Work for benefits

CLAPTON

J_i_m wrote: »

I think that is a very easy and comfortable phrase to say, and I think it is bandied around these forums too readily.

I also think those who say it are perhaps speaking from a narrow perspective.

I'm not sure what point you are making

here we were referring to whether highly paid people once made redundant should be treated in a special way whilst being funded by tax payers.

stinktankcynic

Anyone who has worked and saved hardly gets any benefit anyway. The whole dole for life with free housing, council tax etc needs to be stopped.
It's crazy to pay a council worker £14k taxed a year and a non worker £10k a year for sitting at home. Both paid for by the state. If you have to pay dole and rent then the council or other organisations should have two employees instead of one.

richdeniro

Do find it strange how so many people fall for the right wing demonisation of the poor and most vulnerable in society. Years of economic growth and rising productivity yet we pay more for basic shelter and we have to work longer and get less at the end but this is not down to the rich who's wealth has increased significantly during this period but down to those on the dole.

The welfare system is just that - welfare. The looking after of people who are vulnerable or have fallen on hard times. So the Tories decided to put a sociopath like Duncan Smith in charge of it.

The establishment must love how easy people are to fool in this way. Even if you eradicated all welfare fraud and had an entirely perfect benefit system you would probably only knock a few billion off the overall welfare bill. I just wish the populace would show as much passion for the real ills in society such as 50%+ of the countries wealth being held by less than 5% of its population, corporations and individuals paying a pittance in tax and companies paying such appalling wages that the state has to top them up so people don't fall into poverty.

The policies announced by Osbourne and IDS are not designed to work or to save money. They're designed to appeal to the worst elements of human nature. Sponging of the state might get up some peoples noses but I'd take a minuscule minority doing that over people starving and living rough in a Victorian nightmare any time.

If the likes of Cameron or Osbourne ever had to do a day's manual labour they would need at least a month in their favourite spa to recover. Sanctimonious !!!!!!!! pumped out by public school heirs to fortunes most people couldn't even imagine.

John_Pierpoint

UK "productivity" per worker has been falling since 2008 - you don't need a lot of "productivity" if an economy is based on drilling a hole in the ground and black gold gushing out..

The whole global system is based on competition and power politics - and politics is the art of the possible.

Britain in far from the most effective exponent and exploiter of this situation as it was 150 years ago. Nearly all economies are to a greater or lesser extent involved in an international rat race, where the super rich and the super powerful can make arrangements to live in a tax haven that is only too happy to welcome them. When the tax man is dealing with these entities, be it individuals or other powerful entities, they expect "respect" and I bet they don't wait months for a reply to their accountant's letters.

The rest of us footsoldiers are having to pay a tax rate approaching 50% of GDP to our national government which is to some extent batting for the home team. So we are forced to play the international game and spend a lot of our [STRIKE]working lives[/STRIKE] waking hours examining how we can do so more effectively.

What is your solution to Britain's attempt to slide down the national income tables, another God given miracle like North Sea Oil, or a retirement into some sort of go it alone National Socialism ?

Do you have a proposal for dealing with "the demographic" time bomb?
.
How about dealing with the motivationally challenged ? It is not just a matter of education, some people cannot cope with the rough and tumble of the rat race. [Which is often at its worst in large nationalised institutions - perhaps with our unique ability to recognise and interact with up to a three figure number of other individuals, we are not designed to cope with organisations with thousands of offices populated by hundreds of thousands of people ?]

Loughton_Monkey

richdeniro wrote: »

Do find it strange how so many people fall for the right wing demonisation of the poor and most vulnerable in society. Years of economic growth and rising productivity yet we pay more for basic shelter and we have to work longer and get less at the end but this is not down to the rich who's wealth has increased significantly during this period but down to those on the dole.

The welfare system is just that - welfare. The looking after of people who are vulnerable or have fallen on hard times. So the Tories decided to put a sociopath like Duncan Smith in charge of it.

..

Is it 'demonisation of the poor' or more a reaction against successive governments who have "created" a constituency of 5.7 million working aged people who fall into your category of "vulnerable"?

Maybe shortness of memory is a vulnerability, but my own memory tells me over 20 or 30 years, a pattern of almost uninterrupted higher wages, above inflation, higher wealth, and more money for fewer hours.......

Meanwhile, for 13 of those years, Gordon Brown was at work behind the scenes throwing more, and more, money into 'the economy' by way of benefits for the 'poor', and the obscene foray into £20 billion of housing benefit from which there is little chance of return.

Yes, of course, this came to an abrupt halt in the financial crisis and just about every segment of society has had to bear the cost. Employed people (public and private) have probably suffered the most. Pensioners have been protected on State Pensions but their private annuities and savings have taken swingeing hits.

Compare this to the relatively minor changes to benefits - some of which are yet to bite - and it's no surprise that people are tending to say that the benefits picnic has to stop. The taxpayer doesn't, I'm sure, mind paying a reasonable amount for really vulnerable people. But any attempt at discrimination, unwinding the excess, getting back to a rational 'norm' always gets criticised as "hitting the poor and vulnerable."

MacMickster

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Is it 'demonisation of the poor' or more a reaction against successive governments who have "created" a constituency of 5.7 million working aged people who fall into your category of "vulnerable"?

Maybe shortness of memory is a vulnerability, but my own memory tells me over 20 or 30 years, a pattern of almost uninterrupted higher wages, above inflation, higher wealth, and more money for fewer hours.......

