this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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I have to deal with WINZ from time to time, and it has made me a big supporter of a Universal Basic Income. They are so difficult to deal with by design. It's horrible.
It's not entirely design, though again the last Nat. Govt. added some true bullshit. It's also a whole lot of under-investment in IT, lack of coordination between policies and results, unwieldy legislation, truly stupid KPIs, etc.
I'd love a UBI though.
Or at least stop assessing people for benefit on their relationship status. It's stupid and it punishes people for normal human behaviour.
As an example, you log in to your WINZ account, and click the button to contact them. It gives you a phone number!
I get a form I need to fill in. It says to upload to my account, but I need to call them first so they turn on uploading for me to do it.
It's so unnecessarily difficult.
I get that people in a relationship tend to share expenses. But you spend so much staff time arguing over whether someone is in a relationship. And friends share expenses too (flat mates), so really it seems archaic.
I know the turn on upload thing is because they're afraid if it's always there someone will DoS them by uploading way too much stuff.
Because it'd cost too much to integrate the system that holds the files and the system that uploads them so that anyone loading too many could get blocked...
If two working people split expenses, it's easier for both. If two beneficiaries split expenses they're expected to do so on less than theyd get if they just had a flatmate. And if one of them is on benefit and the other isn't, it's even worse - no relationship for beneficiary unless their new SO is willing to start financially supporting them.
IRD does it great. You can message them through your account, and upload supporting documents to submit at the same time. Many other government agencies allow upload of documents. It's not like it isn't a solved problem.
As I understand it WINZ have recently started a massive project to replace their major legacy system, so I hope they redo their online stuff to make it more customer friendly.
I forgot about that part. WINZ basically forces your partner to look after you, without regard for how you're managing your finances. WINZ needs a full overhaul.
On the messaging thing, basically IRD has way, way, WAY less services and often MSD needs a bunch of info to do anything. So they try to steer everyone into forms that in theory elicit all the information. Doesn't work, but also they definitely don't have the resources to have involved email conversations with everyone. They can't even answer their phones and unlike with taxes people can't wait 2-6 weeks for a response.
Would be really nice if they could though.
Yeah, this is why I'd prefer a UBI. It solves or reduces most of these issues.
I agree UBI would be nice and then WINZ could just provide extra help for people who want to work but have no idea how to present themselves, or who have other complicated problems (like needing a no interest loan to escape a bad living situation, hardship grants, stuff like that).
I don't understand how a UBI wouldn't just cause inflation.
In my imagined version, you adjust tax brackets so people keep approx the same take home pay, and people on benefits/super receive approx the same amount.
Unfortunately with a major overhaul of policy where you give out free money but no one is better off, well you can't really sell it politically, so I can't see it ever happening. But that would be my ideal implementation for a starting point.
Thanks for the explanation, that kind of makes more sense than just giving everyone the same amount.
So I'd pick a baseline, probably the NZ super single person payment, then make this the amount for everyone.
Then adjust the lower tax bracket so everyone working and earning over that threshold ($14k) would pay slightly more in tax, about the same as the new payment.
Then get rid of all benefits and superannuation (but keep the other assistance payments like accommodation supplement, disability allowance, etc).
This does leave some people slightly better off, but it shouldn't cause more inflation than any other election bribe.
It then gives you a starting point to e.g. raise the UBI towards the living wage equivalent, make some supplementary payments standard and give them to everyone, etc.
Details would need to be worked through by a policy team, but at a high level I think this would be a big benefit to the country.
Makes sense. NZ super single is about twice core benefit. That would pretty much lift everyone out of poverty super fast.
Our gini coefficient would shrink and our entire society would get the bonuses to health and economy that go along with that.
Right, I want to vote for you at the next election.
Haha it may make sense but it's not a vote winner. Your average voter will think spending hundreds of millions on WINZ reform just to make it more complex (now we need a bank account from everyone in the country so they can be paid from two sources) is not a good idea, and the right will for sure be telling people no one will work and the economy will collapse even though trials overseas have not had this effect.
True, true. I think we spend millions on pointless cosmetic winz remodels pretty much every time we get a new govt, but people never notice.
They also don't train their staff properly. No two people in there will have the same idea about how/what to do. It's crazy.
There's an insane amount of different things all of which have different rules for for parents, or under age 25, or over age 65, or single, or getting something from ACC, or has a medical certificate, etc.
Also of course you get people applying policies that are out of date or that some manager decided on their own without consulting anyone.
And then there's the various rules suspensions that happen whenever there's a natural disaster, or a catastrophic IT failure, or an angry government, or a lawsuit.