Who really gets £500+ weekly state benefits?

[vivizone]

I find this shit so hard to believe. Reading the media, you would think this was a common figure on life on benefits.

Yesterday and today's Metro newspaper - people writing in saying they agree with the cap of £500 and why should people be sat on their arse and be rewarded by £500 per week. . Why should they earn £200 per week working and people are getting £500 a week doing nothing.

Seriously, who gets this £500 per week that is being peddled out of the media? I spent 7 months out of work after redundancy and I could not live on the pittance I received for me and my children. I do not know how people do it. I really don't. I had a decent redundancy package and that was the only way I could make it.

How many people do you know (forget the newspaper stories) that are RECEIVING £500 or more every week? I thought so.

How come if life is/was that cushy on benefits, not enough people are/were packing in their jobs to join a life of riley?

We have been had. Life on benefits is HARD and DEMORALISING. I have tried it and I can tell you you get PEANUTS.

The reason why stories run on people living in million dollar homes/getting thousands a week in benefits is because it is RARE. It is SO rare, that it gets reported on.

I agree if you want to bring down rent then more housing needs to be built. Hopefully that might start to happen now that the government have removed the restrictions on building that put developers off.

Wanting to be paid for the service you provide does not make a landlord greedy.

Sock, I didn't realise that when I replied, but fair point. I get frustrated that child tax credits are called tax credits, it implies you have to pay tax to receive them. But you don't have to pay tax or do anything to get child tax credits, and I think the whole tax credit thing was just some very good marketing by the labour government.

"janey68 Thu 22-Nov-12 20:20:07

No- if you read the thread ...I gave an example of a friend of mine who chooses to work as a classroom assistant rather than a teacher because she gets enough tops ups and fringe benefits to hardly be any worse off.
A system which acts as a disincentive to people to work longer hours or in harder jobs is clearly bonkers. "

That is the sort of simplistic view which does make it all seem bonkers.

The reality is that we need classroom assistants. The number of classroom assistants needed will always be higher than the number of teachers needed.

Taking my DD's special school as an example:

10 children, 1 teacher, 4 teaching assistants.

The class of children doesn't need 5 people planning their next steps, deciding the lesson plans. One teacher can do that. They do need 5 people who are able to facilitate learning and manage behaviour.

There will always be a higher need for low-waged, low-skilled labour. There will always be a premium for high skilled labour.

When your friend moves on and works as a teacher, who will replace her as a classroom assistant? Will she/he then be criticised for being low paid?

If you want people to aspire to higher wages, then wages need to go up. With free education, funded by the state, then revenue would need to go up, which means higher taxes.

I think this topping up part-time work with benefits does need to be looked at. I know somebody who works with people on benefit and a lot of the part time people won't do overtime as it wouldn't be worth their while because they would lose benefit and would be no better off. That simply does not make sense.

Outraged. Correct really but look at it this way

None working family child tax credits used to just be called income support.

Working tax credits used to be called working families tax credits

Working families tax credits was just a jazzed up name for family credit.

This benefit started in 1986 each new name just replaced the previous named benefit and was advertised as doing so.

If we like it or not we will always need low paid workers and sadly its no longer possible to support a family on a low wage like it used to be.

Would you be interested in learning a bit more about mass employer contracts and/ or benefits?

I though income support was separate to tax credits and that you didn't have to be working to get it.

I realise we will always need low paid workers, but we don't need people to have children when they have to claim tax credits to be able to afford them.

Outraged - we do need people to have children, though. A country with a low birthrate has problems. We need young people growing up and becoming workers and carers, otherwise there will be no-one paying taxes when we are retired and no-one to wipe our bums when we are too frail to do it ourselves. Children are a benefit to society and most countries encourage people to have children, with tax breaks and even direct payments.

Children are a benefit to society only if the people that created them can financially support them. If society has to support them then society is not benefiting, society is instead spending a lot of money that it doesn't have.

We need the right people to have children, not the ones that have to rely on child tax credits.

It's a myth that only families living in desirable parts of London are being affected. I live in the South West and the average yearly salary in our county is less than £20,000. The price of an average house around here is £230,000 - 14 times the average wage. Housing benefit for a 3 bed house in our city is capped at £790 per month. There are currently only 2 properties to rent in the entire city for less than this amount.

This is where those £millions of benefits are going - straight into the pockets of the landlords. These vast sums we see being quoted are not going to the families at all, and they will have to use benefits money which should be spent on food, heating or clothing to make up the difference in rent and avoid being made homeless. Successive governments have failed to implement any sort of rent controls, and this is the result. Setting a cap on housing benefit now, at the top of the market. is completely pointless, it should have been done YEARS ago, and this situation would never have arisen.

Lougle- I am not disputing that We need classroom assistants! I think some people are wilfully misreading posts on here! I actually think classroom assistants do an important job.

