We all pay your benefits

Soubrette

grizzly1911 wrote: »

I took it as if you are a career claimant and know which elements to work, regular child bearing perhaps, you can pulls in a decent amount long term. If you happen to crash out of job for a relatively short period it can be difficult to get all the necessary elements together.

Should a long term employed person get more instant access to benefits like your P.S. suggestion.

Unemployed people don't get more benefits for children than working people do they? I thought child tax credits were only available for those in work?

I agree, those with children can pull in a decent amount long term and that in itself might be a disincentive to work if you feel you have enough from child related benefits, but the guy in work will always have more than the guy not in work surely, even if they have the same number of children?

Or am I being naive?

The PS wasn't a suggestion - just a vague memory that in places like Canada short term job seekers allowance is related to how much you earned in work but long term is probably lower than ours. I may be misremembering though.

quantic

Another thing:

Someone on benefits (disability not included) should, in my opinion, never be able to earn more than someone on minimum wage, let alone average wage (25k cap etc)... disgusting.

Soubrette

quantic wrote: »

People who have never worked should get less so that people who have always worked, but have been made unemployed, can get more.

Actually that's not the bit I couldn't understand. Sorry I don't understand why benefits aren't enough to support one person but the same benefits are enough to support someone else to the extent that they choose not to work.

grizzly1911

burnleymik wrote: »

Either way it's clear what is happening right now is not working when people on benefits 'seem' to have more disposable income and a better quality of life than people who work full time.

Interesting with constant reshuffles of benefit to minimise what is claimable and the fact that, according to the ONS, another poster has demonstrtaed that incomes have risen much more quickly than RPI, which benefits are pegged to.

princeofpounds

This. Even a genuinely unbiased producer who has to cut down to for example three cases is going to provide an inaccurate representation of the entire population of benefit claimants.

I don't think they did a terrible job actually.

One family, two single parents (male and female), one young single man.

They weren't terrible people (seemingly), some paid lip service to wanting to work, some claimed to be trying. Some were less interested.

None of the claimants were alcoholic drug addicts. None were outside of a family system. I would have like to see one example of that situation.

Looking at other comments on the topic I've seen the program denounced as bleeding heart BBC welfare propaganda or harsh right-wing demonisation of benefits claimants. Which probably means there was some balance.

I would have preferred it to be much more aggressively analytical about what was going on, but you're never going to get that on TV.

I agree, those with children can pull in a decent amount long term and that in itself might be a disincentive to work if you feel you have enough from child related benefits, but the guy in work will always have more than the guy not in work surely, even if they have the same number of children?

Or am I being naive?

Depends on the situation. The problem is more that you get so much benefits if you have children that if you are unskilled it's very hard to earn more than that, so you don't bother trying to work.

The marginal tax rate for coming off benefits is about 90%, meaning every pound you earn, you only get to keep 10% of it, the rest disappears in lost benefits.

Would you work the hours for 10% of the stated salary in incremental benefit?

The salary to escape this is really quite high - as pointed out the family in the show were getting 1800 a month net (there was a grandparent/care issue which wasn't explored much just FYI, so not sure how the figure was calculated) . You'd need to earn mid 20s k to do better than that.

This is what Ian Duncan Smith is trying to address with his universal credit initiative. But frankly it's almost mathematically impossible to solve because you have to remove the benefits at some point.

quantic

Soubrette wrote: »

Actually that's not the bit I couldn't understand. Sorry I don't understand why benefits aren't enough to support one person but the same benefits are enough to support someone else to the extent that they choose not to work.

Maybe the guy who is made redundant has more outgoings, because hes been successful, bought a nice house and paid a huge amount of tax into the system.

Benefits dont provide more for one than the other, im not saying that. I'm saying the person who has worked and earned their benefits, deserves a better standard of life while out of work than someone who has never worked.

Im saying that i dont care if the benefits that someone receives having never worked a day in their life, are enough. They should go down over time until its not an option to stay out of work.

princeofpounds

I don't understand why benefits aren't enough to support one person but the same benefits are enough to support someone else to the extent that they choose not to work.

Basic JSA, which is what most people think of as benefits, is not that high. IIRC about £70 a week. That's not enough to live on, on its own. But if you are in a situation like the younger guy in the program living with a family that has housing and can afford food it's really healthy 'pocket money'.

The 'big money' on benefits comes from things like housing-related benefits (that's 40-50% of average net salary right there), child-related benefits (both direct and indirect, like permanently more housing benefits until the recent bedroom 'tax'), lack of incidental costs (free meals, medicines, home improvements etc).

Putting cash in hand jobs aside, people on benefits often aren't that cash-rich. But that doesn't mean they can't sustain lifestyles equal to people who earn far more than minimum wage.

Soubrette

quantic wrote: »

Maybe the guy who is made redundant has more outgoings, because hes been successful, bought a nice house and paid a huge amount of tax into the system.

Benefits dont provide more for one than the other, im not saying that. I'm saying the person who has worked and earned their benefits, deserves a better standard of life while out of work than someone who has never worked.

Im saying that i dont care if the benefits that someone receives having never worked a day in their life, are enough. They should go down over time until its not an option to stay out of work.

Now that makes much more sense - it's not that the guy choosing to be on benefits is getting any more than the temporary unemployed.

Thanks for clarifying, I appreciate it.

I suppose my next question would be, how long do you have to have worked for benefits to kick in? Because if it's something like a year - don't you think the "workshy" would just knuckle down and do it, then claim benefits for the rest of their lives as per normal?

Soubrette

princeofpounds wrote: »

Basic JSA, which is what most people think of as benefits, is not that high. IIRC about £70 a week. That's not enough to live on, on its own. But if you are in a situation like the younger guy in the program living with a family that has housing and can afford food it's really healthy 'pocket money'.

The 'big money' on benefits comes from things like housing-related benefits (that's 40-50% of average net salary right there), child-related benefits (both direct and indirect, like permanently more housing benefits until the recent bedroom 'tax'), lack of incidental costs (free meals, medicines, home improvements etc).

Putting cash in hand jobs aside, people on benefits often aren't that cash-rich. But that doesn't mean they can't sustain lifestyles equal to people who earn far more than minimum wage.

I've bolded your middle paragraph because aren't all these benefits income related, so you may well be working but still entitled to them?

As you can probably guess I don't know much about benefits

princeofpounds

I've bolded your middle paragraph because aren't all these benefits income related, so you may well be working but still entitled to them?

Some of them are available on low incomes yes. But I would link it in to the previous post I just made - any work you do up to a certain point results in the benefits you receive being taken away at a high marginal rate. So if you earn £100, you lose £90 of benefits until you aren't due any benefits any more.

(It's not 90% marginal tax rate at all points on the wage scale, but it is at some points and it is generally very high.)

So you get a lot more free time and only a little less money by not working.