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

chewmylegoff

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Couldn't agree more.

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

my mum wanted to send me and my sister to a rudolf steiner school, and took us to an open day when my sister was 3.5 and i was 2. apparently i have a massive tantrum about something and she ended up having to take me home, and gave up on the idea. great decision making from me - if i hadn't i would have ended up being a socially dysfunctional accountant with an obsession for meaningless statistics, or something.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

ruggedtoast wrote: »

spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spitspit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit
spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit spit

My my my, someone is an angry little spitter this morning.

Now try responding to any of the points at hand.

Here's some to start with.....

HAMISH_MCTAVISH--
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.

ruggedtoast

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

My my my, someone is an angry little spitter this morning.

Now try responding to any of the points at hand.

Here's some to start with.....

Good work, you're even selectively quoting your own OP. Presumably because you read it all back, realised it made you sound like a prize ninny, and then gave up.

Here's my response to your post, the entire post at the beginning of this thread, not the modified one.

You're a nob.

There you go.

LadyGooGoo_2

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

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.

And for all the millions of women women who ran their husbands households and brought up their children but who didn't make enough contributions to cover the income support they now need in their 70s 80s 90s and beyond?

Access to a soup kitchen and a camp bed in a drafty church hall?

yorkshirekev

I personally have never been in receipt of unemployment benefit, but I did get a small grant at college (about £500 over two years). Used the NHS a lot as I was a very sickly child.

I think that people do have to be more determined about not relying too much from state handouts. It is easy to get stuck in a benefit trap, but very difficult to get out of. It was always drummed into my head that as a man I should be working - that is a non-negotiable fact. Benefits are there to protect the more vulnerable in society.

Unfortunately, the means-testing eats away at any savings made in the recalculation of benefits. The only sensible way to start in my opinion is to manipulate the tax system, so that those on low pay get a much higher proportion of their income untaxed. The only debate then is where do you draw the line and how do you pay the initial up-front costs.

Working should always be the answer and people need to be rewarded for working. It will need a change of culture as well as a change in the taxation system.

LadyGooGoo_2

Pete111 wrote: »

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.

We have a £8.6 billion road maintenance backlog because of decades of under investment, In addition to this widening the M25 is set to cost 3.4 billion by the end.

Good roads and all the accoutrements like traffic lights etc cost a heck of a lot of money.

bendix

While I find myself on Hamish's side of this particular debate (and I feel slightly unclean saying that), I do have a huge degree of sympathy and support with ruggedtoast's philosophical proposition that the aforementioned Hamish is a prize nob.

Pete111

LadyGooGoo wrote: »

We have a £8.6 billion road maintenance backlog because of decades of under investment, In addition to this widening the M25 is set to cost 3.4 billion by the end.

Good roads and all the accoutrements like traffic lights etc cost a heck of a lot of money.

No doubt.

You will note I did not calculate the specific tax raised through fuel duty. I would suggest this provides a significant wodge of the required cash here given it is the majority of the cost of a litre of fuel( currently at approx £1.18)

We also have company car taxes, fuel card taxes, new car tax, car insurance premium tax etc etc...

I would welcome someone clarifying the UK tax take per annum related to motoring - anyone know?

I think it's also important to reiterate my view that provision of roads is a public 'service' not an individual 'benefit'

chewmylegoff

Pete111 wrote: »

No doubt.

You will note I did not calculate the specific tax raised through fuel duty. I would suggest this provides a significant wodge of the required cash here given it is the majority of the cost of a litre of fuel( currently at approx £1.18)

We also have company car taxes, fuel card taxes, new car tax, car insurance premium tax etc etc...

I would welcome someone clarifying the UK tax take per annum related to motoring - anyone know?

I think it's also important to reiterate my view that provision of roads is a public 'service' not an individual 'benefit'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11451180

road fuel duty expected to be £26bn for 2010/11. the way the article is worded implies that this is the total for fuel duty only, and doesn't include the VAT on top.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Much as we like to moan about Broken Britain and going to Hell in a handcart, we live in a stable, wealthy democracy.

On a crude level, I certainly pay in more than I "get back" in direct terms, but I benefit from living standards that would be the envy of most of the world's population. I don't have to pick my way through raw sewage and rotting corpses on my way to work. I can speak my mind publicly without being dragged away and beaten by the militia. I can trust the police (there'll always be bad apples, but nothing compared to the endemic corruption and ineptitude of lowly paid forces in Poland and Italy where I've also lived) and they don't have to carry guns. I have a daily choice of newspapers offering a range of political opinion. My passport allows me to travel easily around the world with hardly any visa restrictions. An unquantifiable amount of our taxes goes into maintaining the UK as, you know, a civilised place where normal people can have normal lives.

How many ex-pats living abroad actually apply for a new nationality and then burn their British passport?