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?

There are jobs for people who want them. We’ve had a period of bringing in quite a few people to do them.

The jobs are there. Getting to a place where more people here do them is harder but should be addressed.

Labour’s anti job policies aside that is. If another approach was taken, more people could work.

There needs to be a stop for the low wage economy. NMW should be enough to live on. That's housing, food/clothes and transport (in most cases a car). Then by all means help families with children by giving them extra in child benefit. Tapered to reflect earnings but not as an extra income or a universal payment to everyone.

Then we can look after our most vulnerable properly. Give people who are ill or genuinely unable to work a decent amount to live on.
If someone falls on hard times, give them enough time and support to sort themselves out 18 mounts to 2 years should be sufficient.

Also, so many people on these threads always talk about what they can't do, maybe it's time for people seeking work to think about what they realistically can do. There should be more pride in the ability to support oneself.

And what do you think the reality of that actually means because it will likely mean fewer jobs

I agree with you entirely and I'm sorry about what you've endured. But even if you hadn't paid in then I wouldn't begrudge you. For example a baby can be born disabled, contribute nothing and I would still want it to be cared for by the state. There's a peculiar notion (and I'm not accusing you of this) that you work hard = you do well. But I believe that lacks nuance and context. People might need benefits for a multitude of reasons: ill health/disability (which can strike at any age and is the one minority you can't be born into), personal circumstances (for example fleeing domestic violence), external factors (like the pandemic causing businesses to close). All of those require a safety net. I wonder if people forget that when they're doing well.

I always think this people who fight so much against people on benefits they seem to forget they might need it themselves one day. Things happen, completely life changing things that we have no control over.

@HelenHan67as I said, I paid NI all my working life, happily knowing a portion of it was being used for welfare benefits. I didn't say or infer that people who haven't paid a penny in contributions are any less worthy of welfare benefits than me and dh.

That's true - apologises if you thought I was criticising you. Absolutely not my intention.

You think that NMW should be enough to run a car in addition to paying for the basics? That’s bonkers. A car is not a necessity like housing and food. People who can’t afford one (and many who can) get the bus, walk or cycle.

I actually said Transport & in most cases that's a car. So not necessarily a car, but depending on where you live, you'll need a car to get to work. Without a car, you'd have more disposable income....

Not necessarily. More disposable income in people's pockets will result in more spending. Going to work actually costs money. That can increase productivity and the need for more staff.

Reducing the in work benefits bill would also give us more money to spend on essential services like the NHS, again to improve things, we need more people to do the jobs.

The only people I see refer to benefits as gifts or handouts are the people that have no clue how they work, and think people on them are rolling in it.

Do you honestly not realise that some people don't live on a bus route? (Or even a train route, come to that.) If they work too far away to walk or cycle, what are they supposed to do? And a lot of people fall into this category.

And what about people in jobs such as care work, who often have large areas to cover and who aren't given enough travel time between appointments to walk, cycle or bus it? Similarly cleaners who have equipment to lug between cleans? Mobile hairdressers? Gardeners/handymen?

Sounds like you've led a sheltered life, or lived in a town or city all your life, or both. For very many people a car is indeed a necessity.

I bet they will be told to pull a couple of £k out their ass, and move closer to work.
You are right though... some jobs are still NMW that need a car, and the car is vital. If you are using your car as part of your job, your car costs more to maintain, and you don't even get much in the way of reimbursement for that.

It it more sad to have the view that NMW should not be enough to run vehicle. Talk about a race to the bottom.

Sometimes to get to work and drop the kids all before 9am a car is needed. What is so difficult to understand??

I totally agree with most of these suggestions, but just wanted to point something out re people talking about what they can't do. Frequently they aren't being defeatist or making excuses, but are pointing out the genuine difficulties lots of people face, in the hope certain realities might start to percolate through to the hard of thinking (I don't mean you, I'm speaking generally about how these threads tend to go.)

