To love the idea of scrapping all benefits and just giving everyone £500 a month

[DyslexicScientist]

Like Finland are going to do.

Would get rid of all the east that goes on with means testing and would cost about the same.

Would be much fairer as the current system does discriminate against certain demographics.

I was being offensive OP because I pointed out a flaw which would adversely affect disabled people.

Hi all - unfortunately we do have doubts about the OP here.

However, there has been some sensible debate, despite the goady OP, and so would you like us to keep the thread up to allow the discussion to continue?

Angelos 49% of the welfare on your tax statement is pensions. What do you want to do? Shoot old people?

I think it's obvious that there would need to be a higher amount to cover those with disabilities or with disabled dependents.

I also think that to be able to discuss the idea properly we need to move away from the £500 figure

And Becca I wouldn't want to see it stand sue to some of the attitudes and ignorance around disability

Please keep the thread up! I am finding it fascinating!

I think it's a complete load of nonsense. If everyone was getting £500 a month, do you honestly think prices for services, from building to window cleaning wouldn't go up? The people proving goods and services would just take into consideration that those people, who are not poor, can now afford to pay more. The poor sods who need extra to live on would, yet again, suffer. If they give everyone the same amount then the government would say cuts would have to be made to pay for it, or taxes have to go up! It would just be a merry-go-round and we'd all end up back at square one.

Proving* providing.

So, basically - if I've got this right - the better-off in our society wouldn't suddenly get a free gift of £500 each, to add to their salary? Their tax codes would be adjusted to claw this back so their total income remains unaltered? This would make it much more acceptable. And I don't suppose it would be that complex a task to adjust income tax codes as it is the same amount to be applied to everyone.

That still leaves the problem of the £500 - or whatever amount is decided - not being enough for the long-term unemployed but, if extra benefit were still to be available to them, I suppose the scheme might work.

Basically, if this is a scheme simply to cut down the huge cost of administrating the benefits system, thus increasing the amount of money available for government spending, I can see why it might gain support.

I don't necessarily buy your argument staywithme but you've touched on a good point about taxes that nobody seems to have made yet. Which is that this would have to go hand in hand with removal of the personal allowance. The CI would be your personal allowance. I don't claim to know whether this would mean the income tax take going up or down, but there would presumably be more people paying it if every working adult was doing so. There are millions of people whose earnings don't meet the income tax threshold at present. Maybe people wouldn't like that since we've got quite used to being able to earn a fairly substantial amount without income tax kicking in.

Staywithme - you are assuming that everyone would chose to be better off (take the money and earn the same as they do now on top) I really don't think that would happen, speaking for myself we live well enough on the money we earn now - if this money were given to us I would work less hours so we would earn the same but our quality of life would be better

Yes the number of people who would choose to work either not at all or less than now would likely be significant.

Bettercall
Unfortunately HMRC doesn't have a great record with tax codes
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11352114/Millions-with-multiple-incomes-at-risk-of-shock-tax-bills.html
"People with more than one income, whether from pensions, PAYE employment or a mixture of the two, are being allocated their personal tax-free allowance multiple times. It means the tax codes issued for their various income sources are incorrect, so not enough tax is taken. Often the mistakes are discovered by HMRC years later, leading to unexpected tax demands."

If you vary the amount based on circumstances, you lose most of the admin saving.
Better off people will not have any more money as tax rates will have to rise to pay it.
Anyone who gets more than currently will need to be funded, either by losers or by higher taxes - effectively neutral for everyone or hit the lowest paid hardest.

I remember reading about the Canadian experiment, it allowed people stuck in minimum wage jobs to not be afraid to have a go at what they really wanted to do, start a small business, become an artist, because they knew their very basic needs were being met by a guaranteed income, its a very interesting example of how some people are held back by not being able to afford to take the risk.

The savings to allow it come from removing all the means testing though, and we have already said that as soon as you widen the scope to apply to all people, means testing suddenly becomes necessary again due to peoples individual circumstances, and therefore the savings that are supposed to be funding it start getting funnelled away into admin costs.

Chaz -Yes, it would definitely help if the HMRC were efficient!

Would you be able to survive on £1000 a month if you could live in a SH one bed for the two of you at, say, £300 a month U2? If not, how much extra do you think would be needed for a disabled person?

Two of us with left over of £700 a month after rent? Yeah, we could manage.

Where the fuck is it all going? Most people shouldn't rely on any type of welfare surely?

what country do you live in? HB alone is accessed by a very large number of people. Welfare in the UK isn't designed as a safety net. People are meant to collect for life because the cost of living is so high.

Love the idea of a citizen's wage, coupled with proper taxation of corporations (including landlords and international subsidiary structures)...however you'd need to be very careful with the transition, considerations like:

1. People who wouldn't be getting enough due to special circumstances (disabilities, large families, care responsibilities)
2. You'd need regulation of things like care homes, private rental sector to make sure they don't just jack up their prices to x% of the citizen's wage overnight
3. What happens to all the people in the civil service who've doing the administration- are they redeployed into e.g. combatting tax avoidance, regulation of rental sectors, made redundant?

Higher rate dla/pip is about £530 a month so those people would need at least £530 on top.

Wouldn't inflation rise accordingly?

Pretty sure Frank Field suggested this to Tony Blair after the 1997 election - not a new idea and one that I quite like the idea of...
We would pay higher taxes to cover it -so if you were working you wouldn't be £500 better off ...
I think it would could down fraud and bureaucracy (make a lot of civil servants unemployed though), stop sanctions, allow people who can't get full time work the freedom to do casual work where they could and be better off...
Many years ago I ran into a crazy situation trying to retrain after being seriously ill - I didn't claim benefits and worked several part time jobs for most of it but at one point when I tried to work less and claim just whilst I took my exams I couldn't carry on doing my best paid job (so costing the state £10 per week top up) - I had to give it up and cost them £55 per week...and if I had had not worked before (so not paid enough NI) I would have been fine -even the guy in the job centre agreed it was crazy.

they should split out the pensions/pip part of the welfare bill, it just gets people annoyed that a big part of their tax goes there - i'd rather see how much goes to people of working age who 'could work'

I could manage on £576 per month plus all my rent covered by Housing Benefit (£397.04), but just because I could, doesn't mean everyone could, so YABU.

Fell - you've taken out pensions at 49% and disability benefits at around 10% you're left with 41% 'working age'.

This group includes carers who are unable to work, lone parents of under 2 year olds. Of the 41% about 12-15% is ALL JSA, both long and short term claims.

The biggest chunk of 'working age' is tax credits.