Why are so many people on MN so anti benefit bashing?

[Bearbehind]

Genuine question- although I am well aware I will probably get flamed for this.

Osbourne's comments in the wake of the Philpotts's about benefits supporting lifestyles which are disagreeable to most tax payers today has touched a nerve with many for varying reasons.

I've always been of the opinion that benefits should be sufficient for the basic necessities but shouldn't cover luxuries like cigarettes, alcohol, Sky, mobile phones or holidays, as they shouldn't be an alternative to working (obviously only for those people capable of working) yet so many threads on here say its none of our business to question what benefits are spent on?

Why is it so many people are happy for their taxes to fund the luxuries listed above for others when they can't afford some of them for themselves after paying tax!? Am I missing something?

What percentage of vote did the ConDems get? How many people voted them in and was it because they wanted the government to do this to our country? Do they have a mandate?

23 millionaires in cabinet - really? How can they fairly represent the average person?

I didn't vote for them, the majority of Scotland didn't vote for them, but we still have to suffer their policies and see their divide and rule tactics leave us squabbling amongst ourselves, whilst they continue to destroy the welfare state. What sacrifices are they making in the benefits they get?

I believe there are a tiny minority of benefit fraudsters, most people probably don't get what they are due because the system is so complicated.

To feel hatred towards people who have less than you, struggle to feed and clothe their families especially the low paid - who have to claim benefits in order to get by.

Who are the real scum in society? Not the poor!

What percentage of vote did the ConDems get? How many people voted them in and was it because they wanted the government to do this to our country? Do they have a mandate?

The tories got 36.1% of the vote. The libdems got 23%. So together 59.1% of the vote.

However voter turnout was only 65.1%, which means, if my poor maths skills are right, 38.5% of eligible voters voted for them. 61.5% of eligible voters did not vote for them (and that doesn't include all the libdem votes from people who wouldn't have done so if they'd thought for one second that they'd effectively be voting tory)

Tapsel Who are the real scum in society? Not the poor!

who do you think are the scum?

Why aren't we more annoyed that so many employers seem not to pay a living wage, knowing that depressed wages will be topped up by the taxpayer? Why aren't those employers derided for ripping off taxpayers, instead of only those who receive the benefits? And I would be more inclined to accept that wages cannot go up if executive salaries hadn't gone up massively over the last 20 years. Aren't we being required to subsidise the poor so their bosses can massively increase the money they take out of their companies?

OP - It depends on how high up the economic food chain you are on. If you are on the lower rungs then chances are you yourself or relatives or friends are receiving benefits. So those people can identify with those being 'bashed'.

Bashing 'cock sucking bankers' on the other hand is fair game because, to many they are a breed apart that lives in leafy burbs and privately educate their children.

This class is busy working as opposed to spending time posting all day on MN so of course they will be in the posting minority. This gives the mistaken impression that the majority of the population are against the benefits bashers.

Most of the service/cleaning jobs in the City are done by students, immigrants from Africa and in more recent years from Eastern European. This is because the UK benefit system is such that, after travel costs and tax, its not worth coming off benefits to take up these near minimum wage jobs.

The reality is that for many people they will only be marginally better off if they had a job. Human nature being what it is, why spend 40 hours week cleaning an office building when you are only going to be about £30 better off?

Faster the scum are the people who attack the weak, the poor and the vulnerable in this society, as scapegoats. Who got us into this mess? The ones who have the power to use the media to divide and rule, then sit back and stuff their pockets when we scrabble and fight for what we are due.

MP lives on £18 a week - says
"But the really disgusting thing is that on the same day that the bedroom tax is being introduced millionaires are being given a tax cut that will be worth £1,000?not over the year as a whole, but every single week."

OP....I am on benefits.

I have a mobile phone (needed so my son's school can contact me...he is autistic)
BT Vision...I never go out as childcare is not around for children like my son
I have internet access
I have a fancy laptop (thanks to Amazon who I review items for occasionally...they sent me this free in return for a review of it).
I worked previously for 30 years.
I even have....shock horror...a flat screen TV.

I anticipate I will need benefits for up to the next 4-5 years max and will then be back in work and contributing once more. By the time I retire I anticipate I will have put in 40 years of work and yet despite this I am made frequently to feel a second class citizen by some simply because I happen to need the welfare state at the moment.

I am VERY anti benefit bashing because any one of us could fall into a position where we have to rely upon benefits. We are not all wasteful, feckless and workshy, I would anticipate most are not and many want NOT to be on benefits, but given the comments I read both here and in the media you might think otherwise. So when I see benefit bashing going on I dive in and sometimes get very angry with people

Why aren't we more annoyed that so many employers seem not to pay a living wage, knowing that depressed wages will be topped up by the taxpayer?

