Posted on November 21, 2008 - by Frank

Social Welfare and Corporate Crims

Following on from the general election just held here in Aotearoa/New Zealand I have been reflecting on many of the discussions I had the pleasure of being involved in during the lead up to it and directly following it. In many of those conversations there was one topic that consistently made itself known - social welfare.

Social welfare is often a political issue in Aotearoa/New Zealand, but I got the impression that it was much more of a feature in people’s minds this time round. I don’t know if my impression is correct.

Aotearoa/New Zealand has a relatively developed welfare sector and people generally sit on a spectrum of thought regarding it, from those who don’t see anything wrong with it through to to those who think it is entirely unethical and everybody using it is a bludger. This year, more than any other year I heard people voicing issue with those who have made a lifestyle out of “milking the system” and “taking advantage of the hard working taxpayer’s dollars while they laze around doing nothing… bludging.”

Social welfare is a political football in Aotearoa/New Zealand that gets tossed around according to how it will politically advantage the party talking about it. Generally the political left talks about the need to provide for people in hardship and the political right talks about the need to toughen the system up to stop people ripping off the system. It’s an easy ball to kick around without actually doing much.

While listening to people voice their discontent with those taking advantage of the social welfare system though, I have been acutely aware of another group that plays with the system to squeeze as much money from it as they can - yet these people go unnoticed. No politician ever calls them to account and “middle New Zealand” never voices their dissatisfaction with them, yet it is this group that can largely be pointed to when it comes to current financial crashes around the world. It is this group that has a large hand in the financial pie and no matter how much they are achieving, they continue to milk the system.

If we are to call those who work the system on social welfare, “bludgers” and “freeloaders”, let’s call this other group “corporate extortionists” and “corporate illusionists”.

It could be argued that what the latter group does is legal, and I would agree, most of the time it is, but so are the activities of that hated group who work the social welfare system for their own gain. The question isn’t about legalities when kicking around the social welfare football, the question is ethical. Is it ethical to milk a system of money provided by others for your own personal gain when you are capable of obtaining such finances via your own sweat and blood? No. The same goes for the latter group - the questions are ethical.

Currently, around the world we are seeing corporate executives receiving lavish bonuses and maintaining luxury lifestyles while their companies go down the gurgler and jobs are shed at a rate never seen in my lifetime. These executives are milking bonuses and benefits when their achievements have been nil. They have been pushing around fake money, racking up debt and living the life. They have created a false economy, a world of illusion, pushing profits higher and higher with no foundation to sustain the climb except smoke and mirrors. They have leveraged risk, dodged taxes, purchased politicians and received salaries and bonuses that would make your average person weep. All the while the bubble has been waiting to burst.

That bubble is now bursting and the explosion is reverberating around the world, yet those at the top still beg to maintain their illusion. They still fly private jets, receive large bonuses, undertake lavish trips and maintain a lifestyle many of us couldn’t even dream of - all the while shedding jobs in their companies because their companies are hurting financially. The sad thing is that they are now using public “bail-out” money to do it all, even going so far as to have the cheek to fly to Washington in private jets to ask for public money to save their cash-strapped firms.

All this goes on while the person at the other end of the financial spectrum who is milking the benefit receives a mental lashing from much of our middle class. There’s a bigger game being played out here and the petty thief at the bottom of the heap isn’t the biggest problem. If we’re going to call them to account, we need to call those at the other end to account as well.

Allow me to send a message to any government bailing out large corporations - by all means do it, if only to save the jobs of those who could suffer at the hands of irresponsible executives, but just as you put stipulations on your loans to developing nations (we need to talk about that), you also need to put stipulations on corporate executives seeking public money. They need to be told that the free ride is over, that we need a more sustainable, responsible approach to business and that their model is outdated and needs to die. Corporate responsibility needs to be strongly encouraged and stimulated.

Note: The model of jet featured in the image used is the Citation X. The Citation X is used by people such as the famed televangelist, Kenneth Copeland.