to think that there are people who choose to live a life on benefits?

[autumnlights12]

the recent threads about George Osbourne made me wonder..
A high number of posters say that people don't choose to live like that, they stumble into it, hate it, what a miserable existence it is, nobody would ever choose it etc..
but if you have two or three children through choice, whilst at the same time having no job to provide for them, or if you turn down the job at the local factory (as I know someone who did) because it pays £7.50 an hour and a full time job there doesn't give you the same unemployment rights and benefits, isn't that choosing to live a life on benefits? Or being trapped on benefits? I'm not talking about people who can't work, disabled people, ill people, women dumped by feckless ex and left to fend for herself etc.. of course they should be protected.
I was watching 999 What's Your Emergency and I know that area. And I know people like that exist. And it's often a second, third generation who have never worked a day in their life, even during times when work was freely available. In the town I live, we have numerous Eastern European immigrants who all seem to be working, but mostly in low paid work the locals wont do
What say you?

Charleybarley, I recognise the sense of your criticisms. I merely divided the £30bn additional concessions to the wealthiest individuals & corporations by 1% of the UK population. It was just a way of making a point, not intended as a breakdown of where the £30bn is actually going.

Re: the annoyance of part time work and full time childcare costs, I personally think part time work is often a bit of a swizz. It only seems to work with highly qualified, usually professional people. Three day a week laywer yes. But with retail work and bar work and so on, it's grim.

As to choosing a life on benefits, I believe the posters who say the numbers are small. I imagine they are also concentrated in particular areas and the problem will be long seated.

I doubt that that the child of workng parents "chooses" grows up and chooses to live that way.

You see, I don't think large retailers should be allowed to keep people on such sparse or varied contracts. Give people a proper job ffs, that allows them to know what wages are coming in, to book their childcare, and not feel that they are better off not working.

YANBU OP but the majority will not agree as benefits are their right.

Of course we should protect the disabled who cannot do any form of work or assist households where children cannot access special needs childcare but there are lots who claim they cannot work when they actually could they just dont want to in many cases. Having children does not render anybody incapable of working and being a SAHM is a luxury and one that should be supported by the household not the state. Yes its hard juggling work, a house and childrenmbut millions do it.

I would have like to have seen UC get a little more strict, working mums get 12 months maternity leave so everey new mum should and after that work should be expected unless you can live on the household income alone.

Breaking the benefit cycle and having children grow up in working households and seeing that the nice things in life only come from working can only benefit us in the future.

senior school heads earn 150k? Really? I didn't know it was that much. Thankyou Mumsnet. I've read the whole thread and I'm glad there are many of us who silently agree with my OP, thought I was going stark raving and that MN was inhabited exclusively by naive liberals who think we're all exactly the same and all decent, hardworking members of society. And thanks those of you who agreed that it isn't a tiny insignificant problem which we ought just to ignore because we can't ever change it. I won't accept that defeatist claptrap because I don't want to live in a country like that. And so called statistics are flawed anyway. Just looking at this thread, and the fact that such a high number of us know people commiting benefit fraud shows that it's probably a much more serious.issue. And it.effects society massively: unemployment, poverty, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, crime, violence..overwhelming, the people involved in these acts are stuck somewhere in the welfare trap. It is NOT a small insignificant unimportant minority.

Senior school heads don't earn that amount. Or at least not as the norm.

typing on phone, excuse the lack of paragraphs, crappy phone!

It was a moral argument, charleybarley. I am perfectly capable of making a cogent economic argument when that is what I wish to do.

Of course people choose to live on benefits.
When you get a letter telling you to apply because you are entitled to them, what do you expect people to do? Refuse them.
In an ideal world there would be plenty of jobs, with suitable hours, paying a liveable wage. As this isn't the case of course people choose to live on benefit. Myself included.
If you mean to say that some are deserving and others aren't I can't agree with you, as everybody is entitled to help and support.
Some of the judgemental comments on these threads beggar belief.

Footballers pay is a whole other thread.

I could rant for a year on that topic

Happymummy.