My point is quite simply that a classroom assistant working, say, 30 hours a week should get twice as much money as one who does the same job for 15 hours. And a teacher should get more again. And the headteacher should get more than the class teacher. Greater responsibility, and longer numbers of hours worked should be rewarded. It's not to say that those in lower grade jobs shouldnt get a decent wage- of course they should- but people doing harder jobs which involve stress, open ended hours etc should get more. If the people working part time, or in easier jobs end up getting tops and benefits which bring them almost to the level of someone working longer/ harder, then frankly - and this is my key point, you may as well not have any difference in wages, because the end result is the same. What matters to Jane bloggs is being able to pay her rent, council text, bills and get a filling at he Dentist when she needs one. If she can get those things working fewer hours in an easier job, why would she work longer hours in a harder job to end up with the same disposable income?

OMG the right people to have children

Yes let us sterilise the wastrels eh.

Amber, yes, in response to a post about society needing children.

"You cannot get £381 a week hb for a 1 bed in central London. If you are privately renting then you would receive LHA ad the max you can get per week is £250 for a 1 bed in central London. Only social housing tennants can recieve hb "

apologies if it has already been covered but i'm assuming it's only in central london that you cant get HB unless you are a social housing tenant? why is it different for london?

Seriously i can not believe what i have just read.

So because i need child benefit and child tax credit i shouldnt have my daughter.

I would like to know how many people in this country get no benefits whatsoever. No child benefit, no tax credits, no housing benefit. I bet the number is very low.

Janey.

A ta working 15 hours would receive no wtc they would have to work at least 16

They would also get an additional premium for working 30 hours

Iamso. Local housing allowance is what private tenants get, hb is what social tenants get both are paid by the same office.

And outraged did you really just agree with snipping poor people?

janey68, can you show me an example of this working please?

"I don't have any issue with people choosing to work 15 hours a week if they can afford to do so. What I take issue with is a system which makes it possible to work 15 hours a week and get topped up to a level where someone working more hours in the same job, or working in a significantly more difficult and stressful job with more responsibility, is hardly any better off. How is such a system supposed to work? Where is the incentive to do more diffiicult, stressful work, or to work more hours? What if we all want to work part time in easy low stress jobs? Who are the poor sods who do the full time difficult jobs? "

providing the person on 15 hrs isnt at the dentist getting root canal work once a week or getting 5 prescriptions a month, how are they both coming home with the same wage??

I'd really like to see an actual example of this, the idea that a full time worker in a difficult job will come home with the same as a part timer in a low wage job is ridiculous

examples please

how very short sighted of you outraged. children are children for only 18 years as far as supporting them is concerned (i think it's 19 if they are still in FT education?) they are tax paying adults for alot longer than that afterwards and alot of them are your 'right' kind of people who have children without needing tax credits to support them so they are raising children to further contribute to society down the line.

but of course we could just let you decide who is the right type of person to have children and see where that gets you in your twilight years when there is no pension at all and no staff to help you bathe or get into bed or cook your meals.

sockreturning i am in NI and i rent privately but i recieve HB. perhaps it's different here?

The fundamental problem in this country that no political party seems to want to address is that house prices are way to high, both to rent and to buy. We can't afford to buy our own house, yet we are deemed wealthy enough to lose some of our child benefit next year. So, we are stuck with renting a very small house as that's all we can afford. It is nothing special and needs a lot of work both inside and outside. It was one of the cheapest houses we could find in the area. As we have to pay high rent to a landlord, we are not able to save much in the way of a deposit for our own place. We couldn't afford the high prices in any case. The bottom line is that we are paying our landlord's mortgage and are unlikely to be able to afford to buy our own place any time soon. If we are in this situation, how on earth do families earning less than £30k manage? We need more affordable family homes and I think there really does need to be some kind of tax on multiple property owners or this situation will only get much worse.

FFS, some of you people really do just read what you want to, never mind what is actually on the screen in front of you.

I'm not advocating 'snipping' anyone. But if you can't see for yourselves that society needs more net contributors and less people who take out far more in financial benefits than they will put in, then there's not much point in me trying to explain.

ssd - I gave an example of my friend upthread. Don't blame me if you choose to not believe it!

just to make you all jealous...my 3 bed, 2 downstairs rooms and kitchen, front and back garden house costs me £420 pcm :)

you can buy a 3 bed house round here for £50k, horrble areas tho lol

i think i'm quite lucky where i live too mama my rent is 450pcm. the house is small, very small and a tiny garden not attatched to the house but the area is great. it's a terrace but it's in a great location and my neighbour sold a house recently for £69k which i think is quite good. i never want to move tbh.

what, you friend who works as a TA and is coming home with the same as a teacher?

break it down for me then, show me the actual money involved and I'll believe you

or did she tell you this and you believe her without knowing actual earnings?

She chooses to work as a classroom assistant, because with the top ups she gets including tax credits, childcare subsidies, HB council tax and things like free dental care mean that she has the same disposable income as she would if she works as a teacher. I know this because she has told me. In her words, why work longer and harder for no actual gain. I said all this upthread ssd- as I say, I'm not asking you to believe me because clearly you're choosing not to.

Plenty of other examples too on this thread (and others) from people who have found first hand that working longer doesn't pay.