The reality of life for many MANY people.
Discussion
Kermit power said:
I think believing that puts many people in one of the biggest bubbles of all, and until that gets burst, the whole economy is going to struggle!
Let's say you raised the minimum wage to £12 so that you can get rid of those in work benefits. What happens next?
- Any UK exporter currently exporting commodity goods is going to see their exports collapse because they'll suddenly be so uncompetitive.
- Any UK domestic manufacturer with any imported competition is going to see their sales collapse for the same reason.
- It would be a good time to have shares in automated warehousing or drone delivery companies, because all of a sudden, there's going to be an even greater incentive to install them.
- Prices in the shops will rocket for everyone, and that will hit the very people you're trying to take out of benefits disproportionately.
To my mind, the problem is that successive governments seem to have completely given up on the notion of making the bulk of the workforce in this country competitive on the world stage, and instead are just throwing lots and lots of money at keeping the least competitive from starting a revolution.
Nobody would want to return to the inequalities of the Victorian era, but the reason we were the greatest Superpower the world has ever seen and probably ever will is because we happened to have a perfect storm of world-beating technology and pitifully low wages. Nowadays, in many areas, we've still got the world-beating technology, but we've got this huge millstone round our collective necks of a massive proportion of the population not having the skills to allow them not to need to compete with people earning those pitifully low wages in developing economies.
If you go to this website, you can see the breakdown of how income tax is spent. A typical less well off PHer living hand to mouth on a mere £133,760 per annum would be paying £15.28 per day of their taxes towards "family & children", "the socially excluded" and "the unemployed", but only £8.95 on education, and that's without considering what proportion of the £9.75 spent on sickness and disability might be avoidable with better skills for those currently claiming on that.
OK, it'll never completely go away, but just imagine what would we could do as a country if we were able to spend £24+ per day on education instead of £8.95? How much more competitive could we make our workforce? How much could we increase our GDP by? How much more profitable could our companies become?
Of course, there will always be a need for people doing low skill jobs such as waiters and the like, but even there, if everyone else is earning more, and the tax burden per person can therefore decrease, their employers could afford to pay them a decent living wage, because even with higher prices, people would still have more in their pockets at the end of the week.
The real challenge is how you manage to divert the money from benefits to education for long enough to improve the lot of enough people without putting them into grinding poverty first?
Either I've missed something or you're making a massive leap, without foundation. I very much doubt that a near-threefold increase in spending on education will have anything like the benefits you seem to be suggesting. Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're saying ?Let's say you raised the minimum wage to £12 so that you can get rid of those in work benefits. What happens next?
- Any UK exporter currently exporting commodity goods is going to see their exports collapse because they'll suddenly be so uncompetitive.
- Any UK domestic manufacturer with any imported competition is going to see their sales collapse for the same reason.
- It would be a good time to have shares in automated warehousing or drone delivery companies, because all of a sudden, there's going to be an even greater incentive to install them.
- Prices in the shops will rocket for everyone, and that will hit the very people you're trying to take out of benefits disproportionately.
To my mind, the problem is that successive governments seem to have completely given up on the notion of making the bulk of the workforce in this country competitive on the world stage, and instead are just throwing lots and lots of money at keeping the least competitive from starting a revolution.
Nobody would want to return to the inequalities of the Victorian era, but the reason we were the greatest Superpower the world has ever seen and probably ever will is because we happened to have a perfect storm of world-beating technology and pitifully low wages. Nowadays, in many areas, we've still got the world-beating technology, but we've got this huge millstone round our collective necks of a massive proportion of the population not having the skills to allow them not to need to compete with people earning those pitifully low wages in developing economies.
If you go to this website, you can see the breakdown of how income tax is spent. A typical less well off PHer living hand to mouth on a mere £133,760 per annum would be paying £15.28 per day of their taxes towards "family & children", "the socially excluded" and "the unemployed", but only £8.95 on education, and that's without considering what proportion of the £9.75 spent on sickness and disability might be avoidable with better skills for those currently claiming on that.
OK, it'll never completely go away, but just imagine what would we could do as a country if we were able to spend £24+ per day on education instead of £8.95? How much more competitive could we make our workforce? How much could we increase our GDP by? How much more profitable could our companies become?
Of course, there will always be a need for people doing low skill jobs such as waiters and the like, but even there, if everyone else is earning more, and the tax burden per person can therefore decrease, their employers could afford to pay them a decent living wage, because even with higher prices, people would still have more in their pockets at the end of the week.
The real challenge is how you manage to divert the money from benefits to education for long enough to improve the lot of enough people without putting them into grinding poverty first?
Kermit power said:
Nobody would want to return to the inequalities of the Victorian era, but the reason we were the greatest Superpower the world has ever seen and probably ever will is because we happened to have a perfect storm of world-beating technology and pitifully low wages.
