To think dh is winding me up when he says some people on benefits are getting £500 a week?

[angelos02]

I'm pretty sure he's talking bullocks? Otherwise why the fuck would anyone do a minimum wage job?

My brother and his family were above the cap (neither parent working or have any qualifications, 5 DCs) HB, CTC, CB, CTB well over £2k per month so equivalent to a £30k+ salary in an area where this is well above average (South Yorkshire). Moaned like hell when their income went down and horror of horrors, he now works full time when he can - most work is Agency/NMW so not secure.

Another relative with 5 DCs is the master of meeting the minimum hours criteria to maximise CTC, WTC etc etc and also receives over £20k pa (own their own house with a tiny mortgage so no HB either) topped up by about £10k in earnings, so again equivalent to a salary that is well above average for the area for a bit of local part time work.

No disabilities in either family. Where I am this is extremely common, I could give several other examples, but of course this is ficticious, no-one ever does this at all, oh no.

Higher wages might solve a few things but would create problems too. If you up the wage of a retail worker thrm teachers, doctors etc wages need to rise to keep the gap. Little point in studying and working that hard for not much difference. In turn, prices simply go up.

People won't stop claimimg benefits because wages rise. If they had a work ethic they would already be working full time however those subject to the £500 cap a week aren't working and won't when they get a £2k net salary a month and those using top ups won't suddenly decide to not have a SAHP or up their hours.

Oblomov is right, tax payers are resentful of those who take advantage rather than support themselves. It's a waste of taxes. People can work or not work, choose their number of children and live where they like as long as they pay for it. Sadly for many that's an alien concept.

If we cut right back to a basic welfare state that covers the disabled, temp illness and redundancy, there would be more money to spend elsewhere on better things that make for a better future. Invest in education, hospitals and being able to afford treatments for the ill that are currently being denied.

Ffs. She sad £500 a week not a month. RTFT!!

Those of us who did read where she said it could be per month.

LURKEDFOREVER trust me I'm not annoyed

Rent is around £200 + a week for a 3 bed house around here. So housing benefit makes a big chunk of what people get.

So with no the new cap I know a family that will have to pay bills and feed and cloth 5 children on £184 a week.

No way could I do that. Even with being frugal what happens if an appliance breaks etc. It's all well and good saying she shouldn't have had those children. But those children are here now.

I think the whole system sucks.

You don't want to encorage people to not.work. but at the same time I don't want to see children in poverty.

Those accused of 'benefit bashing' seem to be simply asking why a family who live on benefits should receive more than a similar family that works for a living. What's wrong with asking about that?

Lots of people who study and work hard do not earn high wages.

Ginham- becuase it'd a misconception. The only families that receive high benefits are those with large numbers of children.

Currently if a family with a large number of children children earn the the average wage... lets say 25k... then they would get working tax credits to top up to an affordable level of living.. therefore you are always better off working over sitting on benefits (I believe this is about to change though for new claiments)

I agree that putting caps in place is a good idea to deter people from having more children. However for families that already have children removing a significant proportion of their money will put them in to significant poverty. And then what do they do with the children they already have? ... perhaps work houses would be a good solution?

"If you're getting Housing Benefit, the cap is: £500 a week if you're a couple - with or without dependent children. £500 a week if you're a lone parent with dependent children. £350 a week if you're a single person without children."

Yes, it happens. A family member works part time and brings in around 1.5k in tax credits alone, then there's housing benefit (I think £90 a week here) and council tax reduction. Pretty sure that brings it up to £500 a week.

For families just over the limit for getting benefits, they can earn worse off than those on benefits, because they don't get non cash benefits such as free school meals. So yes there will be resentment.
But the real issue is low wages. Benefits are set at the level people need to be able to live. Nobody should be worse off working. Wages need to rise.

A close friend recieves just under £800 a week not including child benefit. However she is disabled and has dc , one dd and disabled triplets ds. So that total includes two lots of carers allowance, income support with disability premiums and three lots of disability extra tax credits . Dla, pip and child benefit are not included in that figure.
My friend is married her dh recently stopped working to care for her and her dc, every day is a struggle for her and her family.

I get paid £60 a week by the government to care for my severely disabled child. Considering I had my own career in marketing and was earning £30k .... Hmmmmmm

I do wonder how much it would cost the government to care for my son weekly!!!!

Of course there would be solutions that enabled more people to come off benefits:

paying wages that people could actually live on

accept that if you want an infra-structure in places like London, people who perform the shit jobs need to be able to afford to either live in London or pay for the commute- so wages for street sweepers and café workers and cleaners of drains in such places would need to be adjusted accordingly

provide affordable childcare for parents in low-paid jobs

provide affordable childcare which takes into account that the jobs available (and the jobs that need to get done!) may not be 9-5

provide specialist childcare and/or respite for children with disabilities and SN, enabling their parents to work if appropriate

provide transport and workplace adjustments to enable more disabled people to find jobs they can actually do

foster a workplace culture where parents of children with disabilities or chronic illness can get time off for illness or hospital appointments without losing their jobs

regulate the zero hours contract culture so that workers could feel reassured that taking a certain job actually means a certain income coming into the house every month

"If they had a work ethic they would already be working full time" sounds particularly ironic in the face of the fact that more and more jobs are advertised as zero hours, leaving the number of hours up to the convenience of the manager for that particular month. But the rent still has to be paid at the same rate every month.

people always seem to forget that the person on NMW would be receiving many of those benefits on top too - re: housing benefit, tax credits, child benefit etc. you can't compare one persons earned income with anothers total benefit pay out.

for me, when i returned to work after being ill for a while when ds was little and on benefits, i was way better of even in my relatively low paid job at that time because i suddenly got working tax credits which were high. i worked out i got more in in work benefits than i'd been getting whilst off work.

you have to compare like for like which means adding on thousands of pounds of working tax credits, rent top ups etc.