No one is saying it's impossible for, say, disabled people to get a job, but there's a huge number of people on MN who seem extremely ignorant of the limitations some disabled people face. A lot of morons people post along the lines of 'But work will make you feel better! A few weeks of walking up three flights of stairs in an office with no wheelchair access, and you won't even need your wheelchair any more! You're just being negative! It's all a matter of mindset! You just don't want to work because you're rolling in it on PIP [!!] and get your nails done every Thursday!' OK, I've exaggerated somewhat there for dramatic effect, but you get my general point - it's important to challenge the more ignorant/clueless narratives, and in that context saying certain things aren't possible isn't negativity, it's realism.

Similarly when people are struggling to find work for genuine reasons, there's so much 'There are plenty of jobs, there must be because just the other day my local cafe was advertising for someone to clear the tables', 'They're not trying hard enough, otherwise they'd have found a job by now' (according to some recent figures many job seekers in the UK send out 50 to 100 applications before they finally strike it lucky, employers are receiving 20–50+ applications on average for each vacancy they advertise, and graduate roles can attract 140+ applicants each), 'In my day you went into every business in town with a CV until someone agreed to hire you', 'They can just retrain' (sometimes true, but takes time), and in one memorable example last weekend, 'Why don't they just set up a cleaning company, they'd be raking it in overnight and if anyone disagrees with me they're just not go-getting enough!'

The sheer ignorance and prejudice some people post on MN (again I don't mean you) needs challenging, and some so-called excuses are actually valid reasons. When people point that out, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are being negative or defeatist although I get how it could seem that way.

If I left for my work now on public transport it would take 14 hours.
Edit to add: it's a 40min drive (many sections not accessible to cycles)

But equally you’re using somebody in a wheelchair as an example, when we know the majority are MH/ND related.

What’s that got to do with it? You’ve chosen where you live, and chosen where you work, knowing that you will need a car to get to work. If you were only capable of getting a NMW job you would make very different choices.

as a parent of 4 it costs me less to run a car each month by a considerable amount than it would to pay for the bus for us all to get to work and school from the village we live in.

edited to add: I didn’t choose where I live, we were forced to relocate after my landlord sold up (for the second time in two years) and couldn’t get a house anywhere near where we were living. We’re now 14 miles from school and we couldn’t change school as the nearest one has no space.

Well you say that but how do you measure the severity of disability? Serious question - if you were creating policy, what criteria,would you apply?

my location is between my job and my partner's.
I am not minimum wage but many junior staff trying to build a career are very close to it.
It's not uncommon for career jobs to be lower paid and not uncommon for partners to work in different cities.

Would you rather the women just took what she could get near her husband's job and forget about having a career. Maybe just make some babies instead

I live rurally thanks. NMW should be just high enough to pay for the absolute necessities, same as benefits. And that does not include a car. Some people do of course need a car for their job but that is between them and their employer, not something that should factor in when setting minimum wage.

Absolutely. The situation in England is about to get a lot worse with the advent of the new legislation (I agree with pro-tenant law but this has been badly implemented). Councils need to be funded to buy housing as well as building it. Some sort of fair rent system needs to be implemented. We will never improve things until we take sparse and unaffordable private sector housing out of the mix.

Keeping NMW artificially high is what keeps people out of the jobs market, because as soon as you make it uneconomic to hire people, rather than say invest in automation, or move your production overseas, then guess which route employers take? Life on NMW should be hard, it’s what makes people to strive for better.

Well said. I also saw the posts about setting up a cleaning company. Just get some bleach from Home Bargains and pop an ad on FB... and that is what they said too 😂 They also thought anyone would be raking it in within a week. Total bull.

DM has a cleaning company, and she now gets 80+ applicants when she puts a vacancy out... and this could be for just a few hours a week. Not FT work. She has plenty of applications from graduates. People are desperate and are just going for anything.
And because she had the pick of the bunch, she interviews people with a lot of cleaning experience, and not graduates due to them being a flight risk.