Jobless mum spends £2k of benefits on christmas
Discussion
So buisness/celebs/wealthy people legaly avoid paying tax by putting their money in ofshore acconts etc and this is demend acceptable as the government allows this but the government gets critized for it.
Mother takes what she can legaly take from the government through benefits and the mother is called everything under the sun but very little comments about the government allowing it.
Double standards matters.
I couldn't give a rats arse what she does i pay my tax what the government spends it on it's up to them surly people have better things to do than get annoyed about this.
Mother takes what she can legaly take from the government through benefits and the mother is called everything under the sun but very little comments about the government allowing it.
Double standards matters.
I couldn't give a rats arse what she does i pay my tax what the government spends it on it's up to them surly people have better things to do than get annoyed about this.
DonkeyApple said:
otolith said:
DonkeyApple said:
It's why I think if you used Draconian laws to force men to be fully accountable the problem would diminish very quickly.
Absolutely - but what do you do if estranged dad is living on JSA?The idea being that instead of knocking a bint up for a housing benefit or just because they don't care you would change their mindset so that they don't spaff up the sleeve for risk of losing their benefits or hard earned wage.
A man can easily travel to find work and live on beans and toast so we don't need to worry about them when their money is diverted to some clunge they knocked up.
There must be some way of making feckless absentee fathers responsible for their actions, though.
Steffan said:
The overall spending of the government has to be brought into line with the level that the UK taxpayer can actually service. Something has to be cut. The overall expenditure is not affordable.
I think that one of the unforeseen consequences of the and benefits system in the UK is that it has undoubtedly reduced the need to work. In consequenbce a significant proportion of working age individuals use the system to avoid work.
The thing is, as I've pointed out a few times now, if you use the girl in the OP as an example, she'd get near enough the same in benefits whether she was working or not. So the saving to the tax payer is trivial.I think that one of the unforeseen consequences of the and benefits system in the UK is that it has undoubtedly reduced the need to work. In consequenbce a significant proportion of working age individuals use the system to avoid work.
What's really wrong is pay is too low. But PH business owners will be up in arms about that.
otolith said:
DonkeyApple said:
otolith said:
DonkeyApple said:
It's why I think if you used Draconian laws to force men to be fully accountable the problem would diminish very quickly.
Absolutely - but what do you do if estranged dad is living on JSA?The idea being that instead of knocking a bint up for a housing benefit or just because they don't care you would change their mindset so that they don't spaff up the sleeve for risk of losing their benefits or hard earned wage.
A man can easily travel to find work and live on beans and toast so we don't need to worry about them when their money is diverted to some clunge they knocked up.
There must be some way of making feckless absentee fathers responsible for their actions, though.
Deva Link said:
Steffan said:
The overall spending of the government has to be brought into line with the level that the UK taxpayer can actually service. Something has to be cut. The overall expenditure is not affordable.
I think that one of the unforeseen consequences of the and benefits system in the UK is that it has undoubtedly reduced the need to work. In consequenbce a significant proportion of working age individuals use the system to avoid work.
The thing is, as I've pointed out a few times now, if you use the girl in the OP as an example, she'd get near enough the same in benefits whether she was working or not. So the saving to the tax payer is trivial.I think that one of the unforeseen consequences of the and benefits system in the UK is that it has undoubtedly reduced the need to work. In consequenbce a significant proportion of working age individuals use the system to avoid work.
What's really wrong is pay is too low. But PH business owners will be up in arms about that.
On your example you suggest that wages are too low. I suggest that, rather, benefits being almost equal to earnings in such a case are clearly far too high. It is the benefits that need cutting to achieve balance in the UK budget. Raising wages will simply make UK products even less attractive abroad.
Deva Link said:
Steffan said:
I think most Ph'ers recognise that since welfare spending is by far the largest sector on government spending and that this sector has been spiralling out of control for some years, the resulting Benefit Society problem that we now have in the UK is by far the most serious difficulty preventing the balancing our budget.
More than half of the welfare bill is pensions.The sort of welfare being railed against in this thread is actually fairly small beer in the great scheme of things.
Deva Link said:
What's really wrong is pay is too low.
