If you can work you should... But why?

[Tryingtokeepgoing]

So, Rachel Reeves is of the opinion that if you can work you should. However, there are millions of us in the 50+ bracket who can work, but don't need or want to work. We are financially self sufficent, happily (ish) paying tax and spending money supporting the services economy on which so much of the country depends. Why should we work? Altruistically, I see my choice not to work as creating opportunities for progression for others...

Why should we work?
What is achieved by encouraging us to work?
If there are benefits to us working, how can she incentivise us to do so?

caveat - I am not a fan of the Telegraph, but it is a direct quote

“If you can work, you should work,” she said after official figures showed worklessness in Britain rose to its highest level in more than a decade.

People who are working part time are working, by definition, so that would be an odd choice of words from her if so.

So claiming benefits, presumably? How do they actually get away with this and get enough to live on? Working age benefits are not that generous and I thought would usually require effort to find work. Do they have to fake looking for work or fake a disability or something? I find it hard to understand the mentality, to be honest.

I'm not 50 yet but work 2 days a week (with a salary still high enough to be in the 40% bracket). I take home about half what I did on a 5 day week because of tax. I'm very happy with that, I'm still a net contributor but I don't pay what I did at my peak. I have no intention of working more to pay ludicrous amounts of tax and I don't want the stress. I think our tax system is stupid, not necessarily because of the amounts but because of the cliff edges- unless you are well above the thresholds the loss of certain benefits and tax allowances does make you worse off. If the pension changes that are mooted come in it will make it more compelling for higher earners to do everything they can to stay below certain points and work part time. If Labour want to be really radical they should look at simplifying the system, higher personal allowances and fewer cliff edges so it's worth working more for people, whether on benefits or losing benefits.

If Labour want to be really radical they should look at simplifying the system, higher personal allowances and fewer cliff edges so it's worth working more for people, whether on benefits or losing benefits.

This certainly needs addressing. We have a system riddled with bottlenecks and disincentives, and some people respond accordingly.

The entire Treasury seem to be total muppets and have been for years. Everyone keeps saying (politicians included) that we need fewer cliff edges and counter-intuitive rules and a simpler tax/benefits system, but then the Treasury just keep coming out with changes that makes things worse, more complications, more cliff edges. We even once had the ridiculous Office of Tax Simplification which took years and cost a fortune to do the square root of bugger all.

I think one of the biggest issues is unemployment when you are young. The number of young people on benefits has risen. Those are the years to work and start pensions because you feasibly have time to save enough to live off in old age. However you aren't apparently a net contributor to society unless you earn over 40k!

@Uol2022 So claiming benefits, presumably? How do they actually get away with this and get enough to live on? Working age benefits are not that generous and I thought would usually require effort to find work. Do they have to fake looking for work or fake a disability or something? I find it hard to understand the mentality, to be honest

It's hard to comprehend when you've not seen it and have never been on benefits, but they have more children, fake illness, fake looking for work, claim carers for relatives, and children etc etc. The amount of money they get to live on would be a pittance to most people on here but if you've grown up surrounded by generational worklessness. it's the norm and you get by. You can buy shoplifted clothes, trainers and food which helps. Before I get attacked on here, I'm not saying that the majority of people who don't work do this, but there are families who screw the DWP (or the Nash as it's called here) because I worked with them and their children who also had no intention of working. They don't know any different.

It's actually not ideal for a society to have an extremely high employment rate, as a lot of advances usually come from people who have the extra time to dedicate to the arts and sciences, rather than spending their life slaving in a role that a lot of the time is made up. And I say that as someone who worked part time throughout my a levels and university and have always worked full time since then.

There is also the massive problem of the black economy where people are working "cash in hand" and not declaring it, so not paying tax/nic and also claiming benefits at the same time they're not entitled to. A double whammy. You don't have to do much cash in hand work to have a decent lifestyle if you're illegally claiming benefits alongside and aren't paying tax/nic on your cash wages.

The black economy is one of the biggest components of the official "tax gap", far higher than tax evasion by international companies and far higher than tax evasion by the very wealthy.

It's a numbers game. Huge numbers of people not paying the right amount of tax in relatively small amounts is far higher than a small number of international firms/millionaires not paying huge amounts of tax each.

Net contribution is a tricky term as it only looks at bare funds, a lot of jobs for example teachers, nurses and care workers contribute enormously to society in ways that many people earning over 40k do not.

Rather than RR going on about getting more people working, she'd be better beefing up HMRC to give them resources and power to start going after the black economy. The tax authorities used to be very proactive back in the 80s and 90s with regular inspection checks to small businesses to check their paperwork and that they were properly declaring payroll taxes, VAT and income tax/NIC. In the 90s and 00s, we had crazy tax office amalgamations and closures of local offices plus mass redundancies of experienced tax inspectors so the entire system of local checks vanished, and since then the black economy has flourished - who'd have thought it!! (The idiot politicians and treasury officials obviously didn't!).

Uol2022 they get away with it by saying they can only work certain hours, no evenings, weekends, not before 9.30 or after 2.30. No holidays etc. This is according to my neighbour.

The welfare state is no longer sustainable.

This is not for a lack of money, but because the people who have the money, who have been given a large proportion of our countries wealth are keeping it for themselves and have no interest in using it to provide welfare services. Their job is to take money, not give it.

