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 ...

I completely agree op, 10 years ago my part time wage in admin was enough to look after me and my 6 year old, I was earning enough to cover; our rent, after school clubs, travel to work, work and school clothes, we even had a cheap weekend break away twice a year. I now work double the hours, on less wages which doesn't even cover my rent! When I got made redundant in 2010 I found it impossible to find a similar role on the same wages, I experienced the new trend in employers offering inflexible zero hours contracts, temping agencies that traditionally could get you into permanent jobs, made you apply online, then never got back for initial interviews let alone jobs. Rents in London are well over the average monthly wage of two working tenants, greedy landlords get their mortgages paid while doing the bare minimum, and big employers get their workforce funded by housing benefit and tax credits system. It makes no sense

Silly OP, got put off by a few authentic goady fuckers

I'm imaging the parliamentary Labour Party all whipping out biscuits and calling Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum goady fuckers now...

Tesco and other supermarkets, then

Here's the source
metro.co.uk/2015/04/13/supermarkets-pay-workers-so-little-the-government-has-to-chip-in-1bn-a-year-5148380/

Completely agree, salaries have not kept up with the cost of living and the state is subsidising large businesses. While the standard of living of bosses of large companies has increased exponentially.

Yet posters would rather dole out biscuits and blame the poor.

I don't think I've ever really seen poor bashing over tax credits. I think most people appreciate that recipients are working.

A most interesting thread and the biscuits are hilarious - or maybe not (but disclaimer, i dislike the whole biscuit thing anyway). Do we need a new acronym for 'read the post'? Unless the biscuit leavers genuinely think it is wrong to discuss the relationship between employers' costs and in-work benefits?

Anyway. It is true i think that housing costs are the main 'component' to have increased disproportionately to wages over the past couple of decades. It is difficult to know exactly why. pp made an interesting point though that while demand exceeds supply, wage increases might just be diverted to rents - private rents will always be determined by what people are able to pay (including hb) unless they are capped. I agree there may not be a shortage of physical supply, in that there are unoccupied and underoccupied houses, but while these aren't 'in the market', demand to rent (in london and se at least) does seem to push up rents.

I haven't rtft because I cant be doing with the benefit bashing. But your initial assumption that 'housing benefit didn't exist in the 60s' is flawed. Yes, there wasn't a benefit called housing benefit, that was created in the early 80s when Maggie T took housing out of the perview of the DHSS and into council control. But prior to that many many people lived in social housing with rent subsidies. It just had a different name. Housing subsidies have been around since alms houses were created in the 12th century!

Sigh. You might not have RTFT but could you at least not have read and understood the OP properly before posting Fuckability. The OP was not benefits bashing, she was discussing why the government is effectively subsidising profitable companies to pay wages which are too low for their staff to live on.

You look a bit silly when you've clearly just skim read, seen the word benefits and jumped to a conclusion without actually taking in what was said!

On another note, very impressed at the knowledge of speenhamland on this thread! Is that still part of gcse or are people just generally well informed?

Gf despite not having read the op you do make a good point that social housing is a form of rent control - it is a means of intervening in the 'free market' to provide housing within people's means. There were problems with the old rent controls of private housing - anecdotally people would leave property empty rather than rent it out, though not sure how widespread that really was, and growth in private rentals has increased flexibility which is good for some. - but the current system is giving rise to unintended consquences as well, like the decline in owner occupation - not what margaret thatcher or john major intended, i think!

biscuit for all the people leaving biscuits. I don't think the problem is that you failed to read the op, you failed to understand the point the op was making, that benefits have actually benefited the rich because they are the people banking all the HB and having the poverty wages they pay subsidised by the state.

I hate this TV programme - which my h seems to like watching while he criticises the people on there .

The well off get another benefit as well fake name which i think often goes unnoticed, which is that they also benefit from low cost labour, meaning cheaper services, supermarket prices etc.
simple example is domestic cleaning services - many of the people providing these would have to be paid more to live within commuting distance if the employers were not being subsidised, by means of hb etc being paid to the cleaning operatives. On the other hand there is a wage point at which the employer will decide to do his or her own cleaning instead of paying the higher wages.
So to an extent the hb subsidy may lead to higher employment - which i think is a good thing. There is a balance to be struck, and it's possible that 'taxpayer paying for people to be employed' is better than higher unemployment in terme of general social well being. The question is where to strike the balance i suppose. Or how to bring housing costs down!

I have seen on this site posters questioning tax credits. Questions like, why don't you do more hours? Why don't you ask for a pay rise? Benefits shouldn't be for families only for those in dire need. I have been called out on why ive struggled financially in the recent past because I have chosen to have three children and can't afford them even though we are both working. The biscuits for biscuits is just childish. I think the op could have phrased her op much better if she wants a valid discussion. But of course she's gone. This is how these threads go and fails to recognise the sheer desperation and anger for those stuck in this cycle. People are angry and fed up with being blamed for beIng in poverty or even just mildly struggling. Those benefits programs do not help.

