To think there is little incentive to work hard in the UK

[BeachTree]

Context. 30's, no kids, single, work full time.

Just a bit disheartened. I have never claimed benefits, or any type of support, I work hard to make sure I can support myself (Not disputing those who genuinely require benefits/support) I have always paid all my taxes, and national insurance. I expect by the time I reach retirement age, the 'state pension' may look very different to what it does now and may not be available despite having paid in my whole life.

I feel sometimes that I pay so much into the 'system' and get very little return and don't 'take' from it, whereas there are many people claiming every benefit possible, and constantly 'taking' from the system they don't pay into. There are so many ways to extract money from the system but only for those who don't work full time. I know someone who worked for about 1 or 2 year in late teens in the UK, then worked abroad for a number of years, during this time did not keep up with national insurance payments and obviously not paying UK tax as no in the country, also didn't pay tax in the country they resided in. Returned to England to have a baby on the NHS, now residing back in England, claiming benefits as a single parent for 2+ years, gets assistance with rent council tax etc despite having paid next to nothing in to the system. I cannot compute how this is fair.

For example the cost of living payment, people who claim benefits will get £650, where as those who work and do not claim benefits will get £400. The cost of living crisis affects all of us - perhaps more so the people who work their socks off and aren't 'entitled' to 'support' The system is backwards and not in favour of people who work full time to support our ridiculous benefit system. So many examples - ie. people get help with rent, council tax, working tax credits etc etc etc - however those who work get zero, zilch.

AIBU?

I claim benefits, work hard and don't get free prescriptions.

@BeachTree

I know people on benefits who still seems have everything they want, a car, the latest iPhone, days out etc...

Well why don't you have some guts and ask these made up people how they manage it, eh? Instead of sulking and moaning and bitching about it on an anonymous forum?

The answer is very unlikely to be because they get such vast amounts in benefits. Seriously. You do not know the ins and outs of their finances, what they are receiving how much benefit for, how much help they are getting from their family, how much debt they are in, if their phone is on a contract they can't afford etc etc. But honestly if you look at a benefits calculator and work out what, on the face of it, they would be entitled to, you will quickly see it is barely enough to keep body and soul together. So unless you think there is some cunning way you can convince the state to keep you in luxury on a permanent basis without being the queen (please share what you think this might be), you are just speculating.

@NellesVilla

You don't need to pay for all your prescriptions separately if you get a number of them each month. Just get a prescription prepayment certificate: www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/help-nhs-prescription-costs/nhs-prescription-prepayment-certificates-ppcs

NHS Prescription Prepayment Certificates (PPCs)
A PPC could save you money if you pay for your NHS prescriptions.
The certificate covers all your NHS prescriptions for a set price. You will save money if you need more than 3 items in 3 months, or 11 items in 12 months.
The prescription charge in England is £9.35 per item. A PPC costs:
• £30.25 for 3 months
• £108.10 for 12 months

You can pay for a PPC in the following ways:
• In 10 monthly instalments by Direct Debit. This option is only available for a 12-month PPC. It is not available at pharmacies.

YABU — VVVVVU — for making the erroneous and disingenuous connection between state support and ‘not working hard’.

Punching down is so, so cheap.

I dont think theres any theres any incentive to be sensible with money .

Me and my partner are saving for a deposit for a house so we have around 20k between us.

If one/both of us was to lose our jobs we wouldnt get any help.

My colleague who has no savings spend 4/5 nights a week down the pub pissing his money up the wall. If he loses his job he would get all the help he needs .

Doesnt really seem fair

YANBU.
I worked my ass off for 20 years to but a 1 bed flat in a shitty part of London. Now have a baby and stuck here as I can’t afford a larger place.

Friends who have, shall we say, a “patchy” work history all had a baby to get themselves a nice 2 bed+ flat in Notting Hill. Yes, they might have had to live in a bed sit in east London for a year first, but they have all ended up getting to live where they want and right next to family.

They get full housing benefit (no rent or mortgage to pay), no council tax to pay, child benefit, income support and who knows what else. One of them also just got £3k of designer clothes for “job interviews” from some scheme when she has no intention of actually getting a job. We’re talking about Stella McCartney, etc. type of brands.

