We all pay your benefits

grizzly1911

CLAPTON wrote: »

On reflection I think I may have exaggerated;

probably Henry VIII, Catherine the Great, Louis XIV and a few others probably wouldn't have been beneficiaries.

Not all then, a lot perhaps and some considerably more at the expense of others.

CLAPTON

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Not all then, a lot perhaps and some considerably more at the expense of others.

Yes, I have already agreed that I was poetically economical with the actuality, so it's completely possible that you are better off at the expense of others.

Going4TheDream

MacMickster wrote: »

The other family were probably the most interesting, and I wish that their circumstances and finances were examined in rather more detail. Benefits of 1800 pounds monthly, but still reliant on food banks suggests to me that something was missing from the analysis of their situation. They were given a very sympathetic portrayal, which I remain to be convinced was wholly justified.[/B]

At least this programme appears to have tried to present a balanced viewpoint, rather than setting out to demonise benefit claimants. I await the next episode with interest.

I agree, I would be interested if the mothers income/benefits taken into account in all of these calculations, as I am sure she would have had something coming in, or how she contributed even? And I still cant fathom why they feel their children NEED separate rooms if they are under 10 years old , (ie girls and boys cant share) which seemed the reason for upgrading to a 4 bed house when the mother became ill and needed care? They make up £250 a month out of their benefits to accommodate the larger house ( a shortfall of 29% they have to make up), and then need food banks as they are short of cash?

Maybe its just me and as harsh as it may appear to sound there seemed a lot of choice going on there?

MacMickster

Going4TheDream wrote: »

I agree, I would be interested if the mothers income/benefits taken into account in all of these calculations, as I am sure she would have had something coming in, or how she contributed even? And I still cant fathom why they feel their children NEED separate rooms if they are under 10 years old , (ie girls and boys cant share) which seemed the reason for upgrading to a 4 bed house when the mother became ill and needed care? They make up £250 a month out of their benefits to accommodate the larger house ( a shortfall of 29% they have to make up), and then need food banks as they are short of cash?

Maybe its just me and as harsh as it may appear to sound there seemed a lot of choice going on there?

At face value, it seems a clear case of a family being unwilling to adapt to their changed financial circumstances. I hope that this is explored in the next episode. They could (but don't want to) live in a smaller house in a less desirable area. In turn, this leads to the "I couldn't work for less than £18,000 per year" attitude which is preventing the man of the house from getting a job.

ash28

CLAPTON wrote: »

The vast majority of farming land is owned by a small number of very big farmers (i.e. it's big business)

They are driven by the same cost drivers as any other big business


If UK business doesn't introduce efficiency measures then they will be driven out of business by a flood of foreign imports.

Your standard of living is all possible because companies are continually making improvements (cost savings) and product improvement.


Would you want to go back to the awful UK car manufacturers making rubbish unreliable expensive cars?


New jobs are being created all the time.

The vast majority of farming land is owned by the aristocracy, the National Trust, the Church, the Crown......the Co-op. Not necessarily farmed by them.

30% of farms are tenanted.

The Co-op is the UK's biggest farmer......it doesn't own all the land it farms.

http://www.co-operative.coop/farms/client-services/What-do-we-offer/

The UK has 300k active farms and around 200k are less than 50 hectares....42k are over 100 hectares. The average size of a farm in the UK is 57 hectares.

We are surrounded by farms and the majority aren't big.

I used to work for the Rural Payments Agency who administer the Single Farm Payment.....you would probably be surprised at how many small farms there are.

N1AK

rabbit_burrow wrote: »

But you're talking about modern day farmers N1ak, I'm talking about when farmers were working the land in the old open top tractors. They bought into it to save hours of back breaking work, which yes would've taken jobs from people, but wouldn't have been saving them thousands of pounds (the equivalent to today's millions)

You're envisioning 'ye olde' farming through rose-tinted glasses. In 100 years time maybe some will look back and imagine that supermarkets brought in self-checkout to save employees from doing boring repetitive work stuck at a checkout and free them up for better thing! Amazon automated their warehouses to stop people having to do manual labour in a busy environment so that they could stay at home on JSA instead etc.

So I repeat my question. When is it change for a reasonable living and when is it 'evil profiteering'? When is it a reasonable income and when is it too much?

rabbit_burrow

N1AK wrote: »

You're envisioning 'ye olde' farming through rose-tinted glasses. In 100 years time maybe some will look back and imagine that supermarkets brought in self-checkout to save employees from doing boring repetitive work stuck at a checkout and free them up for better thing! Amazon automated their warehouses to stop people having to do manual labour in a busy environment so that they could stay at home on JSA instead etc.

So I repeat my question. When is it change for a reasonable living and when is it 'evil profiteering'? When is it a reasonable income and when is it too much?

