Benefits and food banks - how would you word this?

[Sn1859]

Firstly, I want to apologise if I offend anyone, this is not my intention at all.

So earlier on tiktok I commented on a post about food banks saying that we shouldn’t need food banks with the benefits system we have. I didn’t mean people are raking it in and shouldn’t need to use f/bs but with the benefit system (not as it is, just as a whole) and how many people who can get benefits (not just not working but as a wage top up etc) you would think they wouldn’t be needed as the benefits system should work but it doesn’t. People are acting like I’ve just punched their Nan in the face so now I’m wondering how I could have worded it better so people got what I meant.

in my defence before people think I’m judging benefits on here too, I’m not. I’ve been on them 18 years whilst working and they have been shocking, keep moving the goalposts, not checking things when I’ve sent them in so I owe them money. It seems once you’re on they make it impossible to get off.
I do think in this day and age people shouldn’t be struggling for a meal. It’s ridiculous and it feels like we’re all going backwards instead of forwards.

Well I guess you've made a comment that has been taken the wrong way by some people.

I'm guessing what you were trying to say is that 'there shouldn't be a need for food banks to exist - ever'. Well yeah that's just kind of obvious isn't it? Maybe people think that doesn't need to be spelled out so took the other meaning 'people should be able to support themselves on benefits and not use food banks as well'.

It's the internet, people are going to agree and disagree and some people will get aggressive in doing so. I'm not sure Tim Tok is somewhere I would expect to get any balanced and reasoned debate on anything of any importance to be honest.

People had a budget hat worked for them until inflation made the whole thing fall apart. Yes it would have been sensible to have budgeted making sure a portion of wages was set aside for unexpected rises. But I don’t think anyone would have foreseen a pandemic and two wars breaking out within five years.

That’s it in 2023 we shouldn’t need food banks. It’s terrible that we do. The problem seem to firstly stem from the cost of housing. Then in the last year or two the cost of electric and gas and petrol then pushing up the costs of food.

A lot of things would be fixed if housing costs where what they once where compared to wages but nobody wants to lose value on their house understandably but we can’t make the £1 worthless by just increasing everything till it’s £10 for a loaf of bread just to keep house prices up/High

Universal credit rates are not benchmarked to what people need to pay for the basics. This is the main problem.

https://neweconomics.org/2023/05/universal-credit-is-falling-890-a-month-short-of-the-cost-of-living-despite-inflation-linked-uprating-1

The very original purpose of food banks was to cover emergency unexpected events that leave ordinary people short and are not covered by benefits e.g. shortish periods of illness (few weeks, not months), car/washing machine breaking down etc. Not just food banks either. Where I used to work years ago we had what was known as the Benny fund where the company employees provided one off grants for this sort of thing to each other. It was supposed to be for occasional emergencies and supplementary to benefits not to make up your salary.

However the government looked at this sort of thing and thought we don't need to let benefits and peoples salaries keep pace with inflation, newly unemployed people can rely on (meagre) savings for the first 5 weeks instead etc. They effectively incentivised house price growth by help to buy but didn't also build enough homes for social rent. They permitted weakening of employment conditions e.g. zero hours. So now we have lots of people (both in and out of work) who routinely do not have enough to survive on. Essentially the concept of food banks has been exploited to the point where it is now a voluntary tax on kindness because ... it is just pacifying the poor enough to permit the rich to be able to continue doing what they like. As a nation we voted for this because people don't like paying taxes, but really life has not been so expensive or hard for a long time. I would rather pay proper taxes and regain good services and have a decent benefit system.

And more generally. Far fewer people needed food banks a few years ago. Have people suddenly forgotten how to budget? No. Wages have also not kept up with the cost of living.

I agree @RC1234

An excellent post - you some up the underlying causes very well.

Vicious circle though - people's salaries can't keep rise with inflation if employers don't sell / manufacture / service more and more... We've all seen how many retailers have closed shop this year. Industry isn't competitive - and we (UK PLC) needs to find a way to remedy this.

Single parents who work full time are in a similar position. Benefits are less than the cost of a child.