I agree.The real problem is not that benefits are so generous, but that meaningful work pays so little.
The Gubberment attempt to divert attention away from this fact by topping up the wages of the low-paid with 'tax credits'.
Shouldn't the onus be on employers to pay a living wage?
Likewise, the Gubberment 'buy' jobs by giving subsidies to companies like Nissan to base their factories in the UK rather than elsewhere in Europe.
Tot up the cost of all that...
Why the f
k is the UK Gubberment subsidising the cost of employing workers for companies who could well afford to bear this cost themselves?Oh, hang on, shareholders might have their dividends cut...
Deva Link said:
The thing is, as I've pointed out a few times now, if you use the girl in the OP as an example, she'd get near enough the same in benefits whether she was working or not. So the saving to the tax payer is trivial.
What's really wrong is pay is too low. But PH business owners will be up in arms about that.
Before the welfare state those like the girl would not have had children until they had a partner to help support them, and if they did have a child by accident much of the time they would have put them up for adoption.What's really wrong is pay is too low. But PH business owners will be up in arms about that.
The real issue is the state replacing men as primary provider. Why an employer would pay more than an unskilled woman is worth to them to compensate for the choices they have made in life I am not entirely sure.
DonkeyApple said:
otolith said:
DonkeyApple said:
otolith said:
DonkeyApple said:
It's why I think if you used Draconian laws to force men to be fully accountable the problem would diminish very quickly.
Absolutely - but what do you do if estranged dad is living on JSA?The idea being that instead of knocking a bint up for a housing benefit or just because they don't care you would change their mindset so that they don't spaff up the sleeve for risk of losing their benefits or hard earned wage.
A man can easily travel to find work and live on beans and toast so we don't need to worry about them when their money is diverted to some clunge they knocked up.
There must be some way of making feckless absentee fathers responsible for their actions, though.
He doesn't have any money to take. He does have an awful lot of free time, though. I think I'd be looking at taking some of that away instead.
JagLover said:
Before the welfare state those like the girl would not have had children until they had a partner to help support them, and if they did have a child by accident much of the time they would have put them up for adoption.
Yep - we should go back to position where marriage, and then children, was the norm. Few seem to agree though.JagLover said:
The real issue is the state replacing men as primary provider. Why an employer would pay more than an unskilled woman is worth to them to compensate for the choices they have made in life I am not entirely sure.
In practice it wouldn't make much difference even if the family in the OP had a resident male who was in a minimum wage job. They'd still get £13K/yr in benefits.Mobile Chicane said:
Why the fk is the UK Gubberment subsidising the cost of employing workers for companies who could well afford to bear this cost themselves?
Why is the government taxing so heavily? Why does it tax people on (what I would consider) very low wages?k is the UK Gubberment subsidising the cost of employing workers for companies who could well afford to bear this cost themselves?If the difference between gross and net pay were less, people would have more money.
The really big picture here, that some people totally fail to grasp is that our government sopend more than it can possibly raise in tax. It is there fore borrowing heavily, i.e. deferring taxes for future generations to pay, in order to perpetuate the charade.
Mobile Chicane said:
Deva Link said:
What's really wrong is pay is too low.
I agree.The real problem is not that benefits are so generous, but that meaningful work pays so little.
The Gubberment attempt to divert attention away from this fact by topping up the wages of the low-paid with 'tax credits'.
Shouldn't the onus be on employers to pay a living wage?
Likewise, the Gubberment 'buy' jobs by giving subsidies to companies like Nissan to base their factories in the UK rather than elsewhere in Europe.
Tot up the cost of all that...
Why the f
k is the UK Gubberment subsidising the cost of employing workers for companies who could well afford to bear this cost themselves?Oh, hang on, shareholders might have their dividends cut...
Digga said:
Mobile Chicane said:
Why the fk is the UK Gubberment subsidising the cost of employing workers for companies who could well afford to bear this cost themselves?
Why is the government taxing so heavily? Why does it tax people on (what I would consider) very low wages?k is the UK Gubberment subsidising the cost of employing workers for companies who could well afford to bear this cost themselves?If the difference between gross and net pay were less, people would have more money.
