To be confused by benefits cuts to the disabled and ill?

[AllyHayHay]

As luck would have it, I have not been in this position, but I do know of one disabled lady who has struggled. She was incredibly fortunate to already own her own home prior to her accident.

I am not what you'd call politically astute, but I have been reading about the proposed spring benefits cuts and wonder why people always discuss this ONLY affecting the sick and disabled.
I am also aware that there are many, many rough areas with families who have never worked, people who are struggling with addiction, prison sentences (their kids, spouse, etc) and these people never seem to be included in the Guardian articles and opinion pieces online.

Why would a system wish to make the life of a disabled person worse, yet ignore the growing issues of illiteracy, generational poverty and other issues which are going on in most urban areas just out of sight of the comfortably off?
Why not address the reasons that great swathes of people are living on benefits across the UK who are NOT disabled? I imagine this would drag up questions of why those issues persist - and no one in government wants to address that.

Since benefits claimants who are not in work of on the pension are a minority, are these cuts more of a populist tendency?

That was a Tory proposal though, and didn't go through in the end. And it never made sense anyway, as you can be eligible for one benefit and not the other.

Yes, this I totally agree with!!
Always target the vulnerable, weak and the poor first. Reason? It’s easy!

As easy as targeting farmers etc with class warfare cries of "tax the rich"? From the outset Labour have used divisive rhetoric to gain support for their policies. Why is it a surprise that they are know turning this onto benefits/disability? Their MO was clear for all to see but most were happy while it didn't affect them.

I really wish people on MN would stop equating a poster suggesting that benefits should be reduced with a suggestion of genocide/Halocaust. I had similar posts on a thread about a bloody bus pass! We are in real danger of straying in 'boy who cried wolf' territory here and it is in everyone's interests to keep posts proportionate.

The reality is that most people will 'happily' or not so happily pay their National Insurance Contributions and other taxes for their full working lives (18-65+) and still be net beneficiaries of the welfare system. Obviously if lots of people drop out of the workforce for whatever reason then this places an even bigger burden on the working population and specifically the net contributors.

The welfare system was always designed so that most people were self sufficient but where necessary the stronger and wealthier members of society would contribute more to subsidise those that can't work or cover their own costs. The system simply can't cope with the huge numbers of people that are claiming to be too sick or disabled to work and diminishing number of 'strong' people that are willing and able to pay into the system for themselves and others.. We have to do something! We have borrowed an astronomical amount over the previous two decades to fund the welfare state and now we have a crazy amount of debt that is costing two thirds of the NHS budget to service in interest payments each year. We desperately need to pay this down as soon as we can so that we can actually utilise this money on services that would benefit people instead of paying interest on money that's already been spent.

They haven’t targeted them first

Do we actually know what is planned ?

well we know what they have said they propose to do. It’s a matter of whether they can get away with it.

@Bumpitybumper It's an historical fact that disabled people, along with other persecuted groups, were sent to Nazi death camps. The Government via the press seem to currently be encouraging resentment and hatred towards the disabled who are claiming benefits, encouraging people to see them as a drain on the economy. Is it any wonder that we are starting to compare ourselves to those persecuted in Nazi Germany, look at the treatment the Jews in this country are getting, now the disabled, who will be next? Unless you are disabled yourself, it's easy for you to say we are overreacting to the threat of having our income taken away and that we are feeling persecuted by a government who seems to be targeting the most vulnerable members of society.

@ExIssues
I do understand what you are saying.
Unfortunately the labour market is not disability friendly enough.
Zero hour contracts can be a good thing for people with disabilities, especially those with fluctuating conditions.
Sometimes a disabled person can look at a job they could do but can’t because the company wants 1 full time employee rather than 2 or 3 disabled people.
Sometimes disabled people could do the job with ongoing support but it can be difficult to get and it’s hard to continually have to fight for help.
Sometimes disabled people struggle with completing application forms and interviews and rejection after rejection knocks any confidence they have left.
There are a multitude of reasons as to why they are economically inactive.
Very few are truly scamming the system. It’s just the system isn’t built for helping people navigate into a world where disability is judged so harshly.
If the employers offered true flexibility we would see more people in work.

The reason most people are "net beneficiaries" is because of low pay and astronomical housing costs.
The ones who benefit from the current situation are the employers and mortgage providers (and of course those landlords who don't have mortgages)

The solution is to raise NMW further, and build social-rent housing.
The welfare state was set up in a time of strong unions and mass house building - that has what has changed.

Why not target fit, healthy people who are claiming UC, who aren't in the LCWRA group? Why not take more serious steps to get them into the workplace, not go after people who have already had to go to great lengths to prove they are incapable of work due to sickness/disability?

Because apparently, it is people in the LCWRA group who are costing the country £billions.

Just continually raising NMW isn't the answer. It just leads to artificial wage inflation and issues higher up. So someone unskilled earning NMW can now be on same as a graduate with professional qualifications? NMW is now around 25K full time.

But if most people are 'net beneficiaries' of society, that must mean their wages are too low to pay sufficient tax for them to be 'net contributors'.

By pushing up NMW, it will hopefully push up the pay at all levels as employers will want to keep pay differentials, so everyone will be paying more tax.

