'I'm only not paying my bills because employers aren't paying me'

[Lanark2]

Am I being unreasonable to think 'why should I pay my bills to you, the employers of the world, when you aren't paying the employees of the world enough to pay their bills?

Its gets me so annoyed..the ONLY reason I am not paying my bills is because I don't have enough money. The reason I don't have enough money is I'm not paid enough, the reason I'm not paid enough is because we all used to borrow.. BECAUSE WE WERENT PAID ENOUGH .. And the only reasons employers could pay not enough was because we have been trained not to argue, with them, then borrow... Now it's all not working (again) why should I pay my bills...

Can't I just forward them to my crappy employers??

There are tasks that need to be done, and the people who do them should be properly paid, but this idea that everyone should work as in be an employee, is nonsense. There are not enough tasks to occupy every able-bodied adult and as automation increases, there will be fewer and fewer.

that's a theory from about 20 years ago, and hasn't come to pass at all. Those machines don't build themselves, nor repair themselves. What automation does is shift labour, but it also makes us more productive. Almost no one grows their own food anymore, because we only need about 0.1% of the population doing that to have an adequate food supply. Machines have made that possible. What didn't happen is that everyone who isn't a farmer lost their job - people are doing other things.

There is in fact plenty of work, if the government would let people do it and train them. We have plenty of people with a lot of money, practically begging for someone to build them a home, and there is no one and nowhere to do this. I would argue that wages aren't too low, but the cost of living here is too high (these are in fact very different problems), and that is largely because housing is too expensive (south east centric here).

Yes but Downstairs, that 22k only for a newly qualified teacher in their first year. Many teachers earn 30-45k or more. Which is a very good salary anywhere outside of the South East.

Which begs the question of the OP, if you have to work 3 jobs, don't have a social network round you and can't afford the basics, why not move somewhere cheaper?

Or if you do actually want advice on how to pay for the things you choose to consume or use, there are plenty of people here able to help with budgeting of you're willing to make some changes.

Well said Amarok.

I am going to hide this thread now because it is irritating me. Some people don't want to consider the bigger picture.

Of course it is so much easier making the usual arguments about poor starving orphan types, evil capitalists, exploitative bosses, climate change or whatever etc before you turn on your 40 inch telly (that uses the electricity of five light bulbs) to watch poverty porn and avoid paying your bills and then tut to yourself about the cost of living. FFS. No wonder we never move on as a society.

Get off your frigging high horse and DO SOMETHING about it if you care so much.

If everyone has enough to live on, then they can choose to take on extra tasks for employers, or not - but employers will have to pay employees properly and treat them fairly.

Rubbish. It will just inflate prices so much that it will be essential to have a job on top of a basic income to survive. In fact, it would likely become a state subsidy on extremely low wages for companies who make huge profits. And who would pay for this if people didn't have to work? Companies wouldn't pay all the tax, they'd relocate overseas, especially as the market for their products in this country would likely collapse as one section of society would just have enough to live on and the other would be paying huge taxes to support that so nobody would have any money to spend.

We have a low wage, high cost society at the moment. We need to stop importing cheap labour, invest in training children brought up here in useful, productive skills.

We also need to build more housing, specifically, retirement villages, which could free up desperately needed family homes.

Getting older people to downsize should be easy, but apparently what stands in many people's way is stamp duty. If you are out 50k just for moving, you really need to think twice.

AyeAmarok, I dont think the OP is interested in budgeting.

i'm fascinated by budgeting! I am proposing cutting out unnecessary expenses..

You would have to be spending over a million pounds on this new smaller property to have a £50k stamp duty bill.

That's not really representative of the average downsizer chilipepper

Yes agree with Amorak - just don't buy stuff you can't pay for. If all people did this we would all be in better financial shape - fact!

My post was deleted

On the whole not paying bills screws your finances and credit rating up more than it screws up anyone else. Ditch the credit card and walk not swim and only pay for things you can afford.
Not sure where Starbucks is relevant here, are you planning on ordering a coffee and not paying for it? They are rick because if you don't pay for your coffee they don't give you it. It's people who give you stuff before you pay for it who get people in to debt.

It does genuinely annoy me about Mumsnet. Some people have comfortable lives and have always had comfortable lives and don't really understand how other people live. I'm fortunate to be okay financially now, but I had times not too long ago when I'd have to stiff my phone bill if I wanted to eat that week, or having to eat toast all week if I wanted the heating on for an hour. And then there's an emergency and you have no option but a Wonga loan and then you're even skinter and it just spirals.

I've been there and it's horrible. And I was working two jobs at the time too (full time and weekend). I think it's a lot more common than people realise, certainly than some Mumsnetters realise. I probably don't go along with left wing solutions for it (I think the last Labour gov made it 10 x worse) but I agree it's a problem.