The really big picture here, that some people totally fail to grasp is that our government sopend more than it can possibly raise in tax. It is there fore borrowing heavily, i.e. deferring taxes for future generations to pay, in order to perpetuate the charade.
I believe that two of the largest welfare costs are the NHS and pensions?
The NHS is facing a very difficult moral question as to where to draw the line when it comes to spending more and more on more expensive and complex services as medicine progresses. We obviously cannot revert to the basic option of Aperin or a coffin but unfortunately something must be done.
Pensions desperately need to be means tested. It may seem unfair to those who have worked bloody hard all their lives but we need to remove fuel allowances, bus passes and even pensions from all those with money. It may lead to people downsizing but this will free up family homes for families. And when people no longer have enough savings they will be eligible for welfare.
We do need to focus on the fact that it is the working population who will be taking us out of this depression and support them.
Simplifying the benefits system so that workers are not actually part of it is also important. Low income workers receive benefits at present to reflect that the lowest incomes are not sufficient to live on. Roll all these workers benefits into the income tax system. Lets stop trying to use benefits for the purpose of social engineering or buying votes.
It will mean that a single person may earn more in net income than someone with kids but that is more money they can invest for when they have kids or piss away into the economy for others to earn.
Recognise that single mothers cannot and should not be earning. Aggressively enforce fiscal crippling on the fathers. This will dramatically reduce the number of unworthy single mother scenarios.
Grade council housing formally so that you have a home commensurate with your needs. Remove the right of home for life.
Remove almost all red tape for companies employing fewer than say 10 people. Small companies do not employ as many as they could because it is a huge drain and also risk to a small business.
Introduce a 'revenue' tax for multinationals. Doesn't have to be large but enough to enable a small highstreet business to compete with them for example. Could this be done by a two tier VAT rate? Is it remotely workable.
Could you also tier NI so that smaller firms pay less?
Strivers vs Shirkers? Ten Things They Don't Tell You About the Welfare Budget
With the Conservative Party unveiling a new ad campaign in marginal seats, which basically divides voters into hard-working 'strivers' and stay-at-home 'shirkers', and with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg launching an attack on universal benefits, it seems the perfect time to debunk 10 key myths about the UK's welfare budget and, specifically, 'out of work benefits'.
Here are the 10 things about welfare that they - Tories, Lib Dems, some New Labour figures, the centre-right press and the CBI - don't tell you:
1) Myth: 'THE 1% RISE IN BENEFITS IS FAIR BECAUSE IT HITS SHIRKERS, NOT STRIVERS'
Fact: According to the Resolution Foundation, "far from hitting only the out of work, 60% of the value of the £3.7 billion cut would fall on in-work households". Why? Because the 1% rise - which equates to a real-terms cut - affects universal benefits like child benefit and tax credits like child tax credit.
Also, the benefit loss for a low to middle-income household is about twice the size of the personal allowance gain (the same allowance gain, incidentally, that the Tories have tried to use to deflect attention from the 1% squeeze).
2) Myth: 'SPENDING ON OUT OF WORK BENEFITS IS OUT OF CONTROL'
Fact: First, according to the DWP's own figures, the majority of all welfare spending is on pensioners - 53% - with out of work benefits accounting for less than a quarter of the welfare budget.
Second, on average, between 2000 and 2010, welfare spending grew annually, in real terms, by 1.75% - compared to 5.5% in the 1950s and 1960s, and 3% in the 1980s (under Margaret Thatcher).
Third, benefit spending in 2011-12 accounted for 10.4% of GDP, lower than under Margaret Thatcher in the mid-80s (11%) and under John Major in the mid-1990s (12%). (There are also a million fewer people on out of work benefits now than there were in the mid-1990s, off the back of the previous recession.)
Fourth, it may surprise you to discover that benefit spending as a share of GDP fell during the first 11 years of the last Labour government; it only began to rise in 2008, after the financial crash, as hundreds of thousands of Britons found themselves out of work through no fault of their own.
(They key point here is to distinguish between benefit spending figures presented in scary, cash terms and those presented - much more accurately - as a proportion of a nation's GDP.)
