To not understand how people can justify it

[ijustdontunderstand]

Okay, not a bun fight I just want to understand how those who vote Tory can think the cuts to disability benefits are OK.

This is NOT saying if you vote Tory you're a bad person, at all, I just want to understand. Will you vote them in again knowing?

Green I have never claimed a penny in benefits despite being from a very poor background. It makes no sense to me to confiscate c. 30% of someone's income at source and then give a proportion of it back depending on how deserving (or indeed irresponsible, in some cases) that person is considered to be. Why not just tax everybody less in the first place? At the moment we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Tax credits distort the labour market and keeps wages low.

I said ATOS under labour. It is both who are to blame.

I'm not aware of a change in pip points. We were assessed since ATOS was replaced and have had no issues with the conclusion. I am yet to find out if that will change as we are due reassessment this year but situation remains the same.

I am disabled and am only allowed the minimum disability payment because apparently walking in pain is ok, because I can walk.

We still vote Conservative because it's not all about me. You have to look at the whole picture, not just what would benefit yourself.

I could vote Labour and get more money but the country would be fucked. I wouldn't swap a bit more money for that.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women-are-using-newspapers-because-they-cannot-afford-tampons-warns-salvation-army-food-bank-a6932111.html

Young you're so right. Why not move to Afghanistan or Venezuela, they have much smaller states and lower taxes there. God forbid we should ever be like Sweden or Norway, where they pay higher taxes than us and yet still have a higher standard of living.

I voted tory as the best of a bad bunch. TBH, I expected it to be another hung parliament or for labour to get in. Either way, I did not vote for (or agree with) the current disability cuts. But then, I did not vote for university tuition fees, GBs raid on pensions, the financial crash, the early opening of this country to eastern EU citizens that caused immense pressure on jobs and housing or the insane house building policies of the past 30 years. People with disabilities are not the only ones to have been screwed up by recent or past policies.

Hmmm Beaky I am not sure Sweden is a place that anyone would particularly relish living in at the moment.

Venezuela and Afghanistan are countries about which I know very little, so no comment on that (other than it seems a rather extreme suggestion!) I don't feel ashamed of wanting a low tax economy though - I want to be able to look after my own family, because the state cannot be relied upon to do it adequately no matter who is in power.

jen

See here:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35793004

Why wouldn't anyone want to live in Sweden?

I think Young you're assuming that everybody's in a position to be able to work full-time hours but not everybody is. Paying less tax on an small income still isn't going to make it a liveable amount. No matter how hard someone works to support their family, one wage can't equal two wages.

It makes no difference how poor your background was (it can't have been any poorer than mine certainly) - it's the current situation that matters. I managed to drag myself out of my 'poor background' before I had my children but now here I am trying to survive on a single wage.

Shit happens....it's just the way life is... but paying a little less tax from my earnings is not going to change very much at all, just as paying a little more tax from your earnings will probably have very little impact on your life in reality.

I don't know what the answer is, I'm just addressing the original OP's question when I say that I believe people vote Tory because they can't feel empathy towards other people whilst their own lives are going fine.

If their circumstances were to take a dramatic turn for the worse, they'd think again about how they vote - IMO.

BeakyMinder mentioned upthread the housing benefit bill, 25 billion a year. This is the consequence of right to buy, and to my mind is one of the worst policies ever implemented.

And the reason ,YoungGirlGrowingOld why many low income families will never achieve the self sufficiency you want them to aspire to.
How will they ever do that when their rent is as high as the mortgage of a middle income household?

PIP is touched because they are changing the points system. It may not affect your DH personally but it's not correct to say the benefit overall is not changing.

Support ESA is not affected yet (it would be a less cynical person than me who doesn't believe it's just a matter of time).

"People who really want to get back into work but need help or time to do so" is pretty much the definition of the ESA WRAG (work-related activity group). These are not, contrary to popular misconceived opinion, people who have been found "fit for work". They are the long-term sick and disabled who, in time and with support based on optional work-related activities, may be capable of finding employment. That's the one that is now being cut by £30pw to "incentivise" these lazy scroungers long term ill/disabled people to get better and find a job within 12 months or be shunted onto JSA where they can be sanctioned.

ESA replaced Incapacity Benefit, which was paid to both short- and longterm sick/disabled claimants. There was never a time limit on it or its replacement until the recent splitting off of ESA.

I agree with you about right to buy Sultan - that was an utterly foolish decision. However, the housing market is also influenced by demand and the population is much higher than it was when that policy was implemented.

Housing benefit is nuts and I get that policies on housing have made it a necessary evil. However it cannot be sustainable in the long term for taxpayers to subsidize rent to such a massive degree? (That's not meant to be ideological btw - just a practical observation).

It depends which way you look at it, you could look at it and see that taxpayers are paying landlords mortgages and leaving them with an asset.