Meanwhile, for 13 of those years, Gordon Brown was at work behind the scenes throwing more, and more, money into 'the economy' by way of benefits for the 'poor', and the obscene foray into £20 billion of housing benefit from which there is little chance of return.

Yes, of course, this came to an abrupt halt in the financial crisis and just about every segment of society has had to bear the cost. Employed people (public and private) have probably suffered the most. Pensioners have been protected on State Pensions but their private annuities and savings have taken swingeing hits.

Compare this to the relatively minor changes to benefits - some of which are yet to bite - and it's no surprise that people are tending to say that the benefits picnic has to stop. The taxpayer doesn't, I'm sure, mind paying a reasonable amount for really vulnerable people. But any attempt at discrimination, unwinding the excess, getting back to a rational 'norm' always gets criticised as "hitting the poor and vulnerable."

Being a generally charitable soul I prefer to give Gordon Brown and Tony Blair the benfit of the doubt.

Lets say that they conducted the biggest social experiment in the history of the UK, pumping money into eradicating child poverty through theintroduction of tax credits and other increased benefits. The premise behind this was that this additional money would allow hard-working but low paid families to give their children better experiences and opportunities, which in turn would enable them to go on to achieve more themselves in their adult lives. This all sounds very plausible, and so hundreds of billions of pounds were pumped into that experiment.

Roll on over a decade later and the experiment has clearly not worked. Instead we have children brought up in an entitlement culture with living on benefits being seen as a lifestyle choice. Children themselves are cash cows entitling parents to ever greater levels of benefits.

This has to stop now.

The taxpayer cannot support a welfare state which has been perverted. The original vision was to provide temporary assistance to the sick and unemployed while they got themselves back on their feet, with longer term support only to those actually unable, rather than choosing not to, support themselves. We need to get back to basics.

andrewf75

Its a delicate balance we have to strike between not demonising the poor and ensuring that the incentives are always to look for a job rather than go on the dole. I think currently a shift towards getting tougher on benefits is right - and I'm certainly no Tory right winger. Its not about saving money, its about trying to instill a work ethic into people and improve society.

In my view this all comes down to one thing though. The way we live our lives is simply not sustainable. People moan about higher food and fuel prices, but that isn't the issue. Food and fuel and other essentials have always taken up the majority of incomes. The difference today is the things which used to be luxuries that people expect. And in my experience of people I know, the poorer people tend to be the most irresponsible with money. This is a fundamental change. Go back a few generations and the poor would be extremely frugal, knowing how to make a few pounds go as far as possible, walking rather than paying for the bus to save a few quid, eating in the most cost-efficient way. Now, its the middle classes who cycle to work to save money, grow their own veg etc while the poor eat takeaways and wouldn't dream of walking or cycling to save money. Bit of a generalisation here and going off ona bit of a tangent, but from what I see there is some truth in it and its relevant to the whole benefits/rich v poor issue. How to fix it I don't know, but this is what is wrong.

grizzly1911

MacMickster wrote: »

Being a generally charitable soul I prefer to give Gordon Brown and Tony Blair the benfit of the doubt.

Lets say that they conducted the biggest social experiment in the history of the UK, pumping money into eradicating child poverty through theintroduction of tax credits and other increased benefits. The premise behind this was that this additional money would allow hard-working but low paid families to give their children better experiences and opportunities, which in turn would enable them to go on to achieve more themselves in their adult lives. This all sounds very plausible, and so hundreds of billions of pounds were pumped into that experiment.

Roll on over a decade later and the experiment has clearly not worked. Instead we have children brought up in an entitlement culture with living on benefits being seen as a lifestyle choice. Children themselves are cash cows entitling parents to ever greater levels of benefits.

This has to stop now.

The taxpayer cannot support a welfare state which has been perverted. The original vision was to provide temporary assistance to the sick and unemployed while they got themselves back on their feet, with longer term support only to those actually unable, rather than choosing not to, support themselves. We need to get back to basics.

In doing so we need to ensure that effort is targeted at the real culprits rather than those who truly need assistance. Seeking to tar all with the same brush as the gutter press and certain politicians do doesn't help.

Should we ever have something like 98/99/100% employment at truly living incomes then I think we coul dallow the "sadistic tendency" to prevail a little more.

We keep hearing about £20bn in HB. Is the the fault of those recipients or HPI and chronic housing shortages are the cause. Demad in the SE in particular and concentration in jobs has been allowed to happen by those in "control" (used very loosely). This is simply the effect.

Tancred

Sampong wrote: »

In the media headlines this morning;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2434182/Now-work-benefits-Ministers-unveil-tough-crackdown-payments-jobless.html

At first sight seems like a great idea. The whole "benefits culture" thing annoys me (as it does a lot of people).

But -

• 
  Where exactly are they all going to work?

• 
  Surely this would be wide open to abuse - unscrupulous employers will use it a method to obtain cheap labor, driving down wages elsewhere in whatever industry they are in, and making it difficult for businesses who actually have some ETHICS and social responsibility to compete.

Can't see this ever happening, but surely a recipe for disaster if it did?

This could work - and I emphasize 'could' - as long as the minimum wage is increased to something more resembling a living wage, as in France and similar countries, and people are engaged on genuine jobs, not 'invented' jobs sweeping the streets or trimming hedges five times a day.

John_Pierpoint

I don't think we need lessons from France - we are already attacking the benefits on offer to families who have embraced self employment rather than Job Seekers Allowance.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/54985b62-d36b-11e2-b3ff-00144feab7de.html#axzz2gZGlZQzk