3) Myth: 'OUT OF WORK BENEFITS HAVE RISEN MORE THAN AVERAGE EARNINGS'
Fact: While the chancellor George Osborne was correct to point out, in his Autumn Statement, that "average earnings have risen by around 10% since 2007" but "out of work benefits have gone up by around 20%" he chose a narrow, self-serving time period, i.e. the past five years. Over the past 30 years, wages have outstripped benefits.
As economist Jonathan Portes, head of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR), pointed out: "In 1979, unemployment benefit (the predecessor to Jobseekers' Allowance) was about 22% of average weekly earnings; today it's about 15%, a relative decline of about a third. What's going on? Simple: JSA has been indexed to inflation. In normal times, earnings rise faster than prices..."
But as Osborne knows, we are not living in 'normal times', partly thanks to his growth-killing
austerity measures... On a side note, Jobseekers' Allowance is currently £71 a week, or £10 a day. Could Osborne, or any other Tory minister, live on £10 a day? Could you?
4) Myth: 'WORK IS THE BEST ROUTE OUT OF POVERTY'
Fact: The majority of children and working-age adults in poverty in the UK live in working, not workless, households. That's 6.1million people - 2million children and 4.1million adults - a million more people than are living in poverty in workless households. Low pay is the biggest cause of poverty in this country - a fifth of British workers are paid less than the 'living wage'. The national minimum wage is now worth less in real terms than it did in 2004.
5) Myth: 'THERE ARE LOTS OF OUT OF WORK HOUSEHOLDS WITH BIG FAMILIES'
Fact: Families with more than five children account for 1% of out of work benefit claims; families with more than three children account for less than 10% of claims.
6) Myth: 'THE WELFARE STATE IS BEING UNDERMINED BY AN INTERGENERATIONAL CULTURE OF WORKLESSNESS'
Fact: Despite repeated Tory references to "three generations of worklessness" (Iain Duncan Smith) and "four generations of families where no one has ever had a job" (Chris Grayling), this whole "culture of worklessness" and inter-generational fecklessness is a complete exaggeration based on little or no empirical evidence.
Consider the conclusion of a recent, in-depth report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF): "Despite strenuous efforts, the researchers were unable to locate any such families. Even two generations of complete worklessness in the same family was a very rare phenomenon."
In fact, a Bristol University study of Labour Force Survey figures found that only 0.3% of UK households have two generations - let alone three or even four (!) generations - that have never worked.
7) Myth: 'THE BENEFITS BILL IS RISING BECAUSE OF CHEATS AND FRAUDSTERS'
Fact: The government's own figures show that just 0.7%, or £1bn, of benefit expenditure is overpaid due to fraud - compared to, say, £70bn lost to HM Treasury through illegal tax evasion.
8) Myth: 'HOUSING BENEFIT IS BEING WASTED ON LAZY, OUT OF WORK HOUSEHOLDS'
Fact: According to the homeless charity Shelter, only one out of every eight people who receive housing benefit is unemployed - the vast majority of HB claimants are pensioners, carers, people with disability and, of course, people on low incomes (see myth 4).
As even the Daily Mail conceded back in October, there has been an 86% rise in housing benefit claims by working families over the past three years.
9) MYTH: 'PEOPLE GET PARKED ON BENEFITS FOR YEARS AND FORGOTTEN'
Fact: As public policy analyst Declan Gaffney has pointed out: "Benefit claims are much less likely to be 'long-term' as people seem to believe. The majority of people on Jobseeker's Allowance claim the benefit for less than three months; less than 10% claim it for more than a year."
10) Myth: 'MEANS TESTING BENEFITS IS FAIRER AND CHEAPER THAN HAVING UNIVERSAL BENEFITS'
Fact: According to the National Audit Office (NAO), means testing "makes the administration of benefits more complex and is associated with higher costs as well as increased rates of fraud and error". The NAO also notes that "there can be disincentives for recipients of means-tested benefits to return to work"
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/welfar...
With the Conservative Party unveiling a new ad campaign in marginal seats, which basically divides voters into hard-working 'strivers' and stay-at-home 'shirkers', and with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg launching an attack on universal benefits, it seems the perfect time to debunk 10 key myths about the UK's welfare budget and, specifically, 'out of work benefits'.
