What standard of living do you think should be the minimum everyone can afford?

[MondayAgainnn]

What do you think the absolute basic minimum should be?

I think everybody should be able to afford:

Decent food
Safe housing
Any extra medical things needed, including dentistry
Internet package as it is completely necessary nowadays
Enough clothes to stay warm, dry, appropriate trainers for exercising etc
Enough for some discretionary spending - obviously this is harder to quantify, but things like Netflix, a coffee, cinema tickets I feel should be a normal attainable part of life for everyone
Enough to save a bit

Whether it is through work or through benefits I feel everyone in society should be able to have a lifestyle that is dignified, basically comfortable and with room for treats. Not just subsistence level.

What do you think the minimum should be?

Agreed. Some people are plain ignorant.

I think every home should be insulated and heating affordable for all, also food and clothing. The people saying Netflix shouldn’t be affordable to people on benefits- you don’t think people should have access to a spare tenner a month?! And depends what people mean by a holiday- for years we stayed in crumbly hostels in non touristy (but still great) areas or went on day trips to places that were free. I’d still have said we were going on holiday!

Shelter (housing, electricity, running water, clothing)
Food
Healthcare from cradle to grave
Wifi
Education to 18
Pension / right to retire late 60s
Freedom to vote
Clean air
Freedom from discrimination
Freedom of information

Nor Netflix, coffee, holidays and savings ffs 🙄

Why a gym? We have outdoor space where people can exercise.

So they can stay healthy. Not everyone wants to jog.

@Emotionalstorm or walk, or skip, or do outdoor aerobics, pr squats, burpees or use one of the free outdoor exercise equipment in the park?

Or stuff like this www.healthline.com/nutrition/outdoor-workout-ideas#outdoor-hiit-workouts

You do realise that people stay fit and healthy without the use of a gym?

1000s of people manage this every single day!

I don't think anyone is suggesting people should be able to have all those things, or (where applicable) have them on a daily basis. It's more that there should be a little money free for an occasional treat, or to save up for something like a phone upgrade or modest holiday.

It is currently believed that 1 in 5 are disabled, however, the number of people diagnosed with disabilities ismincreasing at a staggering rate. As a disabled person, I’m conscious that the government didn’t cause my disabilities and I do not expect them to provide me with extra money due to my ill health. I would much prefer these funds to be used to improve access to assessment and treatments.I would like to see access to high quality training to improve the employment prospects for disabled individuals and those on UC.

I believe the basic standard of living should cover shelter, heat and food. There should also be free bus passes and access to leisure services, including the library and swimming.

When my parents where both made redundant in the 90s our free bus pass and access to free swimming were invaluable.

Enough money to travel around, with a car or a bike or reliable public transport.

I think it's time we stopped calling disability allowance a 'benefit'. I think it should be a totally separate entity and of course allow people luxuries as well as basics! They didn't chose to be disabled!

To those saying only the essentials and no netflix or coffee, days out or anyhting at all. I think everyone needs just a small amount of discretionary spending.. like £20 a month. I think if all you can pay for are the essentials and nothing else at all, it's very easy to become depressed and lonely. Being able to have the odd treat goes a long way to self care. Meeting a friend for a coffee or doing a hobby class or something can make a big difference to someone's mental health.

Best idea, discretionary spending on what they want. Not what others have decided is important.

Best idea, discretionary spending on what they want. Not what others have decided is important.

But people are so intent on controlling what others do - I remember the utter fury that folk who received lunch allowance for their kids during lockdown weren’t limited on what they could spend it on. So god forbid someone had a bottle of wine in their shopping while using a food voucher for any part of that shopping.

The rhetoric that people in benefits aren’t responsible enough to make choices about what they spend that very limited amount of money on is quite insulting and quite unfair.

I also think ALL children should have funded swimming lessons from reception age until the end of primary school. Knowing how to swim is so important and lessons are expensive. When DS was learning to swim it was £8 per half hour!

The government would also have to fund coaches to get classes to swimming pools. Coach costs are making school trips to places with free entry, cost a fortune at the moment. As schools can only ask for a voluntary contribution to trips, they are quickly becoming unaffordable. We have had to cancel 3 planned local trips this term-the entry was either free or minimal, but the coach hire was exorbitant.

I 100% agree, but it's so bloody ingrained in some!

So what would people on benefits do if something like their fridge broke?
If there is no space in their budget to save or have a treat then how do they replace essential items? Or should these people have to shop every day and don’t deserve the convenience of storing fresh food?
The same with an oven?

We were on benefits are lockdown when the government let businesses make all the staff redundant because they wanted to change the contracts, lower pay and conditions!
It’s not fun and DH got a job immediately and I was still working (equivalent of NMW full time pay), childcare was killing us so DH’s new job works around my hours but is less pay but I’m now working more and we’re not longer on benefits.
The stress of watching every penny is horrible, we didn’t do treats - except the odd ice cream for the kids, no holidays, petrol couldn’t be wasted as we needed to get to work.
I can’t imagine how bad it is for people in extortionate rented places who only have a third of their rent paid by UC (if that) so what would be the point in them working more?

There needs to be a bigger incentive financially to work. I had two in nursery and would have been in debt to work more than part time.

We struggled but did it to keep our house. Our mortgage luckily was half of most people’s rent so we just about coped. And we knew it would improve once one was in school and the other would get funded hours.

I think benefits should be the essentials with a little extra to cover the odd treat and broken white good! Mental health is bad enough in this country without making it worse. Also the children don’t deserve to suffer. We are all responsible as members of this society.

So what would people on benefits do if something like their fridge broke?
If there is no space in their budget to save or have a treat then how do they replace essential items? Or should these people have to shop every day and don’t deserve the convenience of storing fresh food?
The same with an oven?

