Aibu to think the new Sunak scheme is woeful

[Marg33t]

New scheme is going to make lots of people lose their homes and starve.

Employers to pay 1/3rd of wages is way too high. They will cut viable jobs that will bounce back otherwise.

I'm happy to pay my taxes for all that need it to continue to receive furlough as this scheme will keep people in poverty.

Aibu to think it's a mistep?

@Malachite234 they were- I believe Hays travel agency took on government contracts to operate the tracing side of things with their trainees and foreign exchange staff who were otherwise redundant

[quote Ifeelsuchafool]@MarshaBradyo can you link to the details of payouts to venues, please? My son's string quartet just did an online concert for a hall who asked them to waive their payment to support the hall. It was a wonderful perrformance, put together in just one week after over 4 months of not being able to rehearse and they got not one penny for their trouble. It's heartbreaking.[/quote]
Ifeel I’m afraid I only know the amount not the detail, ie not sure which venues got it specifically, was it a major one?
£1.5bn to venues

That’s really hard : (
Did they agree to pay them then withdraw that?

I know very large companies who furloughed and didn’t need to claim that money whilst others desperately needed to and weren’t able to. Perhaps somehow that could be addressed?

I think the scheme is fair and positive. If it keeps two or three people in employment over just one then great

I am director of a small Plc company. Have been for 20 years. I have been paying personal tax, corporate tax and VAT all that time, filling up the government’s pockets. I have never claimed anything, not even maternity leave, instead going back to work when my children were days old. But I received NOTHING during lockdown. My business has been battered and I used company funds to survive. I employ 3 people and continued paying them 100% of their income all along, to the detriment of my company and myself. We had work and needed to get it done even if it was very low income generating work. We have just about survived so far. If there is a second lockdown, I will still get nothing. I doubt I will make it this time.
Mr Sunak is very well aware of the plight of people like me but he has made it very clear he doesn’t care. Instead, he might increase corporate tax, making people like me pay to help a government pay for support they refused to give us...

Well unfortunately my husband has already lost his job based on this decision. He works in an industry that would definitely be viable once the country is back up and running again but his employer doesn’t have 1 hours worth of work for him so they can’t pay him 55% of his wage to do nothing.

@Solange1973

I am director of a small Plc company. Have been for 20 years. I have been paying personal tax, corporate tax and VAT all that time, filling up the government’s pockets. I have never claimed anything, not even maternity leave, instead going back to work when my children were days old. But I received NOTHING during lockdown. My business has been battered and I used company funds to survive. I employ 3 people and continued paying them 100% of their income all along, to the detriment of my company and myself. We had work and needed to get it done even if it was very low income generating work. We have just about survived so far. If there is a second lockdown, I will still get nothing. I doubt I will make it this time. Mr Sunak is very well aware of the plight of people like me but he has made it very clear he doesn’t care. Instead, he might increase corporate tax, making people like me pay to help a government pay for support they refused to give us...

Sorry I don't understand why you weren't eligible for the furlough scheme?

@Solange1973 you are exactly the business who needed the help whilst multinational who claimed it. But why didn’t/couldn’t you?

I could have furloughed my staff but we had enough work for all to stay in work. The problem was that the jobs were very small and not paying enough. I was able to cover employees’ salaries but not my own. I have lived off the company’s reserves which leaves me short to pay my taxes in January...not good. There are many businesses in my position right now,

Over £50000 a year in revenue and working from a home office. Two of the reasons stopping me being eligible for grants. I could apply for a loan but more debt when I don’t even know how I am going to pay the taxman this year is the last thing I need!

