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?

This 👏👏👏
The 'system' isn't just benefits.

Yes, I know how the system works, I’m married to an American who lived with and paid into it for many years. The fact still remains that what we pay in tax and NI as a household in the UK - getting in for £80k a year for both of us - is still more than double what the people we know with similar incomes and circumstances in the US pay in income tax, health insurance, copays and deductibles combined. So forgive me for being bitter that the MN mantra about the NHS is always “well, if we want a better NHS then we all need to be prepared to pay more for it” - usually from posters who pay very little tax in the first place - when I already pay more than plenty and get fuck all in return.

You haven’t hit the time in your life when you may need help. Unless you’re a high earner you won’t be paying that much in because we don’t have high taxation in this country.
yes there are definitely those who are work shy/ ‘sick’ etc but to balance that there’s also a lot who are providing 24/7 care for another person and getting very little from the state to cover the costs. It does need reform, it’s not a fair system at the moment but I don’t think those reforms will put money into your pocket necessarily

This is true. Also salaries in the US are often double what they are here in the UK for technical jobs.

No, its not like "people" moaning about a completely unrelated thing that you have for some reason added to your rant.

It is about someone who has lived in The Netherlands and France comparing the appalling "service" the NHS provides and people sometimes having to pay twice to get their cataract operation or hip replaced just to be able to enjoy a normal life. It is nothing to do with tv licenses or the US healthcare system.

You do realise that there are more than two countries in the world? Perhaps you should try living in one of them to broaden your life experience.

@ComtesseDeSpair

So forgive me for being bitter that the MN mantra about the NHS is always “well, if we want a better NHS then we all need to be prepared to pay more for it” - usually from posters who pay very little tax in the first place - when I already pay more than plenty and get fuck all in return.

But if you did need it, it would be there. None of us know if we will become disabled, get a serious or life limiting illness etc. And savings would be depleted incredibly quickly if it was necessary to pay for treatment privately here in the UK. The NHS provides a safety net for everyone. If you never need to use it then in many ways you're very lucky.

The grass isn't always greener. Unemployment brings up more serious problems than no weekly wages, it impacts on the entire family and their MH too.

Others are brought up without any incentive or confidence to start work.

The social issues go much further than unemployment benefit.

In your situation I think you need to appreciate the fact you have the skills, confidence and ability to hold down a FT job.

YANBU. If you are not working or work part-time and have kids, benefits are very generous, sometimes far more than the take home salary of people in full time work. The ones who are really screwed are, like you say, single people in work or single people on benefits who are only entitled to minimum benefits and normally a room in a house share. Benefits should be time-limited and based on previous contributions.

@LadyCatStark for PM! Forget Rishi and Truss.

So much this that it deserves quoting:

“I think a lot of people on Mumsnet are supportive of those on long term benefits because they live in their middle class bubble and don’t actually know anyone that can’t be arsed to work.”

I get the impression so many PP who think living on benefits is awful don’t actually know anyone on benefits. There is nothing like the peace of mind of a secure council tenancy.

My sympathies lie with the couple earning under £40k between them and trying to make ends meet for their DC. Renting from a private landlord who can ask them to leave at any time and having to uproot their DC from one school to another, every few years.

"I have also seen people with no benefits cap due to disability claiming the equivalent of a 60k salary."

Disability benefits are not extra spending money. They cover the extra costs associated with having a disability. I am sure this has been explained before about a million times.

And the PP who said less would be paid in benefits if NRPs were made to pay maintenance. Maintenance isn't classed as income so it wouldn't make a difference.

Yes, it's not counted as income - but why? Because by and large it's something that is very successfully ignored and not paid, with zero will to change that. Instead of changing that, using the powers already in place to make sure it's paid at the right amount, on time, and regularly, the government choose to pay benefits to single parents on a low income instead, and any maintenance is a 'bonus'.
It's bloody backwards, benefits are the default for single parents and maintenance the extra, which allows NRPs to disappear into the sunset doing this again and again.
If you're an RP there's a 2 child limit, yet if you're an NRP you can have as many children as you like, and they can be funded by benefits, as long as they're with someone else, with no requirement you pay anything for any of them.

Perhaps if that changed, as in every NRP has maintenance taken at source when they refuse to pay (similar to council tax) for each child, then benefits are the back up rather than the default and maintenance is the default. Thus meaning that men NRPs fund their own children and not benefits.

But we're too entrenched in seeing the RP as the one in receipt of benefits and therefore the scrounger, the one who should be better, it's way too tempting to kick them. While the other one, by their lack of responsibility for their own behaviour is the problem.

I worked ft and paid more than 50% of the cost of bringing up my daughter, he worked full time and paid sweet fuck all, benefits filled the gap. Yet I'm the problem according to so many. Like I said, backwards.

The rich have always pointed the masses towards the poor. “Look at them! Look how they’re living! Look at them TAKING!”

..and while we all look that way, the rich scoop up everything for themselves.

I'd agree with your post if you didn't assume people on benefits didn't work. Of course they work!

The unfair bit is someone can be doing their best in full or part time work, getting up and out the door in the morning going to work/juggling kids etc. But because wages are so shit they also need to claim top ups. Meanwhile someone unemployed can get the same money doing sweet FA.

For me, it'd be far easier to not work, to claim everything. But I just don't have that mindset and I think ahead to the time my kids are older and I wouldn't be able to claim anything so would end up in a dead end job in a never ending vicious circle. Instead, I've chose to work, build up experience and qualifications through my work, so now I've gone for a promotion and work full time.. however, despite this, my wage is still too low to live without top ups of tax credits!

