George Osborne considering freeze on benefits to save £4.4bn

lostinrates

Loopgames wrote: »

I'm not talking about conventional jobs..I'm saying that there is always work to do. Someone with a bit of imagination can offer their services as self employed if they wanted to.

Don't limit yourself to the slave world of conventional employment.

I'm quite sure a number of claimants are just so employed...cash in hand. A problem is that or those...''daunted'' by employment the paperwork, legal and insurance requirements of self employment are further ''off putting'' and possibly for the long term unemployed, the educationally unconfident or lacking, or the simply !!!!less....its overwhelming.

treliac

lostinrates wrote: »

I'm quite sure a number of claimants are just so employed...cash in hand. A problem is that or those...''daunted'' by employment the paperwork, legal and insurance requirements of self employment are further ''off putting'' and possibly for the long term unemployed, the educationally unconfident or lacking, or the simply !!!!less....its overwhelming.

And it's not worth coming off benefits to take work that may or may not work out in the longer term... it's too much of a hassle having to go through starting new claims and waiting while they are processed, before payments can start. Better for most to sit tight on welfare, especially when you add in the full range of living costs that are also paid for.

kabayiri

treliac wrote: »

And it's not worth coming off benefits to take work that may or may not work out in the longer term... it's too much of a hassle having to go through starting new claims and waiting while they are processed, before payments can start. Better for most to sit tight on welfare, especially when you add in the full range of living costs that are also paid for.

This is very true.

It's important to understand how daunting this transition period can be, moving from the state safety net to working under your own steam.

We should make the system far more fluid, giving people an opportunity to try new work areas without burning all their bridges.

I really do not worry if someone ends up claiming a few hundred quid more than they are technically entitled to, if in the process they make a break with the comfort zone and try something new.

Loopgames

B.E.N wrote: »

If someone has creativity or a specialist skill, yes.

But, we still come back to the problem of Full Employment - can 2.47 million people (or however many it exactly is) *all* find a little niche to fill?

lostinrates wrote: »

I'm quite sure a number of claimants are just so employed...cash in hand. A problem is that or those...''daunted'' by employment the paperwork, legal and insurance requirements of self employment are further ''off putting'' and possibly for the long term unemployed, the educationally unconfident or lacking, or the simply !!!!less....its overwhelming.

As I said people are either physically or mentally lazy. Unfortunately society seems to lack the 'get up and go' attitude.

Pobby

Just another point from an older person, who I might say has worked their ...... off for years, along with my wife. Private pensions. A joke? well maybe. Annuities have crashed. The nice bit that you thought you had has now gone, and may I say by loads. About 70% I think in the last few years. That`s a lot. Oh the joy of retiring on 30k a year including the state pension is some joke. Oh well never did work in the private sector.

One thing I notice, is all the money that benefits folk get. Mad as a great deal of it is housing costs. My benefit relative gets that but I wouldn`t like to bring up 3 kids on about £230 a week.That`s after hb and ct. Am I wrong? Dunno. As someone who hated the stupid rise in housing, sorry gang, but I do believe that it is a curse. Friends in Spain and Eire tell me horror stories about their own house price crash.

Brown was loopy, as was Thatcher, economic thingy bobs, like King Canute. Loads have been sucked into this. wonder where all of this is going?

elaina79

Shakethedisease wrote: »

It didn't however, turn out to be quite as straightforward as they thought...






( Shadows of the Workhouse -Jennifer Worth )

....Which is why we got rid of them in favour of the welfare state.

I have read that book too. It makes some very sad reading, and thats where me and my family would have ended up if we were living in london in the 50's too.

dktreesea

Loopgames wrote: »

I'm not talking about conventional jobs..I'm saying that there is always work to do. Someone with a bit of imagination can offer their services as self employed if they wanted to.

Don't limit yourself to the slave world of conventional employment.

Being self employed is hard yakka. Having tried both working for someone else and self employment, I would say the latter is a lot harder.And certainly no guarantee of an "above the level to qualify for benefits" income.