I think your DH is right.

There probably are people who are getting £500 pw benefit, at the moment.
Emphasis on at the moment.
but instead of feeling jealous and resentful, you should feel sorry for them, because 5 years from now (even sooner) there is no way that gravy train will still be running.
Already caps are being put on certain benefits and the goalposts are being moved.
The NHS is struggling.
The country's overburdend and continues to be overburdened at an alarming rate.
There is only so much money in the pot and cuts are being made.

I'm not resentful of them. If anything, I'm alarmed and worried that a lot of people have become used to receiving a certain level of help, help that will now (in the very near future) more than likely be drastically reduced.

Let them enjoy it while they can.

The thing that always puzzles me about benefits is the distribution of the money given. I work full time as a teacher in London, but I can't afford to live in London so I commute in every day from my one bedroom rented flat in Slough. Someone not working can afford housing in London because housing benefit means they can afford a flat of an average price wherever they choose to live. I pay around £750 a month on my flat as that's what I can afford, but if I was on benefits and wanted to live in London, I could get housing benefit of around £1,000 a month. That seems crazy.
HOWEVER, after housing benefit, the actual amount of money people on benefits get to live on is tiny. If I went on benefits, I'd get around £1000 a month for housing so could upgrade my flat, but would only get £70 a week for food, bills etc. I would struggle to live on this. So people on benefits get housing that is better than a working person, but can hardly afford to pay to put the heating on.
Would it not be better to pay them a flat rate and let them decide how to spend it, e.g. to live in a cheaper area but have more money for heating and food, like the decisions a working person has to make?

Paying for 'all this'
All what?
Disabled people's survival?
Perhaps they should just be euthanised, eh?

And before anyone says it's not about disability yes it is because due to welfare reform and sanctions the only group receiving anything close to the figures quoted are disabled people and carers. No one else gets those kinds of sums unless living in high rent areas.

... Gravy train? Enjoy it while they can?

Yes, personally I can't wait until the vulnerable in society are just wiped out. That's the world I want to live in! .

Good post from Cory.

OP has been on many a benefit thread to try to portray wide eyed innocence is pointless. There will always be the scroungers who want to fiddle the system. They are a small minority, as are the ones having big families for more benefits. A tiny minority.
Families with a disabled child or parent do not get enough. Single parent families do not get enough. These programmes people see are probably filmed before the cap. Where people are in huge debt.

Do people really think that if benefits were only given to the disabled, carers, unemployed and redundant that the money saved would be spent on hospitals and schools? You're having a laugh.
We have plenty of money for a proper welfare state, NHS and schools.
The rich and powerful just choose to keep the money under their tight reign for their friends.

So yes, people do take tax credits rather than work if it suits them to do so. There's nothing wrong with this if you are honest with your figures and truthful.

accept that if you want an infra-structure in places like London, people who perform the shit jobs need to be able to afford to either live in London or pay for the commute- so wages for street sweepers and café workers and cleaners of drains in such places would need to be adjusted accordingly

This.

The Coalition and Tory governments have very successfully positioned the whole Tax Credit issue as being about the claimants; the supposed greed of the claimants; the culpability of the claimants; the alleged laziness of the claimants. And now we have a strong national narrative of "Oh look at us poor taxpayers propping up and being exploited by the claimants".

It's complete bollocks and it distracts attention from the real tripod of problems; high housing costs
high transport costs
very low wages

But strangely enough, the privileged classes (with so many business owners and landlords in their ranks) don't want to talk about those (real) social problems. They just want to denigrate the sticking plaster and the patients 'benefiting' from the sticking plaster.

My nightmare neighbours who have 4 kids in the week and 6 at the weekends receive around £700 a week in benefits for just them and the 4 kids that live there permanently.

I had always wondered how they can afford so much nice stuff and their alcohol. This thread prompted me to do a little bit of maths and to be honest I wish I hadn't as it makes me sick.

Your nightmare neighbours told you about their finances?

Mine did. She's a single woman in her 50s who spends an awful lot of time loudly holding court in her front garden with her grown up DS etc.

More than once, before they upped the hours requirement for single people from 16 to 30 pw for WTC we would be treated to an explanation about 'how it wasn't worth her working full time because she was no better off than 16 hours a week'

Rather galling when you arrive home from work at 6 pm to see her drinking in the sun in her front garden, most likely to have been there most of the day.

But seriously Dacre you can just put details of family size, postcode etc into any one of several official online tax credits calculators to see how much anyone in any particular circumstances is entitled to.