To ask why JSA is virtually half State Pension per week

[Oilnwater]

I'm probably clueless and totally missing something which is why I'm on here asking for help in understanding ......
Currently a single person aged over 25 would get £73.10 per week JSA. A single person basic pension is £129.20.
Why the huge disparity? Who comes up
With the figures? Is there a formula?
It just strikes me as odd that both single people would in theory be facing the same housing / petrol / fuel (the winter fuel allowance isn't much) food, normal everyday costs. Why the huge difference?

There are no more tax credits for new claims, Pop. It's all UC now.

And Lulu anecdotes are just that. They are not data. There is a lot of unemployment in certain areas because there is no investment, the main industries that provided reliable, stable, secure jobs were dismantled and the answer is not a load of zero hours, piecemeal gigs.

If fruit picking was given a living wage, then yes. I think people who are seeking work would be better off having more money coming in, and there would be more money for those who can't work to actually have enough money to live off. People aren't going to work if it means they are worse off financially and security wise ie with a tenancy, but I don't believe the vast majority of people are scroungers either, yes sure a few, but the majority would take jobs if it meant a better standard of living.

I do think anyone who has worked in retail or hospitality will have plenty of the anecdotes that Lulujakey mentioned.
There are clearly issues with wealth distribution and also the jobs people are prepared to do.
I was shocked to hear my 22 year old niece who graduated last summer turn down a good starter job due to the weekends and the late finishes at a local airport.
My brother on the other hand thought she had the right idea, to put her leisure, family and free time ahead and not work for "buttons" as they described it.
We will always have to agree to disagree on this subject. I had the mantra to work work work instilled in me from a young age and felt like crappy hours, shifts, working bank hols was par for the course to move onward and upward. My nieces generation do not they value their leisure and family time above money. Rightly or wrongly it's definitely a thing and since her generation will probably work well into their seventies I understand them valuing their leisure.

I had the mantra to work work work instilled in me from a young age and felt like crappy hours, shifts, working bank hols was par for the course to move onward and upward.

It leads to FA most of the time these days, that's why some people are no longer willing to toil away their lives to line the likes of Jeff Bezos's pockets. It will get them nowhere. Pretty ageist and snotty to generalise about an entire generation, though.

I agree I didn't mean it as an insult, since they've got the life situation they have, harder or impossible to get on housing ladder, lots of job competition, huge debts from further education and depressed wages it's no wonder she's opting out so to speak.

To @lakielady, re my previous comment:

ESA replaced incapacity benefit in 2008. There was only one group for Incapacity Benefit and it was not means tested

and your helpful comment:

IB was only available to people who made sufficient NI contributions in the relevant period. Not everyone could get it, and people who were too ill to work had to claim Income Support instead.

@LakieLady, thank you for pointing out that Incapacity Benefit was not means tested as it was for people who had paid NI contributions and those who hadn’t would get Income Support plus added disability rates. This is true and useful information to add. However, there is still some difference between contribution based ESA (based on NI contributions) and its previous equivalent, Incapacity Benefit (also based on NI contributions). This is because all claimants who are awarded ESA, both contribution based and non contribution based, are now split into two groups. Those claimants put into the work-related activity group (this group claimants supposedly may not be capable of work currently but may possibly in the future with help. I think it’s a ruse personally) and not the support group are only entitled to contribution based ESA for the first 12 months even if they have paid sufficient NI contributions. After the 12 months a partner’s income will be taken into account and unless the partner is earning v little those receiving ESA and put in the work-related activity group will find they are not entitled to anything

@ProfessionalBoss, thank you for your reply. I am glad that you have been able to arrange work that allows you to work mainly from home and fit in better with your condition.

I am sorry about your uncle. Currently the system does mean those who need long term care in a care home - mainly those who are elderly but not always - will if they live long enough will probably lose a big chunk of any assets they have such as home, savings etc. I think the current law is if in they go into a care home their assets, which includes their home if they have own one, have to be used to finance the care home until their last £24,000.