Two reasons I can think of:

1. The vast majority of employers are not your Tesco's/Amazon's of the world. Most employer's are your small business entrepreneur's who are struggling themselves and certainly not earning millions. So it's not easy for them to up their salary costs. In fact most small employers shy away from hiring staff because of the high costs and bureaucracy involved already.

2. The last Labour govt made tax credits do this. Prior to tax credits there was a similar benefit only available to a small group. Labour changed this and with good intentions. But the law of unintended consequences meant that now millions of people could suddenly work part time knowing the govt would top their wage up. Then employers cottoned onto the fact they could just hire someone part time too!

So if you want to be annoyed, it's not the companies you should be annoyed at. Blame the idiots who created tax credits. What makes it even worse is that tax credits is/was all funded from money borrowed. The money wasn't found by cutting something else or an extra tax. Labour just borrowed it. Now it's so ingrained into our economy that noone can easily take it away.

Why aren't we more annoyed that so many employers seem not to pay a living wage, knowing that depressed wages will be topped up by the taxpayer?

it is a minority of employers who don't pay a living wage. the average salary is £26k so clearly most pay well above this.

OP i mentioned workfare because you were talking about long term "lifestyle claimants"
a long term claimant WILL be on workfare at some point.

As for flat screen tvs.
You cant get any other kind. Please show me the website or high street stores where you can get the very old models to back up your argument
I will be very interested to see this nonexistent company.

And have you ever heard of Brighthouse.

darkesteyes yes I have heard of Brighthouse but have you ever heard of Specsavers as, once again you have mis-quoted me- I haven't once mentioned flat screen tvs either

When we were proud of our welfare state, seeing it as Utopian, sharing, increasing community values and helping a lot of people access healthcare, feel more equal to people with higher incomes and a feeling that we were a networked society dependent on itself moving forward to be successful - we had people who were respectful of benefits and help and used them fairly because there was little shame other than feeling obligated to contribute more should your income rise. There was pride in raising children properly and methods to get brighter children from any background into education, and into roles where there contribution to society was maximised. Our position in the world was stronger because we were working together.

I would guess MNers are anti benefit-bashing because they can see and feel the results - demonising people who claim benefits sets up immediate self-loathing, despair, depression and a feeling of being outside society. Instill that in any group and they cease functioning as part of the whole, feel marginalised. What's worse is more marginalisation, the more people feel as though it is a permanent badge.
IN an environment of demonsation there are two strategies flight/hiding or bitter acceptance. Bitter acceptance is of the 'they hate me so screw them' hence Philpott etc

Frankly we can't afford to have everyone on benefits feeling less human, depressed and demotivated...

However, those who are playing an individual game 'I don't care how the whole does, I care that I am doing better than others' don't care if the majority are disenfranchised- in fact in times of economic stress when growth can't be attained, the only way to increase the slightly psychotic margin that their self-esteem relies on, is to push the competition's performance downwards. You can see this in sales environments, the top sales person who can't keep increasing sales, moves to a strategy of demotivating colleagues in order to keep staying on top - crazy really because if Beckham had nobbled the defence to make him seem more valuable, he would have still been on a losing team.

MNers seem to be more collaborative, supportive and team orientated than the poppulation as a whole, that's why you will see support for members of society who are struggling financially but contributing equally.

Ooh Ooh Specsavers! A great example of 'privatising' healthcare - they get money from the government to supply glasses so... they advertise and prod and poke people to have 'free' eye tests (they claim from government for a lot of these) then whatever your result or need, if there is the slightest shade of a need for a prescription they will offer you one - if you are on benefits they emphaise how you will get a free pair of specs anyway so why not. Mystery shoppers and prescripted behaviours move people down the 'enquiry - glasses' pipeline. Why? because specsavers can treat glasses for people who don't really need them as a valid income stream because all their shareholders care about is the dollar result. You can see government ministers using the inflated costs as justification that specsavers are doing x millions of pounds of work in healthcare, but those costs didn't exist before the 'sales' culture of healthcare inflated them.

When tax payer's money is spent on costs, and on provision, any surplus is on reinvestment. When tax payer's money is paying costs, provision, and a profit margin for shareholders, tax payer's money gets funnelled back to those with spare money - who are already wealthier than the population at large, and to those managing the spare money (investment houses) who are many times more wealthy than the average.

This isn't 'achievement' or 'growth' this is fiddling the game to create unfair outcomes for those who already have wealth at the beginning of the game - sort of like only letting wealthy people win at Monopoly - it hides real growth behind a money conveyor belt.

