To think that a 23k benefits cap will drive some families in the SE

[Minifingers9]

... Into destitution?

I live in a pretty unappealing and comparatively cheap part of greater London but you can't get a 3 bedroom rental for under £1400 a month.
If we lost our jobs we wouldn't be able to live on 23k a year as a family of 5. Not when 15k of it was going on rent.
Why don't they have regional benefit caps?

YANBU. We moved from the North where I was a sahm and dh earning £16,000pa to the South East, for a job where he earned £30,000pa. We were stone broke, had absolutely nothing. Ended up taking anything of any value to cash converters. Didn't have a spare pound for a toddler group. Had no car because we couldn't afford the MOT and no money to catch a bus. It was f*ing miserable. We were much worse off than we had been with almost half the income in the North.

I presume your not talking about me JellyBean?

Justanotherlucker,
No sorry I was speaking to Lotus.

Thank you though, for posting those articles I actually had no idea about the measures they were taking!

The point about Candles is she works 40 hours a week for her £12,000 and then pays tax and NI on that when there are people who do nothing and are given £26,000 currently on which they pay no tax or NI. It isn't about her 'working herself into a froth' as you so dismissively said SillyStuffBiting.

Many couples work and brng up a family on less than £23,000 and pay tax and NI. They live within their means as we all should do. People on benefits should not be better off than people who work. It is unjust.

And yes, people should have to move for work or to live somewhere cheaper. People have always moved for work, why shouldn't they do so now? I bet we all have grandparents, parents or great grandparents who moved around the country for work. Mine came from Ireland and Scotland, Lancashire and rural Northumberland to Newcastle to dig roads, work in mines because there was work there. DH and I can't afford a house in the village we would really like to live in so we live where we can afford. We have saved for two years so I can have a year's maternity leave. We are not expecting someone else to pay for that extra time.

There is a whole group in society in this country who don't take responsibility for themselves and their choices and expect the state to support them.

To those who think £23,000 is nothing. That is the salary of a NHS nurse (minus tax ) with an average of 7 years working experience post degree. If I had no qualifications and would never in my wildest dreams earn that amount post tax It would be a no brainier to reject the supermarket cashier/ cleaner/ macdonalds type job and live off state benefits. My dcs would also get free school meals/ pupil premium and we would all get free nhs dental treatments and prescriptions. For those reasons State benefits really need to be made contributory and time limited for the able bodied. The government should also do away with TC and make employers pay a living wage.

Blossom most people would agree with you. When state benefits were set up the idea was it would be temporary help for a short period whilst you were out of work. A lot of the rest of Europe has contributory benefits (like national insurance). We used to have a big difference between those claiming out of work benefits who had an NI record and those on a much lower level. Nowadays there seems not too much difference.

Except that people rarely get the full £26k/£23k in benefits & therefore the amount of people who are solely on benefits are not better off on benefits.
9/10 you will always be better off working. It's such a misconception that people are automatically better off on benefits?! I don't know where that's come from!

I had to leave London in order to be able to afford a family. I live in Yorkshire, a four hour drive from my elderly family.

I think that there should be a short term higher rate for people in London. So if you lose your job you aren't automatically turfed out of your home because you can't afford. A reasonable amount of time to find a new job, say a year.

But I disagree with funding long-term housing benefit for people to live in areas which are too expensive for working people to live in. It traps them in a cycle of not working, because they can't afford to lose their housing benefit. And it's also deeply unfair on people who work and contribute but are priced out because they have done the right thing and got a job. Especially when you consider many of them will either have to have moved away from their families or have such long commutes they see little of their children.

It would be great if the cost of living forced people to move out of London and the south east to get jobs, reducing pressure on housing and deflating the bubble.

What you don't want is to have people with jobs living in one part of the UK and people on benefits in the other.

The average family gets nowhere near £23k on benefits.

We get: ESA as a couple, ctc for my two children, ct benefit (we still need to pay some of it), cb and PIP for me.

In total we get approximately £13-14k a year. We get no housing benefit as we have a mortgage, we still have all our bills to pay, travel costs for teen to get her to school and have a car to get us to hospital appointments. I don't get a high rate OR mobility so no free car. We do not live a life of luxury and I don't understand why people think if they give up a job they will just get handed £23k. It doesn't work like that.