As you know, this system means if someone is unfortunate to get a disease like Alzheimer’s which often requires having to go into a care home for the last few years of their life they not only have to have the misfortune of a horrible illness in their last few years of life but they will lose the bulk of their assets and have little to pass on. Whilst someone who does not need to go into a care home in their final years on this earth will not lose their assets and can pass on to their family.

Both Labour under Gordon Brown and Cameron recognised this isn’t a fair system. Labour around 2009 wrote a white paper suggesting the possibility of setting up a National Care fund which could possibly be funded by approx a 10% deduction from a person’s estate at death. This would mean everyone pools the risk of needing a lot of care in their life, so similar to how the NHS is funded. There would be pushback i imagine from those who would just see it as more tax on an estate. I personally think it’s the fairest way to fund more evenly care.

Cameron when in power said his govt would make sure by 2020, originally it was going to be 2016: people would pay no more than approx £75,000 towards any care in their lifetime. I can’t remember how he claimed govt would fund it. Then Brexit came and May’s election so it was not taken any further and the promise of it happening by 2020 fell by the wayside. Then May proposed her what became known as her dementia tax which said people would be allowed to keep £100,000 of their assets if they needed long term care. This is more generous than now where it’s about £24,000 but not as good as Cameron’s pledge for those who need long term care and have a lot of assets. May scratched it when it looked like it was losing her votes.

In the general election earlier this month, Labour pledged they would provide for free any care needed in the person’s home who are over age 65 and if a person had to go into a care home they would not have to pay more than £35,000 in their life time so the most generous.

Johnson’s Conservatives (tagging you @Pixxie7 for this bit as you raised the question) merely merely said that social care funding was an important issue and needed more cross party consultation. So in my opinion just kicking the can down the road and a lot less than Conservatives under Cameron offered before Brexit. As Brexit is forecast to probably shrink the economy for a good few years and Johnson hasn’t made any pledges on it I don’t see the situation changing from how it is now, sadly and there will continue to be people like your uncle that could be left with little to pass on if they to go into a care home.

Ps sorry @ProfessionalBoss, reading back your comment I see you didn’t say it was an uncle just an elderly relative so I don’t know why I got it in my head you said uncle.

One final thing about care, at least if you are in a couple and if one of the couple needs to go into a care home and the other partner is able to remain in the joint home and outlive the partner in the care home at least the joint home will not have to be sold. However, any savings in the name of the partner who has gone into the care home will I think have to be used to finance care.

@HoHoHoik I have 1 ds who has SN and I get carers allowance for him.

You should have carers x 3 or at the very least an enhanced rate for what you do.

@Chocpear I agree that ESA(WRAG) is really just a way of stopping people who have little hope of working from getting a long-term award, given how very difficult it is to get placed in the support group.

And I agree with you about the Blair/Brown care fund proposal, although I'm not convinced that 10% would be enough to cover costs as longevity increases. I still think it's the best of all the options that have been proposed to date.

They will have to find an alternative for funding care when the millennial generation starts to need it, too. As fewer people are able to buy homes, and will be renting for the whole of their lives, it's likely that the state will have to meet all or part of their housing costs in retirement and fund their care, as there won't be capital from the sale of the (non-existent) homes.

It's very worrying, and makes me glad that I'm old and only have being a WASPI to worry about!

"There are many jobs in our society that EU members come and do for very little money - eg fruit and veg picking - because British people will not do them on the whole"

You are incredibly ignorant. Poorer British people (who would be the people having to do these jobs) CANT do them due to living in social housing. They CANT LIVE AWAY from their rented flat for weeks/months because the flat would be classed as abandoned and they would lose the tenancy . And before you start with "well how would the HA know" ..........well firstly these three words........gas safety check.

Plus there is always the risk that some nosey neighbour (not unlike some of the posters on here) would report the flat as abandoned.

Pensioners have paid in all their lives rubbish jsa/income support child benefit etc all give you ni credits.

Yes, people keep ignoring that you don't have to be paying in to get NI credits!

I thought British people were being forced into low-paid work/unsuitable work now by being sanctioned. Is that not true?

