List The Benefits You Receive. Can the state afford them?

silvercar

LilacPixie wrote: »

How does the free bus pass thing work.? Does everyone over 60 automatically get send one and then the bus company somehow claims money per usage or does the government pay a one off fee per pass? My dad is over 60 and TBH I don't think he has been on a bus since about 1974 so even if 'entitlent' to one it would be useless. Is there cost implications to that?

Everyone over 60 can apply for one.

The transport companies get paid according to average usage. Complicated surveys and analysis of where tickets are issued, where they are expected to be used, where they actually are used and where there is an obligation to provide service. It doesn't work perfectly which is why you get some bus services crowded out with pensioners which would mean more frequent buses on that route if they were all paying customers. There are also service obligations, so a particular bus company may have got a franchise on the understanding that it provided a route between A and B; it could mean the bus pass users on that route don't feed into the money paid to the operator because there was an obligation to provide the service even if there were no pensioners on it.

The basic answer is that for every pensioner applying for a pass, a set amount of money will be paid by government to transport operators somewhere.

kabayiri

Like many others I benefit to a degree, CB for 2 children would be the obvious one to note.

I've had a few ops on the NHS in recent years, mostly day case, and the service was fantastic. I am extremely appreciative of what I received.

Which is my point.....we forget the meaning of the word 'benefit'. It's carefully chosen and should have meaning. It is intended to benefit the individual and therefore society.

Maybe we should rename certain things to be called 'entitlements' because when you see people talking on Kyle show et al they consider them to be fundamental rights, unvarying, forever.

I'd like to see state money shift to collective benefits and not individual. As an example, public transport costs are still far too high in this country, and we still seem to be buying diesel rolling stock which won't reach end of service life until 2050.

Enable a low income person to get to work for a couple of pounds on clean safe public transport and see how much of a life/work enabler that is.

Pete111

I have never claimed benefits of any ilk. I have paid (and continue to pay) a lot of tax. However I do not resent it. I am very fortunate in that I was born to parents of means, was well educated and as a result am able hold down a very decent job. I know this and am grateful.

A couple of random points:

1) My willingness to pay large amounts of tax and my recognition that I am fortunate in general should not be construed as my being happy to pay for others to sit idle all their lives without any requirement to contribute to society.

2) I feel strongly that only the least fortunate should receive benefits and they should NOT be an across the board entitlement. Clamping the majority of people to the teat of the state support is inherantly wrong IMHO

3) Certain vital public institutions - including the NHS - need funding properly. Period.

Finally to those who mentioned people 'using Roads' as examples of receiving a state benefit. Last time I checked I paid over £250 a year in road tax. Am I alone?

P

ruggedtoast

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And how do you justify them?

As for me.....

I don't get Benefits or Tax Credits of any kind. I have never claimed a day of unemployment or any other state subsidy in my life. I was even privately educated as a child.

I don't use the NHS, the education system, or any other elective government services beyond statutory requirements such as DVLA and Passport Office, which are pay-per-use anyway.

I already pay more in taxes than 99% of the population, and use less in services than 99% of the population. The state makes a significant profit from me living here.

And yet bizarrely, those who do not work as hard as I do, who do not contribute to society as much as I do, and who do not take responsibility for providing for themselves as I do, expect me to pay more to subsidise them further?

Alrighty then.....

I suggest benefits of any kind should be reserved for the very poor, the very needy, or the very sick. By all means, I'm happy for their benefits to be increased. Particularly from the money we'll save by eliminating paying benefits to the middle classes who clearly don't need them.

If you're capable of working, the only benefits you receive should be a minimal short term safety net to recover from loss of job or illness. Let those be generous.... Let them be more generous than they are today. But let them be limited so that the amount you take out over a lifetime is no more than the amount YOU put in. I'm guessing around 4 years of eligibility per adult per lifetime would be about right.

Beyond that? Nothing.

Other than perhaps a dormitory bed and access to a soup kitchen and job centre. We won't let people starve or freeze to death, no matter how lazy or f eckless they may be. But we can't continue to enable the lazy and f eckless to be that way forever.

And for the love of god stop this nanny state, champagne socialist, middle class wealth redistribution nonsense we have now. Get rid of ALL middle class benefits and tax credits. Reduce the amount they pay in tax instead, and save the administrative costs of the state taking with one hand and giving back with another.

Get rid of free bus passes, winter fuel allowances, and state pensions for the well off. We don't need them, we won't miss them, and we don't deserve to have them.

And start treating benefits the way they are supposed to be.

Benefits should be a short term helping-hand-up, not a permanent hand-out.

A safety net, not an entitlement.

It's time to slash and burn our way through the benefits system, and make people that can pay their own way do so.

