Let's help Duncan Smith - how would YOU improve the benefits system?

dharm999

I feel so unworthy of commenting on this thread, as I cant possibly post anything as remotely revolutionary or imaginative as bendix and sidekicks have suggested but something I saw on Judge Judy (working from home has to have some upside) certainly caused stirrings in me. Some benefit waster won some money on the lottery, and had to pay half her winnings to the state as recompense for the benefits she had had. I know lottery revenue would drop through the floor but I dont own shares in Camelot so dont care. Same would apply to betting/bingo/any other gambling winnings. I must get back to the athletics.

LizEstelle

Here's another benefit worth scrapping - let's do away with the benefit of allowing people to buy educational advantage for their children over those of people of more modest means. Why should Joe Public continue to accord charitable status to places which are little other than breeding grounds for snobs?
Let's reverse matters and slap a tax on schools whose main 'lesson' to their pupils is that society should be divided into haves and have nots.

LizEstelle

Here's another benefit worth scrapping - let's do away with the benefit of allowing private hospitals to shut their doors to patients when things go wrong and bills start to creep up. Why should I, as a taxpayer, pick up the bill for incompetent private practice? Let's have the private providers themselves forced to pick up the bill for any subsequent corrective treatment/long term care.

LizEstelle

Here's another benefit worth scrapping - let's do away with the benefit of allowing car ownership to exceed the garaging or street frontage capacity of any property. Cars and caravans are unsightly, especially monstrous 4x4s and people carriers. Ideally they should be out of sight when not in use and should not be polluting the view of a neighbourhood. Anyone who insists on 'excessive ownership' should pay as appropriate for the pollution.

dharm999

Here's another benefit worth scrapping - public sector pensions. All staff to contribute to their own pension scheme, and the government to stop contributing. I'm sure that would save billions.

LizEstelle

Here's another benefit worth scrapping - let's do away with the benefit of public disorderliness. The streets in my town have become lawless no-go areas at certain times of the day. I suggest the right to be unpleasant via drunken revelry and boy racing should lose any benefit of police cautions and the like. It should be the immediate subject of a 'civic responsibility' tax upon the perpetrator's salary.

kabayiri

LizEstelle wrote: »

'Help' those with double-barrelled surnames who would never remotely dream of sending their progeny to the schools which 95% of the population use to reconsider the scrapping of state school building repair and replacement.
.

Oh the irony of this comment, coming from someone with an (almost) double-barrelled forename !

Yours,
Kaba-Yiri

LizEstelle

Here's another benefit worth scrapping - let's do away with the benefit of firms snapping up graduates who have been educated at the public's expense without so much as a by-your-leave. Any firm which employs a higher than average ratio of graduates should be asked to pay more in tax. Why should I, through my taxation, subsidise that firm's dividend payout to its shareholders?

Graham_Devon

It;s simple really.

Cost of living.

That is too expensive. That's why so many people choose to stay on the benefits system. In all seriousness, on national minimum wage, you are screwed. You simply won't be able to afford to live unless you hook up with someone else. That's not always possible. Who want's to bring a lodger into their home that they don't know to live with their kids to help them pay for their roof? What person looking for a lodger want's someone with kids?

How are you supposed to pay for childcare, and a roof while you go to work? You simply can't. How is a single person supposed to afford to live on near minimum wage without hooking up with another one or two people? You simply can't.

With the cost of living, the major cost being housing, rising almost constantly, it only stands to reason you are going to be paying a bigger and bigger welfare bill to home people. We can;t cheer on every rise in the cost of living, and then moan at the same time about the welfare bill getting bigger. The two go hand in hand. Every rise alienates someone else who's doing their best to get by but has found themselves priced out of being able to look after themselves.

The very same benefit system pushes prices up even more, as landlords charge the max possible to those on housing benefit, pushing those without it to pay even more just to keep up with what the benefit system pays. Theres lots we can do with the benefit system to make things better and to ween out those abusing it. But at the same time, those with assets can't keep cheering up the price, or were back to square one.

It's not just houses, it's everything. The cost of childcare has rocketed. What happened there!?

LizEstelle

Here's another benefit worth scrapping - let's do away with the benefit of any personal taxation tax breaks for those earning over a certain level, to be debated, possibly c. £75k. No offsetting this against that, no allowance of X because of Y. Nothing.

Just as we have a national minimum wage, there should be a national maximum income ceiling beyond which you may not claim remotely to need any kind of tax help with your situation.