Benefit Britain - the irony

[Mhoys]

Years ago there was no Housing Benefit as far as I remember - talking about growing up in the 1960s. Or even Child Tax Benefits, etc etc. Now it seems so many people get these, even people working in reasonably good jobs. The Government is meant to be anti-benefits but expenditure on all this must be significant. Some of this may be due to a small rise in living standards since then. But also have wages become so low relative to living costs, that the state is effectively subsidising private enterprise? There is nothing necessarily wrong with this I guess, but isn't the government "in denial" when few ordinary people could afford a family or rent or buy a home in the South at least , so the taxpayer/State has to stump up? I have some thoughts but am also genuinely puzzled ...

One final thing totally outing I may not have understood the nuances of your post, mainly because I am seething with anger at rude you've been about how thick I am, but you are one of the most stuck up self righteous posters I have ever had the misfortune to come across on Mumsnet and I have been here a quite a while. People do have opinions that don't match yours. You don't have to be quite so fucking rude

Warhol - they do get housing and council tax benefit over a certain age, this where single mums - it is mums - are going to get screwed. All child related benefits go at 19 because in theory the "child" should be in work or uni. Kids from broken homes often have issues though that prevent them from performing to their best ability and sometimes they are at home with mum earning bugger all, how do you take money off a kid earning £4 an hour for food and rent and expect them to be motivated ? So mum is subistidising every thing - dad doesn't even have to pay Csa any more if he ever did - and young person is entitled to nothing that would allow them to stand on their own two feet - unless they get pregnant - self fulling the outcome expected from a broken home. It's utterly awful tbh

One final thing totally outing I may not have understood the nuances of your post, mainly because I am seething with anger at rude you've been about how thick I am

I gave you the benefit of the doubt that it was a non-apology rather than you being thick. You've rejected that idea. Sorry if you feel you were some kind of sacrificial lamb in aid of my point but my point was not all about you.

The simple reality is once the children are 18 the parent in low paid work can in cases lose £1000 a month in child releated tax credits and other passported benefits.
This is a cliff edge drop in income.
A person can then have to work double the hours for half the previous total income.
This is becoming more apparent as the first full generation of tax credit supported families reach maturity.
The argument is that tax credits have enabled lower wages, which is obvious.
It could be seen that without tax credits wages would be higher, thus removing the sudden collapse in income.
It is difficult to unwind.

Only about 16 % of households (not individuals) are in receipt of tax credi, they may have some influence on wages, but are not the root cause, nor a major cause of lower than real terms wage growth in the UK since 2008. If they were why did average wages, and the wages of those at the bottom increase between 2002 and 2008?

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Whats the deal with young people getting housing benefit now?
I know it was something talked about getting rid of, so in theory the parent could lose all the child related benefits, the young person is in a zero hours contract and unable to contribute to the household. Yet the parents are expected to support as they wouldn't get housing benefit on their own?

That sounds about right inthese...

Really, only 16% of households? I'm quite surprised by that. I know a lot of people who get tax credits.

No way is it 16% I'm sorry it's just not ... Working tax credits maybe but not any tax credit credits. Don't forget the figures will be bent to suit whatever the argument is on that day

As much as i don't like Nigel Farage (or loose women) he made a point that made my ears prick up today and i thought of this thread. Im not sure its a good one as i can't see the numbers being that high but it is a point none the less. He used the example of strawberry pickers, e.g if there aren't enough people willing to work for low wage they will have to put the price of strawberries up to be able to pay the workers more to entice people into that work.
What i took from that is everything needs to get more expensive to pay everyone a living wage.
My DH is self employed and i often wonder how people would react if he actually charged what we and his young apprentices would need to buy a house!!

This paper suggests around 40 percent of families are in receipt of tax credits >
www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn35.pdf

The government report into benefits suggests that 3 m households have tax credits.

That's about 16 percent of the 20 m households in the UK.

Families and households are different things

I'm not sure that everything needs to be more expensive for people to be paid a decent wage. In many industries profits are massively high and driven by the demand for dividends from shareholders. In the past, many more businesses were run on less of a profit making basis or were nationalised. Profits went back into the business rather than being creamed off.

I think it is largely the cost of housing, and possibly the growth in the amount of stuff people want, that makes our wages go less far. Food is relatively cheaper than when I was a kid, as are cars and foreign holidays.

The government own data shows that the 3.3 million stat is correct, this accounts for 40 percent of families.