I also heard it is now impossible to be long-term unemployed as you have to prove you are actively looking for work for many hours per day and jump through hoops, so it is actually easier to just go to work. How do some people manage to get away with it?

I have never been unemployed and I don't know anyone who is, so I don't really know.

I have never met a person who has committed benefit fraud. I know quite a few people who don't claim the in-work benefits they are entitled to, myself included.

I understand that anecdotes are not data, I gave them as examples of the kind of jobs I was referring to. I know some of these jobs are poorly paid but I think people should work- if they are fit enough to work. The government could provide additional support to make the earnings up to a minimum that would be higher than the minimum living wage- and it would cost less than it does now because there would be some wages being earned.

Also, there are jobs that there are not enough skilled people to do - HGV drivers for example are in very short supply because people do not have the skills or the licenses. Why can't the government recruit trainees and pay for the training so they help people gain skills in areas of shortage? They will be needed even more after Brexit.

There are significant numbers of people who choose to live on benefits - and often do other, undeclared or illegal, things to earn additional money. I loathe what Ian Duncan Smith has done to the most vulnerable in our society but I also find the idea that some people who could work, choose not to work and pay into the system and expect to be kept by the State, absolutely wrong. There is a sense of entitlement that I find shocking. I saw it myself as a Deputy Head in a deprived area - repeatedly. People 'on the fiddle' one way or another. Those people do not contribute to the Welfare State - they steal from it.

If someone chooses to be long-term unemployed when jobs are available, should they qualify for JSA? That was never the intention of a Welfare State.

If you haven’t paid enough NI to get a full pension, or indeed any pension, then you get pension credit instead, which is the same amount (as long as you don’t have other income).

The whole “pensioners have worked hard and paid in all their lives” is bollocks. State pension/credit are benefits you get once you’re old enough, nothing to do with “working hard and paying in”. That’s just smoke and mirrors .

Jellybabiessaveslives@ whilst I accept that some of what you said is true. As quoted during the election pension is an entitlement not a benefit. Also a vast amount of pensioners have worked and contributed most of their lives.

The point is that the idea of a pensioner as someone who must've contributed is inaccurate. Lots of them did, but certainly not all, and the data isn't provided as to who paid in what. Yet people are very attached to the idea.

@LakieLady, thanks for your reply. Yes, I think WRAG group was a cost cutting exercise above all. I thought to reduce WRAG to same rate as JSA further indicated they were looking at it financially and not how it affects people. Anecdotally, I am seeing on boards people being put into WRAG group who will probably never be able to work or have a fluctuation condition with relapses and periods of improvements making a regular job v hard.

If you are saying 10% may not be enough due to what I said, I think I may not have been clear. I meant every citizen who has estate to leave will have a 10% charge on their estate which will then go into a national care fund. As not everybody will need years of care, I would think it may be enough?

However, you make a very good point as home ownership levels are decreasing with the younger generation and will continue to do so if government does not try to arrest the ever increasing inflated housing market then in thirty five or so years people will have a lot less estate to leave and they will be living longer probably. You are right will have to consider how they will address this.

@mindproject, that is my understanding too so the reality is people are not easily getting JSA and the national insurance credits for years as DWP have so many conditions to get ongoing JSA/UC. Insecure low paid work seems to be the picture more.

There are significant numbers of people who choose to live on benefits

I don’t have data to refer to but as mindproject mentioned getting JSA/UC now has so many conditions and sanctions I do not believe there are significant numbers of able bodied people of working age now living on unemployment benefits long term.

Current pensioners are the richest population group (yes, there are exceptions, but on average they are). they are powerful voters and there’s loads of them, so they get give more. simple.
none of us under 50 now will ever see state pension, so the difference will naturally disappear

Myself2020a I don’t think you will be with out a pension it is your right and you are paying for it.

Unfortunately we are paying for the pension of people currently returned. i will get my private pension, but i would be surprised if i would see a state pension before the age of 75. let alone free bus passes, heating allowance etc. its just not possible looking at state finance

retired, not returned!