The UK benefits system

[THECATINTHEHAT]

The thing is, Daddys company will make money out of the benefit system, even as it pays into it. ALL the money ends up in the hands of government, & the rich. The rest of us just recycle their money, it always winds up back in their hands in the end...

We all have to buy goods, food, transport, energy, a roof etc etc with the money we get from benefits. On those payments we pay vat! The goverment uses our taxes to ease local & global trade & offer tax breaks to businesses who can't afford clever tax lawyers... perhaps like Daddys. They get it all back.

Yeah, lets try and stay off taxes as I suggested because that's a whole other disscusion. This is about whether you think the benefits sytem is appropriate/effective.

 

[Inflorescence]

This is a little out of date but I expect not that much has changed. Owen are you refering just to the UK system or Europe when you say the dempgraphic?

I suspect most that post here are UK or Ireland based but any way this is an interesting read.

Comparison of UK Benefits with those of the EU14

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

Errr, well by demographic of the board I meant anyone posting on here but with regards to the subject matter I meant the UK system. Interesting link though, I'll have a proper read through when I get back from my cretin test later.

 

[bummer]

I'm interested to know what people think, personally I think the benefits system is a fucking joke. Someone I know has just been spared prison for failing to meet his probabtion meetings. His punishment? They're giving him a flat.

Commit a crime and fail to adhere to the conditions of your punishment>here have your own place to live.......be a student and try to broaden the country's skill base>fuck you give us £30k and live in a shitty shared house.

Someone else I know is off on the sick and has saved up £10k to go abroad to live in Vietnam, even he agrees that it's a fucking joke that he's been able to do so.

Even though the issues are inherently linked can we try to avoid discussion of taxation etc as whilst the ability to give to the less fortunate is based on the amount of taxation coming in it's a seperate issue really and will complicate the discussion.

Whats the alternative ?
If we cut off people's benefits the crime rate will sky rocket. If someone wants to sit on there arse and pretend to be sick all their life, let 'em.
The country can afford it. Its the price we pay for having a system that supports people who are between jobs ( and there are many due to the dire state of the economy ) or genuinely ill or disabled.
The real scroungers and parasites are at the top of the pyramid IMO, the tax dodging companies. I also suspect a lot of public money is wasted due to incompetence and stupidity.
The fact that, on the whole, people accept this but seem to feel genuine rage towards people on the dole is a masterstroke of social engineering IMO.

No, i'm not on the dole but do have people close to me who are unable to work due to health issues and / or having kids with health issues.
The fact that we have a system in place to support people who are down on their luck is something we should be proud of.

edit - reform of the welfare system began a few years ago, and some of the proposed changes havent really taken effect yet. Johnny special brew is still having kids left right n centre, he still has no motivation to work ( who is even going to employ these people ? ) he is no better or worse off.
But what has happened is the standard of care for the elderly and those in residential care has suffered due to cuts in funding ( slightly different as most of this is due to local authorities but still part of the same problem )
As a society we are shitting on our grandparents, and on our own futures, and society's most vulnerable just because we resent the lay-abouts.
Reforming the welfare state is probably a good idea, I just don't think the tories are the right people to do it.

rant overrr

 

[Shambles]

The real scroungers and parasites are at the top of the pyramid IMO, the tax dodging companies. I also suspect a lot of public money is wasted due to incompetence and stupidity.

Quite. What hurts the country more - the aforementioned Johnny Special Brew getting £50-70/pw from government coffers or Google or Starbucks or any of those other big corporate arseholes paying people a shitload of money to evade (not avoid - euphemisms don't change facts) legitimate owed taxes on the vast sums they make from said Johnny Special Brew and the rest of us lowly scum. And all those horrid and hypocritical individuals who keep being outed for doing the same recently. They are the parasites cos they really are taking the piss. Is there really so much difference between trousering £100m and £60m or whatever? Quite a big difference in absolute terms but given the amounts involved who gives a shit you're still incredibly wealthy.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

Yes yes but can someone start a different thread if they want to discuss the taxation laws in the country. There's a very interesting discussion to be had on that but it's not why I started this thread.