1 doesn’t work at all but the other 2 work the “allowed” 16 hrs per week to be able to claim full benefits, plus do many more hours of “cash in hand” work. The last time I spoke to the non working one, she said she was getting £3,600 per month (she has 1 child she has 50:50 custody of). She has to pay her rent on a 2 bed flat in west London from this (£1700 pm) but it’s still a lot to play with, tax free.

I know 3 individual women doing this.
All 3 can afford to run cars, I can’t.

Regularly off to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Disneyland Paris, etc. I haven’t been abroad for 6 years.

All 3 have basically done exactly as their mums did, but I was determined to break out of what I thought was the “poverty trap”. I guess the joke is on me.

They have better lifestyles than many of my friends who’ve worked all their lives. The only ones who are doing better in terms of lifestyle are those on 6 figures. Make it make sense.

If I had my time again, I would have lived the life of Riley through my 20s and early 30s and not bothered to save. Then got myself knocked up and gone “on the social”. I can’t see that I would be any worse off than I am already. In fact, I’d probably be better off.

The main thing posts like this fail to understand is that 'benefits' are enormously complicated. It's not like someone just goes 'on benefits' as a blanket thing and then all the exemptions apply. There are a huge range of benefits ranging from tax and prescription charge exemptions to disability benefits to JSA (both of which are special kinds of torture, you are constantly monitored and reviewed and sanctioned if you are not seen to be making substantial effort to get back to work) to UC top ups to help with housing costs. It's a mess, it's difficult to navigate, it's hard not to get sanctioned. If you actually knew anyone on benefits well enough to have any insight into their daily lives, you'd understand that.

My mum was on disability benefits for years due to her autoimmune diseases and mental health problems. Anyone looking at her from the outside would have thought she was 'sitting pretty' because she got help with her mortgage payments and didn't go out to work. She even had a phone, the scrounging lazy bitch. They had no idea of the suffering, of how many jobs she had been forced to leave because they wouldn't tolerate the fact that she spent a significant proportion of each month doubled up in agony on the toilet and couldn't get the tube to work without the very real prospect of shitting herself. That she had to go to so many medical appointments and have so many operations. And there were still the 'reviews' with ATOS and their like, who would look at this woman with severe mental health issues and a host of physical diseases and determine because they had seen her walk across the room and she wasn't actively suicidal at that moment, she was 'fit to work'. JSA, another appeal which would be eventually accepted as she obviously wasn't, but they were going to force her through the hoop first etc. Eventually she just gave up and made do without because the process was so tortuous.

She did eventually kill herself, btw, probably at least in part because she had separated from her husband but didn't dare initiate divorce proceedings or she might lose half her home, and as long as they were not divorced she was ineligible for benefits and she couldn't see how she was going to live.

So sorry, YABU, you either don't know what you're talking about or you're fucking heartless.

I'm sorry it's hard for you. But that's not the fault of the benefits system. It's the fault of the greedy rich bastards who have been siphoning off the wealth of this country for decades and are richer now than they've ever been whilst everyone else scrapes along the bottom. You are kicking down when you should be looking up.

Watch 'The Decade The Rich Won' on iPlayer and you'll see there's sanctioned theft going on to such a degree at the top it makes any benefit fraud look like bloody chicken feed.

@FreyaStorm

If I had my time again, I would have lived the life of Riley through my 20s and early 30s and not bothered to save. Then got myself knocked up and gone “on the social”. I can’t see that I would be any worse off than I am already. In fact, I’d probably be better off.

Why not do it now then if it's so wonderful on benefits?

I agree with you OP. All I really want as an employee is for the State to provide me with the basics in return for my taxes - decent roads, good affordable public transport and things like footpaths and road crossings to get to my work. It does none of these, or very little well. Where I live, the grass verges only get cut once per year so the few footpaths there were have become overgrown and can't be used. There is no bridge over or underpass under the bypass to the city centre so its impossible to walk safely to the railway station. The bus to work takes an hour to travel 7 miles. There is no motorway between my city and the two neighbouring cities, only a dual carriageway "in places".

