MSE News: Benefits recipients could lose £1 billion

tagq2 wrote: »

Back in 2003 applicable amount was ~£55. A possibly wrong bit of mental arithmetic with RPI values that ~£68 in 2010, which is more than the current amount for a single person over the age of 25.

RPI isn't the correct measure to use for the AA, since RPI includes rents, mortgages & council tax etc, and the benefits which make income up to the AA (ie JSA/IS/ESA/CTC etc) aren't intended to cover these things (that's for housing benefit and council tax benefit to do).

They used an index called "rossi" for most of these, this index excludes rents, council tax etc. For CTC and pension credit they used earnings, but often with ad hoc increases above earnings (certainly for CTC anyway).

The family premium was ~£16 in 2003. Today we should be approaching £20, which we are. I am no benefits expert at all - I just have a general idea of the system and am looking things up as I go along. Am I missing something?

Actually you're right about the family premium in the AA, this has gone down in real terms because it is reflected in the family element of CTC plus the "first child premium" of child benefit. The family element of CTC is the element that higher income families get, and has been frozen at £545pa since its introduction in 2003.

But of course anyone getting the family element also gets at least one child element, and that has sky-rocketted, from about £31pw in 2001 to about £62 now. So overall anyone with kids is far better off now.

It's 50% more than the individual rate: comparing couple with the 16-hour WTC entitlement seems inappropriate because AFAICT it'd be unusual for a couple to be entitled to both.

I meant the earnings required to get WTC can be about the same as IS for a couple (and close to ESA for a single person), ie about £5000pa.

Also the self-employed, who aren't subject to the NMW, could get WTC on much lower incomes. Provided they can persuade HMRC they are actually working the required number of hours.

It has been tough accepting we have to do a lot more for a lot less, but there is no end in sight.

All the borrowing and printing money is just postponing and stoking the crash to come, and it will come unless we change fundamentally.

Those benefit recipients need to understand that after a period of time, workfare; it will change their attitude to work, which will clean our hospitals, feed the elderly in the hospitals, maintain our public buildings, staff our courts, sweep our streets.

And for those that won't cooperate then we build workhouses no free council flats to run back to.

With that instilled, workfit, they will compete with foreign workers, because they have to, and can.

Students will realise that the fees are in investment because they will have a job to go to, and only pay it back.

Neither should be taxed to the eyeballs afterward, work has to pay.

Yes I feel better now : D

propertyman wrote: »

I am not being disrespectful of your post.

Is it me?

Is that not a perfect example of the sheer complexity of this freaking system. :eek:

Absolutely. It is ridiculously complicated. The universal credit will simply things quite a bit. But it doesn't go far enough...

Interwoven and conditional benefits - you need that degree as an unemployed ex student to understand it.

While Public sector workers won't like this it is this sort of self serving work that is unproductive that we don't need.

Exactly. I'd prefer a non-means tested Citizens Income, plus a flat rate of tax. Cut out all the bureacracy of means testing and get a fairer system. No high marginal withdrawal rates, no poverty trap, everyone working is considerably better off than those who don't, and a more progressive system.

I would rather you were transferred to teaching.

What makes you think I work in the public sector? My job has nothing whatsoever to do with benefits.

IF it is right that benefits should be automatically uprated by an index, then they should be uprated by the index ... in this case by the September index figure.

Whether benefits are set at the correct level in the first place, whether they should be adjusted by one particular index or another, or whether they should be uprated at all when many are facing a pay freze etc is a different matter.

What I object to is the squalid compromise of averaging 6 months figures, just so that a different number is generated. It makes no sense and debases the whole concept of indexation. If a figure other than that provided by the index is to be used, then come clean that it is a political decision, and don't muck about pretending there is any logic to it.