Scrap Benefits and pay every adult, working, non working or retired, an unconditional basic income of £15,000 a year? Discuss

isnt part of the problem not that someone gets more money on benefits than working but they dont get enough extra by working to believe its worth it?

AmberLeaf "I don't believe anyone has more disposable income after having children but especially those on benefits!"

I know of two people who beg to differ.

Even with 4 DC, the only reason I wouldn't be better off in work is because of childcare costs. If childcare was more subsidised, then you would find a lot more Lone Parents would flock out to work.

Most people I know that zDON'T work say it is only the childcare costs that cause them to be worse off while working. They could afford to pay a nominal amount when they are earning LESS THAN A LIVING WAGE, but Nursery fees here are £52 a day, and a days care for a school age DC in the holidays is £50. Which is not particularly helpful when you only earn £47 a day...

Yes, Tax Credits pay UP TO £210 a week to help with childcare, but if you have more than 2 DC in childcare, with one in Nursery, that covers less than 60% of the costs, and the more DC you have, the lower the percentage of the costs of childcare is covered by that £210 a week.

These are people who were either SAHM's or working very short hours around their Ex's job while they were IN a relationship, and had their DC's as a joint decision, but have been left to bear the ENTIRE costs of childcare without their Ex's being made to pay towards it.

If the rich fathers that leave are forced to continue to pay private school fees, why is it that lower income fathers are not made to pay half the cost of childcare fees when they leave their relationships?

Making fathers 50% liable for childcare fees when a relationship breaks down would get ALL the single mums I know that are on benefits with 3+ DC's back into employment.

As far as I see it, despite fathers supposedly being 50% responsible for their DC, they are not expected to be 50% responsible for essential costs such as childcare to enable BOTH parents to work.

Any changes in the benefits system IMO should have addressed this, and made it possible to split claims in respect of shared care, for both the RP and the NRP to claim help with the childcare costs if they were separated, if their income was low enough, so that both could become liable for 50% of childcare costs that enable them BOTH to be employed. Why is it deemed to be solely the financial responsibility of the RP, when their income has to take a hit anyway as they are the ones who have to fit their work around the available childcare. Leaving them unable to be as flexible about employment hours and days as the NRP anyway.

And it would certainly focus serial Father's minds when they walked out on their DC if they KNEW they would be liable for 50% of childcare costs if their child's mother/s went back to work. And none of this taking it out of JSA at a stupidly low rate of £5/£10 a week - if there was no protection on the possibility that they could lose ALL their JSA to pay for their child to be cared for while the child's MOTHER went back to work, they'd soon take A job, ANY job...

You just don't have 'disposable income' when living purely off benefits though.

I don't believe anyone has more disposable income after having children but especially those on benefits!

I don't know their exact circumstances but both informed me that they have more disposable income now than they did before having children.

And yet I when I had 3 DC, was better off working than I was on benefits.

Unless you are counting Tax Credits in with benefits, in which case I wouldn't be better off in work. Even more now...

CouthyMow There are two friends of mine who each had a baby - in both cases, the fathers (both useless tossers) buggered off mid-pregnancy and left them to raise their children on their own. One of the girls was shocked at the level of benefit she was entitled to, got herself a nice flat, paid for entirely with HB, and told me in her own words that she was better off on benefit than she was when she was working by quite a margin.

The other already owned her own home and was self-employed in a relatively low paying job. She also admitted to being quite comfortably looked after by the taxpayer.

Neither of these girls are intending to have another child but it isn't beyond the wit of man to see that there is little financially to deter them if they so wanted to.

One might be tempted to suppose that an unskilled school leaver - who will be having the devil's own job trying to find work at the moment and at best, can hope for a minimum wage position - would be mad not to at least contemplate this option.

I read all of it, MrJudgeyPants. I just disagree wholeheartedly with it, as I have yet to meet ONE single mum that kicked a perfectly good partner/father out or GOT pregnant TO get a council flat. And that's pure bollocks anyway - you DO realise that there is no way a teen mum with a baby is going to leapfrog a couple who have been on the housing list with two DC's for 3 years, as time waiting is taken into account? It would be a pretty shit way of trying to get their own house or flat, as it DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT. I have yet to meet ANYONE, even those with reasonably severe LD's, who think that they can have a baby to be given a house, or even have one in order to GET a larger house...

'I don't have a cat anymore.
I will crap on it.'

No wonder. I expect the cat walked out when it witnessed the shocking lack of standards and respect for the Daily Mail.

I lied.

I don't have a cat anymore.

I will crap on it.

My cat refuses to use the Daily Mail for that; it will only accept the Guardian!

Yep Claig you can have it after I've used it to line the cat litter tray. How bout that? [Grin]

Can I have the Daily Mail? Such valuable information should not be used for a knockabout!

"(I'm not supposing for one second that most claimants are guilty of this but that it happens cannot be denied)"

Which bit of that sentence did you not read?

or opting to kick the father out and raising the child in a single parent household can net more benefit etc, etc, etc. By accident, the state has created an incentive scheme where the more that you can screw your life up the more unemployable you can become and the less chance you have of making something of yourself the more money / freebies you are given

You are having a fookin laff!

Yep cos the country is full of single mothers who kicked out perfectly decent fathers/partners just so they could get a bit of that glamourous single parent benefits lifestyle.

