Feel this country has become rotten - benefits

[She11y]

A studio apartment in my area is about £800 per month.
A minim wage job is around £1500 per month net.
After you've worked in a hard and demanding job - most minimum wage jobs are demanding - you've got £700 to pay for food, travel, bills, clothes.
You might end up with £100 left over each month. Working hard all your life with no hope of owning your own home or having any sort of financial stability.
No wonder people don't want to work. Make owninf a house affordable and over night 1/3 the people claiming benefits will stop.

My point is that a lot of people are on benefits because they're depressed at the hopelessness of their futures, and try to avoid working.

Both housing cost inflation and wage suppression are directly linked to mass immigration.

We really need to get it back to around 100,000 people per year to allow the house builders to keep up with demand.

Absolutely not. A read a quote somewhere along lines of 'the civility of a country should be judged by how it treats its most vunerable' - we should support those who cannot support themselves.

But the issue is establishing the boundary between can't and won't. Those that won't work give those who physically can't work a bad name.

Would you rather have more people in employment or higher wages for those with employment on minimum wage?

Because that dial is about to swing from one to the other and think it will further fuel the welfare bill.

They do indeed but again it’s so hard to solve. Junk food is addictive, the companies that manufacture it are very aware of this but market it heavily. Walk down any high street and you are bombarded with every variety of unhealthy food you want. It’s much harder (and much less desirable) to find healthy options. And obviously price plays into that too.

As I said in my earlier post though this is so hard to change - no government wants to be labelled as making food more expensive which is precisely what they would be accused of if they tried to take on the big food manufacturers.

So while I sympathise that it’s easy to become overweight/obese and even normalised in our society I think solving the problem needs to be attempted on an individual level - everyone is responsible for their own food choices and the consequences of them.

Screaming “some people have medical conditions!” (as always happens when obesity is debated) I don’t think is helpful.

It could well be a vicious circle though. If illness has a profound effect on mobility it's going to be difficult to burn off calories too.

I acknowledge that it's a complex issue. I don't think I was screaming though. 😉

We have property taxes - stamp duty when bought, council tax based on size of property, and inheritance and capital gains tax when sold

The fact of the matter is minimum wage means minimum lifestyle - things scale from there.

Most of us started out on minimum wage - I worked through Uni at minimum wage (picked a supermarket, so I got discount on my food/clothing and worked awkward shifts which at the time carried a premium). Then as time passed and I got my degree I got better jobs, and got a better lifestyle.

My brother didn't get the degree, and stayed on minimum wage jobs, so has flat-shared his whole life.

My sister is married, so works a minimum wage job, which allows her to look after her children while her husband has a full time job so they could afford a home (on the edge of town, in need of doing up, which they do themselves)

You cut your cloth to match your income.

Someone purely on benefits has nothing they can do to improve that income and lifestyle. Someone in any job does.

Some people argue that anorexia is self inflicted and a choice.

Addiction can be a result of self medication of mental health problems, so yes, it can be caused by a disability. Mental health services are shit - too much demand, too little resource, add in the need for a multi agency approach and things can fall apart, though things should, hopefully, be better than they were when addiction services wouldn't help you if you had untreated mental health issues and mental health services wouldn't help you if you had addiction issues...

Addiction is complicated.

Absolutely agree!
plus the overal benefits as calculated should include housing, reduction in ctax, free prescriptions etc whatever comes free or reduced. It should never be more to be on benefits and should be significantly less
If that’s what Labour want
to
Make Work Pay
^^

It is generally cheaper to live in shared accommodation

A studio will always be more expensive

Agree
Its also worth noting in the past when houses reduced in value people found themselves in negative equity and lost their homes
House prices halving overnight would not only crash the economy but put tens or hundreds of thousands on the street.

We could build more flats also.
Cheaper to build.
Uses less land which is better environmentally and keeps farmland to feed people

Both housing cost inflation and wage suppression are directly linked to mass immigration.

We really need to get it back to around 100,000 people per year to allow the house builders to keep up with demand.

Our population increases have also being caused by people living longer though. We never recovered from the 08 crash & economic policy inflated assets. We have an ageing population, immigration is going nowhere.

We have property taxes - stamp duty when bought, council tax based on size of property, and inheritance and capital gains tax when sold

Council tax needs to be revamped.

House prices halving overnight would not only crash the economy but put tens or hundreds of thousands on the street.

Halving overnight is wrong but they really need so stagnant for a long time.

Actually births and deaths are basically equal at the moment see ons stats for England and Wales ( Scotland and NI do their own )

Its emigration and immigration that has a significant effect on population changes here in the UK

I think you’re right about the lack of incentive. Britain is a small, overcrowded island. Because the demand for housing is so high, developers take advantage and build disgusting little rabbit hutches, then squeeze them on top of one another. Also, it’s now law that when you build these horrible new estates you must include social housing. So you can work hard for decades and end up with a violent, yobbish ‘problem family’ next door (obviously you get lovely people in social housing as well). It isn’t just that nobody can afford these new build ratholes. The problem is, nobody wants to live in them. The U.K. is so crowded that our quality of life is deteriorating. There’s nothing to aim or work for. If you live in a huge country like Canada or Australia, there is lots of personal space. The houses are bigger and more spaced out, and you can hope to live a decent, civilised life. To live a quiet, pleasant, civilised life in the U.K., with a big garden and plenty of space around you, you need to be a millionaire.

@FreedomandPeace immigration has had a significant impact but as I said people living longer has contributed too.

"The older population in England is getting larger. In the last 40 years, the number of people aged 50 and over has increased by over 6.8 million (a 47% increase), and the number aged 65 and over has increased by over 3.5 million (a 52% increase)."

" • The number of people aged 65-79 is predicted to increase by nearly a third (30%) to over 10 million in the next 40 years, while the number of people aged 80 and over – the fastest growing segment of the population – is set to more than double to over 6 million."

Actually births and deaths are basically equal

Hence why we have an aging population...

In the 60s it was 5 workers to 1 pensioner, now it's 3:1 and in the next 30 yrs 2:1. Not sustainable and why immigration will be going nowhere.

It could go somewhere. In the next 30 years we’ll see a lot changing via tech in the workforce.

Why stay in a min wage job? Surely that's a starting point and you can work your way up the ladder and earn more? Upskill if necessary, plenty of courses online.

Actually there is some merit in this idea my parents worked there asses off to buy a home if they were renting there would have been less drive to thrive and more work to survive

Why do you think so @EasternStandard? Much of the west will be fighting over immigrants although we are in a particular sticky spot. Plus it will be exacerbated because our talented young will be attracted to other countries for better QOL, ability to afford a house etc.

"The number of working tourists from the UK has jumped from 31,000 in 2023 to almost 50,000 last year."

"According to a poll from the money transfer company Currencies Direct, 74pc of Britons aged 18 to 34 were thinking about moving abroad in the next five years."

Low birth rate also has an impact though….that’s choice based ( and partly lower fertility )
Living longer isn’t exactly choice based…we can hardly blame people for living longer ( I’m not suggesting you are btw, but so many on MN do )
So
Our stable population is not just down to one demographic