Bearbehind - The flat screen TV comment was directed at Jakebullet and not you :)

at promote.

A customer has to be very feeble minded to walk into Specsavers with 20/20 vision and to get talked into buying a pair of glasses that they don't need

The staff are ordinary people. They are somebody's mum, wife, daughter so It's kind of stupid to suggest that once they clock in and put on their name badge they instantly morph into some hard sell salesmen, determined to sell you glasses that you don't need.

I''ve read a lot of rants about oil companies, utility companies and other Big Businesses. First time I read a rant about opticians

It's benefit fiddlers people really have an issue with, isn't it? Not genuine benefit claimants? And it is possible to criticise greedy bankers as well - it's not like it's some game where you have to choose between one or the other.

The fact that we have a welfare state at all is a good thing. I haven't ever met anybody who seriously argues the contrary. I'd be astonished if anyone could. It's very important to have a safety net for people who find themselves temporarily unable to find work. And it's one that we all pay into when we're working, so it's not as if we are spending "other people's" money.

The other important point always made about being a benefit claimant is that it can happen to anyone. It even happens to people with a lot of qualifications. Like a lot of people who graduated from university in the 1990s, before the economy picked up, I was on benefits for a short space of time in my 20s - largely because, while I had qualifications coming out of my ears, I just didn't have the experience for jobs I was going for. Even when I made it as far as the interview, the job would always go to someone with more experience.

I definitely saw it as a temporary thing, though, and while it's pretty demoralising having to go in every week and basically justify your existence by going through all the jobs you've applied for, I just kept telling myself it had to be over before long. (One thing I remember, though - and this may be a mark of how society has changed - it would never have occurred to me to buy a mobile phone, a computer, a TV, a car or a holiday during that time. It was quite firmly entrenched in my mind that these were the privilege of people who worked - and, moreover, had been working for a long time and had saved up for them. My Income Support, as it was called then, went on necessities - there wasn't enough for anything else.)

When I was on benefits, if I had gone out to work I would have been £10 a week better off.

Travelling to a job on public transport/parking the car would have cost more.

Therefore, I was better off at home.

I suppose that made a scrounger.

Sorry...yes I mentioned flat screen TVs as they so often get an outing on these threads .

Fact is though that most people want the "normal" things others have (I don't include Sky etc in this) but there are things that perhaps I need that others might not such as a mobile phone. This is why benefits are not given in vouchers etc as most people need to be able to fit benefits round their lives and we all have different needs.

I have a friend who is a smoker and on benefits...yes she wants to stop but at the moment she isn't able to (I am certain she will in the future). She had the most abusive childhood you can imagine and 25+ years on is still in therapy to help her cope. So she buys tobacco, rolls herself the thinnest cigarette going but says it helps keep her calm.
Who are we to say "actually you are on benefits so how dare you smoke"? It also prevents her (mostly) from cutting her arms when she is down...I'd rather she had a fag than sliced her arms up.

Have you tried buying a non-flat screen TV recently? Just by the by.

Freddiemisagreatshag did you stay on benefits instead of taking the job then?

Yes I did. NMW wage job 9 miles away. Public transport crap. Would have had to drive every day 18 miles round trip and pay to park the car. So I turned the job down.

You telling me you would have left yourself with LESS money in your pocket going out to work 37.5 hours a week? Bloody sure you wouldn't.

There's less money and less money though. If the "less money" is minimal when I go back to work then yes I would go back for less....there's more benefits in working than money. If the "less money" is significant though then why would anybody do it? How CAN anyone do it?

The jobcentreplus advisor I saw last (I am wanting to go back to work eventually) said that to break even financially I would need to do 30 hours at NMW (at the present time).

In the meantime I am doing voluntary work with an education charity which keeps me up to date with changes and means that I have something to put on a CV during this work break apart from "Carer".

£10 a week according to the advisor I checked it was right.

18 miles a day 5 days a week is 90 miles. My car at the time did 30 to the gallon. That's 3 gallons. At even a fiver a gallon that's £15 quid right there in fuel.

Plus car park at at least £3 a day, probably more. That's another £15 quid.

So my tenner better off costs me £30 so I would have been £20 worse off going out to work.

Damn fucking right well and surely I turned the job down.

Freddiemisagreatshag

No, I didn't actually say that I would have taken the job instead of staying on benefits. I didn't say at all what I would have done. You read that into my post somehow.

Was it not worth it for experience/having something on CV instead of CV out of interest?

Sorry. I misunderstood.

Benefits are minimal. I was already living hand to mouth. £80 less a month was a clean fortune. I could not have lived without that £80.

And no, it wasn't worth it for experience. I could have done it standing on my head with one hand tied behind my back.