Pitifully low by modern standards, but low by the standards of other countries at the time?DonkeyApple said:
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Why not look at it the other way around? Most people clearly do and are able to live on that income so why do you need more than that?
and don't receive benefits.Self employed dog walker and pet sitter for the last 6 years. My regular income is £67.50/week which is 6 x 1 hour walks (£10/walk) and a 30 minute (£7.50) walk. Fortunately in the summer I'm often house sitting which boosts the coffers to cover the leaner months.
I don't earn enough in a year to pay class 2 National Insurance contributions, though with this years self assessment I have opted to voluntarily pay them as I need to build them to 35 years to get my full state pension ( which won't be at 60 but 66).
I'm very content with my life
jeff666 said:
You slop up motors for a living now dont ya ?
No shame in it, i do the same.
Not entirely sure what slop up means, but yes it's motors No shame in it, i do the same.
I now own a garage and bodyshop which I started from nothing when I quit my corporate life. I now employ 4 people, and a rare Porsche 964 we restored recently won 1st place in Concours at the Silverstone Classic. It's been very hard but very satisfying.
Quite the change from what I did for those 11-12 years.
Edited by NinjaPower on Friday 21st October 08:23
Kermit power said:
Thankyou4calling said:
The benefits are allowing employers to pay low wages as they are topped up by tax payer money.
I think believing that puts many people in one of the biggest bubbles of all, and until that gets burst, the whole economy is going to struggle!Let's say you raised the minimum wage to £12 so that you can get rid of those in work benefits. What happens next?
- Any UK exporter currently exporting commodity goods is going to see their exports collapse because they'll suddenly be so uncompetitive.
- Any UK domestic manufacturer with any imported competition is going to see their sales collapse for the same reason.
- It would be a good time to have shares in automated warehousing or drone delivery companies, because all of a sudden, there's going to be an even greater incentive to install them.
- Prices in the shops will rocket for everyone, and that will hit the very people you're trying to take out of benefits disproportionately.
To my mind, the problem is that successive governments seem to have completely given up on the notion of making the bulk of the workforce in this country competitive on the world stage, and instead are just throwing lots and lots of money at keeping the least competitive from starting a revolution.
Nobody would want to return to the inequalities of the Victorian era, but the reason we were the greatest Superpower the world has ever seen and probably ever will is because we happened to have a perfect storm of world-beating technology and pitifully low wages. Nowadays, in many areas, we've still got the world-beating technology, but we've got this huge millstone round our collective necks of a massive proportion of the population not having the skills to allow them not to need to compete with people earning those pitifully low wages in developing economies.
If you go to this website, you can see the breakdown of how income tax is spent. A typical less well off PHer living hand to mouth on a mere £133,760 per annum would be paying £15.28 per day of their taxes towards "family & children", "the socially excluded" and "the unemployed", but only £8.95 on education, and that's without considering what proportion of the £9.75 spent on sickness and disability might be avoidable with better skills for those currently claiming on that.
OK, it'll never completely go away, but just imagine what would we could do as a country if we were able to spend £24+ per day on education instead of £8.95? How much more competitive could we make our workforce? How much could we increase our GDP by? How much more profitable could our companies become?
Of course, there will always be a need for people doing low skill jobs such as waiters and the like, but even there, if everyone else is earning more, and the tax burden per person can therefore decrease, their employers could afford to pay them a decent living wage, because even with higher prices, people would still have more in their pockets at the end of the week.
The real challenge is how you manage to divert the money from benefits to education for long enough to improve the lot of enough people without putting them into grinding poverty first?
Those pensioners are also the bulk cost of the NHS.
While much of the blame for State costs has been levied at immigrants and unemployed the true reality is that the actual problem is that the current pensioners are an enormous demographic spike and they did not pay enough into the system to cover themselves in old age. There aren't enough indigenous workers to pay the bills and it's part of the reason so many immigrants have been purchased to try and even out the freak demographic imbalance of the baby boomers.
The true problem was the failure to plan ahead for the impact of this demographic in old age. It's not as if everyone was unaware but they chose not to act as it was politically a bad move.
But in 20 years time when most of the Boomers are gone what will the landscape look like then with a more even population spread? The massive drain on the NHS will be over as will the drain on benefits. All those assets held by the Boomers will have been taxed at 40% (above threshold) and distributed down.
So actually is it all as simple as to just wait and fudge our way through the next decade because the current system of ignoring the real issue and persecuting the poor, the immigrants and the young really isn't morally correct or justifiable.
Dr Jekyll said:
Kermit power said:
Nobody would want to return to the inequalities of the Victorian era, but the reason we were the greatest Superpower the world has ever seen and probably ever will is because we happened to have a perfect storm of world-beating technology and pitifully low wages.