Let's not fool ourselves. Taxes are not paying anywhere near the government's expenses these days. Borrowing is the highest its ever been at any time apart from at the height of WW2. Remember the UK was still in the doldrums until the 1970s after that borrowing fiesta. What you should be doing is asking your children if they are happy to pay crippling taxes when they grow up to keep people in jobs during 2020-21 in positions they will probably by that time never have heard about (nightclub hostess, what is that? Group travel planner? Mesmerising!) There comes a point where industries need to figure out what is viable long term and the only way they will do that is by paying a majority of the cost of furlough. Those affected are of course innocent but will just have to be flexible and opportunistic to try nab some of the new opportunities that are opening up as eg delivery drivers or warehouse workers, possibly just short term, but we can't saddle future generations with this bill when they have no say!

@Solange1973 I have every sympathy with you. My husband is in a similar position. As he had taken over £50k per year out of his business previously, he didn’t get a penny, despite his business having a massive drop in income. We have survived using our savings...but they are running out. And my husband will be left paying for this shit when his corporation tax increases in the future.

Yogi I understand where you’re coming from, but do you know what poverty does to the life of a child? By removing the support systems the government have put in place for six months, you would plunge millions of families into poverty. Those millions of people would all be competing for the jobs at the same time and, instead of ‘the children’ paying heightened taxes for x amount of people being given 1/3 pay by the government, ‘the children’ will be paying even higher taxes for x amount of people being supported 100% while they remain unemployed and job hunting. Meanwhile, those children experience hunger now, probably cold now, the uncertainty and fear and stress that living in a house on the breadline brings... now. Maybe watch their parents argue and cry and split up over money, now.

The Tory government aren’t stupid. I personally think the majority of them are heartless wankers, but they’re definitely not stupid. If this government think this set of measures are better than the alternative, doesn’t that tell you something?

Its tragic. But there comes a point where we all need to be realistic. I have been on furlough since march. Sat at home doing nothing and tbh the 20% ive lost on furlough is basically my parking,transport and lunch money. I appreciate it. I really have. But now, Im redundant. My job that 8 have had for 10 years is just gone. No goodbyes to customers/staff/suppliers etc
We had a thriving cafe in a massive office complex. Now its a shell of a building with no customers as everyone is working from home and the owner of my shop has had to pay £1k lease every week since March.
It's a truly awful situation. But there comes a point when we all need to get realistic.
Covid 19 destroys lives. I may not have contracted it, but it has took my life.

All I know is that the number of jobs out there at the moment are in high demand and if you are unable to work outside of a bog standard 9-5, like me, then you’re in real trouble because those jobs are few and far between.

Totally agree - people just don't seem to get it! Also, a lot of work being offered is part time or casual, and not enough to live on. I'm not in the UK, but if I work only half-time I earn enough to not be able to receive anything under the JSA, which is fine, but if I work for over a certain number of weeks then I have to reapply for the JSA all over again when I stop work - it really isn't worth it.

I do hope the public sector has to ‘lean in’ too.

I work in the NHS and the amount of money wasted on ‘non jobs’ is incredible. I’m a clinician with 25 years experience. I work on an autism diagnostics team. The waiting list is two years. Meanwhile, our ‘equality and diversity’ professional (who doesn’t even have a degree) is paid £10k more than me for checking that we are being inclusive. It’s an absolute farce.

@Solange1973

I could have furloughed my staff but we had enough work for all to stay in work. The problem was that the jobs were very small and not paying enough. I was able to cover employees’ salaries but not my own. I have lived off the company’s reserves which leaves me short to pay my taxes in January...not good. There are many businesses in my position right now,

You could have furloughed some of your staff though and then made use of the part time furlough arrangements from July onwards. You're now in the situation that the furlough scheme was trying to help. Hopefully you can recoup some money from this new scheme from November.

I think a lot of people are missing the point of job support schemes. They are not there to ensure any worker or group of workers can pay their bills. Ultimately, if this thing doesn't blow over before it's necessary for a given worker, the correct amount of support and the correct mechanism for giving it is defined by Universal Credit.

