Nice if You Can Get It
Well, Parliamentary services has opened the books and the week has been filled with people acting shocked because (gasps of horror!) MP get a load of perks. Sir Roger Douglas has not done himself any favours by spelling out the unpalatable fact MPs are entitled to these perks (apparently given by Labour in lieu of stonking great pay rises – let’s hear it for transparency!) Cactus Kate rightly castigates Douglas and English for blithely dipping into the snout trough on the dubious grounds of “it’s legal”. DPF provides some defense of English’s perk as he is entitled to the ministerial house currently being occupied by the Governor-General. While I accept his arguments as genuine, the fact remains the English has had to engage in exactly the type of “legal trust” fiction tha most tax-avoiders do. This is not a good look for the minister of finance.
What troubles me most though, is not the perks themselves, nor their often tortuous justifications, but the whole sense of entitlement running through the episode. What makes this even worse, however, is the sheer breathtaking hypocrisy of those who last week were whining about the loss of the entitlements of adult education and the Training Incentive Allowance are now moaning about the entitlements of MPs.
If anything illustrates why big government is bad, it is this overweening sense of prerogative – The idea that it is your right to have these things rather than a privilege granted by the taxpayer. Entitlement takes without thought of cost and without gratitude. You only get that depth of entitlement from government, where the bill for your claimed rights never reaches your door, but gets absorbed by the taxpayer.
There is little wonder that this sense of entitlement is pervasive. Half of the country is on some sort of welfare and even those who are not are entitled to access free or nearly free health care and education. Oscar Wilde said that ”A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing”. We are in danger of knowing neither price nor value.
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Aug 3 09 5:35 pm
Who knows what values are now?
You now need a degree to look after pre-schoolers and get paid $20-37,000 for the privilege, but a woman with no degree and very little secondary education gets $50,000 for looking after preschoolers plus top ups from her boyfriends. And of course, she gets paid an extra $60 per week for each pre schooler she has. Better than that, as the children age, she gets paid more!
A penniless new Green rolls into Wgton, buys a $350,000 house for nothing down, 8% of his salary (super) goes towards the house, plus the 20% the taxpayer puts in plus the taxpayer funded $24,000 for “accommodation”. In two Parliamentary terms he has a freehold house plus his ongoing $24,000pa!
A boy walks off the family farm, goes to work for Treasury, goes back to farming for a while and then gets to Parliament. Nineteen years later he’s still got the farm, lives in Wgton and has the taxpayer pick up a $50,000 tab for his living experience. But, he’s still a farmer from the Deep South, right?!
Meanwhile, a no education kid works as a storeman, marries and has a child, he gets $32,000 plus WFF of $7592.. he’s already better off than the pre school minder with the degree, but you know, maybe thats fair enough.
Anyway, the Dipton bloke looks to be doing better than any of them, but at least his wife is home looking after the tribe… bugger, nope shes a GP and goes round making other people’s kids cry when they see her! Still, she’s employing the pre school educator with the degree to mind her kids, so thats alright then.. maybe the educator is the real valuable one.. until she realises that the DPB pays better and she can give her kids her undivided attention.. or maybe the slightly smelly old uncle is looking after the kids whilst she’s out rockin’ with the boys..
Well, I’m sure they are all valuable people doing necessary jobs, but I’ve got a sneaking liking for the storeman, he’s costing me the least, but the Cabinet Minister and the DPB merchant.. they look to be costing me the most, and about the same.
Maybe I like the smelly old uncle the best.
JC