I suppose the same as people who work but don’t have savings. Ask family, use overdraft, get a loan, buy second hand, use freecycle. It can be shit. Our fridge freezer broke when the kids were little and we didn’t have enough money to buy a new one. We found a pretty old one being sold locally and persuaded a neighbour with a van to take me to collect it. It Had lots of dents and didn’t match anything we owned, but did us for
several years!

I don’t think people on benefits are buying new fridges anyway. Usually they would go to a charity which redistributes second hand white goods for cheap or free.

I was raised on benefits and didn’t have holidays or coffees or restaurant meals until I was grown up and working. It wasn’t a tragedy. We did always prioritise paying for a tv licence though, because it was the cheapest form of entertainment. Nowadays Netflix is the equivalent, nobody watches live tv any more.

What would actually help is if people could earn pocket money without losing their benefits. Say £20 a week. Because lots of people on benefits do this already and live in fear of being caught. The current limit for what people are allowed to earn is £5 per week before they start removing benefits, which hardly even pays for a coffee.

I'm really not sure why it's so offensive to say that once everyone has a basic standard of living met, as described in the op, then working should always allow you to earn more?

I appreciate being disabled often comes with added expenses but I'm not sure that should mean that the state always covers those expenses by giving more money

I'd much rather see properly funded services. And more support to allow disabled people to work where possible.

Plus increasing carers allowance for those with genuine care needs

I'm in the same situation although I think normalisation of a situation where people work full time but can't afford a holiday is quite wrong.
I live in a very rural area and going back only a generation it would have been normal for churches to pay for annual seaside trips for children. It's so grim to think that many children can't even avail of this nowadays.

I'm really not sure why it's so offensive to say that once everyone has a basic standard of living met, as described in the op, then working should always allow you to earn more?
The problem is that as soon as you earn any money they start removing benefits. If an unemployed person can earn £20 a week that’s great, they will benefit from the extra money and over time the experience could lead to higher earnings. But if they take it away from you where’s the incentive?

They also limit your ability to do unpaid work experience which might lead to a job. When I was unemployed I was offered an opportunity to volunteer at a local company - best case they might hire me, worst case I could put it on my CV. And the benefits office said no, if I did it they’d take my money away and I wouldn’t be able to eat or live. So I couldn’t do it.

Why is it apparently so bad to let people do voluntary work or even earn a few quid, to improve their prospects and create future opportunities? Our government is so insistent that if you’re on benefits, then you’re on benefits and aren’t allowed to do anything else. But in the real world it’s often a sliding scale to transition into employment, and they’re blocking that.

I think this is an interesting and complex question. I also find it interesting that not many people really think about how we would fund this basic standard of living and how increasing the standard of living would impact things like funding for other state services and immigration.

MN seems very keen on reducing inequality but only with very specific parameters. Reducing inequality usually means that those with privilege have to lose something. Almost everyone in the UK is privileged versus many countries in the world. Would those on a low income in the UK be happy to have their standard of living eroded further to allow those in less wealthy countries to enjoy a better standard of living? You could definitely forget about Netflix, the gym, free bus passes etc for the poorest in the UK but it would mean that some people in other countries could have running water or at least one decent meal a day. I honestly see very very few people on low incomes in the UK even contemplate this because this inequality obviously doesn't matter in the same way that they think the inequality they experience Vs British rich people matters. They expect those that are more wealthy to give to them willingly because it is the moral and ethical thing to do but don't seem compelled by the same forces to share their resources with people that are less well off than them.

I guess my point is that people are people and are mostly self serving. We all think there is someone better placed to fund the things we want or help the needy. We are quick to ask for help and slow to offer it. This will always hamper any minimum standard of living

Yes, that's what I said....bills haven't come down because energy conpanies are privatised, selling on an open market, exposed to its conditions, and must maintain their profit levels.

If the oil / energy industry hadn't have been privatised in the first place energy wouldn't need to be sold on the open market, or at least it would be possible to withdraw supplies for the benefit of the country when needed, there would never have been the need to maintain profit for shareholders, and all that billions in profit that the private companies have made would have went to the exchequer, which could have been used to invest in infrastructure and provide long-term security for the country (although that would require component governments).

Energy companies don't look to make redundancies because of tax regimes, they look to make redundancies because profit is their sole reason for being and must be protected at all costs. You could eliminate tax completely and as soon as that level of profit became "normalised" they'd start up redundancies the moment it was threatened again.

That's the way the current capitalist system works. It doesn't have to be that way but it's the way that benefits the rich and the way tories and their ilk desperately want to keep for some reason.

I think it’s totally shameful that we live in a ‘rich’ country but yet a family on minimum wage working full time struggle to have the money to pay basic bills let alone enjoy the occasional treat. The government having to pay benefits to people who work is nuts, they are subsidising the criminally low wages being paid, and feeding the profits of the big companies they work for. Everyone should be able to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle - safe housing, utilities, transport, medical (including dental) care, healthy food, clothing, and then have a bit left over to save or to spend on hobbies. Less than that and in the long term the costs to the country are more - physical and mental health issues being stored up, reliance on state benefits, loss of community (as no-one has time and energy to engage with helping and being with others if they’re stressed and working all hours). I think anyone who works hard, whatever that job, cleaner or nurse or company director, should be able to enjoy life in return, and we should look after anyone who isn’t capable of work (and provide lots of support to those who want to get into employment but have barriers). Things are so much harder now than when my parents were young - my grandparents lived in spacious house they bought from my grandad working a regular job, my grandma stayed at home and looked after the housework, they enjoyed lots of leisure time, my parents went to university with grants and no tuition fees. It’s depressing how hard we have to work and how much we have to pay just to scrape by now.