Britain is a low wage economy, so low if fact, that if a couple were both earning the minimum wage, working full time with two children, they, amazingly, would still qualify for both housing benefit and working tax credit.

There's a couple down the road from us. The guy is a security guard, and the other lady works in some kind of residential home as a carer. Both minimum wage. Two children. They both clear just over £10K each a year. They don't get WTC, but they do get CTC (almost £80 a week) and housing benefit ( she said they get around £70 a week, which covers half their rent).

Sure, they are the ones receiving the subsidy, but the ones being subsidised are the employers. It's amazing to me how a family with over £400 income a week after tax can get any subsidy at all, but since the government has decided that they need an extra £7.5K a year to bring their income up to the minimum standard of living, perhaps they should be raising the minimum wage sufficiently to achieve exactly that?

It's employers who are benefitting from their labour. Why shouldn't they have to pay the proper price for the work? Why should some other taxpayer be forced to give up £7.5k of their income just so the employer has more profit in his pocket?

Generali

dktreesea wrote: »

...since the government has decided that they need an extra £7.5K a year to bring their income up to the minimum standard of living, perhaps they should be raising the minimum wage sufficiently to achieve exactly that?

It's employers who are benefitting from their labour. Why shouldn't they have to pay the proper price for the work? Why should some other taxpayer be forced to give up £7.5k of their income just so the employer has more profit in his pocket?

Presumably because the company and the owners of the company are paying so much tax to support the current system of wage subsidies that they can't afford to pay more and the employees are paying so much tax they can't afford to live from what remains.

B.E.N

dktreesea wrote: »

Britain is a low wage economy, so low if fact, that if a couple were both earning the minimum wage, working full time with two children, they, amazingly, would still qualify for both housing benefit and working tax credit.

There's a couple down the road from us. The guy is a security guard, and the other lady works in some kind of residential home as a carer. Both minimum wage. Two children. They both clear just over £10K each a year. They don't get WTC, but they do get CTC (almost £80 a week) and housing benefit ( she said they get around £70 a week, which covers half their rent).

Sure, they are the ones receiving the subsidy, but the ones being subsidised are the employers. It's amazing to me how a family with over £400 income a week after tax can get any subsidy at all, but since the government has decided that they need an extra £7.5K a year to bring their income up to the minimum standard of living, perhaps they should be raising the minimum wage sufficiently to achieve exactly that?

It's employers who are benefitting from their labour. Why shouldn't they have to pay the proper price for the work? Why should some other taxpayer be forced to give up £7.5k of their income just so the employer has more profit in his pocket?

As Pobby said - the real problem is with the overpriced houses/rentals in this country.

Whenever you see one of these "equivilent of £42,000 on benefits" cases, the majority of the 'income' is in Housing Benefit, simply because the property prices in this country are sky-high (thanks Labour!).

The reason that the working couple that you reference are still receiving some benefits, is because, quite simply, if they didn't, it wouldn't work out to be benefitial working.

Thus, they'd probably go 'on the sick' and as such would be a much bigger 'drain' on resources.

As for employers taking advantage and keeping wages low - I'm going to go against the grain and say that I don't think this is the case. A minimum wage job now, probably would have been a minimum wage job when WTC was introduced.

Minimum Wage jobs are usually there because they are unskilled and thus there is more 'supply' relative to 'demand'. Thus, I can't see that the hourly rate of the job would have increased had WTC not been introduced.

As for increasing the minimum wage to a reasonable level, I agree that we should,but how would we go about it? If we did an 'across the board' uprate to say £8ph, we would choke smaller businesses. We could introduce a staged minimum wage, of course, depending on the size of the business (though how we'd define that would be another question..) --> e.g. Larger Companies - £8ph, Smaller Companies - £5ph, perhaps..?

JasonLVC

B.E.N wrote: »

If someone has creativity or a specialist skill, yes.

But, we still come back to the problem of Full Employment - can 2.47 million people (or however many it exactly is) *all* find a little niche to fill?

Who says that a country has to achieve full employment to be socio-economically successful?