KEY POINTS:
Every now and again, when I'm having one of those weeks in which I'm confronted by a blank computer screen, a looming deadline and a shortage of good ideas, I ask myself why I do this.
It sure isn't for the money.
Factor in the time spent thinking
and fretting and sometimes getting around to answering emails about the column, and that hourly rate starts to look a little anorexic.
There must be other reasons then, more complex and intrinsic than cold hard cash (although I'm not discounting the value of being able to buy groceries).
If I were to say that it had something to do with the convenience of being able to avoid peak-hour traffic and work in my pyjamas, a (doubtless misplaced) sense of duty and, on the good weeks, a measure of professional satisfaction, that would still be just the half of it.
What motivates any of us to work, or not to work, and where, is more complex than you might imagine.
For example, a recent Japanese study found that praising people activates the same reward centre in the brain as paying them cash.
Another study by the National Institute of Mental Health in the US found that a rise in social status gave people the same buzz as winning money - supporting the findings of previous studies showing the importance of social status to good health.
The lower your social status, as a longitudinal study of British civil servants has found, the greater your level of stress and the higher the odds of developing cardiovascular disease and dying earlier, which is one of the reasons posited for the higher rates of ill-health and mortality of highly unequal societies like ours.
To any of us not driven solely by money, though I'm not sure I should be admitting this, the idea that a good reputation and respect can matter as much as money - provided, of course, that our basic needs are met - isn't all that surprising.
Human beings are a complex lot, with complex motivations, but government policy seldom gives us any credit for that.
Why else would we keep beneficiaries, and their children, if they were silly enough to have them, as poor as possible?
Make benefits more generous and less difficult to access and you'd never get the buggers to leave their cushy lifestyles on the benefit and get a job, or so the thinking goes.
The Government believes that paid work, and only paid work, is the way out of poverty, and Working for Families and much government policy is predicated on that belief.
To "make work pay", it discriminates against children whose parents derive their incomes from benefits, with, for example, the In-Work Tax Credit, which gives $60 a week to families with up to three children, plus $15 per week per child thereafter, but only if the parents are working.
Too bad, then, if you're one of the hundreds who lost your job in the past few weeks as more and more companies move overseas or close down unproductive and unprofitable plants.
Welcome to the ranks of the undeserving poor.
Unfortunately for you, this is not a good time to be joining the ranks of the unemployed.Your income will now fall to a "precarious" level, where you'll have "little left over to cope with additional or unexpected costs", according to the Pockets of Significant Hardship and Poverty report just released by the Ministry of Social Development.
It says rather damningly: "Beneficiary families with dependent children in 2004 had lower living standards than those in 2000."
So it's a shame you didn't lose your job before National slashed benefits back in 1991. The core benefit income for a sole parent with two children fell that year to just 65 per cent of the average wage, down from 92 per cent in 1986. By 2004, it was down to just 58 per cent. Today, a single adult on unemployment benefit collects $184.17 a week, or just $26 a day.
And things aren't likely to get any easier. The report notes the "significant price shocks" to beneficiary families of rising power, transport, food and credit costs. Even with Working for Families, it says, there are "special circumstances" which may mean that some people are exposed to "significant poverty and hardship".
So why would you not want to get a job? A 2007 evaluation of Working for Families notes that numbers of those on the DPB have fallen, crediting the incentives provided by benefits like the In-Work Tax Credit.
But it seems more likely the consequence of what has been until recently a strong economy and high employment, and an improvement in free childcare hours.
There is a surprisingly long list of barriers making it harder for beneficiaries to find sustainable work, including having to pay off debt accumulated through borrowing money to pay the telephone and power bills; low-wage, low-job security associated with the increasing casualisation of the workforce; the lack of public transport in poorer neighbourhoods.
Very few have to do with people not being able to get out of bed in the mornings.