Pitifully low by modern standards, but low by the standards of other countries at the time?Robertj21a said:
Either I've missed something or you're making a massive leap, without foundation. I very much doubt that a near-threefold increase in spending on education will have anything like the benefits you seem to be suggesting. Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're saying ?
I'm not claiming to be an economist or an educational specialist, but it seems to me that we make it too easy to be unskilled, and not easy enough to become skilled.I don't know how big the returns would be, but at the moment, every penny spent on benefits is dead money that won't improve society, whereas at least expenditure on education stands a chance of doing so.
Maybe you don't pay benefits to people unless they're in education of some sort and gaining qualifications?
Kermit power said:
I'm not claiming to be an economist or an educational specialist, but it seems to me that we make it too easy to be unskilled, and not easy enough to become skilled.
I don't know how big the returns would be, but at the moment, every penny spent on benefits is dead money that won't improve society, whereas at least expenditure on education stands a chance of doing so.
Maybe you don't pay benefits to people unless they're in education of some sort and gaining qualifications?
It's incredibly easy to become skilled! Show up to school and pay attention, you will do alright. Go to college and university if you can. I don't know how big the returns would be, but at the moment, every penny spent on benefits is dead money that won't improve society, whereas at least expenditure on education stands a chance of doing so.
Maybe you don't pay benefits to people unless they're in education of some sort and gaining qualifications?
If you hold people's hands any more than we already do, then you start getting people coming through the system that frankly shouldn't be because they don't actually have the capacity to perform, it's been masked by all the hand holding. When that happens the qualification becomes meaningless and the free market figures out a different way to distinguish the worthwhile candidates from the useless ones, and the cycle begins anew.
Your final bit just encourages people to be in education who don't want to be there and have no intention of taking it seriously, clogging up the system for those that do and wasting money.
The unpopular truth is that any state support should be in the direct form of the most basic stuff required to keep you alive - food banks and shelters, not deposits into your bank. Yes it's unpleasant but without that unpleasantness it's all too easy to stop trying, a major motivation is lost. And I'm not talking about specific people here, not pointing the finger at dole scroungers or whatever you want to call it, I'm talking about the macro effects on a society-wide scale - knowing we have a pretty comfy safety net makes us all complacent.
There will always be a bottom of society. Always.
Edited by OwenK on Friday 21st October 08:36
DonkeyApple said:
The bulk of that 'benefits' figure is the State Pension?
Those pensioners are also the bulk cost of the NHS.
While much of the blame for State costs has been levied at immigrants and unemployed the true reality is that the actual problem is that the current pensioners are an enormous demographic spike and they did not pay enough into the system to cover themselves in old age. There aren't enough indigenous workers to pay the bills and it's part of the reason so many immigrants have been purchased to try and even out the freak demographic imbalance of the baby boomers.
The true problem was the failure to plan ahead for the impact of this demographic in old age. It's not as if everyone was unaware but they chose not to act as it was politically a bad move.
But in 20 years time when most of the Boomers are gone what will the landscape look like then with a more even population spread? The massive drain on the NHS will be over as will the drain on benefits. All those assets held by the Boomers will have been taxed at 40% (above threshold) and distributed down.
So actually is it all as simple as to just wait and fudge our way through the next decade because the current system of ignoring the real issue and persecuting the poor, the immigrants and the young really isn't morally correct or justifiable.
Interesting thoughts and I think the most likely outcome. The alternatives are too politically costly to be implemented.Those pensioners are also the bulk cost of the NHS.
While much of the blame for State costs has been levied at immigrants and unemployed the true reality is that the actual problem is that the current pensioners are an enormous demographic spike and they did not pay enough into the system to cover themselves in old age. There aren't enough indigenous workers to pay the bills and it's part of the reason so many immigrants have been purchased to try and even out the freak demographic imbalance of the baby boomers.
The true problem was the failure to plan ahead for the impact of this demographic in old age. It's not as if everyone was unaware but they chose not to act as it was politically a bad move.
But in 20 years time when most of the Boomers are gone what will the landscape look like then with a more even population spread? The massive drain on the NHS will be over as will the drain on benefits. All those assets held by the Boomers will have been taxed at 40% (above threshold) and distributed down.
So actually is it all as simple as to just wait and fudge our way through the next decade because the current system of ignoring the real issue and persecuting the poor, the immigrants and the young really isn't morally correct or justifiable.
vonuber said:
f
k me:
you have a higher income than around 96% of the population - equivalent to about 60.9 million individuals.
That's depressing.
Income means less and less in terms of being well off.k me:you have a higher income than around 96% of the population - equivalent to about 60.9 million individuals.