I can remember earning as a junior librarian 15k per year in 1989, renting a 2 bed house was about £240 per month That same size house now costs around £550 per month and starting salary is around £20k.

I think that wages should have a cap on them. The highest earner in a company should be on no more than 10% of the lowest earner. Any bonus should be subject to the same rule.

Shareholder pay outs should be no more than the lowest earners salary over 6 months.

This will enable more money to be used.
If you increase mine and my dh salaries by £2 an hour we wouldn't need to claim tax credits. All of that money would be spent keeping the money in circulation. If the CEO of a super market received that it would probably be hoarded in a bank account and never used.

I'm rambling but totally agree that the government is subsidizing business and that this needs to stop.

I didn't see the post as goady at all or critical of people claiming benefits. The question was are those having income topped up with benefits (eg the working poor) better served by the government legislating for businesses to properly support employees living costs. I think it's a very interesting question.
However, I have lived as a couple and single parent and stayed in the same job and house, but needed more help at the single parent time.. that could not have been addressed by the employer... you can't pay a single mother more than a mother in a couple for the same role. So what you're suggesting isn't a catch all solution, but I agree with the general principle that employers should be more responsible.

if I see yet another poster on here saying this thread is benefit bashing I think I might just cry. Please read the post. If you think it's about benefit bashing read the thread. If you still don't understand why it isn't about benefit bashing, just keep reading until you do.

drummer, that's impossible. We live in a globalised world, companies would simply move their bases elsewhere and list them on another countries stock market. It would decimate employment and destroy the financial sector which generates so much of our GDP.

I opened this thread expecting it to be a benefits bashing thread. It's far from it.

Why don't people read properly before attacking the poor op?

I'm sorry op has gone it's a good discussion.

I think a big barrier to low income families is high housing costs, high cost of childcare and wages that don't cover the costs.

I'm not sure what the answer is.

Well the answer is higher wages and lower houses prices but no idea how that could be made a reality after it's been like this.

there really is a Pavlovian response to the word BENEFITS on here.
Read the original post again. It's a perfectly reasonable question.

Yes the majority of these top up benefits are a load of bollocks that enable big corporations to pay their workers a fucking pittance, receive a pat on the head from the Government and also stop workers from progressing as they become reliant on these top ups.

It's abhorrent and should be discussed. Not biscuitted.

Absolutely Feral, I couldn't agree more.

There were benefits in the 60s, they just had different names. When I got married in 1969 we both got tax rebates and he started paying less tax. When our children were born in the 70s he got more tax rebates and paid even less tax. I got family allowance (I think that was what it was called then) people below a certain income could get rent rebates, free school meals, free school uniforms and milk tokens. The system is so complicated and they change the names like musical chairs. I think younger people get told "We never had any of these benefits" by older people and it isn't always true.

Just to add if you were formula feeding you could get subsidised milk and also free orange juice. We were all lacking in vitamin C in the 60s apparently.

I hate this TV programme

A woman who was on it posted on here a while ago crossroads. She and her partner were trying to save up £1,000 from their benefits to save to get married and it was presented as 'this pair of layabouts are having a lavish wedding at the tax payers expense'. Much was also made of the fact she's bought him a play station. They said she didn't work as she had panic attacks and he was just described as 'unemployed', the impression given was there wasn't really a plausible reason for two young fit people not to be working.

When she came on here the woman explained that she had actually been the victim of a really nasty violent attack which she was still recovering from and had left her with PTSD. So not just 'panic attacks'. Her boyfriend had been out of work for a matter of weeks after being laid off from a zero hours contract. He was actively looking for work and undergoing training and was actually annoyed he wasn't getting enough support looking for work. He said he sometimes thought about committing a crime to go to jail because then he would get more support looking for work! They only put aside £20 a week towards the wedding and the PlayStation was bought when he was in work!

They had to totally misrepresent their circumstances in order to make them fit the stereotype they wanted for the show.

I don't really get how these shows are still going after the benefits reforms. I know that before they came in there used to be situations which could be found quite shocking, but I think nowadays to pretend that people on benefits are somehow living the life of Riley on the taxpayers buck is ludicrous. The fact they have to twist it so much to make it look that way shows just how far from the truth it is.

BillSykesDog, I didn't see that programme but I know what you mean. Back in the 60s when I was an office junior there was a similar programme about a single mum (very disgraceful back then) and her struggle to get by. She smoked alot during the programme. There was so much criticism of her and lots of "She can't look after her kids but she can afford to smoke." A woman I worked with knew her and explained that her friend couldn't afford to smoke but the TV people had kept her well supplied with cigarettes as she was nervous. She had been a smoker before she had her children but could rarely afford a packet of cigarettes as she was on benefits.

I always remember that story when these sort of programmes are on.

Nothing changes really.