How can it be right that you can get so much money on benefits?!?!

[TerrazzoChips]

How on earth can this be right? Link

it doesn’t include disability benefits but does include housing allowance and childcare costs. But a single earner will also have those?

I despair and could honestly cry. I am genuinely considering having another child and dropping my hours. I would be better off. I hate this so much.

Don’t ask me. I just kept paying more tax for all this. 🤷‍♀️🙄

One reason work is so poorly paid is that in-work benefits subsidise low wages. Things you subsidise, you get more of.

There’s no easy fix though, becuase if you remove in-work benefits you get a ‘cliff edge’ instead (as soon as you take a job you lose all benefits, disincentivising taking work).

So instead there is only the ‘difficult fix’ of keeping benefits from creeping up inexorably to satisfy political demands, while also ensuring real hardship is protected against.

I think maybe a law saying our benefits bill will be capped at X% of GDP over some horizon, then we can argue in parliament how we want to allocate that.

I’d also like to see much more focus on the positive ways we can get higher-paid jobs: ie having lots of high-earning high-productivity businesses. For that we need: much cheaper energy and housing, and preferential tax policies for entrepreneurialism, and for high-paying globally mobile roles.

This couple earn £10k per year or £819 per month. The AET for a couple to take them out of the work search group so they don’t have to attend weekly/fortnightly appointments at the Jobcentre is £1534 per month. Once the main carers youngest turns three they will automatically be placed in the work search group. The other parent would be placed in the work search group as their earnings are so low.

And unless they're claiming a disability benefit they'd be subject to the benefit cap. (Earning £846 per month will also remove this)

Precisely! Everyone seems to have forgotten the benefit cap exists!

I didn’t have time to finish the calculation to include a UC deduction on their wages, plus CB then then work out what the benefit cap would be.

I only get child benefit but piss off with this excuse to kick people on benefits

I don't know if it's different in different areas but where I live you don't get free council tax, gym membership or travel costs because you get universal credit.

I just knew it was going to be a link to the Mail before I opened the thread.

How can people be so gullible that believe what this rag prints.

Every day someone posts this kind of thing!

Why don’t people who claim living on benefits is better just drop their jobs and give up the luxuries that come with a salary to actually live on benefits?

I wish AIBU viewers would run a competition, with receipts included, from everyone who gave up everything to live solely on benefits.

A life on benefits is grim. Little control over your present - no control over your future. I’ve lived it first hand as a kid and if I got double on benefits that I earn I still wouldn’t choose it.

@TerrazzoChips not coming back then? Dump a DM story about benefits and how much people can get, then run. Did you even read any of the replies, or is it just to make people more divided?

If 'they' take £500 off of hard workers and give 5 shirkers £100 each, then they've lost one vote but gained five ? Think this is the basic principle of how this ridiculous situation works.

If I put my salary into a benifits calculator and say I get no child support from their dad I'd get over £1500 in benifits per month. That's nonsense as I earn almost £60k. That's enough to support me and two kids if required. Yes, I'd need to move somewhere cheaper but it's doable. I should f be taking that much form the state.

Where's the incentive to get dads to pay for their kids if the state will just do it for them?

I changed it to say I had a mortgage and it says I'm only 'entitled' to £195. So in order to get my £1500 'entitlement' I should just sell my house and spend all the money? If I sold my house and bought an expensive car or a painting could I then claim benefits?

I have no doubt life on benifits is hard but I do think the system is wrong. We should t be paying people to work. Minimum wage needs to reflect what it actually costs to live. Plus we can't just subsidise people's shit life decisions and choices. If you are a dad PAY up. Don't have multiple children if you don't have any money. It's a race to the bottom.

YABU. I've got a Brexit bus to sell you as well.

Define "shirker".

Bit late to the party here, but from the excessive use of punctuation in the thread title and the fact it's based on a Daily Mail story I think I'll just assume it's bollocks.

I remember a few years ago there was an article in the DM that used cyclists as the hook to get their gullible perma-spluttering readers worked up that day. The premise was that it was actually more 'green' to drive a car than to ride a bike. To demonstrate this they made assumptions such as the car in question would be a tiny hatchback, with 5 adults on board, that got bang on the manufacturer's claimed mpg figures, that the cyclist would be breathing extremely heavily (thus exhaling lots of CO2) and that the cyclist got all their energy from eating red meat whereas the occupants of the car apparently didn't breathe or eat anything, and the environmental impact of making the car in the first place was totally ignored. Utter shite, essentially, but so long as it gets the gammon frothing the it's job done. I suspect the article in question here displays a similar level of journalistic integrity.

Which calculator did you use that came up with this? Child maintenance payments don’t affect benefit entitlement.

And it’s “benefits” not “benifits”.

You are correct. Spelling clearly isn't my strong point. I put it in entitled to.co.uk. Surely that's worse that child maintenance isn't included?

Why is it worse when as you've already pointed out, so many men don't pay for their children at all and it is often inconsistent if they do pay something?

Haven't read the full thread but surely most of that goes back to landlords and childcare providers, even it if it was true? You need to be looking at what isn't an outgoing to see what people get as a useable amount. Generally this is £400 per single adult and £300 a child per month. Any earnings are deductable. UC rent payments only the landlord gets to see. Childcare - parents have to pay this in advance and UC only pay the basic costs, not meals or consummables.

See, read and inwardly digest

https://benefitsinthefuture.com/tis-the-season-to-be-jolly-misleading-in-the-daily-mail/

Yay another post attacking the poorest members of society

That is deprivation of capital and it is illegal.

@Kirbert2 because it automatically lets men off the hook. Don't worry about paying for your kids, we will pick up the tab! If you father a child there needs to be a mandatory contribution for that child. £7 or however much is not good enough. I always wondered why we still say single mothers rather than parents. Now I know , dads simply don't need to handle any of the consequences.

Also how much can you get from an ex on top of a huge state hand out? It's nonsense. There is literally no financial insentive to bring up a family with both parents contributing. Nor any incentive to save money over £6000. Not make sound career decisions. Why would you bother to work your way up the ladder when you are just as well on minimum wage plus benifits.

It was changed after it became apparent that with inconsistent payments, it was plunging children into poverty and at the end of the day, it is about making sure children are still able to have food in their tummies despite their parent (or parents) sometimes.

Men who refuse to pay for their children should be dealt with but not at the expense of leaving their children to go hungry.

Earnings are only deductible after a certain amount for anyone with kids. These work allowances are pretty generous and even then earnings are deducted on a taper. many part time workers have barely anything much deducted for earnings. UC is a pretty generous benefit in that respect, not so much for single people of course who don't get a work allowance.