I've lived abroad and all of those things were provided everywhere. I think those "count how lucky you are" posts must be comparing the UK with the third world and not with a modern European country. The infrastructure is awful.

Then theres the wages. They are so low. Due to austerity, employers in the UK haven't given decent pay rises in line with inflation for years yet tax has gone up. Unlike in many European countries, employees cannot deduct their travelling to work expenses from their income tax bills - such a measure would instantly improve the lot of working people.

There is no incentive to work hard here. Instead there are disincentives. Earn enough and you lose nearly 50% of any pay rise.

Its damn hard getting up early in the morning to navigate the awful commute to work. Of course its easier to be lazy and not work full time. Of course people can be lazy - its human nature. The notion that Britain is full of saintly angels who are never lazy because they are entitled to benefits is just one of the problems with the UK. Someone mentioned Polish people working hard here because they can buy a really good house back home. Yes, they have an incentive. Here, your reward for working hard is to pay more tax, get nothing for it that improves your life and to be seemingly reviled by a large sector of the population.

And every few years the goalposts are changed by the government in pursuit of yet another vote winner for those marginal votes who might just be won over by a gimmick or a soundbite on tax.

There just aren't enough people who work full time in the UK any more, and there are too many reasons and or excuses for them not to.

One big point - if you compare the UK to France, France has much higher inheritance tax and that also helps keep down house prices. You still get an inheritance but only 40% of it - 60% of all of it goes to the State. And I think thats a great idea - why should income from working hard be taxed heavily but chance of birth not?

But that’s only if you lose your jobs. On the assumption you never lose your jobs (I’ve been working 30 years and have never lost a job not through my own choice so it’s not unusual) then you will have enough of a deposit to buy your own house and he’ll still be pissing it up the wall.

I have been helping an old school.froemd who lives in the UK. He's 44 and has never worked, I don't know why. He is always asking me for stuff and I don't think it has ever crossed his mind to work. He is so helpless, I can't believe he gets it together to sign on even. He smokes a load of dope and I think just doesn't really remember life with daylight and people. He is extremely angry and political and of course violently anti tory bit literally does nothing but garden and get stoned. I don't mind helping him with dog food but I said no the x box!

I am actually thinking of selling my flat to liquidate my assets, rent a lovely place and live well for a few years until the cash runs out and then do as my aforementioned friends have done. It would be one way of getting back into a part of London with very good state schools and I need to think of my DC now.

I think people who have a "great life" on benefits must be cheating the system somehow. It's impossible to afford designer clothes, holidays and getting nails done at the salon on £500 a month.

the problem is the government is facilitating the extraction of wealth from all of us to big corporations like amazon, Tesco, Google, BP, all the public transport companies etc

Is that just in UK or in other countries too? I ask because I agree Amazon should pay more tax here and I wondered if it paid more in other countries?

You have over egged and thus ruined this benefits bashing post. Free Stella McCartney clothes for non-existent interviews? 🤣🤣🤣

Bullshit.

Not if you actually get given the designer clothes for free from “dem programs”.

I don't think my friend is having a fun life but I do think he's being facilitated to be a smelly, anti social angry, lazy and ignorant man because he doesn't do anything except smoke dope. Anything. If he wasn't given a fancy flat and money to buy the dope with, he could work. He is being let down