Here are the 10 things about welfare that they - Tories, Lib Dems, some New Labour figures, the centre-right press and the CBI - don't tell you:
1) Myth: 'THE 1% RISE IN BENEFITS IS FAIR BECAUSE IT HITS SHIRKERS, NOT STRIVERS'
Fact: According to the Resolution Foundation, "far from hitting only the out of work, 60% of the value of the £3.7 billion cut would fall on in-work households". Why? Because the 1% rise - which equates to a real-terms cut - affects universal benefits like child benefit and tax credits like child tax credit.
Also, the benefit loss for a low to middle-income household is about twice the size of the personal allowance gain (the same allowance gain, incidentally, that the Tories have tried to use to deflect attention from the 1% squeeze).
2) Myth: 'SPENDING ON OUT OF WORK BENEFITS IS OUT OF CONTROL'
Fact: First, according to the DWP's own figures, the majority of all welfare spending is on pensioners - 53% - with out of work benefits accounting for less than a quarter of the welfare budget.
Second, on average, between 2000 and 2010, welfare spending grew annually, in real terms, by 1.75% - compared to 5.5% in the 1950s and 1960s, and 3% in the 1980s (under Margaret Thatcher).
Third, benefit spending in 2011-12 accounted for 10.4% of GDP, lower than under Margaret Thatcher in the mid-80s (11%) and under John Major in the mid-1990s (12%). (There are also a million fewer people on out of work benefits now than there were in the mid-1990s, off the back of the previous recession.)
Fourth, it may surprise you to discover that benefit spending as a share of GDP fell during the first 11 years of the last Labour government; it only began to rise in 2008, after the financial crash, as hundreds of thousands of Britons found themselves out of work through no fault of their own.
(They key point here is to distinguish between benefit spending figures presented in scary, cash terms and those presented - much more accurately - as a proportion of a nation's GDP.)
3) Myth: 'OUT OF WORK BENEFITS HAVE RISEN MORE THAN AVERAGE EARNINGS'
Fact: While the chancellor George Osborne was correct to point out, in his Autumn Statement, that "average earnings have risen by around 10% since 2007" but "out of work benefits have gone up by around 20%" he chose a narrow, self-serving time period, i.e. the past five years. Over the past 30 years, wages have outstripped benefits.
As economist Jonathan Portes, head of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR), pointed out: "In 1979, unemployment benefit (the predecessor to Jobseekers' Allowance) was about 22% of average weekly earnings; today it's about 15%, a relative decline of about a third. What's going on? Simple: JSA has been indexed to inflation. In normal times, earnings rise faster than prices..."
But as Osborne knows, we are not living in 'normal times', partly thanks to his growth-killing
austerity measures... On a side note, Jobseekers' Allowance is currently £71 a week, or £10 a day. Could Osborne, or any other Tory minister, live on £10 a day? Could you?
4) Myth: 'WORK IS THE BEST ROUTE OUT OF POVERTY'
Fact: The majority of children and working-age adults in poverty in the UK live in working, not workless, households. That's 6.1million people - 2million children and 4.1million adults - a million more people than are living in poverty in workless households. Low pay is the biggest cause of poverty in this country - a fifth of British workers are paid less than the 'living wage'. The national minimum wage is now worth less in real terms than it did in 2004.
5) Myth: 'THERE ARE LOTS OF OUT OF WORK HOUSEHOLDS WITH BIG FAMILIES'
Fact: Families with more than five children account for 1% of out of work benefit claims; families with more than three children account for less than 10% of claims.
6) Myth: 'THE WELFARE STATE IS BEING UNDERMINED BY AN INTERGENERATIONAL CULTURE OF WORKLESSNESS'
Fact: Despite repeated Tory references to "three generations of worklessness" (Iain Duncan Smith) and "four generations of families where no one has ever had a job" (Chris Grayling), this whole "culture of worklessness" and inter-generational fecklessness is a complete exaggeration based on little or no empirical evidence.
Consider the conclusion of a recent, in-depth report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF): "Despite strenuous efforts, the researchers were unable to locate any such families. Even two generations of complete worklessness in the same family was a very rare phenomenon."
