Originally Posted by
justakiwi
Every time someone makes a comment like this, they are making an assumption about people they do not know. Yes, no doubt some of you “know someone” on a benefit who is exploiting the system, but the vast majority of beneficiaries want to work. Wanting to work and being able to are, however, two different things! Single parents are generally not in a position to uproot their family and move to Nelson to pick fruit for a season. They can’t just abandon their kids to go work on a fishing boat. They can’t afford to pay for full time child care while they go work on a dairy farm for minimum wage. It is damned difficult to make those kinds of situations work, if not impossible.
I was a single Mum raising four kids. I was on a benefit for more years than I ever anticipated. I managed to get a part time job in a furniture factory, paying $10/hour (back then) but I spent more on petrol, traveling to work, than what I earned. It was not doable. Yes, things have improved since then, but please don’t fall into the trap of believing beneficiaries have it easy. It is a bloody hard slog, and being constantly disparaged by people who have never walked in your shoes, does nothing to support us or help our self esteem. It is difficult enough to have to ask for help, visit food banks or apply for school “charity” funds so your kid can go on a school camp; without being sniggered at and condemned by the rest of the population.
And before anyone says it ... no, I am not an exception to the rule. The vast majority of beneficiaries were, and are, in the same boat as me - trying to dig ourselves out of the hole.