Taxpayers are subsidising businesses with their contribution to the welfare bill. Most benefit claimants are in work. They have jobs that aren't paying a good enough income to live on. There's a gap. That is filled by the welfare state. Introducing a living wage sounds good but is a piece of legislative sleight of hand on Osborne's part - it will in no way compensate for the money lower income families will lose through his austerity measures. They will earn more and be worse off still. It's Orwellian.

Owl I think the idea that they are paying people's mortgages is even worse tbh!

Wages are low relative to the cost of living. There is a black hole filled by taxpayers' money that has ever-increasing demands placed on it (eg by advances in healthcare and demographics). I don't know what the answer is - people in the developing world are desperate for work and willingly accept much lower wages than we can afford to live on. How can we as a nation maintain our standard of living, never mind a generous welfare state? I wish I knew!

Tax is the price of living in a civilised country.

Small state, low tax countries tend to be places with little public transport, high crime, poor roads, low life expectancy, poorly educated people and streets full of sick homeless people. Life is cheap and corruption is rife because individuals, not unreasonably, focus on meeting their own needs first at the expense of the greater good. 'Beggar my neighbour' even makes the rich poorer in the end.

Feel free to put the Ayn Rand away and do some actual research Young.

JenEric's post is really inaccurate.

Page is correct.

ESA in all its incarnations is the replacement for Incapacity Benefit, which was paid to both long and short-term claimants.

When ESA came in, people on IB were ported to:
– JSA or nothing (if they weren't fit enough for JSA)
– ESA WRAG (Work Related Activity Group), if they were only a certain amount below the fit-to-work threshold - even if they were not likely to improve.
– ESA Support Group, if they were much further below the threshold.

ESA WRAG is not short-term.

NI-contribution based ESA WRAG stops after 12 months. After this people must claim income-based ESA WRAG. Unless the regs have recently been changed, people can stay in the income-based ESA WRAG... forever. Only their condition changing would move them. Well, that, death or reaching retirement age.

Of course the idea of paying landlords mortgages is worse! But I don't understand why those that have to rely on housing benefit are attacked and not those that are benefiting long term from it (ie landlords) It will create a bigger chasm between rich and poor than is already apparent imo.

Why is the focus on cutting the essential in work benefits such as tax credits and housing benefit ? How on earth are families supposed to do without the lifeline that is the top ups so to speak.

The high proportions of housing benefit is as mentioned previously, due to the farce that was the right to buy scheme which slowly hacked away at the group of people it was supposed to help.( many of whom now sit on their high horses and now disagree with other low income families getting help they deserve) But hey ho councils got to make a quick buck whilst claiming they had given a successful contribution to social mobilisation.

Still it's happening today, councils still selling off the little stock they do have. When is some bloody idiot going to wake up and come to the realisation that this all goes hand in hand with the very reason we need such a huge welfare system in place. Is there not one person in government with any backbone or sense of humanity ??

Beaky I have vaguely heard of Ayn Rand but I I can't "put it away" having never read it, so I think your comment is misplaced.

Tax may or may not be the hallmark of a civilized country but there is a big difference in tax rates between (say) Scandinavian countries and Singapore, which has a much lower tax rate. I would say both are civilized but would prefer to keep more of my own cash because (at least in the UK, can't comment on elsewhere) much of the money confiscated in tax is pissed up the wall and all of the things listed in your post still go on.

It's easy to demand ever higher tax when you are not in danger of actually having to pay it.

Placing people who are not expected to recover in the WRAG was certainly still happening in 2013:

"A client with severe Rheumatoid Arthritis was initially reassessed on paper in 2012 from indefinite Incapacity Benefit given in the 1990s and placed into the WRAG. At the time, she'd had RA for 34 years since the age of 22, having had to give up work as a teacher at the age of 29 while suffering from severe stomach ulcers due to her medication, and following her first of many joint replacement surgeries. Despite acknowledging that she had a significant level of disability, ATOS gave her a prognosis of returning to work within 12 months. She tried to undertake the necessary work related activities to the consternation of her family and medical professionals. During this period her condition worsened. Whilst in the WRAG, she faced significant difficulties with the actions that were required of her and suffered a number of falls, and she was told off the record by a potential employer that they didn't want to take her due to concerns about her health. When she was reassessed in 2013 via a face to face consultation it was advised that a return to work was unlikely in the longer term. However she was yet again placed in the WRAG and required to take steps towards employment."

Progressive Conditions Dossier submitted to DWP by charities.

Sheila Gilmore MP's page on the WRAG has an excellent explanation of the issues: www.sheilagilmore.co.uk/campaigns/my-work-on-esa/the-wrag/

I don't think councils have any choice in the matter Pedr0. It's a government policy.

It is a shocking policy though, and now its been extended to housing association properties, things can only get even worse.

Owl I don't think the situation was created by landlords (and DH and I are landlords btw). However when trying to make provision for a pension - on the assumption that state pensions will keep shrinking - there are limited options that will give a decent return because of low interest rates .

Yes we are fortunate to have the money to invest, but the alternative is yet another family relying on the welfare state in their old age, which already does not have enough to go around.