"You know the ones that go to work on Christmas Day to generate electricity so we can sit at home stuffing our faces and drinking with our friends and family."

Yeah Like the great service ppl got from UK Power Networks in the winter of 2013.

Loads of people were having to stuff their faces with Mcdonalds on Christmas Day because ££s of food had to be thrown out due to ppl having no power for up to a week.

I agree bill. I've had people on here tell me that my friend and her DH with twins who have a household income of £120k and are both doctors are amazingly high earners. They work in London and pay £40k a year for their nanny because of the unsociable and unpredictable hours they work. They live hand to mouth. It's wrong but everyone on here was saying how it's their choice and one could stay home plus they could relocate to the outer Hebrides.

In response to the OP, you are missing a huge piece of the puzzle. When you are paid your employer pays a tax and you pay taxes too. Now imagine if you didn't pay taxes..... IMO the real problem in the UK is that you have a horrible tax system where British people are screwed over. I find it very wrong that by virtue of being born in Canada that if I owned a business operating outside of the UK but lived in the UK under non-Dom status I wouldn't have to pay taxes on my foreign income. It's bullshit.

However 'poor' people have never had it so good when you compare standard of living to 50, 75, 100 and 150+ years ago.

It costs money to support the poor.

Balls.. Everything that pushes the poor to live on nothing, every social rule, every 'you are decent if you pay your bills as a poor individual, but if you get out of paying your bills and negotiate 80% 'discounts' when you don't pay as a business you are 'clever' and "hardnosed'... All this so callled'poverty support' is direct subsidy to business, as are the NHS and unemployment benefits, .. If it wasn't for these things keeping the workforce alive and productive businesses couldn't take the spare money and pocket it/ give it to shareholders...if people aren't given enough money to pay businesses.even in these relatively utopian(for business) conditions, then businesses should feel the pain. All those who don't get their bills paid should campaign against the zero hours and supermarket idiots who want people to spend with them but don't pay their employees enough to..its daft..

Actually, living with no heating in winter, blocked drains you can't afford to fix, using sports centre showers on the fly because of this, and having only one bar of soap for all washing is what I had to do this winter, and I had to go to the food bank twice last year because every scrap of food and sugar was gone.. I did two days on coffee and sugar.. That is not better than 150years ago except I didn't get openly spat on in the street s though that happens to some. I am a prize-winning qualified professional, so employers aren't even making the best of this low wage economy to use available talent, if it is in poverty..that's pretty bad....no, its extremely bad, genuinely crappy and poor, and part of life for more than a lot of you realise..

Under labour I was holidaying overseas, learning languages and paying into a pension..

Here is the second one if you don't believe me. Its laundry soap so fatherless.. But it works OK in the shower and on hair and clothes.. And you can clean the floor with it too..but its in essence..pretty grim to do this..

Actually tell I lie..I still have this in my shower..10p soap from November (tescos)

Your children don't seem to be in your list of things to spend money on

Under labour I was holidaying overseas, learning languages and paying into a pension..

part of the reason why we are all suffering now. We spent like crazy in the good years.

Also you seem to have a mortgage which indicates you own. Is it possible for you to move into local authority housing? It sounds like you can't afford to maintain your current home and moving into a housing association home might be far better for you financially as well as livings standard wise.

However you sound very bitter and I can only imagine the hell you have been through. I remember being poor as a student and in the years after. It took real effort from deep within to sort myself out. I out hustled the other hustlers. It was very hard on me and with you saying you have 3 jobs, I assume you are trying to do the same. My experience was that you have to treat it as a business in that I only did it if the money was there. I paid £50 a week in London for a room. It was tiny. When I bought my own place I slept on the floor for months until I had money for a 2nd hand bed.

It depends whether you think the function of government is to make sure that the inhabitants of a country have the things they need to live comfortable lives (housing, food, healthcare, infrastructure, education etc) - or to enrich the powerful and starve and coerce the rest into obedience.

I think the next stage, if we go on the same way, will involve one or both of these things:
Workhouses. They won't be called that, of course - they will be given some shiny new name and touted as the perfect solution to the unaffordable cost of housing, but the people who are sent to them will have to obey all sorts of arbitrary, petty rules (no drinking/restricted Internet access/their days timetabled/prohibition on sexual relationships - you name it. the point will not be to make the place safe and comfortable so much as to ensure the inhabitants know their place and don't get any ideas above their station as poor people) as well as spending their time doing tasks that are either pointless or which enrich a private corporation.

Domestic service incentives: Domestic service dwindled away because people were able to earn more money working for commercial companies, and often had more freedom. I wouldn't be that surprised to see tax cuts for people who employ domestic workers and/or a removal of the employer's obligation to pay national insurance, holiday pay or sick pay... Get the poor back into the mindset of accepting they exist to serve their 'betters'...