Bummer: You have made an awful lot of assumptions about my general views on social welfare in that post. None of which are correct.

 

[Shambles]

They are rather closely connected subjects though - benefits are paid via taxation and if even one of the big multinationals had the decency to pay what they owe that would be the welfare budget covered for a year more or less.

 

[ColtDan]

personally I think the benefits system is a fucking joke.

It's a fucked up convoluted mess. A shameful, wasteful clusterfuck of epic proportions. The utter waste of resources through continual changes to the system alone is criminal.

The process generates too many mistakes and all at the expense of the claimant. It's a shite state of affairs

This.

 

[RLP]

But what about food stamps?

 

[Shambles]

They don't pay the rent or any other bills. Also, we are at least a semi-civilised country I'd like to think. Taking away dignity does not encourage a person to feel part of a wider society - it makes them feel like second-class citizens which feeds on itself making the problem worse. It's bad enough as it is with multigenerational benefits claimants let alone making people feel even less a part of society.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

They are rather closely connected subjects though - benefits are paid via taxation and if even one of the big multinationals had the decency to pay what they owe that would be the welfare budget covered for a year more or less.

Yes I know but the way in which the benefits system is funded is a seperate issue to the way in which it distributes the funds it receives. The aim was to keep the discussion focused preceisely so we don't have people coming in going waaah bankers waaaaah amazon don't pay their tax, which are valid points, but not the discussion I wanted in this thread.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

What are your opinions? Do we give people too much? Not enough?

I'm pretty set in my opinion but I'm interested to hear what the demographic on this board thinks.

16 Billion pounds UNCLAIMED last time I looked. Roughly two and a half times the savings luvvy Chancellor was last trying to save to make up for Bankers fuck ups.

Do we give bankers too much? Not enough? I'm pretty set in my opinion but I'm interested to hear what the 'demographic' on this board thinks going forward...

Oh. So sorry Owen.

 

[Shambles]

16 Billion pounds UNCLAIMED last time I looked.

Funny how that figure doesn't get quoted as often as the screaming headlines about some poor immigrant family being given a house exactly as they are entitled to along with the rest of us.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

16 Billion pounds UNCLAIMED last time I looked. Roughly two and a half times the savings luvvy Chancellor was last trying to save to make up for Bankers fuck ups.

Do we give bankers too much? Not enough? I'm pretty set in my opinion but I'm interested to hear what the 'demographic' on this board thinks going forward...

Oh. So sorry Owen.

Why would you be sorry for having an opinion?

Also, unclaimed benefits has got nothing to do with your opinion on whether the system is set up in the correct way, other than perhaps to say that we're not making people sufficiently aware of what they're entitled to .

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

I was sorry for dragging up the bankers argument which you seemed keen to push into another thread. That's all.

And sure, we certainly don't make people aware of what they are entitled to. It's called govt policy in job centres.

 

[sexNcandy]

Bummer is the only poster so far in this thread who seems to have the slightest clue as to why a welfare system exists in the first place.

Owen, you seem like a good guy with a great heart, but I just can't stand half of your opinions because you are so ignorant. I don't mean ignorant just as an insult, I mean you don't know. Like someone criticizing monetary policy who hasn't studied the economics of central banking in depth. It's just beyond you. Please don't feel to offended, as I will say I agree with you on the benefits being too extensive. I just take issue with you saying such harsh stuff without seeming to know where the idea of modern welfare systems came from.


Although some people are in favor of a welfare system because they think it's "fair", the real reason it exists has nothing to do with that. It's a rational economical choice which is quite complex. The money given to people on the dole is pretty much immediately flushed back to the economy, stimulating it in different ways and through the market, something the government would be terrible at doing itself.

The fact that many people, as you view, "abuse" the system is irrelevant. On a macro scale in the long run it's better to be supporting this people - some of them will eventually climb out of their situation. This is economically better for the country. The gains in productivity and human capital that are had when kids are able to go to school instead of having to work, help around the house or take care of their siblings are enormous. The financial benefit is hundreds of times that of the one you would have by "saving" this money and losing the people.

