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.

great Carol, I'm so relieved you know what's what

Where would the £500 a month come from. There is littl point if the state gives us £500 a month then taxes us to oblivion to pay for it. There will be very little incentive to work hard.

MaxPepsi

What you spend it on would be up to you. Maybe you would work fewer hours? Employ a cleaner or gardener or both? Use it to pay for a holiday?

It has been tried on some small communities and people still worked.

Ridiculous. Hopefully we'd be able to convert all of our assets to gold before the country went bankrupt and started raiding bank accounts.

sashh only because they knew it was a limited trial

Incidentally, the cost of living is significantly higher in Finland, so I presume that they would pay housing benefit, disability benefits, child benefits etc on top of the £500 per month.

I don't know how other countries deal with housing (except for the ones I have lived in), but Britain "solves" the problem of expensive housing a rather silly way in my opinion. Housing benefit is a terrible solution to expensive housing, as is evidenced by the complete housing disaster we call London. We need more housing, not more demand through housing benefit, and less planning permission red tape.

True. So what will a single parent with, say, four small kids get? Just the £500?

don't know, which is why I think such a scheme will have trouble working. The point of this blanket 500/month is to eliminate all the bureaucracy and exceptions, but people will fall through the crack. It's completely unworkable if every child is given this 500/month, but as you point out it will leave single mothers out to dry. There is no point in this scheme if were retain all the complexities we already have.

The problem is that we have a dysfunctional economy where people in full time work need benefits to make ends meet, and the main driving force behind that is that housing costs too much.

The system we have here is pretty good , we need to weed out the benefits cheats which would free up more cash for genuine cases, benefits arnt free money it comes from the tax payer,

but benefits cheats aren't the problem.

Think about this: where can the many low wage people in London live without benefits? It's absolutely impossible. Zone 3 is out of reach now for low wage people, forget zones 1&2 (in fact, I bet I am completely out of touch here as well. My guess is zone 3 is far too expensive). So, it's not the cheats, it's a system where housing has been chronically below building targets for about 20 years. We now have by far the smallest dwellings in Europe (much smaller than similarly dense Netherlands).

I love CI threads. They always bring the frothers out of the woodwork.

Plenty of economists, for two centuries, from both right and left, have thought CI is a a good idea. But as a pp up thread said, we are so wedded to our current broken, fucked economic system that anything as radical as this immediately gets shouted down by the alright-jacks, shrieking about 'something-for-nothing' and 'my taxes'.

Because working all the hours God sends for a fucking pittance is some kind of Moral Good, apparently, and no one should ever consider any other way of life. And that's why it'll never happen here, so no need to panic.

Oneleg - nice summary and bang on.

I'd love to see a trial happen over here. It sounds like it could be brilliant, but as someone earlier said, the devil would be in the details. Also, I think regional variations would be required at present due to such vastly differing housing costs across the country.

Oneleg - love it.

Oneleg's post is hilarious. Absolutely no discussion of the advantages of the system, or addressing any of the potential flaws pointed out on the thread. Just accusing anyone who disagrees as frothing, followed by two paragraphs of frothing.

I've discussed the idea on many previous threads, badlad. Am merely pointing out that they always go the same way. There's plenty of good info up thread, no need for me to repeat it.

If you say so, but your mentioning of "frothing" just seeming to be some exhortation that people who disagree with you should shut up. I scrolled down the thirty of so posts prior to yours, and saw plenty both in favour of this and not agreeing with it, but nothing that was frothing, certainly compared to yours.

If you're including disabled people in this then no, not very fair. My brother in law gets more than this a month as he is incapable of working due to disability.

I'd love to see a trial happen over here.

So would I.

Maybe a region or city will try it, like the Canadian local trial? That's probably the best chance, but not a big chance.

And I say the above as a fairly conservative leaning person. Also I don't think £500 a month is anywhere near enough to live on and a lot of people simply can't work.

Oneleg, I dont see many people disagreeing with the idea in principle, just pointing out all of the ways it wouldnt work with the current UK economic setup.

Many lovely ideas have been suggested by economists over many years, that we should work fewer hours, that we should share all resources equally between everyone, that the CI should be brought in, they are all potentially great in principle. They wont work in the UK without ripping out most of our economic and political structure and starting again.

Show me a practical plan of how to bring it in in real life and actually make it work for more people than the current system works with, and I'm quite happy to listen, but "many people think we should have it!" isn't enough to convince me.

I agree the £500 figure would need to be revised.

Is this a left-wing idea? Early in the thread people seem to be saying it is right wing? It seems to be crossing the spectrum which is interesting.

I've just realised you're actually talking about giving absolutely everyone £500 whether they need it or not. Tbh that's ridiculous, as much as I would like an extra £500 a month I in no way need it and would end up giving it away as I wouldn't feel comfortable. What's the point in giving well off people extra money instead of people that need it - don't understand the reasoning behind it.

This would really benefit me. I am one of those disabled people who can work a bit, but can't work full time. £500 would cover the necessities if it was per person. My family could live on this fine. I could work when I can for the extras.

I am in favour of CI, as well. Because the simple truth is that there is no need for everyone to 'work' all the time ie perform tasks for the benefit of an employer. Most necesssary tasks are, or can be, automated. Most 'jobs' these days are pointless. Yes, there are jobs which need to be done by someone, and the way to get these done when people do not necessarily need to sell their labour is to pay good wages and treat workers with respect and courtesy.
Right now people who do not have a 'decent' job (ie one which is fairly paid, secure, where the employee is treated fairly and works in safe conditions) are told they do not 'work' hard enough and the Government is actively involved in trying to force them to waste their time obeying pointless orders and engaging in pointless activities to make sure they know their place. The obsession with waged work is all about keeping the 'lower orders' under control - their labour is only going to be needed intermittently but they mustn't be allowed to believe they are in charge of their own lives.

And PIP does not meet the extra costs of being disabled. I have lots of extra costs, I don't qualify for PIP as I can use a microwave to cook and can wash myself without help with wet wipes. DLA is being phased out and was about the extra costs of being disabled. PIP has a much higher criteria.
Social Services fund direct payments for those who need carer help. So it would make sense for these still to exist.

It's also true that simply giving money to the poor is the thing that makes the most sense economically. Where there is massive, massive economic inequality, the situation becomes unsustainable. You can't make millions from running a chain of pound shops if no one's got a pound to buy the stuff they sell, after all. When the poorest have a bit more money, they spend it locally - they go and get a cup of tea in the cafe, or a drink in the pub; they buy a new pair of shoes or have a haircut. Then the cafe owner, the publican, the hairdresser, etc, have more money and might take on more staff or buy a new car or something - the trickle UP economic model is far more effective than 'trickle down' which doesn't work at all.

Cleaty sorry to hear you don't get enough help. My BIL's DLA payments have gone up in recent years so I don't think it's being phased out? I thought DLA was the provide the person with adequate money for a dignified life rather than for costs of o

Yeah this is the problem stormtreader. I'm quite attracted to the idea, but I can't for the life of me see how we could implement it. In no small part because of some of the issues oneleg highlights, though.