The welfare state was born from an agreement post war that we should all contribute to our society, at all levels of wealth - and from that the NHS, pensions and welfare provision was set up. Now the rich have got richer, but do not pay back in to society sufficiently and there is no longer enough from those in the middle to pay for the old, the young, the sick and all other needs - no matter how hard you squeeze them.

Before that in the Victorian era provision for the poor was from charity or philanthropy or they worked for exploitative employers - I think we're heading back there.

The 'squeezed middle' have decided that they don't want to pay for everyone else by working difficult jobs until they are 67 whilst others live easier lives.

If we want all the things we have from a welfare state - we all need to pay more and take less - at every age and stage.

If this is true then for goodness sake report them !

Most people by 50 have been working since 18 or younger and want to make the most of the time they left have before they lose their health. Working takes up the most healthy and productive portion of our lives, if people can afford to escape early I don't blame them.

Personally, I'm unlikely to ever be able to retire since the age keeps going up and I have no significant pension or savings but I would retire now if I could.

I think the additional aspect especially for women now is the relatively small gap (if any at all) between having dependent children and elderly parents. My kids are teens, one has ASD and mental health problems so has required much more than the usual amount of parental support for her age. Over their lifetimes we have already supported both my husband's parents through illnesses and disabilities, and now they've passed we're currently doing the same with mine. I went part-time when the kids were tiny, like many other women, but I've never got back up to full time because the family needed me. If we all worked full time to 67/68, there would be a much higher demand for paid carers to replace all those currently providing unpaid support, and since we already have a shortage in those roles, where would the staff (and the money to pay them) come from?

Oh there’s no need to apologise, I didn’t take it as attack. But people do continue contributing even if they’re not working - that’s the point I was trying to make. And of course, one person not working means a job for another person, unless there are an unlimited number of jobs and/or no one trains anyone. I think I’ve worked enough, contributed enough and am altruistically creating opportunities for others by not working if I don’t have to :)

I think the £2.5m number is just based on a variation of your £45k number and basing it on adult life span. So from 21 to 81 is 60 years at £40 something k is around £2.5m. So to ‘cover your costs’ you need to earn that in your working life. If you do that in a working life of 20/30/40 or 50 years the government ought to be indifferent, as they get enough to cover you costs. Of course the government, all governments, spend the money as they get it so I am sure although they love the higher tax take in the working period they don’t like what they see as a gap in later years. Although I look at it as having already prepaid all my costs. And who knows, I might die young and then they are quids in!

But at a certain point there is a fixed number of jobs, because companies only need one CEO, or CFO, or COO or CTO or whatever. And under them there’s only the need for a certain number of directors and managers.

SMEs employ roughly 70% of those in the private sector, and generate roughly 50% of GDP. The answer is to encourage more SMEs, which will create more jobs at all levels, and skilled ones with the right environment and investment by the government in education, skills and innovation. But the direction of travel is a tax environment that discourages the creation of new businesses, and the proposed changes to employment legislation will stifle it further. Our economist chancellor seems light on the understanding of how to actually generate growth. So those with new ideas move abroad.

I would have loved to carry on working when I had to give up 20+ years ago but sadly, childcare provision for disabled children is practically non existent in my county so I had no choice other than to resign. After 20+ years out of the workplace I was no longer qualified for anything other than minimum wage jobs and quite frankly, a job as a carer was the last thing I was looking for! By this point the mortgage was practically paid off, DH earned enough to support us and there was little incentive for me to get a job (I've done plenty of volunteering roles over the years). DH has now retired and I'm still 7 years off my state pension so I'm no doubt one of the economically inactive people referred to. But DH and I both have workplace pensions and savings sufficient to supportive us comfortably until we get to state pension age and put plenty of cash into the local economy.

@YogaForDummies yeah it can be good to have people not worried about money and able to dedicate themselves to other productive pursuits that might be hard to put a monetary value on… but that’s really not the same as people spending half their lives retired with no particular goal other than taking a lot of holidays etc. People being genuinely unproductive is usually bad for a society, regardless of whether those people have money to spend.

@usernother thanks, that’s a helpful explanation. It seems such a shame for people to live like that. I can understand how regular, reliable benefits payments could seem better than pay from insecure and variable employment. But from your description it sounds like there are some people who basically never consider employment as an option.

@Uol2022 it’s quite easy to fake looking for a job. People apply, have an interview and then tell the DWP they didn’t get offered the job. In reality we have tried to phone or email them to offer a role and they don’t bother answering. Happens with 2 or 3 people for every role and has done for previous companies I worked for. You then see them pop up again in local job site looking for work but never finding.

Heaven forbid that people should choose a better quality of life and time with their families instead of spending more time in a hostile workplace on poor / minimum wage.
@TeaMistress and as long as they're funding this themselves and not expecting taxpayers to do so it's fine isn't it!

She's not talking about people who can support themselves without working.

This is what worries me. I'm 49 and being made redundant next month. I've been at my job long enough to get a decent payout so I'm planning on taking 4-6 months off and hopefully temp after that. I don't want to do what I'm doing now but I worry who will employ a 50 year old who doesn't actually know what she wants to do? Believe me, if I could give up work I would!