To think too many people are happy to live off benefits forever?

[BritishQueue]

Okay, I know this is a touchy subject here on MN, but I need to ask, AIBU to think that too many people are just choosing to stay on universal credit rather than work?

Obviously, I’m not talking about people who genuinely can’t work - disabilities, carers, etc (even though a lot of those who claim to be unfit for work are perfectly capable, and I’ve seen “carers” for people who don’t actually need any care…). But I know multiple people who are completely able-bodied and yet have no intention of ever getting a job. They say things like “it’s not worth it” or “I’d be worse off working,” and honestly, I don’t get it. I work full-time, pay tax, and yet I see people getting rent paid, extra handouts, and still managing holidays and luxuries I can’t afford. Not to mention that a lot of women think the government should subsidise their SAHM lifestyle.

I just don’t understand how it’s fair? Surely benefits should be a safety net, not a lifestyle choice? AIBU?

If course they do but many do not.and if they aren't doing voluntary work or studying either, they become increasingly unemployable.

We all have that relative/friend who is playing the system like a fiddle. That's what pisses people off, not those who genuinely need them.

Fair comment.
Maybe some kind of mandatory voluntary work, until a a job is secured
( for those who can work but are not ) ?

You could easily be a member of my family saying that about me, they know so little of me and tbh it's quite humiliating to talk about my disability and the reasons I get benefits.
You don't know everything about these people.

Seen what exactly??

Of course, some people claim fraudulently or attempt to game the system, but it is a shockingly small number. We spend more on fraud investigation (staff, software, phone lines, etc) than is actually lost through fraud.

Not only that, but the amount of unclaimed benefits each year is much, much higher than what is lost to fraud.

Finally, the welfare bill is crippling us because of pensions, not benefits. Even if we stopped all other benefits, the change would be negligible once pensions are taken into account.

The current crisis with the welfare bill has fuck all to do with people on UC or PIP.

We have too many pensioners and not enough young working people, and that is not because young people are workshy, it is because they are not being born and they are not migrating here. All the nasty foreigners people whine about are desperately needed because we are not reproducing at replacement rates and cannot support our aging population.

Exactly. I have a mum friend, sahm mostly just like me but with the difference that my kid is disabled and my husband is working to support us. She's not working because she has calculated that it will be financially worth it with her having some cleaning hours not declared and picking up the children every day after school. Her partner works undeclared and lives with her but not on the contract because she's in a council house and pays only 200£ per month in rent. I am not jealous but she does have more money than I do to spend thanks to the tax payer. So when she proposes restaurants/outings/shopping I always decline because we can't afford it on one salary.

There aren't enough jobs. I looked at this because of the changes to disability benefits. Less than a million jobs, over a million people on benefits with job search obligations - obviously that doesn't include anyone else looking for a job, so the number is likely to be higher.

Well if it wasn't possible to be better off (or even as well of) not working than working then people wouldn't do it, would they? So that's where the fault lies!

Would you wipe bums or serve arsehole customers essentially for free?

If I won the lottery i wouldn't continue working if I no longer had to - i think most people wouldn't. I wouldn't have "done" anything to "deserve" not to work, it would be other people's money paying for me not to (and just my luck to be the winner) so why is living off benefits any different?

It's the fault of several successive governments for making it a viable option in the first place (albeit not as viable as many people seem to think), once they did so I can't really blame people for taking it up.

I'm currently looking for work. Every job I apply to has 100-plus applicants. Remote jobs have 1000-plus, and I'm looking at mid-level, not entry-level roles.

The chance of someone getting a job with a disability and limited work history due to that disability is somewhere between never happening and no fucking chance and that won't be because they're not trying hard enough.

For goodness sake, the views on these threads! The middle class Mumsnetters falling over themselves to insist those on benefits are all salt of the earth people!

Aif course there are decent people honestly claiming what they are due. And of course there are a sizable number of piss takers gaming the system to get what they can. The benefits system is a vast, complex system. Of course there are considerable numbers of people who know how to take advantage of it. That’s not just in terms of direct government welfare benefits. But all the extra bits too. I’ve spoken with stafff who work in deprived communities who will tell you about families who get food from food banks to save up money for expensive fashion trainers for their kids. Who claim electricity credits to power their hot tubs. I worked in housing and I’d visit tenants in rent arrears whose homes were furnished immaculately and expensively with all the latest tech. Stuff I could not afford to get. And they were on benefits.

