Rishi Sunak no more bailouts

[Elpresidente29]

He said government cannot go on like this...

And then they’re all young people who are about to finish Uni and college, with no job prospects

www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/06/risk-dole-queue-future-young-people-after-covid-19-crisis

furlough is unsustainable and some people just want to take government money to sit at home where actually their job is very low risk

You do understand people don't choose to be furloughed don't you? No one can go 'no thank you, I won't go on furlough because I've determined my job is low risk so I don't need to'.

You are told. Not asked if it's alright and given the option of staying if not.

Like a PP said. It makes sweet FA difference if people do prefer staying at home taking government money. They don't have a choice but to do that right now. Once this scheme ends, they will likely do what they did before and get back on with work to pay their bills (providing they have a job to go back to).

Can you also explain how it is possible for the country to pay the income of 50% of people long term. How is this sustainable?

Can you explain how it's sustainable to have nearly a quarter of the UK workforce out of the work through no fault of their own but offer them no meaningful assistance?

The Govt obviously had no choice but to support these people. I agree that that support cannot go on for much longer but what they cannot do is keep the situation as it is in terms of business closures/lockdown etc but just remove the supoort. It will collapse.

Yup, I agree I am privileged. But I also want to be paying my nanny from my own resources, working full time and paying tax. What is wrong with that?

Just a few weeks ago many threads on here were telling people that they couldn't go to work if their work was not essential and people were starting threads because they were upset that they were being asked to work rather than being furloughed on full pay. This is who I mean.

I fully support anyone on furlough who wants to work but can't do so. I understand they are the majority at the moment. But I do think that employers should be starting to bring people back to work where there is work to do. And people should be supportive of that.

Research into UBI has actually shown that it increases productivity, impacts positively on stress related sickness absence, and creates more cohesion in the workplace because the inequality gap is less acute and stigmatising. But I'm going off track here.

Furloughing has cost 8 billion so far and 6.8 million are using it. Some businesses are using it inappropriately to make sure they can ringfence their profits for share holders and owners. I am not furloughed and I am currently about to go into a school to do my work and then I have to go check some bruising on a baby after. I am happy to do this because I am contributing and my skills mean I can do it and I am being paid for it. I am not happy that SOME businesses are abusing their employees and the system by furloughing to save themselves cash, either to mitigate against future loss or protect assets. If everyone is on UBI and non essential business is paused there can't be an abuse of the system can there? Nobody is getting out anymore than anyone else. And there will be no businesses sinking as they are on hold. They don't have any output or input. Would it cost more, less or the same? I don't know but we can definitely ask questions and discuss the efficacy of different schemes. People need to get out of this 'people getting free money for nothing' narrative, the choice has been removed on instruction by the government. You can't provide strict intervention into people's lives to manage a health crisis without intervening or changing an economic model that relies on exchange of production of means for labour. People work to live. You can't remove their ability to work and not give them a means to live.

People work to live. You can't remove their ability to work and not give them a means to live.

Beautifully put

@thetoddleratemyhomework Thank you Over the years DH and I have been employed/self employed/employers so I can generally see things from several perspectives. DH's employer was struggling financially before the virus hit - in his position I'm not going to say I wouldn't be taking advantage of everything I could. Yours was just the one post too many that caught me on the raw after all the comments about 'furlough scroungers sitting in the sun drinking all day'.

It's not so much people on here insisting the state pension is a benefit oldsu, it's what the actual law says. Lots of people just don't like that fact for whatever reason.

PubsClubsMinistryOfSound if the law says the state pension is a benefit and if UBI replaces ALL state benefits, the pension itself would not exist just as UC/tax credits would not exist everyone will get UBI, instead so my question stands if a state pension is changed to UBI will it be taxed like the state pension it replaces or tax free like the tax credits and UC that it replaces for working age people? If its all the same benefit then there should be one rule for both working age and retired, one benefit one criteria so taxed or not taxed

Oldsu IMO it should be untaxed

It depends how it is done (and I don't think we can afford it in the UK by the way). If it were £12,500 for each adult to replace all benefits, to be a new benefits cap (I would support that part of it) and replaced child benefit and state pension and we raised the NI limit to £12,500 like income tax it would be untaxed. So a couple would have £25k between then and be allowed to do s od all and sit around looking at flowers all day (who would work in that situation !!!!! with all that free money?)..... The nif you also earned £100k the £12,500 is tax free. Whereas if you earn £200k you don't get a single person allowance at all now in the UK so the state would steal 45% income tax from it and 2% NI so take about half of it back I suppose.

(who would work in that situation !!!!! with all that free money?)

Isnt it always the well off that seem to know what the poor will do, whereas most people I've ever met who are in the lower socio economic bracket and the members of the underclass always want to work from the self worth/providing for their family (anecdata Im aware from its very nature is flawed) although there seems to be less condemnation for those sitting around doing nothing for their money at the expense of people below them, weird that

So a couple would have £25k between then and be allowed to do s od all and sit around looking at flowers all day (who would work in that situation !!!!! with all that free money?)

i bloody would. 25k between 2 people isnt that much, especially if you have kids

and i am bored bloody shitless at home.