The only other way to make more people 'net contributors' is to cut services and pay-outs (mainly pensions but also working-age benefits), so that people have less to be beneficiaries of.

@XenoBitch That's exactly what this government wants everyone to believe, that it's all the fault of the sick and disabled!

Yes, you’d think this would be the solution but we’ve seen for decades that it isn’t the case.
Unfortunately we don’t have an inclusive society and we also have many more people who have mental health issues.
We don’t see enough actual support to help people into work or training. It’s lip service and nothing of substance.
We KNOW that the neurodivergence is extremely common but employers still think a round peg will fit into a square hole.

We need to adapt to roles to make it work but it can sometimes feel that employers don’t want to.

No, those are not the only reasons. Not even close. I won't even bother listing everything as it would take forever but ultimately we are all receiving more benefits from the system than was ever initially envisaged.

We have a top heavy demographic with more old people living longer in often poor health. Considering the cost of social care this is hugely relevant. We have better medicines and technology now so it is felt that the NHS should fund all sorts of procedures and treatments that didn't exist in the 1940s. The pension bill has risen from £11 billion in the 1940s to £200 billion now. This absolutely has nothing to do with the cost of housing or low pay. SEN education costs have obviously spiralled as has costs associated with disabled and sick adults.

Put simply, the system was never designed to operate under the conditions we find ourselves in today. This is why it's failing and why we need to be more realistic about what is affordable and sustainable. Your ideas around NMW and social housing building are rooted in the past. We now live in a globalised world where we need to be competitive if we want to achieve the allusive but vital economic growth we so desperately need. We also need to be realistic about the government's ability to fund and most importantly resource mass house building schemes.

Yet "will hopefully push up the pay at all levels as employers will want to keep pay differentials" that clearly doesn't happen because most companies aren't multi nationals with an enormous surplus. The majority are SMEs who simply can't afford to continually increase salaries each time NMW goes up.

I manage a £5 million budget in a charity. The combined pressure of NMW + NI increase from April = over £1 million and mean recruitment freeze and £0 yearly wage increase for employees.
People who constantly call for these things have zero understanding of how businesses actually operate.

This is very naive and ignores the impact of globalisation and inflation. Just look at the past few years where inflation has been riding high and even those with large pay rises don't feel any better off. Businesses don't just absorb higher wage bills. They pass them onto customers buying their goods and services and if they can't do that then in lots of cases they will reduce headcount. The end result is nobody is actually any wealthier and the government can't just start taxing people more in this scenario.

I agree with what you say about the vast changes since the welfare state was set up.

That doesn't change the fundamental equation of 'net beneficiaries' vs 'net contributors'. The only way a beneficiary becomes a contributor is if they pay more tax (by getting a higher wage), or receive less back (by fortunately not being sick, disabled, old, etc).

However, this is a bit off-topic for a thread about benefit changes.

I agree with this. NMW increases don’t necessarily mean that people will be better off because businesses and utilities will just keep putting prices up to cover paying their staff.
It’s a never ending circle.

Yes there was a lot about this in proposals last year but not been mentioned much recently. It would help to protect the most disabled.

Not really because it is the context behind why we are where we are today and why cuts are needed. There seems to be an assumption on this thread that cuts are intrinsically mean and nasty. As though the system should be able to function without doing this because it seems to have coped so far.

The elephant in the room is obviously we have been taking on a whole heap of debt to keep the show on the road for the past two decades. It is now completely unaffordable and the idea that we can miraculously raise enough tax from a dwindling tax base to cover a rapidly spiralling welfare bill is clearly nonsense. You can't just raise NMW and everyone is a net contributor. It really doesn't work like that.

We are now in the era of trade offs. If you want to keep sickness benefits as they are then we must look at the other spending big hitters to make the necessary savings. We have pensions, health and social care etc. The low hanging fruit has been picked so any further cuts will detriment someone in quite a significant way. The obvious place to start are the most obviously spiralling bills which include disability and sickness.

I have seen posts on threads like these from posters claiming that they should keep their disability benefits because they don't begrudge free nursery places etc. Its all utter nonsense and obviously designed to make it look like keeping everything is an option. We are past that point now. The reality is if you keep something the same then you will lose something else somewhere else. We are living way beyond our means!

I'd rather the NHS offer euthanasia for "useless eaters" like myself (how dare i exist and need resources?!) and stop pretending to care about sick humans and ration IVF, NICUs, ICUs,Transplants, Insulin and other chronic care so they can free up their precious budget. Maybe only give acute care to the able bodied and working aged if they deemed to have a good chance of a full recovery. Don't want chronic useless eaters costing money! After all, we have wars to fund and a flood of other priorities.

After all , the state wasn't built for all these modern advancements!! Let them die the books need balancing. We can always import more able bodied people.

I feel that is where we are going. I just hope the state sanctioned exit is humane and gentle.

The OP also seems to think that only the thick disablist WC want to see benefits cut whilst their naice MC friends (mostly seeming to work in the public sector or "creatives") would never dream of worrying about such impure thoughts.

Reminds me of other posts here which have seriously suggested that information should be withheld from WC voters because they wouldn't "understand it" (ie they wouldn't agree) and a particular corker - "thankfully our noble institutions are in the hands of MC educated women"

Honestly you couldn't make up some of the posters here (although we know some do).