Tax credits down £280 per month

princessdon

Yep benefits are too high, no incentive for some. I gets£71 then taxed as not entitled to anything else. In aug if made redundant its £55 or work, simple to me - work!

But for others you can see why when benefits pay so high - need to lower them.

skintmacflint

I'm from the generation before all these complicated benefit systems, and been lucky to never have never needed to claim any.

I believe in benefits when needed and don't care for the press placing the economic decline blame on benfit claimers. Not while the banks and corporate companies fleece the public+ tax payer at every turn.

But I'm speechless at the rate some benefits are paid to families Saw a post with family , 4 kids who with 2 parents earn £15000 per year but get £11000 in CTC/CB each year. No offence to the individual but if this typical then the tax payer is paying a heavy price.

I'm not saying I'm right or life was perfect but my generation didn't have kids unless you could support them. You didn't leave home unless you could afford to pay your own rent. But in those days jobs were available and they didn't all pay MNW, banks were banks not fleecing companies, and the newly formed NHS was the best thing since sliced bread.

So the whole world/system seems wrong from top to bottom. Companies take advantage of the tax payer paying top ups allowing them to pay buttons, private landlords abuse the tax payer by charging exorbitant rents for poor housing .Councils don't build enough housing. Maybe HB is using up all their funds? Governments make public service staff redundant who then need benefits , then they give millions in contracts to private companies who pay buttons and rake in the profits for a minority in high positions.

Meanwhile some people have lost all sense of personal responsibility, and expect the goverment to make life simple.

The Labour government introduced all these benfits to reduce child poverty but it hasn't worked. all it seems to have done is make a minority of people lose all sense of personal responsibility, and force others into a position of welfare dependancy.

If thing don't change at the top and the bottom, the plug will be pulled on welfare and the NHS. And people will find themselves back in the position of the days of my parents when I was born, overcrowded poor housing, long work hours no NHS , and if you weren't one of the minority well off, life was hard and I mean hard.

somethingcorporate

sniggings wrote: »

A family with 2 or 3 or 6 kids dont stand a chance on the min wage and again if you think benefits will ever be lowed to make the min wage seem good your crazy.

Take me, if I still worked (have done all my life until this year) I would be looking at a min wage job which is about £220 a week, with a job comes extra expenses such as travel etc etc.

On benefits I get my rend paid £100
My Council tax paid £20
free other bits and bobs such as denist etc
ESA $72

so £30 worse of not working but thats before travel costs to work etc etc so for me about the same.

do the same for a family and you see why working is not an option some take.

Why do you think benefits will not be slashed to make minimum wage look attractive? I think you will find this is exactly what the current government are doing.

Paying people to lay about churning out kids that will likely go on to do the same is not a sustainable status quo.

I think you missed my point that at the moment the benefits are far too generous and perhaps the minimum wage is too low. If your benefits came in at £180 a week and working at £220 which would you do? I am fully behind a system that punishes the lazy and incentivises people to go out and be productive.

sniggings

yep I agree Skint but the Government choose not to change things, only mess about at the edges. Take the family allowance mess they got themselves into and have now back out and will still be paying people earning £60,000 a year family allowance :eek:

It hard to support hard cuts to benefits when it's the Government themselves that set up the system, working tax credits have the same problem, they got paid to people earning £60,000 as well, I saw people at work dropping hours as they new they only had to work so many hours and the WTC would make up the rest, employers know this too so either drop peoples hours or pay them less as they know it will be made up.

Morrisons have admitted that 40% of it's staff are on apprenticeships, the Government pay Morrisons whos profit is in the billions to train there own staff, sorry but what job at Morrisons need an apprenticeships! maybe a handfull but 40% of their staff:eek:
and these were not new people employed but existing staff swapped over to apprenticeships.

It's hard to think their is a problem when they pay out money on daft things as this.

princessdon

sniggings wrote: »

Take the family allowance mess they got themselves into and have now back out and will still be paying people earning £60,000 a year family allowance :eek:

working tax credits have the same problem, they got paid to people earning £60,000 as well

.

Families earning £100K a year (and a bit more - will get CB), a single parent or single earner earning 60K won't - so no back down just moved it from £42 - £50K as the cut of per earner (not household).

WTC have never AFAIK been available for high earners.

Otherwise I do agree with your post, Labour made some really stupid decisions and the only way to remedy them is to slash benefits further and further and increase NMW at the same time.

sniggings

somethingcorporate wrote: »

Why do you think benefits will not be slashed to make minimum wage look attractive? I think you will find this is exactly what the current government are doing.

Paying people to lay about churning out kids that will likely go on to do the same is not a sustainable status quo.

I think you missed my point that at the moment the benefits are far too generous and perhaps the minimum wage is too low. If your benefits came in at £180 a week and working at £220 which would you do? I am fully behind a system that punishes the lazy and incentivises people to go out and be productive.

£40 for 40 hours of work not taking into account travel cost to work etc and that is just a single person.

The min wage will always be at about the same place £6.08 at a couple of kids and £220 will always be lower than benefits, housing costs would take up most of the £220 alone.

Remember too housing benefit and working tax credits cost more to pay to those in work than out! so you can lower benefits all you want but untill someone working 40 hours a week doesn't need housing benefit or WTC then nothing will change.

Just think about it for a min, this Government pay a working person earning up to £60,000 a year family credit and WTC :eek:
Blame the people on those benefits if you want but I put the blame at the Governments door and if someone sees they will be better of on benefits why would/should they take less, and those that say respect are fooling themselves.

sniggings

princessdon wrote: »

Families earning £100K a year (and a bit more - will get CB), a single parent or single earner earning 60K won't - so no back down just moved it from £42 - £50K as the cut of per earner (not household).

WTC have never AFAIK been available for high earners.

Otherwise I do agree with your post, Labour made some really stupid decisions and the only way to remedy them is to slash benefits further and further and increase NMW at the same time.

sorry your wrong, I have seen it quoted many times by politicians of all parties that WTC was paid over £60,000 and they said even some MPs were getting the payment.

Family allowance is on a sliding scale up to £60k I heard, the original cut off was £44 so even at your figure of £50 it has been raised so again you are wrong.

princessdon

wtc wasn't - child tax had a cut off lower than that - I've never had a penny.

At 60K you will get nothing - you said they 60K. They lowered the tax banding so not £44K.

Semantics anyway - yes they have been paid to high earners - but there are situations where benefits pay more than those wages.

sniggings

princessdon wrote: »

wtc wasn't - child tax had a cut off lower than that - I've never had a penny.

At 60K you will get nothing - you said they 60K. They lowered the tax banding so not £44K.

Semantics anyway - yes they have been paid to high earners - but there are situations where benefits pay more than those wages.

WTC or CTC call it what you want but one of them was paid to MPs as I have seen them admit it on TV.

But the family allowance was raised as it was all over the news so to say it wasn't a Uturn by the Government is just wrong not semantics.

princessdon

No it was a "u turn" - but not what people were in uproar about. the outrage wasn't the limit £42 per se, but the fact that single parents and single earners are penalised.

A couple can earn 1p each below the limit and still receive it, a single person/earner can't. eg currently a family earning £99,999.98 can receive it, a single parent earning £50K starts the taper. It was the ridiculous way they are not "means testing" the benefit that caused the outrage and I am sure you can see why when families earning double (plus extra tax relief) are entitled and other not.

they didn't U turn on that - just moved the cut off rate.

anyway - nothing to do with this thread so going OT - but it's a bug bear of mine (and as a dual earning family, it is not personal), I just feel for single parents who have been treat unfairly.