Working families £18k worse off than benefits claimants after budget

[shoelances]

This is madness. Can the last taxpayer in the UK please close the door behind them.

www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/households-on-handouts-to-be-18-000-better-off-than-families-on-modest-wages/ar-AA1RqxlQ

Totally agree with this

Not it’s not. Multiple people have said those who need support should have it. You are just ignoring those parts. In your case the system kicked in as it should.

I also don’t understand why people talk about the numbers on uc rising when it has slowly been replacing the old benefits for about ten years. Of course the numbers have risen. I don’t see why anyone would choose to be unemployed it’s very boring. I’m ashamed I didn’t have a job until I was 21 because I had a baby at 16 luckily there were benefits I guess a lot of people died of starvation back in the day, and there’s a group of thought that think mothers get pregnant just for the benefits even when they’re 15 and need to be punished by being left to starve. Feels weird admitting you’d be one of the first to die in survival of the fittest.

As for disability benefits I think there genuinely are more disabled people than there used to be.

Seriously most on benefits will be disabled, mothers or people who genuinely can’t get a job. The numbers of lazy people who genuinely want to sit at home doing nothing must be very low. Boring and depressing for one

With the exception of the fallout of covid and a higher number of elderly people
It is understood
The increased number of disabled people is down to more awareness and improved recognition of a wider range of symptoms not a higher proportion of disabled people.

Totally agree, people will bitch and whine about 'benefits' while using the services provided by those on low enough wages to need top ups to survive, dropping their kids off at nursery, visiting an elderly relative in a care home, drinking a coffee in a coffee shop, going shopping - and it's just fine for them to benefit from those services, maybe they'd prefer to pay more at source for them and then people won't need top ups? Or they can do without so these jobs aren't needed and we can all go and get the fabled 'better' jobs?
If people don't want benefit top ups then I suppose they'd better get their hand in their pocket and start paying more for the services they want and need and stop expecting someone else to deliver it to them for a wage that needs topping up so people can survive.

Absolutely this!

The idea that we have suddenly become so much more disabled as a nation over a relatively short period of time is obviously nonsense. Yes, COVID and an aging population have an impact but there are far more people being identified as disabled now that wouldn't have been previously identified.

How we manage these people is one of the biggest challenges we face as a society. The term disabled is now so broad that it can cover those who can't speak, move or function at all on their own and it also can encompasses the worlds richest man. We need a very nuanced system that recognises this and allocates the resources and money that we do have as sustainably and sensibly as possible. This will inevitable mean more of us will be expected to shoulder the impact of our disability and poor health ourselves wherever we can. There simply isn't enough to go round anymore as debt is ballooning alongside the number of disabled people.

I think it's important to remember that just because a disability isn't severe enough to be recognised until recently, that doesn't mean it hasn't impacted a person's ability to work.

I cared for a lady who I am convinced had ND; she was definitely ADHD, at least. She would fixate on new hobbies to the point where they took up every minute of her day. When I started with working with her, she was into crochet, she was making gowns for stillborn babies and planned to learn how to make her own crochet patterns so she could make personalised memory bears and blankets and planned to get her own stall in the local hospital so she could sell her wares to raise money for charity.

Then the home allocated some of their garden to allotments for the residents to manage, and she was going to single-handedly end food poverty in the local area by growing all this amazing fruit and veg, which would be given away to locals. She even wrote out little recipe cards to go with her produce and started a petition to get chickens. I don't think she managed to grow even a single strawberry before she moved on to weight loss and chair aerobics.

When I left to go to a remote IT job, she was asking her sons to buy her a laptop so she could learn computers and get "one of those fancy online jobs". She was 87 years old and had never so much as turned on a computer.

She was an amazing woman who was very proud of the fact she'd worked since was 14 and never claimed anything until she retired, but she'd had a few careers, factory work, shop work, hairdressing, dinner lady... and finally she was a lolipop lady after she retired. I can't help wondering how much further she would have gotten in life if her disability had been recognised and she'd been given the tools and support to manage it.

Very few of us reach our full potential in life.

