If you could decide how much people get in benefits

[OneLemonOrca]

There are benefit bashing threads being posted often, with complaints that certain people on benefits can afford a better lifestyle than them when they work, and that it is being made into a life style choice?
So if you could decide, I am just wondering how much you think benefit claimants should receive in certain circumstances or what their money should or shouldn’t be able to pay for, to get a general idea of what mumsnet thinks is “right”.

Agree and I guarantee anyone who disagrees has zero engagement with the sort of people you’re talking about.

I do agree with this however people who work and don’t claim benefits also have these costs to pay out of their wages so don’t ‘’see’ the money either, plus tax, NI, workplace pension, student loans, commuting costs etc.

Often on threads where an OP who earns too much for benefits complains about the cost of living they are told how rich they are and when they mention how much they earn people just take their wages and divide it by 12, thinking that all of the other costs are optional so a bit of awareness each way would be useful.

On the whole though this is an interesting thread with a lot of good points.

If you roll out Universal basic income what incentive would there be for people to train as doctors, lawyers etc? Why would you work a job such as a doctor or nurse with terrible hours and staff shortages when you could work a much easier unskilled job for the same money?

I say this as someone who works in retail and I wouldn't bother with a job with huge responsibilities for the same wages as people stacking shelves.

Some people don't want extra hours, we always have overtime and I can't get my staff to cover it because people on UC are very reluctant to work extra because it gets taken off their benefits and in their own words it's not worth them doing it. I don't blame them, the system is broken and sometimes there's no incentive to work extra.

Stop this?

Have you seen some of the threads lately.

Parents of disabled children are absolutely begrudged the money we get by some.

I think I would give up my zero hours job if we had universal income and then be able to train as something better whilst not worrying about money.

I agree with previous posters who have mentioned housing. The government focus should be on addressing the housing crisis and should involve a larger stock of good quality council housing. This would make a huge difference to benefits claimants and those who are not claiming but struggling.

@Medschoolmum I too would be interested to better understand what the UBI trials showed and how this could work in the UK. I don't feel that I can comment much further without a better understanding of what is being proposed.

It would make low paid deeply horrible jobs deeply unattractive which would force employers to improve terms and conditions in order to attract staff. Market forces would still exist in that sense.

It would be a huge societal shift- which frightens people naturally but doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying.

Introduction of UBI would mean people would work more, not less. Lots of people are afraid to work (at least officially) in case their benefits get stopped or reduced. Look at recent news about people claiming carers allowance having to pay back thousands if pounds because they have worked a few extra hours. Everytime I do overtime my UC payments drop, which is fine but it doesn't exactly encourage me to do it! More people would feel empowered to work and earn money officially (ie not cash in hand and therefore pay more taxes) if they weren't living on knife edge of having their benefits stopped.

I think the answer is that rent is send straight to landlords (helpful to landlords too) and childcare costs are sent directly to the provider, electronic transfer means this is no more time consuming than one payment. Your benefits should only be your living expenses. Enhancing the work requirement with far better opportunities to get work ready eg quality training helps too.

People see huge sums, equivalent to £40k salary or more being given out as benefits and only one out of the two household members doing any work outside the home, you can see why there is resentment. I don't think we should be forcing both parents back to work until youngest is 2, as long as one is working full time (obviously mitigating circumstances like elder care responsibilities aside).

It's really hard to balance a caring compassionate benefits system with ensuring that we don't allow the work shy to take the Mickey. I know households who haven't worked for 3 generations since 1980's, not saying it's common but I've met them through work - thankfully the mentoring scheme I was part of has paid dividends once as in one family the son has graduated university and is now working in a fairly well paid computing job, unfortunately his sister is refusing to work despite being quite capable but she didn't take part in the scheme. There's dozens of households in my old city identified as habitability unemployed, I did my best to help the children. I don't judge, it is complicated often, I just look for hope

You can't just choose not to work and claim benefits.