Also people that are between jobs for too long because they can't find a new one would have a much harder time without any support. For some it would just not be possible. There are accidents, devastating life events... too many sides to this and if you do want to learn it's easy to take a course in developmental economics or buy a book. The greater wealth a country can have is that of the human capital of its people, this is what determines wealth in a steady state, and its this capital that the system tries to improve. It gets distorted by politicians and their interests, and that's one of the main problems and reasons why it doesn't work that well in practice.

As it is, you are very short sighted and seem to not be willing to use any intelligence you have in analyzing the issue. When you say this:

I find it infuriating that we susidise those who have commited crimes against society the money to have their own place to live whilst many who are law abiding are forced in to living in shared accomodation. Makes no sense to me.

As a whole I think we do enough in the way of social care but the way in which it is distributed is all wrong.

Do you really believe the people in government housing are in such a great position, a better one than those who aren't on support, have their own jobs and their whole lives ahead of them? You certainly understand that this housing isn't in a great neighborhood, comes with bad neighbors and a lot of stigma. They are regularly monitored, have to answer to a lot of stuff and obligations that come with it. By using this broad generalizations you try to make it sound very wrong, but its general nature hides the truth.

It's not an ideal position for anyone. The rationale behind it is that by giving people a stepping stone, some will eventually improve their situation and become contributing members of society. Certainly some will abuse it and keep living on the dole all their lives if they can, but the point is that in the end it's financially better to offer support than not to.

It is certainly much more complicated to understand than I could resume in this post. I understand where your indignation comes from, but to talk about this you need to analyze it from a macroeconomic scale and understanding the logic behind it in the first place. You can be a crybaby and whine about fairness all you want, but it's not the point and it's a very short sighted view. You could get a better understanding of it looking at studies in different countries, specially less developed ones where the gaps in society are greater. The UK and Ireland are harder cases to grasp because of their relatively high standard of living.


I do myself think that the system in the UK is too generous, and it is has failed time and time again to deal with structural noise, mainly the fact that there is a group of people who are currently set to abuse the system indefinitely, have no intent of ever leaving it and even glamorize it. That's just a fault of the system, you are still better of with it than without it. Perhaps one of the ways out of it is having a way of identifying the individuals in this subcultures who have created their cultural identity out of being on the dole permanently, and increase regulation, driving them out. Maybe another way is to reduce the benefits slightly, maybe say by 50 quid from someone who gets 600, so they would on one hand still have enough to go by, but would feel they are in a disadvantageous position relative to what they were before and have incentives to get a job.


The way it is now it's so easy to fool the system. I remember them walking in my shop asking for a signature to prove they had tried to get a job. But they had never been there before and hadn't even brought a CV for me to look at. In fact they wouldn't even say what it was for, just ask for a quick signature like they were doing delivery and hope I didn't notice. But how would you not notice, when it's written in their faces and in their clothes that they plan to be on the dole their whole lives if they can?

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

It's just that if we start trying to discuss the funding of the benefits system at the same time as it's structure discussion will lose focus and become fragmented when that was not what I was interested in hearing about. I was interested in hearing about whether people think benefits are being made to the right people, whether certain groups are entitled to either too much or not enough etc. Discussion of how we then fund that would muddy the debate.

 

[bummer]

Yes yes but can someone start a different thread if they want to discuss the taxation laws in the country. There's a very interesting discussion to be had on that but it's not why I started this thread.

Bummer: You have made an awful lot of assumptions about my general views on social welfare in that post. None of which are correct.

My 1st line 'what is the alternative ?' was a response to you saying its not fair that criminals are rewarded or that people on the sick get enough to save...iirc...

The rest was a general rant aimed at nobody in particular. If I misunderstood what you were saying before then sorry, got the wrong end of the stick

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Nobody plans to be on the dole their whole lives. I've NEVER met a young person without aspiration of some sort. That's a ridiculous thing to say. Why don't you go the whole hog and call them chavs SexNCandy?

 

[Sammy G]

Perhaps one of the ways out of it is having a way of identifying the individuals in this subcultures who have created their cultural identity out of being on the dole permanently, and increase regulation, driving them out.

Or you could just adopt the Tory position, assume that each and every benefit claimant fits the above description and treat them accordingly.