I have medicals, fill out endless forms and have to constantly justify why I am still disabled. If I didn't get PIP we would be £2500 a year worse off.

Why on earth should it be the case that working people have to live within their means but those who rely on the state feel entitled to live within their wants?

Raging- I don't think it's a simple equation of
'Most people will be better off working than being on benefits.' I agree that that may well be true.
BUT what I do believe is that there often isn't enough of a difference between, say, working p/t and working f/t. The 16 hour minimum to qualify for tax credits is misguided.... It's meant as an incentive to get people out of work into doing something, but it's become a kind of benchmark for many people. I mean, why work more than 16 hours (which is less than half time!) if youre going to be topped up to not much different to f/t work?

Unfortunately what was intended as an incentive has turned out to be a disincentive in some ways. You also have to factor in things like free prescriptions and other benefits which can add up to making not a huge differential between those who aren't entitled to any benefits and those who are.

I don't think anyone is arguing against the welfare state as it was intended, but many people have a lot of misgivings about what it's become

cough mobility cars aren't free cough

The problem is that so many jobs are very unattractive that benefits seem attractive in comparison.

No-one should be working for £6/hr, that's a sign of disequilibrium.

I don't see anyone equating giving up a job and automatically getting 23k in benefits, the argument is that somehow capping benefits at 23k is going to make families destitute, and the relatively small number who do recieve this amount shouldn't be expected to adhere to the same social constraints that the rest of the population generally follows.

It's not a race to the bottom/envy or anything of the sort. It's a basic acknowledgement that the OP didn't consider any kind of low paid workers or their scenarios and the fact a regional benefits system would enhance the disparity between regions and would cause ghettos.

Ninky, that's not actually true though. People may have to exchange certain benefits for them but the person themselves is having it provided by the state not their own earnings so technically it is free to them.

That's right but wages are only this low because benefits are available to top them up. Without the benefits no one would work for £6 and so employers would have to pay properly.

If the market is suppressed enough to enable the job to be offered at £6 an hour then there are wider issues at play.

Yes but that is the point. It does not matter how unattractive a job is. If you are unemployed you should take any job- the state is not responsible until something comes up that is attractive. That is the mentality that has got us into this mess- an entitlement mentality. 'I am entitled to a well-paid job, a nice house, a car, an iPhone, Sky TV, and until that job that appeals to me comes along, the State should provide me with enough money to keep me and my family comfortable- more than to tide us over'.

Without benefits nobody would work for £6.00 .....
So what would they do then ?

I know a lone non working mother living with 3 dcs in a 3 bed HA house who gets £24,000 in benefits approximately £500 pw she claims her dp does not live with her and makes no financial contribution and tells everyone who will listen. She gets income support, child tax credits, housing benefits, child benefits. Her dcs also get fsm , pupil premium and free spaces at breakfast club at school. She has also spaced out her dcs so she is never obliged to look for work. She is also part of a clique of mums who have worked out how to max out the benefit system. I really resent having to contribute to their lifestyle as I'm rushing to work after dropping off dc at nursery and they hang outside yakking away while their dcs get the free 2 year old nursery places whike I have to pay for mine. < rant over>

Exactly Seensheen and if the government reduced WTC to force employers to raise wages it would be met initially with how evil the government was for introducing such policies, to the cost of living generally going up due to inflation and no one being any better of in the grand scheme of things.

The underlying problem in all of these scenarios is the cost of housing, everyone wants something done as long as thier own personal 'wealth' is effected. This is the knife edge we are on as a country.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I think it's pretty shoddy to choose a life of living off the taxpayer. On the other, I think it's pretty shoddy to not pay a living wage. Labor is certainly dehumanised.

I'll remain on the fence, I guess.

BlossomTang at aged 5 this mother you know will be required to get a job and with few skills and a big gap in her cv she'll be bottom of the pile, you will be five years ahead with your mortgage and pension payments, it really is a very short term gain she thinks she's getting.

The youngest child turning 5 years old I meant, people can't keep having babies forever !