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.

Mainly down to postwar births

I'm on board with the principle that minimum wage means minimum lifestyle, the question is what constitutes a minimum lifestyle?
I think a one bedroom flat for a single person is a reasonable expectation.

Low birth rate also has an impact though….that’s choice based ( and partly lower fertility )

Of course low birth rates impact whether a population is ageing or not...plenty of young people don't feel they can afford them or if they can they chose one and of course age of first time parents has increased.

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 )

It's no one's fault just down to advances in healthcare, unfortunately healthy life expectancy hasn't changed much in years.

Are you disagreeing with me that we don't have an ageing population? Or that it's irrelevant?

Mainly down to postwar births

The fact remains we have never seen such a shift in demographics & financially we have not planned for it!

I was in a similar position once, I was incredibly poor but it didn't make me want to stop work and go on benefits. It made me work hard and I now live a very comfortable life.

What needs to change drastically is how people have come to value any effort on the basis of instant gratification.

My D's is exactly in this situation. First job after Uni graduation. Earning slightly more but over £250 in travel. Unfortunately he needs to available on two bases, so can only move close to one and travel to the other.

Of course it first feels disheartening when you finally starting independent life working harder than ever, but efforts don't just stop there for life to be about enjoying the rewards for the rest of it.

He has now started to think of the next stage which should come into two years approximately. He understands that he will have to keep up with the efforts but ultimately his lifestyle should continue to improve. It might take some steps back for a few years with children, but will pick up again.

That's what life is all about. Investing for the future whilst enjoying new things. At the moment, it will be independence for my DS, and that's precious enough.

his lifestyle should continue to improve. It might take some steps back for a few years with children, but will pick up again

But don't many young people feel like things won't improve? I thought that was the issue? a lack of hope. I only got on the ladder in London because of a 6 fig deposit from parents. That changed my future & my dcs future more than my job/income.

@frillygillymilly

I was disagreeing with the pp who stated our population is increasing because people are living longer
Irrespective of people living longer ( which of course they are ) we can still clearly see that births and deaths are equal from the ons stats.
If we wanted our population to stagnate that is exactly what’s happening….so all things are in fact equal in that respect
It isn’t however. It is growing and the 600,000 population growth that we’ve seen yearly more recently is down to the offset from immigration and emigration

Corporations = large companies, basically. Bit more complicated than that but that was how I was using the term.

Off the top of my head, Amazon and Starbucks are well know for tax evasion in the UK. I've included some links below.

I don't understand what the confusion is regarding the word infrastructure. Companies that don't pay their dues are using our roads, which we the public pay for. They make use of our ports and airports, our railways for freight, grids and water mains. All to help make profit that does not benefit the UK.

https://www.taxwatchuk.org/seven-large-tech-groups-estimated-to-have-dodged-2bn-in-uk-tax-in-2021/

https://www.taxwatchuk.org/tech_companies_2019_update/
Eight tech companies in the UK avoided an estimated £1.5bn in 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/11/us-multinationals-underpaid-56bn-in-tax-in-uk-last-year-hmrc-believes#:~:text=%C2%A32.8bn.-,Amazon's%20main%20UK%20division%20paid%20no%20corporation%20tax%20in%202021,years%20are%20Microsoft%20and%20Netflix.
Amazon’s main UK division paid no corporation tax in 2021 or 2022.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/05/starbucks-paid-7-point-2m-in-uk-corporation-tax-despite-gross-profit-of-149m
Starbucks paid a “derisorily low” £7.2m in UK corporation tax last year despite making a gross profit of £149m on sales of £548m in Britain.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/20/hmrc-has-not-charged-a-single-company-over-tax-evasion-under-landmark-legislation

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/205235/55billion-lost-to-tax-evasion-could-be-significant-underestimate-pac-report-warns/#:~:text=The%20report%20is%20concerned%20by,strategy%20to%20tackle%20tax%20evasion

The only way to make housing more affordable is to increase supply. We need policies which encourage an increase in the provision of well managed, good quality, affordable housing then people won’t need benefits in order to to afford it.

I agree.
It was obvious there would be and was more births. It was obvious at some point in the future those people would retire.
Which is no fault of there’s !

There was no forward planning
Successive Governments have only ever looked at the popularity vote to keep them or bring them into power.
It’s the problem with how countries Governing powers work.

But don't many young people feel like things won't improve?
Why wouldn't they when they have over 40 years to make it so? They feel hopeless because they can't see further than a few months, a couple of years at best.