'Opting' to 'kick the father out?! I really HAVE heard everything now. The ONLY single parent Mother's on benefits that I know that WERE the ones to instigate the end of their relationship are the ones where the father either cheated on her or where there was SEVERE abuse towards her. And it took those mothers, on average, 6 years to leave their partners AFTER they became abusive. And they are only on benefits for between 2-4 years while they stabilise their family living arrangements, sort out court proceedings and retrain as they have often been SAHM's or in very PT, NMW jobs, often cleaning PT around their Ex's work or being MDA's. They can't continue with these jobs due to an effective 99% tax rate and no help with child are costs as they weren't working enough hours, and they often need to retrain to get ANY FT job.

That is the most prejudiced, ill-informed piece of guff I have seen spouted in a very long time.

And my rent IS in the cheapest 30% in my town for a 4-bed. So if I have to pay a top-up of £125 PCM when I am unemployed, what exactly do the people who CAN'T find a home in the cheapest 30% of houses that size in my town have to pay?

And NOT everyone who NEEDS a property in the cheapest 30% in a town can have one - as most of them WILL ALREADY HAVE PEOPLE LIVING IN THEM.

What people fail to understand is that the cheapest 30% of rents in a town will be held by older people living in larger council houses that have lived there for 20 years+.

You can no longer GET those tenancies - Housing Association tenancies, which make up the bulk of any Social Housing tenancies for the last 20 years, as Councils sold stock to HA's, are more expensive, and private Tenancies are more expensive than that.

The cheapest 30% of houses in a town will, by definition, be housing that is totally unavailable until their tenant dies, and often not even then, as those tenants will STILL have the option of passing on the tenancy to an adult child that is also resident in the property at the time of their death, as per the tenancy agreement they signed. As that is a legally binding document, that right cannot be taken away from those that still possess it.

So no-one CAN get a property in the cheapest 30% of rents, so even the most poverty stricken family has to take money meant to feed their family in order to keep a roof over their head now.

Corrupt, your idea is bollocks, and I'm about as lefty as they come now. Even little old lefty me can see that it just won't work, because it doesn't take someone like me into account.

I am a Lone Parent. Who is disabled enough that there is no way I could manage to work FT. OK, you say, you may be capable of working PT then. Erm, no, not always - I can work PT at best, not at all at worst. And even when I AM capable of work, there is the small matter of the fact that two of my DC's ALSO have disabilities. Which means that while I might be for for work on a particular day - THEY will need me to care for them.

As the current system can't cope with that situation at all - what would you do about the fact that in a household with 5 people in it, 3 of them have disabilities that cost lots more than a normal household containing 5 people would need to spend, just to achieve the basics? £15k just wouldn't cut it if you added up everything that was needed to cope with a challenging set of circumstances like mine. So how would the extra support needed be tailored to my situation?

Aw crap. Didn't do too well with the no swearing there.

Xenia. In the politest way ever, you would get £18,000 a year housing benefit about as much as I would get to turn rainbow coloured and fly overhead.

I am a Lone Parent with 4 DC in a 4-Bed Housing Association house. My rent is £720 PCM. The MAXIMUM LHA I can receive (if I am unemployed, it will be half that if I take a NMW job...) is £595 PCM.

Which by my reckoning totals just £7,140. Less than half the pie-in-the-sky figure you appear to have plucked out of your arse thin air.

That is all.

Hi Corrupt. "It's the same thing as a basic income, except its not enough money, but its the same principle isn't it."

It is exactly the same principle as a basic income except that we know that we can afford this.

"So the issue is being able to raise the amount of money in the pot to be split, equally between all."

Yes - we need to know that we can raise the money in a sustainable way and spend it without ruining the economy through inflation.

"we both agree in giving everyone an amount of free money. Am i correct ;-)"

To a point! I'm a Libertarian. I believe in shrinking the role of the state wherever possible. At the moment, the state has assumed for itself the role of arbiter of people's circumstances. It has, accidentally, given us a system whereby if your circumstances match a certain criteria, the state will provide for you. The idea was that this would act as a safety net, and God knows, we need something like this in the current climate. The problem with the current system is that it is perfectly possible to manipulate your circumstances to maximise your claim (I'm not supposing for one second that most claimants are guilty of this but that it happens cannot be denied). For example, having a child bumps you up the priority list for social housing, or opting to kick the father out and raising the child in a single parent household can net more benefit etc, etc, etc. By accident, the state has created an incentive scheme where the more that you can screw your life up, the more unemployable you can become and the less chance you have of making something of yourself the more money / freebies you are given.

The system I propose, where this basic income can be borrowed against when needed, puts the individual in charge of their own welfare. It eliminates the 'gaming' of the system because you aren't cheating the welfare system, you are simply denying yourself. It encourages returning to work as soon as possible. It doesn't come with a penalty for returning to work and it's cheap to administer.

If the money could be used in this way, (i.e. lending and borrowing against it) it would provide a government guaranteed line of credit to everyone in the country. Once this is recognised, the fact that the sum of money involved is relatively small becomes irrelevant.

Ridiculous idea. Inflation would shoot through the roof, and before long, £15,000 wouldn't be enough to live on. Not to mention the question of where all the money would be found to pay £15k to everyone in the country. It would also send immigration more out of control than ever.

I disagree. Those who work harder should earn more. A doctor should earn more than a cleaner for eg.

corrupt

"The sales tax is really the automated payment transaction tax and wouldn't need to be that big a tax percentage when you consider the vast amount of monetary transactions that there are on a daily/monthly/yearly basis"

the Total would still need to be £15K for each person living in Bristol. your sales tax cannot raise £15K pp unless it collects on average £15K pp.