I don't know where this 'evil profiteering' stuff came from, I certainly haven't called it that.

ATEOTD, if a company already has profits of £300million and then decides to streamline their processes further for the sake of £200,000, whilst it is a huge saving, if that means that there are more benefit claimants because of it, is it really that beneficial to the country as a whole?

I see that as different to, say, a sole trader who streamlines to make another £12k on profits of £50k.

But that is my opinion. Whether you say it is wrong and naive of me, well that I can't help. Views/opinions are different to facts. And I don't feel that it is appropriate for anyone to demean others based on their views & experiences.

So what would you do if you had land, couldn't afford to hire any help, demand was increasing for your wares & you were shown a new contraption that could make it easier on you, meaning that you could harvest your field much quicker and thus rotate crops faster to supply a growing demand, would you not take up that offer? Would you not see it as a necessity?

Whilst the government is trying to make it look good by having unemployment numbers as low as they can, that doesn't mean anything when it comes to benefits. If you have 100 people 'laid off', and those people can only find part-time employment, you will still potentially have 100 extra benefit claimants in some capacity, but unemployment would look unaffected.

K.Tarshes

MacMickster wrote: »

I think that next week's episode will be more telling, when the unemployed follow and comment on the lifestyles of their employed counterparts.

When its next one out? Can you post a link?

N1AK

rabbit_burrow wrote: »

ATEOTD, if a company already has profits of £300million and then decides to streamline their processes further for the sake of £200,000, whilst it is a huge saving, if that means that there are more benefit claimants because of it, is it really that beneficial to the country as a whole?

I see that as different to, say, a sole trader who streamlines to make another £12k on profits of £50k.

So what would you do if you had land, couldn't afford to hire any help, demand was increasing for your wares & you were shown a new contraption that could make it easier on you, meaning that you could harvest your field much quicker and thus rotate crops faster to supply a growing demand, would you not take up that offer? Would you not see it as a necessity?

That company would have to pay additional tax on the £200k if it took it in profit; alternatively it could invest the money in growing the business or lower prices making products cheaper for us all.

The workers who got 'streamlined' out can now go and get jobs where they increase productivity rather than decreasing it (which is what they were doing if the company can operate more cheaply without them).

A market trader who works out how to get rid of one of his two assistants (to save his £12k) has just increased unemployment. In fact he has probably decreased employment by his firm by a greater proportion than the bigger firm did.

rabbit_burrow wrote: »

So what would you do if you had land, couldn't afford to hire any help, demand was increasing for your wares & you were shown a new contraption that could make it easier on you, meaning that you could harvest your field much quicker and thus rotate crops faster to supply a growing demand, would you not take up that offer? Would you not see it as a necessity?

It's a fiction to pretend that farmers had two choices:
1/ Bring in new technologies
2/ Be unable to increase food production

Unless you'd like to provide any evidence that farming was facing a manpower or skill shortage during the British agricultural revolution then you're inventing constraints. However you won't because there wasn't.

Farmers brought in technology to increase profits. A salesman didn't turn up with a new baler and tell the farmer how it benefited society and the farmer didn't buy it on that basis; it got bought because within a couple of harvests it would save more in labourer wages than it cost.

Here's a challenge, name a single mechanical farming device that increases the production capacity of land vs the manual labour alternative with as many labourers as required.

We could produce just as much food on the same amount of land if we still used hoes and horse drawn ploughs; it'd just take 100,000's (maybe millions) more of us to be farm workers and food would cost a fortune due to the wages paid producing it.

rabbit_burrow

N1AK wrote: »

That company would have to pay additional tax on the £200k if it took it in profit; alternatively it could invest the money in growing the business or lower prices making products cheaper for us all.

The workers who got 'streamlined' out can now go and get jobs where they increase productivity rather than decreasing it (which is what they were doing if the company can operate more cheaply without them).

A market trader who works out how to get rid of one of his two assistants (to save his £12k) has just increased unemployment. In fact he has probably decreased employment by his firm by a greater proportion than the bigger firm did.

That is assuming that those newly unemployed from the bigger firm can find employment, or even full-time employment.

For example, say that the large firm had to let go of 15 employees to save that £200k.

Those 15 employees don't find work, or can only find part-time work of between 6 and 12 hours.

The benefits claimed, on average (based on JSA and HB, I haven't taken IS or others into effect) would cost £150000 (£6k HB, based on a 1bed entitlement at £500pcm + approx. £3700 JSA, plus free prescriptions/dental/eye tests and glasses etc). Then there's the free training to get into a new skilled jobs etc.

So are you saying that the company that has made another £200k by reducing staff would pay enough tax I.e, at least 75%, to cover the governments new costs?