My family is littered with people that for one reason or another haven't achieved what they could have done. Undoubtedly ND traits have played a role in many people's lives and limited some people but these are people that would never get a diagnosis. Conversely, some of my family (not diagnosed) had 'special interests' that led then to develop a great deal of knowledge and skills in a certain areas that have proven to be quite lucrative. Remember, all of us have ND traits and most of us will have ND traits that adversely impact our lives in some way. Thresholds for ND conditions are often pretty arbitrary and there are conditions like BAP that can massively impact lives but go undiagnosed.

My point is, we can't all receive disability benefits and special treatment. I am though absolutely in favour in teaching skills to cope with ND traits in schools to the masses instead as they are so prevent.

THIS

This is a very simplistic view
Assuming if everyone pays more for a product or service and all will be well ignores the downturn in use, the inevitable loss of jobs, increase in welfare spend and reduction in tax income.
There is a fine line which needs to be appreciated to not just keep productivity as it is but more importantly to increase it

I don't understand this argument; other countries manage it without prices rising exponentially and businesses going bust en masse.

I would genuinely like to understand why it is impossible for the UK to pay a fair wage, particularly when looking at multibillion-pound international conglomerates like Asda/Walmart, which manage to pay fairly in other European countries.

Sweden, for example, doesn't have a minimum wage, but it is accepted that paying a low salary is socially unacceptable and would damage a company's reputation. We not only accept it but defend and excuse it, while berating the people trying to manage on it for not doing better.

Completely agree. And none of those who'd like to see the country's problems solved by making the poor even poorer seem capable of supplying a satisfactory answer to this.

We Brits must come across as a right nasty bunch to them.

We are not comparable to Sweden. Look at their productivity stats compared to ours and you will begin to understand how we differ. Also look at exports per capita. It's all very relevant. Their labour may be more expensive but what they are producing and their productivity means that higher wages are more affordable.

Our PPP is already lower than Sweden. If wages rise this will increase the cost of goods and lead to an even lower PPP and potentially lower GDP as we won't be able to compete so effectively in the global market.

You are trying to effectively put the cart before the horse. Sort out the labour market so that productivity and exports rise and the balance of payments improves. Then we can start to think about higher wages.

Can you sort out the labour market without growth? The quickest way to boost growth is to ensure people have enough money to buy goods and services.

Also, none of that explains why the likes of Asda, Starbucks, Amazon, etc are effectively being propped up by British taxpayers. Clearly, those companies can afford to pay a fair wage without prices increasing because they already do, just not in the UK.

The grass is not always greener

Businesses in Sweden collaborate on wages ( there is no minimum wage set by the Govn) and Union representation is at 90% of all those employed.
It is factors such as these that keep wages relatively high

However
High wages have knock on effects with Swedens unemployment rate standing at 9.3%

It’s also worth noting that the gap between high and low income earners has increased and the purchasing power of any disposable income has declined since 2018.
Whether this will continue is unknown but could be an indication that the model is not so bright in the long term

No, that isn't the quickest way to growth if it leads to inflation, job losses and productivity remains low. Ultimately where do you think the extra money to pay all these increases wages will come from? SMEs account for most of jobs and they typically aren't in a position to foot a massive wage increase. You must also account for the impact this will have in the public sector and in industries like care. Taxes will rise, people will pay more for basic goods and services and won't feel better off at all.

Growth must be substantiated by improvements in exports, productivity and the balance of payments.

Exactly
I do think people compare us in the Global market and read of higher wages and just assume the U.K. can magically support that.

It’s all far too simplistic.

Actually Swedish prople live us

But heres a quick Google on work ethics

• International perspective: A 2023 study by King's College Londonfound that the UK public places less emphasis on work compared to other Western nations like Italy and France.
• UK public opinion on work: The same study noted that 43% of the British public believes it would be a good thing if less importance was placed on work in the future, a view that is more common in the UK than in countries like the US and Italy.
• Comparison with other countries:The UK public is among the least likely to agree that work should always come first, with only Australia, Canada, and Japan ranking lower.

That’s people
not
prople 😆

Only PIP isn’t means tested. All the other disability benefits, which make up the bulk of benefits for the disabled, are contribution based or means tested.

I have no idea. You said not many people would be in council houses in London, but 20% roughly will be if you look at the council housing stock.

Some people in social housing with a history of anti social behaviour are rehoused by the Council. I find this appalling.

Receiving any form of subsidised housing is a privilege. If you then abuse the situation you should lose all right to any future Council and subsidised housing.

Agreed.