Coalition government sets out radical welfare reform

[ElenorRigby]

Britain's welfare system is "bust", with such penal disincentives to work that many people on benefits regard those who take up job offers as "bloody morons"
Strange days...

"My general view is that the benefit system is a deeply ineffective and costly way of subsidising people's lives. If you want to help people above a certain income the route to do that is through tax ? it is simple, straightforward and easy. The benefit system is about helping people in difficulty."

Amen to that.

It continues to be a source of amazement to me that no-one ever mentions employers responsibility in all this.

Why aren't they paying living wages?

The benefit system is fine, apart from the fact that unemployment payments are way too low.

Have a look at healthier economies than ours, Germany for example. There you get around 60-75pc of your last wage as unemployment benefit. Much of Europe gives far more generous benefits than ours.

The view that the benefit system is too generous are part of this extremist right wing ideology of the last 30 years. One that does not put the correct value on unskilled labour. One that demands unemployment of at least 5pc to make markets work efficiently. It is called structural or natural unemployment levels. Nothing natural about it.

Unskilled labour - roughly valued by the minimum wage - should be far more costly. Double the minimum wage and start from there.

This would provide two things to a properly functioning economy, it would incentivise those on benefits to take jobs and it change the way corporations exploit cheap labour to drive down costs to below break-even levels, for example in farming.

Instead we are likely to go on more of an American route, where the poor are starved...

the whole point imo is that the welfare system should be a safety net to get people through difficult times and not a way of life, it does no one any good when it becomes that

the big problem is that salaries are low and
the tax credits are not a good idea as they allow this distortion to continue

a living wage surely is the solution

Why should people who have never worked be paid to do nothing by the state - whose money comes from tax payers.

If someone can't work why aren't they doing community work?

Maybe they are students leaving education to go into the worst job market since the early 1980s...

Just look what happens in the US to the poor who have zero benefits. What would you do? Live on the streets? Sell drugs? Prostitute yourself?

Already in the US shanty towns are springing up around major cities. I'm afraid that is also happening in Europe, around Paris is one example as they have cut back benefit payments, and here in the UK people are starting to live rough as well...

Is that the kind of society people want?

And community labour means forced labour at the hands of the state, a very bad precedent.

Community work to means helping out in your area - nothing wrong in this.

We found, when DH was made redundant multiple times last year that the big problem was that it is very difficult to claim benefits and it takes an awful long time, as soon as you get work you lose the benefits. This is a massive disincentive to taking temporary employment, which means people have the option of working for a few weeks/months and that work may become permanent, but people would rather not risk losing benefits and then facing weeks with no money when work dries up and so choose, understandably, to say on benefits. Another problem is that when you take on part time work you lose your benefits pound for pound - which means you are worse off because you have to find travel expenses to get to work. DH did at one point take on pt temporary work, because he wanted to work so much, but we were pocket.

watching BBC News today there was major avoidance of the issue of people on incapacity benefit, particularly those with mental health issues. I fear they will be the ones to suffer and the ones least likely to cope with the suffering.

perhaps creating jobs for the many that DO want to get off the benefits would help........

What I'd like to know are the figures involved - how many people have never worked (not including those disability means they can't work) & the %.

that would be interesting actually to know how many people on benefits who are "able" to work have never done so.

there are a lot of people who just live on the dole. I know people who did it for years.

but I think there are far more who HAVE worked, and WANT to work again.

and actually IS/JSA is a tiny fraction of the benefits budget.

Picking on the poor again.

And isn;t community work for benefits a bit to close to workhouses for comfort?

Hate the thought that people who are on benefits are thought of as "languishing".

It's fine to say get people off benefits and into work but where are the jobs?

My brother in law has moved back home from abroad where he was working and has been looking for a job since last October. He has just married and they are both looking for work. They have had temporary jobs but cannot find anything that means they could afford to pay rental and move out from his parents. He has a degree, office experience as well as TEFL experience. He is very presentable and confident - a perfect employee but everytime he has got an interview there are so many people going for the same job that he has no chance.

"They are just saying that people on benefits mustn't turn down job offers or choose not to work if they were able to. "

and how strict are they going to be on that? Are they going to stop benefits for the single parent with older child (so has to be on JSA not IS) if they don't take variable shift work that includes weekends or hours where standard childcare isn't available.

Or make someone take a "temporary possibly leading to permanent job even though that job finishing and waiting for benefits to get sorted again could totally and utterly finanically ruin them?).

but it's not always as simple as "just take any job"

when was still with exH and he was looking for work (before he became ill) we had managed to arrange payments to creditors based on our benefit income. Taking "any job" - would in many cases have left us with no enough money to pay the other bills that would reappear once off the benefits.

Not paying some of those bills would have ended up with the house being repossessed, ....losing the house would have meant they would have been paying more in benefits to house us as a family than they were being together in that house. Taking "any" job simply wasn't an option.

Every possible job that came up for him to apply involved sitting down and going through entitledto website and our outgoings with a fine tooth comb and yes - we did decide it was no point in him applying for some jobs as it would have left us substantially worse off.

now...........well he's f*cked financially as those debts were all in his name, and JSA for a single male with no extras just doesn't go as far as CTC and CB and JSA couples rate - and he'd have to earn even more now on his own to cover the bills (can't move, massive negative equity and arrears on the house and we tried to sell 1 1/2yrs ago) (although I suspect his just pissing what benefits he does get now down the drain and will be made bankrupt and lose the house - arse)

ooooooooo sorry I went terribly ot there didn't I

Agree with MintHumbug.

None of this is rocket science, it's just common sense. If you are as well off, or almost as well off, on benefits, than doing the lowest paid, menial work, then what on earth is the incentive to go for those jobs?

The govt needs to make it more beneficial to work - simple. If you are on paper earning more than benefits, but then lose out on housing benefit, free school meals, free prescriptions etc etc etc, and end up not much better off, then why would you get out of bed to go to work?

These reforms are long overdue and the first step towards a fairer society. Why should some people in society be expected to provide, so that other people can sit on their arse doing jack shit?

Coolfonz - I wouldn't hold up the German benefits system as an example of how things should be - you have plenty of people working full time and being on income support at the same time, taxes and deductions if you're in work are humongous, unless of course you choose to work for not more than €400/month. As there is no minimum wage, a lot of these jobs mean effectively working for €5/h or less. As you don't have any deductions, it means there's no pension, for example.

The other ludicrous thing are the €1-jobs, which means people work to top up their benefits for €1/hour (but don't get anything if refuse these jobs). It's cheaper to create these jobs rather than proper employment and basically leaves the door wide open for exploitation.