I WANT to work. Lots of people do.

I personally wouldnt care if some people wanted to sit at home and live a simple life on 25k.

I have spent probably, on average, 20 hours a week with Universal Credit (before that the various out of work benefits) claimants in the last 11 years. 100% have the following one or more issues in their lives hence why I am involved:
Domestic Abuse
Substance use
Mental ill health
Neglect
Physical Abuse
Disability
Trauma
Attachment issues
Sexual Abuse
Self harm
Eating disorders
Food poverty

An awful lot of them scale their situations very poorly. Free money doesn't necessarily mean it's all sitting around looking at flowers and laughing. It is reductive and patronising to say that.

100% *of them, meaning my caseload

Please stop referring to taxation as theft Xenia. It’s as ignorant of the real world as your dismissive view of benefit claimants.

Sure I get your point oldsu, but the state pension as things stand is a benefit. You can make that argument whilst accepting it isn't simply a thing people on here say.

I would still work if there was UBI. But part of the point of UBI is to reduce the numbers of hours each person works and change the kind of work people do because so many jobs are going to be replaced by automation and AI.

I hope that large corporations who have used the furlough scheme will be audited and if found to have made a huge profit this year/paid shareholders or large bonuses management will be paid to pay back the furlough payments.
I’m furloughed on 80%. We are a tiny company (7 people) and our industry will not be back to normal anytime soon ( events etc and all the exhibition halls we were going to be at are all being used as hospitals etc here and in various cities in Europe)
Hopefully once this is all over and everything has opened up I can go back to work. If there wasn’t furlough I would have been made redundant.

This health emergency will certainly shake up how businesses work and how their staff are managed regarding hours worked and pay and conditions. It's already started in big supermarkets with the ' scan and shop' devices which has decreased human power on the tills and AI and robots will decrease it even further next few years. I think this will be the new normal and jobs will adapt or just cease to exist anymore. Great for employers but not employees! (If your a robot engineer your ok ! )
Maybe schools will also lose staff if the older children can be trusted to ' learn from home ' : I bet they are seeing how it's going at the moment and what the take up is with who is doing it and who isn't! Universities won't have as many students ( unless it's a degree you really can't do online that easily) and all be done on laptops and the odd visit once a month to check in or something.
It will all be so different in a few years time I think and the virus is the catalyst to move things forward.

I agree that UBI and as big a financial pause as possible
could have worked well to minimise economic impact. I suppose it's too socialist though.

@Aryaneedle amazing point you’ve put across there. People who’ve been in work most of their adult lives, who have the skills and/or qualifications to stay in work, to buy Or rent a house, to buy food Etc think it’s just a simple case of people being too lazy to work when they get ‘paid to not work’. The alternative and less easy to swallow reality is that people WANT to work, but they might have no minimum quals due to an abusive childhood, undiagnosed autism or learning difficulties at school, being a young carer etc and then there’s those who are in work doing fine and they have a disability suddenly loom, a severely disabled child, are affected by suicide or child loss and this spirals into MH difficulties.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t help themselves, of course they should, and there aren’t excuses for everything but some people really have a shit start and then it goes from there. If you can’t understand that you’re lucky IMO

The increasing use of AI and robots is another argument for UBI. The current economic model wasn't working for the majority of people anyway, even before Covid. To me, it felt like the (younger) UK population were being tested to see just how much shit they would accept, without revolting. I suppose the aim was to get pay, t&c, and living conditions down, more in line with people in developing countries, in order to maximise profits for the big corporations that are increasingly in control.
Expectations e.g. home ownership, a part-time job with regular hours are already lowered. None of this is fair or should be inevitable and at least Covid has highlighted this.

It is using a socialist tool definitely but it wouldn’t be implementing socialism though as it would be a specific, time limited intervention to achieve an outcome in an acute period. The free market would have been free to resume as business would have been frozen. And balances of books would too. I think it’s a difference of doing versus being. It’s a big leap.

Going back to motivation to work. DP works FT in a hospital and I work on CSC. DP has obviously worked more, longer shifts as he has worked in a command centre. I have worked harder because I’ve had to adapt to different ways of working and manage the DC’s. We have both said that being furloughed must be a horrible experience. Your income changes, the structure of your life, the content of your output, your perception of what you can and do contribute all whilst stuck in at home with lots of time to think. It’s so much more than sitting about.

If UBI comes with halving the benefits cap I am not against it as it can operate as carrot and stick and encourage couples to live together and children to have two parents. I don't know if we could afford £12,500 per person with it added to your other income but it would be a massive income rise for many pensioners by the way., State pension is about £7800 a year.

@Charley50 I totally agree with you. I would say this could be a big chance to re think models, close the inequality gap and be responsive to innovation and change in tech but I’m a bit cynical that will all go to pot once the trickle of cold hard cash starts flowing upwards again.