All my life since childhood I have known people deliberately ripping of the benefits system. I know them now in my 50s. Most of those people are ‘alternative’ types who simply don’t want to work. They are smart and they know how to work the system.

As for ‘benefits are so low no one wants to live on them’. Well latte swilling middle classes may not want that life but plenty of people are prepared to live a more basic life if it means they don’t have to work. My brother is one. He is self funding so he’s doing nothing wrong, but for about a decade he has lived off savings, very frugally ( about 4- 5k a year, he has no rent or mortgage) so that he doesn’t have to work. He’s not ill or anything. He just happy living a really basic life if he doesn’t have to work. So yes, there will be those on benefits happy to do the same.

You don’t have to hate poor people to recognize there are both people legitimately claiming benefits and piss takers.

Those of us with personal and professional experience of it ( and just plain common sense) know it to be true. I can’t be dissuaded from it by people with ideological commitments to think all the poor are good salt of the earth people ( except those who voted for Brexit of course, Y’all were happy to call them thicksters who shouldn’t be allowed to vote when that happened).

No, not telling them "they are making it up" but pointing out that "one anecdote doesn't make evidence". It's particularly galling that ignorant people rely on their personal anecdotes as evidence, when genuine evidence is so easily available from, amongst others, the Government itself. For example, Hansard reported that, in the 2023-24 financial year, 2.8% of total benefit expenditure was overpaid due to fraud, with a further 0.6% overpayments due to claimant error and 0.3% due to "official error" (i.e. the DWP screwed up). For those ignorant people who can't do the maths, this means that 96.3% of payments were legitimate, so the idea that we have so many "scroungers" is sheer nonsense and it would be good if the ignoramuses could do some diligent research and gain a sense of proportion. 🙄

@burningmountain I am not middle-class. I come from a small ex-mining town in the arse end of the NE that is frequently featured on things like Benefits Street etc and is well known for having the highest unemployment rates in the UK.

I do not know a single person who has never had a job. If you do I would suggest you stop hanging about with the local crackheads. Though, in fairness, a few of my old mates ended up with addiction issues, and even they've managed a job or two at some point in their lives.

Net contributors are people on £40k. No one is coming off benefits and walking into a job that pays that much. A lot of people will never be capable of earning that much.

@Maitri108 , the real money is in sickness benefits especially those which have people never required to work again. You know this I’m sure.
Surprisingly this Labour government clearly recognises that significant numbers of people game the system and are attempting to address that issue. It’s a hats off from me!
And yes I personally know of someone currently living the easy life at my and other tax payers expense and I also know well a GP who is sick to death of the amount of time taken up by the constant stream of wasteralls who beat a path to their surgery searching for the golden ticket to an easy life.

The "Right to Try" thing is bollocks. If you are on UC, you already have a work allowance, even people in the limited capability groups. Declaring that they are starting a job and putting the earnings into their journal does not trigger a reassessment and wont clos their claim unless they are earing a certain amount. And lets be honest here - no one is going from not working for years into a high paid job. They will probably still get UC as top up.

@BlessedBeTheGroot you may well be right, in which case the amount those people take out will have to be reduced. That’s not about kindness or compassion - it’s just the mathematics of the managed decline approach our governments appear to have adopted.

The OP clearly states that she's not talking about disability benefits. JSA is £90 a week (less for younger people) and she's suggesting that people on less than a hundred a week are going on regular holidays.

I did the maths too and I’d get the same amount of money working 40 hours a week as I would being a stay at home mum. I have just got myself employment though and worked out I can earn upto £600 a month before it comes pointless doing any more hours in terms of UC deductions

Something that is mandatory can never be voluntary.

@BlessedBeTheGroot one of our foster puppies shares your name. Here's a picture of him for some much-needed, lighthearted relief.

He is the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen when he tries to walk. He is just a waddling ball of floof.

What’s to ignore or not ignore about tax avoidance? It’s literally just applying the law. If the law changes to close off methods of tax avoidance then those people will stop using those methods but until that happens no one is doing anything wrong in contributing to pensions, ISAs, etc. In fact we can infer from the incentives available that successive governments have found this kind of tax avoidance desirable, never mind being something they want to stop.

Where did you get them? They look a lot like my Chihuahua when they were a baby they might be related

OMG, what a cutie! ❤

I think they came from Darlington. We're fostering them from a rescue based in Gateshead.

We're considering keeping Groot because he has a neurological disorder, and we don't know if we can manage to trust anyone else to look after him properly.