more realistic day to day parenting and less 'othering' of those who commit crimes we find particularly abhorrent.

That's probably the best I can hope for in a secular context, but of course that's not a real solution.  The real solution is relationship with Jesus.  Because, while I do still act out of my sinful nature, gradually over time I see ways that I'm doing that less.  As I allow the Holy Spirit into more of my life, He illuminates more of the evil in me; and as I repent and ask Him to change me, He does.  There's ever-so-far to go, but gradually that evil is being rooted out, rather than simply managed.  And one day, it will all be gone and I will be who I was created to be :-)

Retirement savings vs. feeding the hungry

This week I have been challenged by the story of Huon, a Christian woman living in Cambodia.  In the context of the food crisis in 2009, an Australian woman for whom she was working wrote:

For Huon, the cook for the InnerCHANGE team office, a single woman in her forties, who works seven hours a day five days a week, making twice what a factory worker would make for six full days of work, the inflation means that she is riding her motorbike less, eating less and choosing cheaper food. She is not saving at the moment despite the need for surgery in the near future and the fact that she has no one to take care of her when she is old. She says: 'I know that I should save some money in case things get worse, but then I see my neighbors who are hungry and I have to share, or how could I be a Christian? I just have to trust God for the future.'

source

Martin and I expect to pay off our mortgage in February next year.  After that, it is our intention to redirect that portion of our income to retirement savings.  We intend to save enough money to fully support ourselves in retirement (without a pension from the government) as that seems like the responsible thing for rich people like us to do.

And yet, like Huon, we have neighbours who are hungry (they just don't live next door); and we have plenty to share.  If we hold onto our surplus, can we, in her words, "be Christians"?

If we redirected that mortgage money to giving instead of saving, we could more than triple our monthly giving (not that all, or even most, of our charitable giving goes to feeding the hungry).  Is it right for us, as Christians, to keep all that for ourselves?  After all, we serve the God who "owns the cattle on a thousand hills" - shouldn't we trust Him for our future needs?

As things stand, we wouldn't even have to trust Him that much!  After all, the New Zealand government, unlike the Cambodian government, provides its citizens life-long free medical care and an adequate pension in old age.  We also have Kiwisaver savings that are likely to grow to the equivalent of $350k by the time Martin retires.  The leap we'd be taking is ever so much smaller than that taken by Huon.

So what should we do?  We still have a year to decide, but we're definitely talking and praying about whether to change our plans.

Upcycled Christmas presents

This year I was delighted to be able to make a lot of my Christmas presents from things that had been discarded, or buy discarded things for re-gifting.  I love doing that because it's frugal and because it forces me to be creative, but most of all I love doing it because it's a gift to some of the poorest people on the planet, not just the recipient.*

* to see what I mean, read this earlier blog post.

One resource that's really helped with that is the website 'get textbooks'.  Despite the name, they're a website that helps you find books of all kinds second hand.  They search zillions of other websites for your book, then present the results sorted by how much it costs to ship the book to NZ.  It's awesome!  I spend a lot of my time listening to audio books and keep a note of those I particularly like.  After choosing titles from my list that I thought would suit various people I entered them into 'get textbooks' and was able to find every one I wanted, in good condition, for only $10-$15 each (including shipping).

Many other presents were hand-made from discarded materials: something I chipped away at as I was able between June and November.

When we got our lounge curtains we got 'remaindered' ones, many of which were too long for our windows.  We duly shortened them and I kept the offcuts, some of which I have now used to make a toiletries bag.  The curtains are thermal-backed so the bag will be waterproof.

I've used 5 of Martin's old T-shirts (along with one of mine and one of Sarah's) to make 3 Christmas presents: two scarves (instructions for tying the square knot they use are here) and a bathmat.

The bathmat is backed with hessian from an old coffee sack: if you don't back these mats, when you wash them they just turn into one big knot :-(

 

From off-cut bits of felt from other projects, I made a set of tropical fish fridge magnets.  The actual magnets were culled from surplus 'self denial' boxes from Tranzsend's 2013 appeal.

 

From felt offcuts and the same magnets I also made some magnetic pincushions; other felt offcuts turned into a baby ball.

Lastly, I made an 'eco travel lid' for my cousin: a food cover you can use in place of glad wrap.  It looks like a large shower cap and can fit quite a range of bowls and plates.  The outer is fair trade cotton and the waterproof lining is gore-tex(!) from a cycling jacket of Sarah's that got damaged beyond repair.

Finally, just to show off, this set of tea towels are the Christmas present I was most pleased with.  They're not upcycled (the actual tea towels are brand new and the cotton isn't even fair trade), but I just love them!  The borders are fabric paint and the flowers are crayon (ironed into the fabric so it'll survive washing) edged with stem stitch.

Wellington New Year's holiday

After Christmas, Martin and I flew to Wellington for 10 days.  This was the first flight we've made since we decided to only make one domestic flight every three years (due to the astonishingly high carbon emissions* from flying) and we were keen to make the most of the opportunity.

*We calculate the carbon emissions from the trip to 400kg CO₂e each: that's a third of the 1.2T CO₂e that the planet can absorb in a year.
If we'd gone by car, the emissions would have been about 200kg each,

by bus about 115kg each
and by train about 100kg each.

For the first week, we stayed in a nice motel in Petone with my Aunty Elspeth and cousin Karlene from Whanganui.  The room wasn't 'accessible' (they only had 2-person rooms that were) but was manageable enough except that the door to the bathroom was too narrow for either the walker or wheelchair to get through!

While we were there we had two outings: to Eastbourne Beach (where my Gran used to live) and the Zealandia Eco Sanctuary.

The Eastbourne trip turned out to be much more exciting than planned.  Karlene and Aunty Elspeth drove us to the beach, then back as far as Day's Bay.  There I had a rest (on a self-inflating mattress that travelled everywhere with us) while waiting for the ferry to Petone to arrive.  After we got on the ferry, however, we realised it seemed to be going in the wrong direction.  It turned out that, since I'd checked the ferry timetable, the Petone wharf had been closed for repairs and all Petone ferries were cancelled!  We'd caught a ferry bound for Queen's Wharf in the Wellington CBD.

At Eastbourne Beach, Aunty Elspeth in the background.

I didn't panic too much and was able to enjoy the ride: especially the brief stop at Somes Island.  However by the time we got to town it was very much lunchtime and I was fading fast.  Finding food was much more challenging than expected, but eventually a kind lady pointed us to a cafe right down the back of an arcade.  After lunch we headed to the train station for a good long rest on the grass outside before catching the train back to Petone around 2.30pm!!!

Fortunately, the trip to Zealandia went much more to plan :-)  We spent most of the day there, sustained by three rests accompanied by (in order) a takahe, a tuatara and a wedding rehearsal.

Heather and Karlene admiring a tuatara that's set up camp under this concrete slab.

Martin at our picnic spot.

The remainder of the holiday was spent visiting Louise, a friend from university.  It was lovely to see her with her kids (she seems to be such a good mum!), to enjoy lots of conversation with her and to get to know her husband and kids a bit, too :-)

In Louise's garden, enjoying fresh lettuce with our lunch.

More photos from our trip are up on flickr.