That's depressing.
Withdrawal of the personal allowance starts at £100K of income pushing those earning over that threshold into very high marginal rates of tax, but are they "rich" if they are living in London and didn't buy their own home some time ago?
You have people on PAYE running very hard just to stay still and keep a "middle class" lifestyle.
condor said:
I'm probably the lowest income earner here and don't receive benefits.
Self employed dog walker and pet sitter for the last 6 years. My regular income is £67.50/week which is 6 x 1 hour walks (£10/walk) and a 30 minute (£7.50) walk. Fortunately in the summer I'm often house sitting which boosts the coffers to cover the leaner months.
I don't earn enough in a year to pay class 2 National Insurance contributions, though with this years self assessment I have opted to voluntarily pay them as I need to build them to 35 years to get my full state pension ( which won't be at 60 but 66).
I'm very content with my life
And its that contentment that is very tangible yet impossible to put a price on ... i know many people in good jobs with salaries between 45-200k who are deeply unhappy and poorer now in terms of cash and liquidity than when they earned less than 20k and don't receive benefits.Self employed dog walker and pet sitter for the last 6 years. My regular income is £67.50/week which is 6 x 1 hour walks (£10/walk) and a 30 minute (£7.50) walk. Fortunately in the summer I'm often house sitting which boosts the coffers to cover the leaner months.
I don't earn enough in a year to pay class 2 National Insurance contributions, though with this years self assessment I have opted to voluntarily pay them as I need to build them to 35 years to get my full state pension ( which won't be at 60 but 66).
I'm very content with my life
NinjaPower said:
But seriously, once you get past a certain point, it's all good really. Spending your days in meetings or at other companies discussing matters with colleagues rather than dealing with the public/customers, going out to lunches/dinners and drinks paid for by the business, reasonable expenses allowances, better pay, company Iphone and other tech provided to you etc
I'm not disagreeing with your "getting on to get up" ethos; it works and you're broadly right that it's pretty much how the world is.However, this snippet is, IMHO, exactly where far, far too many large organisations - both public and private - go so very wrong. Once the customer disconnnect is achieved, the hazards are great.
Digga said:
NinjaPower said:
But seriously, once you get past a certain point, it's all good really. Spending your days in meetings or at other companies discussing matters with colleagues rather than dealing with the public/customers, going out to lunches/dinners and drinks paid for by the business, reasonable expenses allowances, better pay, company Iphone and other tech provided to you etc
I'm not disagreeing with your "getting on to get up" ethos; it works and you're broadly right that it's pretty much how the world is.However, this snippet is, IMHO, exactly where far, far too many large organisations - both public and private - go so very wrong. Once the customer disconnnect is achieved, the hazards are great.
I don't believe in the distinction between normal people and PHs living in a fantasy world. If you dig deep enough every person has its different approach to life. I come from a decadent Italian family that was far more wealthy 80 years ago than now, what is left are properties expensive to maintain and difficult to sell for a number of reasons. I got part of my higher education abroad and I lived mostly abroad, I have been everywhere, I knew a lot of people coming from different countries. And I know a lot about "superflous" things like cars, wines, watches, skiing, sailing but how does all this should make me a not normal person?
matsoc said:
I don't believe in the distinction between normal people and PHs living in a fantasy world. If you dig deep enough every person has its different approach to life. I come from a decadent Italian family that was far more wealthy 80 years ago than now, what is left are properties expensive to maintain and difficult to sell for a number of reasons. I got part of my higher education abroad and I lived mostly abroad, I have been everywhere, I knew a lot of people coming from different countries. And I know a lot about "superflous" things like cars, wines, watches, skiing, sailing but how does all this should make me a not normal person?
like i made the comparison to before with women.why is a supermodel not classed as a "normal" woman but betty bingo wings is ?
I know which one i'd rather have
SystemParanoia said:
like i made the comparison to before with women.
why is a supermodel not classed as a "normal" woman but betty bingo wings is ?
I know which one i'd rather have
Unsuccessful people feel bad about it unless they can class themselves as "normal" and successful people as "unrealistic"why is a supermodel not classed as a "normal" woman but betty bingo wings is ?
I know which one i'd rather have
It gets funny when it comes down to things like physical attractiveness because fat people can protest that big is beautiful as much as they want but people will still go for the thin ones. You can't argue with biology. Used to be a fat guy myself, seen it first hand.
Edited by OwenK on Friday 21st October 09:33
SystemParanoia said:
I very much can...
this is the only thing missing from my life that would being me even more contentment outside of work
An anti Semitic, talking duck? That's quite a big ask. You might be better lowering your expectations. this is the only thing missing from my life that would being me even more contentment outside of work
Edited by SystemParanoia on Friday 21st October 09:11
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff