IDS is right. There is a culture of benefit dependancy, but it's

The good thing about making the personal allowance 13,000 is that it will apply to everyone who earns up to £100,000 a year! yay tax break for everyone.

Unless you're a mum who works part time. You don't get the living wage until you work full time, you lazy bums.

And if you're a cheapskate employer who just wants to keep all his profits to himself so he can spend it in a sunny tax haven, or perhaps you just don't feel like paying tax, well that's fine too!

It's crazy that you be on that much money and recieve benefits. Just tax people less, isn't it.

So whatever the dependency, OP, it was created by Labour.

"all Labour did was rename them and rejig the criteria a bit"

That rejigged criteria meant that families on incomes up to £55k qualified for benefits (Child Tax Credit). I think that went well beyond rejigging and well into the realms of cash bribery...

"myopic tit"

that's awfully good

I should say something intelligent about the rest of your post but I do like myopic tit

Bloody hell, here we go again! Why the flippety-gibbet are you asking already hard pressed employers to pay more in wages when we have plenty of people who cannot find work in our economy? Make it harder for businesses to employ people and you will have fewer jobs and even more unemployment - exactly what we don't want as we try and get our shit together after a colossal recession which is still blowing its icy wind across our land.

Stop to think for a moment - why are British jobs being exported to the developing world? Is it because there is a fundamental failure with the British workforce, or could it be that it is cheaper to get Johnny Foreigner to do intensive manual labour? Now, take it one step further - what will be the effect on the low skilled / easily exported jobs that we do still do if you hike up the workforce?s wages by 20%? Now ask yourself if that outcome is beneficial to Britain or not. Bingo, we are now on the same page!

Now, let?s crunch some numbers. If you work a 40 hour week and earn £7.45 you will be pay almost £2.5k per year in tax. Your take home pay (after tax) will be around £13k.

If you currently earn £6.19 per hour and work a 40 hour week you will earn around £13k per year BEFORE tax.

It is therefore true to say that if you were on the current minimum wage but didn't have to pay tax you would be earning (more or less) the living wage. It therefore follows that the thing that impoverishes you in a minimum wage job is the fact that you have to pay tax.

The answer to the problem, without causing further unemployment, is to stop taxing the lowest paid and to let them keep more of the money that they have earned.

Making the personal allowance £13k would achieve this at a stroke. That Miliband can't see this confirms that the myopic tit is too fond of authoritarian solutions to problems that the state causes.

Going by some of the threads ive read on the Relationships board and some other boards there is also a contingent of financially abusive DHs/DPs who have a culture of benefit dependency. They rely on the SAHP getting Child Benefit and child tax credits so that they (the DP) can keep most of their wages.
Ive seen so many disturbing threads where the SAHM says that the CB and child tax credits is the only money they are getting.

I think Ed Milliband might hit a nerve with the living wage campaign. There are some very distorted wage markets in this country. Mind you, I do think Labour fucked up massively with the whole tax credit concept.

Option 1: Tax less low paid people less, more money in economy, more spending, virtuous circle.

Option 2: Tax people more and make them apply to get some back again. Whole shebang costs a fucking fortune to adminster and allows companies to pay people a rubbish wage secure in the knowledge that the tax payer makes up the balance. Millions of people become dependent on tax credits and a Labour government.

Genius.

If businesses employing over 100 people had to pay a higher minimum wage, you would get a lot of businesses that employed 99 people.

Actually tax credits have existed in one form or another for many years beforevLabour came in. They were previously called FIS (family income supplement) all Labour did was rename them and rejig the criteria a bit. So successive governments have all propped up big businesses that didn't pay their employees a decent wage.

Labour introduced the minimum wage, no? But also tax credits - almost entirely an aim to get as many people as possible on the benefits register so that they had a vested interest in the welfare state and returning Labour to power. By all means end tax credits. Is that what you want? Labour created this corrupt system.

If people are prepared to work the least that they deserve is a living wage.

I created a blog back in 2010 that may be of interest and hopefully provides everyone with the latest news regarding welfare reform, please have a look and tell me what you think?
www.universalcredit.co.uk/

"So could the welfare bill be cut if businesses are forced to pay their staff a living wage?"

If all employers paying £6.19/hour paid £7.45/hour that would equate to a 20% increase in their wage bill, not counting any additional extra costs of NI or new things like employer pension contributions. Chances are that, to meet that cost increase they would employ 4 instead of 5 people. Whilst I think employers should pay a fair wage and whilst I've never been a fan of Tax Credits full stop, it may not necessarily result in the savings to the welfare bill that campaigners seem to think.

I agree. It is ludicrous that a family where both parents are working may need their income topped up by working/child tax credits. It is especially so in areas like mine (south west) where house prices/rents are ridiculously high and wages shockingly low. Either houses prices need to come down or wages need to go up.

The current living wage in the uk(excluding London) is £7.45 an hour.

The current Minimum wage is £6.19. I am on above minimum wage, but am just under a pound an hour less than Living wage. This accounts for at least £30 a week.

Put plainly, it works out quite a lot per year doesn't it?

PeahenTailFeathers you're spot on, one of the worst misuse of public money is the need to 'topup' full time wages to enable people to live because large companies will only pay the bare minimum that they have to. A good example is way that companies such as tesco only contract their employees for a few hours per week but expect them to regularly work extra often up to full time, however if staff are sick they only get sick pay based on their contractual hours, the difference is paid by the DSS and often housing benefit as well. So companies such as tesco et al receive more in subsidies for their staff than many people realise.

I thought most benefits went on pensioners, that's what moaners-about-benefits are always told.

Yes, I've thought for a long time that large employers, eg, employ over 100 employees, should have a higher NMW imposed, eg £8 ph.

I agree.