"Strivers vs Skivers" - what do you think?

[KateMumsnet]

Hello all

Prompted by a blog post this week from MN Blogger Sonya Cisco, and this opinion piece by BlogFest panellist Zoe Williams, for our first blog-prompt of the New Year we thought we'd ask for your thoughts on the current debate around benefits cuts.

According to both Sonya and Zoe, politicians have deliberately encouraged us to think of people as either 'skivers' or 'strivers' in order to pit people on low incomes against one another - and to divert attention from the fact that the economy simply can't provide enough jobs.

Do you agree with them? And if not - why not? Post your URLs here if you blog - or, if you haven't got a blog (why not? ) do tell us what you think here on the thread.

my 24k is before tax but even that is luxury to some folks, imagine what 41k after tax would feel like to them, then coming on here and reading its not a good wage,,,sheesh

Even on 30k a year I managed to live easily without benefits (aside from minimum tax credit and child benefit which came to £100 a month)) though Xenia, I appreciate housing costs can be high but as Wanna says, if I was on a lower salary and said my housing costs were too high I would be told to move, or cut back etc.
Fact is if you are on £60k you are doing very well indeed....CB arguments aside as I don't agree it should be cut.
I certainly did not need help with housing costs even though I was privately renting. When you are on benefits (as I currently am as a Carer) then every penny counts....and I get extra as a Carer so have no idea how others not getting any extra cope. I don't anticipate this being forever but fact is at the moment life is a struggle and is going to be considerably harder than someone on£60k a year losing CB.

i lived, paid a mortgage, saved, paid my transport, food, clothes etc etc without any benefit top ups on 20k before tax. the idea that 41k after tax is not a lot of money or not enough money just sounds ridiculous to anyone who has or does live on a hell of a lot less.

it's a massive insult when it is those same people who believe oap's in their 80's should be kicked out of 2 bed houses and disabled single people should only get enough housing benefit to live in a room in a shared house with 20yo students or that people who don't have enough money should all clear off out of london rather than receive housing benefit that reflects their rent.

i mean come on!! you must reflect on what you're saying and the context you're saying it in?

it's actually offensive in the context of what is happening to the sick and disabled in this country to sit around whingeing that you only have 41k after tax especially when it's a sahm who doesn't actually have to work at all to supplement that and are looking at outright ownership of property in the future. you know? just think what you're saying! try to think about how easy your life really is compared to so very many people.

A lot of SAHMs are unable to work at all because the cost of childcare is greater than the income they are able to generate and their DHs are away from home due to work commitments and unable to share childcare. It is wrong to say that "they don't have to work" - many would like to.

that's exactly the same for people at the lower end of the pay spectrum bonsoir. i know couples where they work on alternating shifts and never see each other because they can't afford childcare. they 'can't afford childcare' yet have to work anyway - they don't have the luxury of saying oh well we'll cut back a little bit and just live on your income for the next few years till the kids go to school and i can go back to my well paid job.

and single mums on benefits are expected to go and work at whatever jobs are available once their kids are 5 - they don't get a 'haven't got childcare i can afford' clause that lets them off.

so again - context and others.

Working alternating shifts is a good solution but it relies on both partners having a good chunk of time at home every day. Not all people are that lucky.

true - hence the couple i'm thinking of he works full time and she works part time shifts at a supermarket in evenings and at the weekend. nothing to do with luck but necessity and doing the shit job you didn't want to do and wasn't what you were qualified for but has to be done to make ends meet.

wonder if these poor sahms who'd love to work but can't afford to would consider night shifts stacking shelves for minimum wage? i'm just saying it's context and choices - when you say 'can't' as a privileged income family you can bet plenty of lower income families make it possible because they have no choice so acknowledge your luck that you can afford to make that choice albeit not one you'd ideally choose.

(incidentally this family does not qualify for any wtc and only a scrap of ctc despite earning well below the figures being discussed on this thread).

Don't be so rude and dismissive, swallowedAFly. Lots of people do do hard things. When one of my cousins was unemployed, his wife (RG university degree educated) did night-time cleaning so that he could carry on with his job search during the day. Nobody knew except close family.

rude and dismissive?!

well there you go then - there are things people can do just as your cousins wife did - so you're agreeing with my point. when they 'have' to they do so those moaning and not doing obviously don't have to and if they have a grateful heart will be able to acknowledge that blessing and appreciate many have it worse.

the friend i'm talking about is university educated too btw if that bears any relevance.

by the way some people do night shift cleaning for years it's their actual job and they don't get to hide it from the neighbours.

