Politicians ripping off taxpayers

[Lilith7]

Most people who are required to work in multiple locations, would expect to be reimbursed for their accommodation costs in the all locations other than were they "normally" live.  E.g. someone who lives in Auckland would expect to have their hotel paid for if they have to go to Sydney for work.  And, if their job required them to live in Auckland, but also be in Sydney several days a week (for a decent number of weeks each year), having a house rented for them in Sydney would likely be a better option all round.  This is absolutely the same as the MPs claiming the accommodation allowance in Wellington.  The MPs in question don't live in Wellington; instead, they live all around NZ, and pay for their own accommodation in the city/town in which they actually live. They just claim the accommodation for maintaining a 2nd home in Wellington were they're often required to be for work.

Also, this idea that poor people would make good MPs is ridiculous.  I realise it will be an unpopular opinion here, however most poor people are bad decision makers which is why they are poor.  Yes, some people are poor because of genuine unrelated-to-any-decision-they-made bad luck, some are poor because they chose to be and genuinely don't want that to change, however the vast majority are poor due to the choices they've made.  In my line of work, I'm privy to the detailed financial situations of a lot of people, and my wealthy clients are almost all smart people that have worked hard and made wise choices, and those that are struggling have almost all repeatedly made bad decisions and ignored good advice.  That's not to say that I'm not in favour of providing social assistance to poor people, even where there financial struggles are their own fault, however the idea that we should be trying to get more of them in positions of power is absolutely misguided in the extreme.

With all due respect, that comment is utter nonsense. 

And I certainly did not say that 'poor people would make good politcians' - that's the construction you've put on my comment about preventing wealthy people from becoming politcians.

People in these times are most certainly NOT poor 'because of their bad decisions', although probably an argumant could be made that many are poor due to the bad decisions of a great many politicians over the last 40 odd years.


And if you bother to do a bit of reading on poverty, you may learn why people are actually poor. The American experience, not so differetn to ours.

http://mic.com/articles/115054/7-myths-w...ut-poverty


"Myths about the poor — that they're lazy, that they exploit benefits, that they neglect obvious opportunities to escape their fate — manufacture the idea that their lives are easier than most, when in fact their lives are exceptionally hard.
The reality is that there's a wealth of data that shows the poor are as responsible and interested in working as everyone else, and that their place on the bottom rung of the economic ladder is often due to circumstances out of their control."