"Benefits are a lifestyle choice for so many these days"

[Bellerina2]

I'm on the bus and two women behind me are having a long conversation about perceived benefit cheats and one of them just said the above phrase. WIBU to hit her over the head with a rolled up copy of the Guardian??

But seriously, it's so depressing that people think this. Well done to the government and likes of the Sun and Daily Mail for convincing people that those on benefits are leading some sort of charmed life

I think for some it is a lifestyle choice, yes.
But it's not much of a lifestyle to aspire to is it?
They are hardly living the good life :(

Of course.

People choose to become disabled. People choose for their families to be born or become disabled.
People choose to be made redundant after many years in the same role and then choose to be unable to secure further work as the local employment market is stagnant.
People choose to be made redundant by a few large retailers and then choose to go back there and do their old jobs in workfare.

All lifestyle choices

It's bollocks. It isn't a lifestyle it's an existence. An unecessarily stressful one at that.

Yes I have a friend who chose to get run over by a driver without a license or insurance and lose his leg. How he loves choosing to claim DLA!!

Yes it is a lefestyle choice for many although some f those are caught in the benefit trap. I have lone parent colleauges whose kids are teenagers who do minimal hours but would be no better off doing more hours as they would lose benefits. Is it a lifestyle choice for them to claim large amounts of top up benefits? They do have the choice to work more hours but turn the extra work down.

It is a lifestyle choice for some.

However, I don't believe the choice is very meaningful.

It's usually the choice between benefits and horrible, low paid, unreliable work.

It's just as ridiculous to say nobody does this to say everyone does it.

Of course there are plenty of people who have no intention of ever working. It's madness to say nobody is like this. It's also madness to think there aren't plenty of people who would do anything to work.

People think this because it does happen. For a long time under the labour government people could quite easily choose to live on benefits rather than provide for themselves if they had children.

It's getting better now and healthy people are no longer allowed to languish on benefits for Yeats, but it happened for long enough that it's perfectly understandable why people think it's still happening. Especially as a small number do still get away with it.

You are naive if you think no one has ever actively chosen to claim benefits rather than work. Very naive.

Every single time.

Just because there are many people for whom living on benefits is not a lifestyle choice, it does not follow that there are no people who have actively chosen to live on benefits.

It is a lifestyle choice for some. I know someone who 'retired' (his words) at 18 and has lived on benefits ever since. He's now nearing what would normally be considered retirement age. He's an expert in getting away with it and I have no idea how he managed all these years.

It's probably quite true if you count tax credits- and I include myself in that btw,

Of course tax credits are included, they are benefits.

It is a lifestyle choice for some because work doesn't pay. I wouldn't want to work for the same money as staying at home once childcare is factored in. Affordable childcare and a hike in minimum wage would help.
It's not an easy lifestyle and for many it isn't through choice either.

It is offensive to lump working tax credit and child tax credit with benefits paid to those who are work shy.

The clue is in working

Not everyone has had the luxury of study nor the opportunity to earn more.

gamerwidow - I was about to make that point. Perhaps if working offered a reward that would - gasp - pay the rent and leave you enough for food, more people would 'choose' it. the fact is work does not pay, that was calculated in under a Labour Government who used it to justify mass immigration and spread about the pernicious lie that 'British people are too lazy to work'.
I would not want this to turn into any kind of immigrant bashing thread though.

It's hard to live on benefits long term unless you have a long term health condition. However you could conceivably stay on income support for years if you have babies spaced far enough apart.
The idea of dole dossers signing on indefinitely has become a thing of the past though as claiming jsa has become much harder.

Claiming tax credits whilst working is only a lifestyle choice in as much as having more money coming in than going out is a lifestyle choice.
LP here working 30 hours in a professional job, live in a rented house just about the average rent for this area and I couldn't make ends meet Without tax credits.

It is a lifestyle choice for some. They think there's no point in working as they'd be no better of on benefits and in some cases worse off. It's the system that has caused the problem not individuals.

I don't see why people are putting examples of people claiming for genuine reasons to disprove that for some it is a lifestyle choice. Yes it may not be much of a lifestyle but some people would rather live like that than work. Bishop and Sunny just because they are in genuine need as are the majority it doesn't mean some people claim when they don't have to

I agree with gamer that even if people make the choice, it's choice governed by factors like poor pay and working conditions and lack of childcare options.