In fact, a Bristol University study of Labour Force Survey figures found that only 0.3% of UK households have two generations - let alone three or even four (!) generations - that have never worked.
7) Myth: 'THE BENEFITS BILL IS RISING BECAUSE OF CHEATS AND FRAUDSTERS'
Fact: The government's own figures show that just 0.7%, or £1bn, of benefit expenditure is overpaid due to fraud - compared to, say, £70bn lost to HM Treasury through illegal tax evasion.
8) Myth: 'HOUSING BENEFIT IS BEING WASTED ON LAZY, OUT OF WORK HOUSEHOLDS'
Fact: According to the homeless charity Shelter, only one out of every eight people who receive housing benefit is unemployed - the vast majority of HB claimants are pensioners, carers, people with disability and, of course, people on low incomes (see myth 4).
As even the Daily Mail conceded back in October, there has been an 86% rise in housing benefit claims by working families over the past three years.
9) MYTH: 'PEOPLE GET PARKED ON BENEFITS FOR YEARS AND FORGOTTEN'
Fact: As public policy analyst Declan Gaffney has pointed out: "Benefit claims are much less likely to be 'long-term' as people seem to believe. The majority of people on Jobseeker's Allowance claim the benefit for less than three months; less than 10% claim it for more than a year."
10) Myth: 'MEANS TESTING BENEFITS IS FAIRER AND CHEAPER THAN HAVING UNIVERSAL BENEFITS'
Fact: According to the National Audit Office (NAO), means testing "makes the administration of benefits more complex and is associated with higher costs as well as increased rates of fraud and error". The NAO also notes that "there can be disincentives for recipients of means-tested benefits to return to work"
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/welfar...
DonkeyApple said:
Simplifying the benefits system so that workers are not actually part of it is also important.
The extension of universal benefits was a very important part of the process of muddying the waters to make it less clear who was giving and who was taking, giving as many people as possible a stake in the continued bloatedness of the benefit system. Look at the middle class families moaning about losing child benefit when they should be asking why they pay so much tax.otolith said:
DonkeyApple said:
Simplifying the benefits system so that workers are not actually part of it is also important.
The extension of universal benefits was a very important part of the process of muddying the waters to make it less clear who was giving and who was taking, giving as many people as possible a stake in the continued bloatedness of the benefit system. Look at the middle class families moaning about losing child benefit when they should be asking why they pay so much tax.The whole removing of the 10p rate and the tax credits concept appeared to turn many independent proud workers into State dependents.
But it was the willingness in which we all have rushed into the claws of the machine of State that has been startling. Even when millions physically protested I don't recall the State reverting?
DonkeyApple said:
Pensions desperately need to be means tested. It may seem unfair to those who have worked bloody hard all their lives but we need to remove fuel allowances, bus passes and even pensions from all those with money. It may lead to people downsizing but this will free up family homes for families. And when people no longer have enough savings they will be eligible for welfare.
The easy targets would be those who do not reside in the UK to start with. Particularly with winter fuel allowance - if you are well enough off and been able to chose to live your autumn years in Spain or somewhere else with a more pleasant climate, you shouldn't get winter fuel allowance. 
Perhaps also those that pay income tax on their pension shouldn't be eligible for winter fuel allowance. Certainly those that pay 40% tax.
Both fairly painless options, and in such austere times genuine savings can be made that were more feasible when the times were good. It will take time, but if every year such 1/2 or 1 or 2% savings could be found, by relatively gently re-assessing the rules then we would be heading in the right direction and effectively reducing the figures that show those that "rely" on benefit.
When the winter fuel allowance came in, ( in GB's 1st budget
) it was expressed that it was important that all pensioners received it absolutely regardless of need, which ultimately kind of sums up Labour's whole disregard and why we are (partly, maybe mainly) in the financial slippery sided black hole we find ourselves.Unfortunately its middle Britain that would have to bear the brunt of these costs, and that is where the DM readership and votes lie, so.............
rover 623gsi said:
Excellent post but likely to be utterly ignored on PH.Well done for trying though.
DuncanM said:
rover 623gsi said:
Excellent post but likely to be utterly ignored on PH.Well done for trying though.
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