So please don't tar everyone with the same brush... people are out there bettering themselves and working full time. Not everyone is sitting at home doing nothing. You need to blame high rents/greedy landlords/high taxes/low stagnant wages. Thats the true reason people are claiming top up benefits.

I do agree that the people physically able to work should be employed.

The unemployment benefit rate in Ireland is double the amount of weekly benefits per wk in the UK.

There is a certain part of able bodied people in society that have never worked for their pay.

I'm unemployed ATT because I couldn't continue working after lockdown I realised I was running myself into the ground with 2 extra needs DC for years.

This is like dogs fighting over scraps. The benefits system is not generous, it’s just that work doesn’t pay well for most people. The vast majority of the wealth and power is held in the hands of a tiny few, many of whom work infinitely less hard than the little people underneath them. For the wealthy, their vast money and asset reserves work for them, so they don’t actually need to do any real work if they don’t want to. Fighting over an ever shrinking pool of what’s left just makes for a lot of very angry, miserable people who all believe they are the most hard done by, when really they are all in the shit together.

There are actually loads of people who choose not to work though. I have horses and there are always lots of people who have 2 or 3 horses who don't work full time and claim benefits, or who don't work at all. And most businesses in the town in which I live struggle to find employees because people can't be bothered working. Off the top of my head I know several people with adult children still living at home ie 19, 20 into their mid twenties, male and female, who simply do not hold down a job because they cannot cope with being a reliable enough employee to actually turn up. Nothing wrong with them, healthy young adults. Most of them do a little bit of part time work here and there when there are plenty of full time jobs available, subsidised by their parents, or do a part time college course in something fairly useless that doesn't even require a qualification that would be better supported by gaining work experience on the job . It might just be a particularly lazy town, but to suggest that all people who don't work aren't lazy is ridiculous - its become a way of life in the UK. Finding a reliable employee who (a) actually turns up every day and (b) works while they are there instead of moaning is like finding golddust. Its not like cats scrapping like a pp suggested, its becoming a race to the bottom.

That said, salaries are extremely low in the UK.

You get the benefit of not seeing ragged starving children living on the street. You get the benefit of living in a safe country where violent crime is rare. You get the benefit of not seeing seriously I’ll people begging on the street because they can’t work. You get the benefit of working with an educated workforce. And the whole society benefits from that.

This.

usually from posters who pay very little tax in the first place

that’s some talent you have there, knowing from a person’s post how much tax they pay!

And most businesses in the town in which I live struggle to find employees because people can't be bothered working

hahahahaha! Have you been living under a rock? There is a staffing shortage right across the UK right now. Maybe have a bit of a think why that might be? I would hint that for the most part, it is not because people can be bothered working.

But why should we work? I do work FT and earn enough to not get UC, I did claim benefits when dd was young and used that time to get a degree and now do really lovely work helping people.

But why should we work to make those at the top richer? I work because I have to and I don't want a life on benefits, but working is shit. There's enough wealth in the world for everyone to not have to work and do something they love instead. Working yourself to the bone, getting stressed about it, worrying over sick days is utterly shitty. I don't give a flying shit if someone claims benefits, I might give a shit if tax loop holes are closed, the richer don't get richer on things like brexit and covid, wealth was more evenly shared. Until that happens if you can claim benefits then do it.

Also, benefits money goes straight back into society. It's spent in shops and makes money for others. You never hear of people on benefits saving it. If money isn't spent the economy collapses.

Working is a massive con.

I do get what you mean op. I have 2x dc and a single parent and work, my friend who also had 2x dc but didn't work had more disposable income than me, when the dc were little. However I have a mortgage and will eventually pay this off, whereas my friend will likely always have to rent with very little pension.

I think working and not claiming might not be beneficial in monetary terms, but is far better in the long term.

I see my taxes go towards not just nhs and benefits, but enables me to live in a lovely society where I can walk home, street lights, drainage, police etc. it also means no one should go hungry ever and always have a roof over their heads

OP - not read the whole thread, but when I was single I felt much the same. I couldn't even use public services (NHS, libraries, etc) because my working hours were so unreasonable, occasionally to cover those with children who were deemed unable to work more.

I left the UK and moved to a much lower tax economy and then after 4 years I relocated again to the ME where I effectively paid no tax. The savings I was able to make really changed my life for the better.

I am married now and earning less/using state schools (although doing my best to avoid the NHS which seems to have imploded), but I agree that the pinch point of "this just isn't worth it relative to the quality of services or my ability to access them" is way too low in the UK and impacts adversely on overtaxed single people.

I can understand some of your frustration when my DH was made redundant he wasn't entitled to anything despite little savings because I worked but it wasn't enough to cover. It's a system he had paid in for over 15 years.
But YABU for your assumptions jusr becausepeopleyouknow take the biscuitdoesn'tmean thats everyone - the cost of childcare is extreme in this country we are both in professional jobs and come next year our costs will be the entirety of my DH wages for 2 who aren't even in full time and with 30 hrs subsidy for my 3 year old (Scotland all receive it).

I think some people have the attitude that they are entitled to everything without having to work for it or save for it and just because they want it. But reality is these types generally end up in debt and struggle eventually. Its far better to have the attitude of working for something and saving towards something then thinking the world owes you favour.

Oh @FreyaStorm, your friends' benefits aren't covering Stella McCartney clothes. Their trips to AbuDhabi and Dubai are.

OP, why should anyone have to work hard?