But as you were saying tax credits hold down wages, as only 16 percent of households in the UK, and 22 percent of working households are in receipt of them, they arenth going to be a major determinant of wages. There are far larger factors than this.

25% of all statistics are made up on the spot you know

But it's true, and a freely available piece of information.

3.3 million households receive tax credits. That's 16 percent of the UK households, 40 % of 7 million families.

tinkly your right there, you just need to look at the bonus's of the chief execs. Were they as big in the past? I mean in relative terms obviously.
Your also right on food being cheaper, there are certain things that have shot up, (wheat based items seemed to shoot up over night around 2007) but on the whole clothes (C&A was the cheapest when i grew up, but it wasn't as cheap as primark is now) and food certainly haven't increased in line with other costs. Although the likes of Lidl have literally saved my bacon on food costs.

Going back to the strawberry picker, its not the farmer on the chief execs wage or bonus though.

user147 What about the experiences that Dylan and i have had and which smallfox also remembers The low wages CAME FIRST. Nearly 16 years ago i managed to get a job in a sex chatline office .Ive talked about this on this board before and got gaslighted and called a current sex worker even though i also stipulated the job ended in 2003. The other choices were workfare or very low paid work and not even the very low paid jobs were willing to employ me.
Tax credits are not responsible for low wages. The gaslighting and rewriting of history over this is appalling.

And low paid jobs also leave women open to a higher risk of sexual harassment at work. Because the rules on sexual harassment tribunals have changed and it now costs £1,200 to even bring a case and that is just the initial fee. Women on minimum wage cannot afford this and are priced out of even the possibility of justice.

If you price people out of justice through the normal channels there is a risk that they will seek it some other way

I remember strawberries being much more of a rare treat (so presumably more expensive) than they are nowadays though.

But we seem to think physical jobs should automatically be less well paid. Historically that has not always been the case. For example my Grandad was pretty bright as a lad in the 1920s. But he never considered doing a clerk's type job in the colliery because he could earn far far more as a collier on the actual coal face. The clerk's job paid a pittance.

KitKats the system does seem to want it both ways. Either they are adults at 19 or they are not.

There is no such think as a childult.

Helena yes low wages came first, yes minimum wage and tax credits helped aleviate that. But we live in a capitalist society, economic conditions change and what worked in the past may one work now. Perhaps tax credits are part of the problem of an ever widening divide between the haves and have nots.

The real issue is lack of houses, not tax credits, or anything else.

Lack of houses is keeping house prices and rents artificially high, and therefore driving the need for in-work benefits.

We've needed more houses for two generations. The fact we still haven't got even a tenth of what is needed tells us that it's a political problem pure and simple. With a main problem being it doesn't suit those in power, nor those that voted for them to see more (and therefore) cheaper houses.

I note, with interest, that every "initiative" to "solve the housing crisis" has avoided building new houses at all costs.

None of this should be news, or secret. Looking at local housing developments recently, I was told by the salesperson how the "stock" was being built - and sold - in phases to ensure the prices remained stable. Or, to put it another way, "rationed".

So, if developers are allowed to dick around rationing housebuilding, then we have to ask (a) if there is a housing crisis,and (b) if there is, why nothing is being done (talked about, yes. Done ? No.).

But then what would you expect from a government whose response to looming energy shortages is to dick around with "smart meters" rather than build new power stations ?

Tinkly do you really think that employers would wake up on Thursday and suddenly discover their altruism and pay a higher liveable wage if tax credits were stopped tomorrow?

You have more faith in them than i have.

They could do it now. Whats stopping them. The minimum wage is the minimum not the law so why arent they doing it now.

But we seem to think physical jobs should automatically be less well paid. Historically that has not always been the case. For example my Grandad was pretty bright as a lad in the 1920s. But he never considered doing a clerk's type job in the colliery because he could earn far far more as a collier on the actual coal face. The clerk's job paid a pittance.

Mining was/is a dangerous and skilled occupation and had its own employment hierarchy. By the middle years of the twentieth century clerking wasn't. The mistake you are making is equating manual with unskilled and white collar with skilled.

The situation is the same now. An oil rig worker will be far more skilled and better rewarded than the admin and call centre staff in the company's head office.

Tax credits are not part of the problem, they stop some people with jobs going bankrupt.
The problem is the attitude in business, not the attitude of the workforce.

There is no housing shortage, the problem is that the council housing stock was sold off and people bought the idea of home ownership.

CHB used to be paid from one council dept to another; now it goes out to private landlords.