So in swallowedAFly's world nobody gets to complain unless they are worse off than every other person on the planet?

nope - not at all but yes i believe that we have a moral obligation to care about people worse off than us and recognise that it can't always be about us and what we want. i also believe that gratitude for one's relative privilege and blessings is a worthy human attribute to aspire to.

and this is a conversation in which people of all different classes and financial positions are a part of so it pays to be sensitive. if you were sat in a world conference about hunger you wouldn't sit moaning that you were starving because you'd had to miss breakfast this morning to someone from a country with a famine in full swing.

those posting here about how hard up they are on 60k are doing so in the company of people living on a quarter of that at times. that would be considered poor manners at the very least in my book.

love the way you did the peanut gallery play there though rather than address me directly. smooth

The real problem is that we seem to have arrived at a situation whereby the not well-off place limits on how much the wealthy are allowed to earn, which means that the wealthy pay less tax. And childcare costs are enormous in spite of the fact that childcare work is very poorly paid: it is very labour intensive, and higher level training doesn't make it less so. We should not seek to curtail enterprise at the top but insted of doling out money in child tax credits to encourage learned helplessness, we should use the revenue to provide really excellent heavily state-subsidised childcare. As things stand currently, you have to be wealthy to be enterprising. I see that as the only way of beginning to close the gap between rich and poor and it is the gap that's the real problem.

I think you need real worked examples before you can compare how much cash various people have in different parts of the country.I do think those on benefits who don't work and have all their housing paid for think those on say £20k or £40k are rich whereas in fact many of those people have the same amount of spare cash because of spending £14k - £30k a year on childcare, £15k on mortgages and often much more, travel, work clothes.

They think gosh if I had £20k extra not realising that would mean housing benefit would go, tax credits might go, child benefit might go, never mind a third going in tax before you've even started (to fund benefits for those who never work).

Anyway the bottom line is that most people in the UK think there is a big problem with shirkers so unless that perception can be changed then these supposed shirkers are going to find life is harder for them.

The real problem is that we seem to have arrived at a situation whereby the not well-off place limits on how much the wealthy are allowed to earn

What do you mean?

nope the real problem is that we have arrived at the point where the people at the genuine top take so much out in profit and give so little out in salaries or sharing profits by reducing prices for example that there is a pittance of money for the masses to spend and ridiculously high costs. so then the very top decided to keep squeezing out their profits by lending ridiculous sums of money the masses (and made profit on doing that too). now it's really fucked because we still don't earn enough and we can't borrow anymore but they're still not willing to ease off on how much they take out of the system.

if they can't overcome their greed the whole system will break imo.

i guess what i'm saying is that mega-companies taking out multi million pound profits from a limited economy and a few people amassing billions is patently not bloody sustainable.

is it just me who thinks that that is common sense? feel free to explain to me that i'm missing the point because to me it just seems that simple! take fuel for example - yes prices of fuel have gone up and that would account for it needing to be a little more expensive for us peasants but the fuel companies (and each mega business in the chain on the way to us) still wants to take out millions of pounds of profit rather than having any responsibility to share the reality of rising prices by reducing their profit margins.

or banks for the obvious example - still taking million pound bonuses out even in the face of the current climate.

we can bicker to our hearts content about the small change at the bottom and who has more of it but the problem clearly lies much further up the food chain with people and companies hoarding fortunes that whole countries couldn't spend in a generation.

Having been in both positions Xenia I can tell you thst employment
and a good salary are infinitely preferable to benefits even with the housing costs etc

agreed jake - my son's school is closed today and so is the college i work at. i can tell you now i'd rather be at work interacting with colleagues, getting on with projects that mean a lot to me and generally living than stuck in the house with a bored 5 yo.

i earn a pretty low salary and don't qualify for any HB etc - just wtc and cb. i am definitely better off financially working both in the here and now and in future prospects - not to mention how much better my mental health and self esteem is. therefore i cannot believe (because i know from real life experience) that people are worse off working in well paid jobs than living on benefits.

Benefits aren't as fun or as much as some of you would think.
Even on mw me & my dh were better off, i wish he wasn't made redundant, but he was and now we are on benefits.
We get £440 a month in jsa, that is it.
My rent isn't completely subsidsed, we have to put £100 towards it.
In April our council tax won't be all paid either.
Apart from that we get ctc which pay for food and essentials and child benefit which i'm very greatful for as my children need clothing and other essentials.
I don't believe anyone chooses to be on benefits.
We all strive to work or atleast have our partner in work, but it doesn't always work out the way.
There aren't enough jobs to go round and many are for the skilled-to gain qualifications you need money=no money equals no education.
Big coporations pay little or no tax, that is the main problem.

If they lower the benefits, the morale will be low which will make families depressed and in a never ending cycle which will never be broken

What IS an issue is that a jobcentre advisor told me if I took a job at NMW then to be financially better off I woukd need to work a minimum of 30 hours. I dont know if this was with the changes to benefits or not (am sure he said but it was a few weeks back).

Obviously having worked in the past I know the benefits to work are more than just financial but if you have never had this then it must be a leap of faith to say "I will work 24 hours even though I might be a little bit worse off financially".

I am also assuming that this includes childcare costs and transport etc....but it probably does not. As Xenia says this adds massively to the costs of being in work and affects how much disposable cash is left foe living expensrs.