As always, it's down to parents teaching them about delayed gratification from a young age.

@FreedomandPeace I was the poster who said

"Our population increases have also being caused by people living longer though."

The above is true though.

If we wanted our population to stagnate that is exactly what’s happening….so all things are in fact equal in that respect

What is equal? what are you trying to say?

It isn’t however. It is growing

I think you are misunderstanding, even without immigration and if people stopped having babies the population would still increase for some time because all the people who already exist would live longer.

Successive Governments have only ever looked at the popularity vote to keep them or bring them into power.
It’s the problem with how countries Governing powers work.

Well yes, but the public don't want to hear it tbh. Many don't even understand how the demographics have shifted.

This is our situation re child disability payments. My daughter’s needs are variable. She can walk quite far with her walking frame, but sometimes she can’t and needs her wheelchair. She is about to learn to drive to give her more independence, but she wouldn’t be able to put her walking frame in the car by herself so would be reliant on her wheelchair. Both her chair and frame need a large vehicle to carry, which is currently provided by motability, but she can’t be insured to drive a larger vehicle under the scheme. So, at 15 years old, she has had to make the decision to “improve” herself by learning to walk on crutches. This slows her down and means there are so many things she can’t do. But under the rules of PIP (which she would move to) this is considered being able to walk. That means she loses the higher level status of her mobility, loses her motability car (paid for by the mobility benefit), and also her automatic entitlement to a blue badge. This means she loses her independence, in which case there is no incentive to learn to walk on crutches. So, we focus on what she can’t do when we are filling in the forms. What else can we do in a system designed for either disabled or not disabled with nothing in between?

I think AI and automation will dramatically change the workforce in the next 30 years.

Without that it seems our system demands an unsustainable pyramid shape, we can’t keep just going up though - unless people think we can?

But with it there’s potential for the people requirement to change a fair bit.

My lack of housing options makes me feel hopeless. I work though and am happy to work to pay for my housing.

I rent privately and have been served two section 21 notices in 2 years. Both times I have become physically unwell with the stress of not knowing where we would end up. Applying for rentals like it was a full time job, no support available from the council, no hope of social housing. Finally found a lovely private landlord willing to take us on and love the home we have now, but its 15 miles from where we had moved to 2 years ago after the first S21. More cost in terms of rental and travel to work/school. And no more security than we had the first two times.

I would give my right arm for social housing. I would even pay more for it, just to have the security.

Why wouldn't they when they have over 40 years to make it so? They feel hopeless because they can't see further than a few months, a couple of years at best.

Is it really complicated? It's far harder to build wealth these days because of higher salaries, higher taxes, higher house prices vs salaries. state pension age increasing etc.

Personally I feel for them.

As always, it's down to parents teaching them about delayed gratification from a young age.

Why are there so many crappy parents? What went wrong with that generation?

Rather than being too hopelessly depressed to work, at minimum wage jobs, and claim benefits..just work at getting a better paid job and possibly improving your future. Jeez, not rocket science.

@MyUmberSeal Depression is a lack of moral integrity? How dare you?
You're ignorant and a loser in my eyes.

@EasternStandard How exactly do you see it changing though? Tech has already changed the word considerably but whilst some industries have become obsolete, others have been created. I suppose robots may fill the carers gap but I still can't see them being cheap.

Without that it seems our system demands an unsustainable pyramid shape, we can’t keep just going up though - unless people think we can?

Who on earth thinks that? 😆 That ship
has sailed a long time ago! But an upside down pyramid is even more unsustainable than a pyramid hence why Tories did little to stop immigration and future govs won't either. Unless people think we will move away from Capitalism?

Or, we could try and get back to a time when a minimum wage job allowed a family to survive. Not every person can be employed in highly paid roles. Or we would have no one doing the unskilled jobs that are still vital for the running of the country

In Ireland 4 bedroom houses operating as HMOs are housing 16 people.

Surely this is the incentive needed to get people into work / work harder and out of social housing.

@LilacPeer I get that, I think the insecurity of renting is very damaging.

@ChangeTheBeds Fuck me you’ve added 2+2 and got 27 there. I quoted the original OP who said it’s ‘depressing’ for young people who feel a lack of hope for their future. She didn’t say they had depression. Quite a big difference. I feel depressed sometimes too, but I don’t have depression.
Don’t change the narrative to suit your own cause, and don’t put words in my mouth.