We can't afford not to.

You really do take the giddy biscuit McTavish.

Can I humbly point out that the reason that you were privately educated, have a good job, have private medical insurance, have never claimed benefit and own property is because...

You had the enormous good fortune to be born into a family wealthy enough to provide these things, or the support for these things, for you.

And its not really like you rushed to stand on your own two feet as an adult is it... your parents gifted you a deposit for your first house.

You seem to be functionally incapable of understanding what real life is like for people who arent as well off as you are. For you, speculating in property carries no risk whatsoever, because even at the start of your adult life mum and dad were there with an advance bail out.

If you'd dragged yourself up from your bootstraps from an estate in Bow or something you would get to lecture people about benefits.

You just exhibit a different kind of financial dependency, one which in my opinion has done you no good whatsoever.

I'm glad you pay a lot of tax to fund people on benefits, I hope they double it. I also find your assumption that people who arent paid a lot, therefore dont work as hard as you, offensive and stupid. Try working for minimum wage in a hostel or wet centre for a week and then see if you want to keep doing it.

Vile and stupuid McTavish, even by your own poor standards.

sss555s

The NHS and a host of others are services, not benefits.

A service is something we all pay towards (taxes) which is there to be used by everyone

A benefit is something we all pay towards (taxes) which is there to give people in a disadvantaged position an acceptable quality of life.

neverdespairgirl

Pete111 wrote: »

Finally to those who mentioned people 'using Roads' as examples of receiving a state benefit. Last time I checked I paid over £250 a year in road tax. Am I alone?

P

It's not just the actual roads, though. It's also pavements, pathways, cycle paths, streetlights, etc.

chewmylegoff

robpw2 wrote: »

bendix wrote: »

Utterly ridiculous argument. education when, as a minor, you can't make personal choices about how you are educated (and which are more than covered by our taxes)

yes you can have you heard of private school.

what so as a child you were able to make a decision on whether you went to a state school or a private school? interesting. your parents obviously delegated budgetary control to a much lower level than mine did.

neverdespairgirl

chewmylegoff wrote: »

what so as a child you were able to make a decision on whether you went to a state school or a private school? interesting. your parents obviously delegated budgetary control to a much lower level than mine did.

Couldn't agree more.

Perhaps I've just forgotten the decision I made about my education when I was a 4 year old.

LadyGooGoo_2

If people have a lot, so much that they can afford to pay for things that we don't have to pay for at time of use in this country then I think this tiny minority of people have an obligation to pay to help other people who are struggling after being made redundant etc.

It must be strange to live such a very rarified life that you never come into contact with any state funded organisations or any service providers who were trained at state run organisations.

Me, I drive on roads, I walk under street lighting, I'm protected by legislation enacted by parliament and implemented by civil servants. I'm grateful for the police and the armed forces defending our country, I'm even grateful for the Queen.

I care about babies on neonatal wards and children on the at risk register and I am happy to pay for the nurses and social workers who take care of them.

I'm glad that there is a safety net for the old as well. My grandmother's investments that were supposed to see her through her retirement were literally decimated last year.

I'm really glad that the dangerously mental ill and the convicted criminals are locked up.

Some of my doctors are private but I am grateful that they got such great training on the NHS and I'm grateful that my NHS GP wrote me referral letters without which they would have been unable to see me. My dentist and orthodontist are private as well and I am equally grateful for their NHS training.

I'm grateful for my state subsidised university education and all my teachers and lecturers and their state funded educations...

But really I just think that we should contribute according to our means and take according to our needs.

Very few of us are so secure and so psychic that we can be certain that the services we are not using today we will not need tomorrow.

It's utterly ridiculous for anyone to say that they will never use the NHS when a near fatal RTA and subsequent ambulance ride to the nearest A&E is completely outside the realms of their control.

I find it astonishing that people can be so shockingly lacking in empathy that they honestly think it's Ok to say that don't want to pay to help anyone else ever. If they don't need it they don't want to pay for it and to hell with everyone else.

But that's not even the point. It's not all about you or me.

In return for living in this society we participate in funding it. That's the deal.

If you don't want to do that you know where the exits are.

Pete111

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

It's not just the actual roads, though. It's also pavements, pathways, cycle paths, streetlights, etc.

Ok so a quick calculation. There are reckoned to be over 30 million taxed cars on the roads in the UK

Lets say 30 mill for ease and lets say £150 p/a as an average car tax rate. Thats 4.5 Billion quid. And that's before the vast tax take on fuel is considered.

As such I would say it's probably covered.....

I would also agree that there is a massive difference between 'fixed' public services ie (defence, NHS etc) and variable benefits that apply only to certain people.