I’m not sure either of you fully comprehend how UBI would help to improve this social inequality.
these people will clearly have no inclination to work (and never will no matter what engagement is used) but under the current system we all pay tax to support them. Under UBI these people would receive no more than they do now but those paying tax would also take something out of the system.

Related:

Myth:

"millions of people who have never worked."

Fact:

"As of the fourth quarter of 2023... ...262,000 who were unemployed for more than a year"

source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/284187/uk-unemployment-figures-by-length/#:~:text=As%20of%20the%20fourth%20quarter,for%20more%20than%20a%20year.

If there's an option for people to not work and live on benefits and never work, why are there so little taking that route now?

And as for there always being someone saying something like,
"I know... a person / a friend of a friend / a sister in law / loads of people... who never work"

Bollocks.
262000 unemployed for over 12 months.

If employers were forced to improve terms and conditions to attract staff, wouldn't this ultimately just have the net effect of pushing up the cost of everything? Because employers would pass on the extra costs to consumers?

Some industries have massive profit margins, but an awful lot of smaller employers couldn't just improve terms and conditions without increasing their income.

Exactly that.

UBI. Mass building of social housing. Keep DLA ans PIP as the only benefits which would be on top of UBI.

You'd still get paid your normal salary for working on top of the UBI. That's where the incentive is.

I agree with this also, it’s a good idea and many people, me included, would still work as I want a better lifestyle than a basic income would give but those who think that we would be falling over care staff once it worked out they were earning more are totally delusional, who would do jobs like that unless they had too?

But how would the extra money being taken out of the system be funded?

I am not sure Iran’s was a huge success. This paper discusses it.

https://socialprotection.org/discover/blog/golden-age-universal-basic-income-iran#:~:text=Iran%20embarked%20on%20a%20pioneering,Hosseini%20%26%20Bilo%2C%202022).

Worth noting the UBI was $480 per year.

So presumably worth while in Iran but Iran also sells oil in international markets so has a reasonable income stream that is inflation linked and not directly linked to labour.

The UK would need a MUCH higher UBI in dollar terms. This would attract even more economic migrants to the UK. No one is going to move to Iran for $480 per year.

And the UK is primarily a services economy. Our tax revenues come from jobs.

@Medschoolmum So, this is why you’d need a complete overhaul of the current tax system and you’d also need to ascertain the appropriate level of UBI that this could support.
our current tax systems are in desperate need of reappraisal and the benefit system will overwhelm the state in the coming decades so this is something that will inevitably happen eventually anyway.

I think the issue with UBI would having to make sure it would cover rent payments in more expensive parts of the country? I guess if everyone gets paid the same UBI then a single person in the north would be able to afford a better lifestyle than a single person in the south east. Or is that the whole point?

This won't be popular but one thing I would do is create social housing specifically for single mothers (no men allowed over night) in a shared area together with childcare or something like a what a surestart centre used to provide included and access to gcse's and other qualifications. From the child being a year old (rough normal mat leave) the mothers have to study to get qualifications while the baby was cared for. They'd have onsite support. Hopefully this would help to break the cycle of families that have generation after generation of unqualified and unworking.

I'd significantly increase carers payments for those who care for people with 24 hour needs (there is a big difference in the care provided by those dho claim carers allowance).

I'd stop pip and dla for a lot of metal health conditions.

Capping the amount private landlords can be paid to slightly over what social housing rent is I think would help, maybe introduced gradually so there is time to sell the properties if needed.

I'd keep something like universal credit rather than ubi.

Never heard of UBI until this thread. It reminded me of furlough during Covid when people got paid for being at home. People loved it - getting paid for doing nothing.

I think it would de-incentivise people to work and as others have said, low paid jobs would become unfilled. Why go to work part time and earn a thousand pounds a month, if you’re already getting it? It would have enabled me to be a sahm longer, and if sufficient, may gave deterred me to going back to work.

Isn’t that the same for benefits today though, or wages (,apart from London weighting)?

@Riverlee because you would still get it. So my impression is that you'd get £1000 a month without a job, or £1000 plus your wages with a job. Is that right?