@BlaseBalletDancer

I agree with you OP. All I really want as an employee is for the State to provide me with the basics in return for my taxes - decent roads, good affordable public transport and things like footpaths and road crossings to get to my work. It does none of these, or very little well. Where I live, the grass verges only get cut once per year so the few footpaths there were have become overgrown and can't be used. There is no bridge over or underpass under the bypass to the city centre so its impossible to walk safely to the railway station. The bus to work takes an hour to travel 7 miles. There is no motorway between my city and the two neighbouring cities, only a dual carriageway "in places".
I've lived abroad and all of those things were provided everywhere. I think those "count how lucky you are" posts must be comparing the UK with the third world and not with a modern European country. The infrastructure is awful.
Then theres the wages. They are so low. Due to austerity, employers in the UK haven't given decent pay rises in line with inflation for years yet tax has gone up. Unlike in many European countries, employees cannot deduct their travelling to work expenses from their income tax bills - such a measure would instantly improve the lot of working people.
There is no incentive to work hard here. Instead there are disincentives. Earn enough and you lose nearly 50% of any pay rise.
Its damn hard getting up early in the morning to navigate the awful commute to work. Of course its easier to be lazy and not work full time. Of course people can be lazy - its human nature. The notion that Britain is full of saintly angels who are never lazy because they are entitled to benefits is just one of the problems with the UK. Someone mentioned Polish people working hard here because they can buy a really good house back home. Yes, they have an incentive. Here, your reward for working hard is to pay more tax, get nothing for it that improves your life and to be seemingly reviled by a large sector of the population.
And every few years the goalposts are changed by the government in pursuit of yet another vote winner for those marginal votes who might just be won over by a gimmick or a soundbite on tax.
There just aren't enough people who work full time in the UK any more, and there are too many reasons and or excuses for them not to.
One big point - if you compare the UK to France, France has much higher inheritance tax and that also helps keep down house prices. You still get an inheritance but only 40% of it - 60% of all of it goes to the State. And I think thats a great idea - why should income from working hard be taxed heavily but chance of birth not?

Even though you say you agree with the OP and I don't, I do agree with you. Of course a lot of people will choose benefits if the wages and working conditions mean its no better than paid employment. That doesn't mean it's lovely on benefits! It just means it's shit on paid employment if you are low skilled and in a low-wage environment. And sorry but not everyone can 'retrain' to be a high earner. There isn't the availability of either training or jobs, some people don't have the time or capacity, and a LOT of people don't have the ability. Which is fine. In a decent world there should be secure work for all kinds of people that pays enough to live decently. The reason there isn't is not because poor people are lazy and immoral, it's because our economy is being milked by those in power.

A fine example of this is as follows in your post:

One big point - if you compare the UK to France, France has much higher inheritance tax and that also helps keep down house prices. You still get an inheritance but only 40% of it - 60% of all of it goes to the State. And I think thats a great idea - why should income from working hard be taxed heavily but chance of birth not?

Well look at the people who are making the laws and the people who are funding them. They are not the 'hardworking', they are the ones with enormous amounts of inherited assets. Of course they don't want meritocracy, of course they don't want hard work to pay, of course they don't want a level playing field. Look up, not down to see the problem.

@Andante57

Is that just in UK or in other countries too? I ask because I agree Amazon should pay more tax here and I wondered if it paid more in other countries?

Many other countries are MUCH better at extracting tax from corporations.

@FreyaStorm

Why are you 'friends' with people whose lifestyle you disapprove of so much?

@BerryBerryBerryBerry

I don't think my friend is having a fun life but I do think he's being facilitated to be a smelly, anti social angry, lazy and ignorant man because he doesn't do anything except smoke dope

You definitely sound like he's your friend. For sure.

Perhaps get a clue of what you're talking about before calling other people's situations bs, @QueenCamilla My rent of £330 is paid in full by the housing element of universal credit. 25% discount off my council tax for being a single adult in the home. Universal credit = Personal allowance + child element + child benefit + scottish child payment = over £1300. So perhaps away and get your facts corrent dear. Now do toddle along.

@FreyaStorm

I am actually thinking of selling my flat to liquidate my assets, rent a lovely place and live well for a few years until the cash runs out and then do as my aforementioned friends have done. It would be one way of getting back into a part of London with very good state schools and I need to think of my DC now.

I would actually be very interested to hear how this works out for you. Do let us know!

Yabu because it’s small fry to the amount of tax dodging going on.

People often forget about this side of the coin to he honest, I agree with you to an extent OP, but if everyone paid the correct amount of tax instead of seeking out loopholes to cheat the system, the country would be far far better off.

I can see with the examples you've given why you feel fatigued, but wealth hoarding and tax dodging costs us far more than the benefit system.