No I'm afraid being a sahm is not a luxury its a right and one I intend to fight to the bitter end to protect.
Many sahms on benefit contribute to society and the economy the same as working parents.
Some of us happen to save the tax payer money by caring for our own children i.e not taking entitlements for free childcare, school funding, etc. As these costs kick in from 3-18 years now, I imagine some sahp have saved the tax payer thousands.
Happymummy I don't think you know much about bringing up dcs from your posts. Especially if you think millions of parents work without receiving any benefit.

autumnlights - people don't want to do badly paid, insecure work which is unfulfilling. Especially when they can see that the fruits of their labour are going ending up funding the lifestyles of the wealthy, through share dividends, and obscenely highly paid CEO's.

TBH it makes me laugh when I hear Tories going on about how FANTASTIC work is compared to living a life on benefits. I think: none of you have ever done minimum wage jobs while living in expensive private sector housing have you?

So yes, a lot of people have been living on a subsistence benefit rather than going out and taking up jobs that would result in many of them having probably an even more miserable lifestyle than they do now.

And until the banking crisis and a large rise in unemployment levels, the country was able to fund people to do this, as well as keep hospitals and schools running, subsidise university education, cut taxes for the middle classes, and pay out millions of pounds in non-means tested benefits to extremely wealthy individuals, of which there are many in the UK. And it managed to afford all this despite the fact that a massive proportion of top earners in this country contribute very little (proportionately) to the revenue pot.

I mean really - whenever we talk about raising more tax from the very richest, people always argue that they would then leave the country or find even more ways to dodge paying. Why is it considered morally acceptable for people who could comfortably pay more and help the country out of the dire situation it's in at the moment, not to do so, because they just don't like the idea of it?

Why is all people's anger directed at those at the bottom of the heap, who are expected to sacrifice a life of leisure (albeit a poverty stricken one) for a life of hard, unpleasant, and sometimes soul destroying work BECAUSE IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO FOR THE COUNTRY?

Why don't we expect rich people to behave in a socially responsible way? Why is there so little censure of people like Tamara Ecclestone, who is spunking away an unearned fortune on gold-plated Jimmy Choos, while the sick and the young are suffering from cutbacks to social welfare?

"An important job though, so the necessity of the salary"

It's always been an important job, but it's only now that people think heads of schools should be made rich out of the public purse.

Not all other countries have the huge wage differentials that we have between bosses and staff.

Yyy to shagmund

"we're all in this together," remember that?

morethanpotatoprints of course being a SAHM is a luxury! Its not a right and never has been.

MyNeighbour.

It has always been a right, why else would you have children? I didn't have children to have somebody else bring them up, of course its my right. I don't want to work as when I did I missed dc and my home life too much.
It is also a childs right to be nurtured, cared for and educated, some of us don't want to out source this to others. What is so wrong with this.

You can quite comfortably be a sahp if you are a single parent in rented accommodation. It's not a luxury, just as it isn't if you are partnered. You might not be living in luxury but it's ok.

I reckon I was in the worst position when I became a single mum with a mortgage. It was my choice to become a home owner but that was before I got pregnant. So my choices were to sell up and spend up and ask to be housed and stay at home or work full-time. I did the latter and we got through it but hell it was hard and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else tbh, whether single or partnered.

MrsDeVere Time and time again we see on mn the rhetoric "oh but it's not true, people don't choose a life on benefits", and yet here on this very thread, within the last 20 posts we have a SAHM who chooses to live on benefits citing some excuse or another.

The majority of mn, the demographic is middle-class well-to-do west london darling high-earners. Their experiences of sink estates are limited. For my own admissions, I've always known there were problems in Birmingham, London, Manchester and Glasgow for example, but until maybe 8 years ago I had no idea that Bristol for example contained swathes and swathes of council estates and grinding poverty. I am under the impression that 30% of the UK population lives like this. It is something which goes unseen on my travels as a middle-class woman. How's that for honesty?

How does a SAHM on benefits contribute to the economy in the same way as a working parent given they are paying no income tax and any spending is done with money already from the public purse?

I didnt take free childcare, is it so hard to fathom that some people actually consider finances before having children rather than let others pay for their lifestyle choice.

I presume you intend to home educate as you wouldnt want teachers raising your children.