To see benefits as a safety net, not handouts?

[ForGreyStork]

It’s the way benefits are talked about. To me, they’re part of a social security system -a safety net that people may need at different points in life, rather than “gifts” or handouts.
I also wonder whether increasing conditions and restrictions risk undermining that safety net over time.

AIBU?

Maybe read up on the benefits system so you can understand how it works?

They were intended to be a safety net, yes. However, we all know people who make sure they always qualify for some help on paper.
I don’t mean people with disabilities obviously. I know a few families (young, fit couples) who have qualified for social housing and pay very little for a house just like ours and will be able to buy it off much cheaply, while we had to save for a very long time and pay a very big mortgage on fairly low wage(s).
As we all know someone playing the system, I suspect the number of these people is not small.

Not having proper restrictions and checks harms those who genuinely need it, and harms the country overall (less taxes - poor quality public services, people without ambition don't value education, etc, etc)

It was a very flawed study.

And excluded any 'work' at all.

So if a Mother worked for a fortnight in a cafe aged 16 and was sacked before she went on to have multiple children starting as a teenager, that couldn't be counted.

She'd 'worked'.

4 generations? So people born in 1920's? There weren't 'benefits', they'd have starved.

In fact there is no evidence of this. There IS evidence of people cycling in and out of work, short term and seasonal jobs, ill health and caring responsibilities, in deprived areas. But not the norm. Stop trying to incite hatred.

This fits my family profile so I suppose they would be excluded too!

This.

Businesses and landlords. You see these rage bait things where we get told claimants get ££££ yet so much of that is the housing element going straight to a landlord.

3 generations a child, a 20 year old parent of that child, a 37/38 year old parent of that young adult only takes you back to 1988 chuck another generation on top and you might get as far back as late sixties early seventies. 😂 Inciting hatred you don't know the meaning. My husband works in criminal justice and has now worked with 3 generations of the same family the youngest being currently 15 and in prison none of them have ever worked. Don't claim to have experience of this world

Here you go, link to the original report.

https://www.jrf.org.uk/work/are-cultures-of-worklessness-passed-down-the-generations

Benefits have changed over the last few years now everything is pretty much uc most people will be on them for life as its mainly, disabled and carers and people on low income

Yes but he will need the safety net for ever and deserves it.

Take £500 from a hard working contributing, self sufficient person. Give £100 to 5 lazy people.

You lost one voter and gained five.

Thats how benefits work.

You’r have to incredibly naive to think that most people on benefits really need them and aren’t taking advantage of people whose generosity has supposed to help the people in real needs

Yes, of course. Pensions have been paid in for, as have certainly other contributory benefits, (such as sickness benefit/unemployment benefit). for younger people. But it needs reform.

And? Is the landlord supposed to let these people live in their property for free?

Are you seriously calling carers , disabled and minimum wage workers lazy?

Interesting view. I haven’t thought it through but at least it looks at the problem. It might be that incentives need to be aimed at employers of young people.

The opposite of rn which is to disincentive hiring.

What are you talking about?

A generation is when the next one starts having children when we're talking about this kind of data.

Not a hundred years ago.

I know someone born in 1971 who had her first child in 1988 and three more before 1993.

Her eldest Grandchild is 18. And he's not even born to her eldest child, he's born to her youngest child who was 15 when he became a Father.

She's been on benefits her entire life, her 4 sons are all on beneifts and her eldest Grandson is at 18.

That's 3 generations with the eldest being born in the 1970s.

I don't often agree with you on anything, but I do think there is a place for offering employers incentives to take on people who have chronic illnesses, disabilities and other problems. You could use tax breaks to offset the cost of offering jobshares, flexibilities and exemptions from sickness absence management for people with chronic recurring conditions. Once you have someone in the workplace and done some work on retaining them, the benefits of work will kick in. My DS gets PIP because of serious and permanent disabilities but works for the NHS - work gives him a sense of usefulness, social contacts, a pension and structure in his life.

We also need to look at what happens when people in work become seriously ill or disabled to the point where they can no longer do their job as it it - once they slip out of work, it's so much harder to get them back in, whereas properly funded accommodations would keep many of them in work. It's a win win. But it takes investment and long term thinking.

I claimed tax credits after my divorce to help alongside my salary I am so grateful for that help when the children were smaller and still in education. My marriage was abusive and I had no option but to end it. There’s no way I could have kept a roof over mine and my children’s heads without help from the government. I’ve worked since I left school at 16 and am still working now in my mid fifties and that’s the only time I’ve claimed benefits. But thank goodness it was available.

But they can only BE a safety net if they are a safety net. Half of these people should be in work and nobody should be getting over £25 in total benefits (many households get far far more).

Yeah, I'll just bounce back to my previous working life if you bounce in & take my disability & health condition that happened over night after 40 years of working.

I'd love nothing more than to have my old life back, working. .sk let me know when you can bounce that for me! Ta.

I get benefits. Pip. I work full time and pay higher rate tax. Do you mean me?

Of course not. We need private rents to be lower though and we need more social housing. That would bring down the benefits bill hugely and would not harm anyone at claimant level.

Yeah....amazing study.

Of 47 individuals across 20 families in only 2 areas of the UK.

That certainly gives it credence of proving that generational worklessness doesn't exist.

I can see why you're linking it... it really proves the point.

I wouldn't buy a skin cream that said the research was 47 people said it did or didn't work but that's just me.

Zero hours contracts which work great for the employers but it means the wages have to be topped up by benefits so, the “working poor”. Disgraceful. Huge increases in private rents. Again, payments topped up by benefits. No one ever looks at the greed involved, only at those caught in the trap.