Sorting these things out would benefit society much more than demonising those on benefits.

Also, even in cases like dotty's example, I don't think it's as simple as 'Oh they're lazy and they think the world owes them a living'. Attitudes like not valuing education and not encouraging/supporting children to attend school don't just arise out of the blue; in some families these attitudes have become ingrained over generations and are surely only reinforced by some people's experience and perception of work as coming with poor pay and conditions.

"If you'd only be £50 better off a week working, some people perceive it as not worth it - 'why should I work for £1 an hour"

Exactly dotty Although I would add (as pp have) that sometimes its a question of being worse off in work- once transport, childcare and work related expenses are taken into account.

Change the income tapers on Housing Benefit (just for example) and see how many people make a different choice.

I would also add that its not always easy to see how moving into work will effect finances- it can take a proffessional welfare rights advisor to answer that question and even then, you can't assume the DWP and LA will handle the change efficiently and not leave you with massive gaps in your income.

Obviously people make choices (some are in more of a position to choose than others) but you have to look at the context of that choice, otherwise its meaningless.

Agree OnlyLovers it is a generational thing and its only getting worse as it is probably now three generations deep in the UK. Haven't got a bloody clue what the answer is though, can't stop the benefits altogether, the job market cant support employing uneducated people in positions that pay more than benefits so what's next?
Benefits are supposed to support us in life but for so many (disabled, redundant, etc) they dont live up to the mark because it is imposible to sort out the deserving from the not so deserving.

I don't see why people are putting examples of people claiming for genuine reasons to disprove that for some it is a lifestyle choice

Absolutely this. Some strange comments that would only be relevant if it was being stated that all benefits claimants don't work out of choice.

I think the majority of recipients of 'top up' benefits would prefer to be paid a living wage.
"on benefits" when working a 40 hour week is insane.

It is hurtful to be judged for earning a low wage.

I love the way you assume that those women have been brainwashed by the Sun and the Mail, op.

I live on a mixed estate of Owner Occupier and Housing Association, and we have a few families that have been living off benefits since the mid 90s. To say this annoys some of the other families on the estate would be an understatement. Interestingly, the people that get really apoplectic about it are those that also live in the HA houses but go out to work and pay rent -- probably because they have exactly the same lifestyle as the benefit families (same homes, same landlord, same costs), only they have to get up at 6.30am every day and work Saturdays to boot.

Maybe it is down to where I live and grew up, but I really do think some people live on another planet when it comes to this issue. To me, the idea that benefits are not seen by many people as an alternative way to fund their life choices is just bizarre.

I can only imagine those people live in very nice areas and went to nice schools.

I know a lot of people that live off benefits: friends, family members, old school friends, children of my parent's friends, neighbours. An old ex-boyfriend of mine even managed to claim the full range of disability benefits during the noughties, and saved huge amounts of money by living in India for nine months of every year. Those benefits just piled up and up in his bank account. Over the last twenty years, he has probably worked for about eighteen months in total, but still has a rather nice one bed flat in a conservation area of London, seventeen years worth of rent paid for by housing benefit of course, and a fat wedge in the bank, courtesy of the tax-payers of Britain.

I can't actually think of one case where the person or family in question actually has an issue with disability or illness, or was pushed into claiming because of family breakup.

If you cut out pensioners, people with disabilities, people living in areas of high unemployment, people who claim 'working' benefits, and people who are temporarily claiming benefits because they have just lost their job, how many people does that leave?

Meanwhile, are there loads of employers complaining that they can't find enough workers who will work full-time?

Some benefits can be a lifestyle choice for some, but what is the alternative? don't claim what you are entitled to and do without?
The gov have made some people dependant on benefits because wages are too low, hardly the fault of the person claiming.

Then there are the other benefits, the out of work type or DLA, income support etc. The benefits people rely on because they are unemployed or ill or disabled. I'm sure this isn't a lifestyle anybody would choose.

I always wonder where the heads are of people who make statements like benefits are a lifestyle choice.
You either take what you are entitled to or you don't that's the only choice.
In this I include a sahp too whose family would lose financially should they become employed.