The point of the job support scheme is to stop long-term economic damage being done by a (hopefully) temporary shock. Someone up-thread complained that employers are going to be reluctant to pay someone 55% of their salary to do a third of their hours. Well, that's why the new scheme is good. Only jobs where the employer has faith in the long-term future of the job will get subsidised. The scheme isn't there to subsidise everyone, only those where managers much closer to the coal-face than the government have determined that subsidy is so worthwhile that they're willing to put their (the businesses) own money into it.

Cannot believe how ungrateful people are. I was always told to put smthg away for a rainy day. Rishi Sunak has done SO much for the people in this country, be thankful you live here, & not in another country where you get NOTHING.

So everyone who's lost all their work in the arts or any other "unviable" sector should just get another job, should they? Where are all the jobs they should get? Who can afford all the one-to-one lessons they're supposed to give, or buy the music they write or the pictures they paint? What about all the people who work in the arts as admin, or technical staff, or front of house?

I don't know why I was expecting any better from the Tories, but I'm horribly disappointed. We'll end up with hundreds of thousands more people claiming Universal Credit. How will that help the economy recover? We already have 3 million unemployed; I wouldn't be surprised if that doubles.

And the help on offer for the self employed is pitiful. A further SEISS grant of 20% of average profit for the last three years. Most small businesses and sole traders barely scrape by anyway; my grant will be about £200 a month, and Sunak made no mention of extending the suspension of the minimum income floor for universal credit which expires in the middle of November. I was so confident that he'd do that that I've just gambled two weeks' profit on renewing my professional licence so that I can at least get some work. I live in a small country town where there are very few jobs; I haven't even had a reply to the applications I've made so far. I can't travel for work because I had to take my car off the road at the beginning of lockdown and public transport is appalling here. If the MIF is reinstated I will have a choice: I can either be homeless and bankrupt at 63, or give up trying to work at all and spend 35 hours a week looking for non-existent jobs so that I can get maximum Universal Credit. And there will be tens or hundreds of thousands like me. OP, yanbu.

Cannot believe how ungrateful people are in this country. Rushi Sunak has done SO much for the people here. Be thankful you live here & not in another country where you get NOTHING. The only thing I think he got wrong is, he should have made these multi millionaires furlough their own staff. When I was younger, I was taught to save up for a rainy day, you shouldn't expect others to bail you out

Sure it is. We're completely bankrupt though. Unless you're secretly a billionaire, your taxes and your children's taxes won't cover it.

To anyone saying why would an employer pay 55% of wages for their staff to work 33% of their hours?

There's also a £1000 bonus coming in January to employers for each member of staff they furloughed and have kept on. It all helps.

@ChromaBook

Chroma I also developed a side line in PAYE as I knew it was variable

Well that was nice for you but the relative I'm referring to worked a 60 hour week and had no spare money to fund additional training.

Hey Chroma, I've home educated for a couple of years and the numbers of people joining is astonishing. If your relative was genuinely stuck there's almost definitely a market for activities in HE. Online/in person tutoring. Music and movement groups, musical adventures outdoors (if social distancing mandatory). DM me any time and I can point you in the direction of several groups.

@RandomLondoner

I think a lot of people are missing the point of job support schemes. They are not there to ensure any worker or group of workers can pay their bills. Ultimately, if this thing doesn't blow over before it's necessary for a given worker, the correct amount of support and the correct mechanism for giving it is defined by Universal Credit.

The point of the job support scheme is to stop long-term economic damage being done by a (hopefully) temporary shock. Someone up-thread complained that employers are going to be reluctant to pay someone 55% of their salary to do a third of their hours. Well, that's why the new scheme is good. Only jobs where the employer has faith in the long-term future of the job will get subsidised. The scheme isn't there to subsidise everyone, only those where managers much closer to the coal-face than the government have determined that subsidy is so worthwhile that they're willing to put their (the businesses) own money into it.

Yes good points. It makes sense if you look at it from a broad economics POV.

What is the answer?

There is not a bottomless pit of money.