In hoping the benefits cap may prove to be A Good Thing?

[thepeoplesprincess]

In the long run. For private renters anyway.

As things currently stand, private landlords are getting away with charging extortionate rents that few can afford because the shortfall is made up by Housing Benefit. So if benefits are to be capped, landlords will (hopefully) be forced to lower their rents to affordable levels or sell up if they can't find tenants that can and will pay hundreds of pounds a month. Either will be great for the average Joe IMO.

sunshine, I'm actually not complaining about higher earners paying higher tax rates (although I think taking 50% of anyone's salary is a bit unfair) I am just pointing out that they are already doing quite a lot to support the economy and people are still screaming "It's just not good enough! We want more!"

When the government starts doing something about Vodafone's tax avoidance, Boots off shore accounting schemes in Switzerland, Phillip Green and his questionable use of a bank account in Monaco, then I'll start worrying about benefit caps.

What I hate about this government is how they judge everybody by their standards. Yep, you lot might like cheating the system out of tax/getting your spouse to take your driving points/cheating with expenses...but not everyone is quite so sneaky.

On a tangent, Andrew Lansley was on the BBC saying that the reason that Doctors/Nurses and MW's are opposing the NHS reforms is because they are pissed off about their pay.

God forbid the true reason is because we give a shit about patients!

Do you honestly think I'd be in nursing if pay was my prime concern?

TWAT.

Nilgirl many of the squeezed middle are often the same or worse than many on benefits.They can't not be.

Are we supposed to just sweep that under the carpet,pretend it's not so,care about 1 section of society and not another.

It's for this very reason a cap is so important.I mean if you take CB out of it some will be on £50K and that's with a cap!!!!!!£50 friggin K!!!!!!!!

"I fail to see why the state should fund people who don't choose to look and plan ahead."

Do you totally lack any imagination?

What about those people who lose their job because their company goes bust because there's a global recession and they cvan't get a new one because there are not enough to go round, and the hires are favouring cheap bright young things, over people getting close to retirement. Or because their company folds because of rising oil prices pushing their fuel bills up. Or because they work for a bank which went bust?

Or what about those who lose their job through illness, or because they have a disabled child and they need to be a carer at home.

Yes, the state should provide for these. We pay in via national insurance and taxes, and the state makes sure you are protected for thecatastrophic thing you haven't thought of happening - and trust me, you haven't thought of everything!

Of course mother but saying you can't cap benefits because I have 4,5,6 or more kids is wrong.If we all had however many kids we wanted instead of what we could afford the country would be even more up shit creek than it is.

justwantcheese- oh if it was as easy as that. In the area I live in, there are no council properties, Maggie sold them all off in the 80s (how about looking/planning ahead then?) There is a 3 year waiting list for those in Private or temp accommodation, whether you work or not. Meanwhile, Landlords are well aware of the council not being able to house people, forcing them to look to private housing, and of course, these Landlords rub their hands with glee as they know that desperation to be housed will mean people will take whatever they can get, however dear it is or in whatever sub standard condition it happens to be. In our area, the council actively encourages you to lie to Private Landlords about receiving a top up- this is what they did to a close friend of mine who was on the list for social housing. They pay people's deposit to move into private rented housing.
Now, the benefits will be lowered to what is an unaffordable amount, there are no jobs available partly, IMHO as there has never been a cap on migrant workers, who will work for less than minimum wage. Which adds to the countries struggle as they then send money home rather than boosting the economy by spending in shops etc. Its a vicious circle and those who are largely not responsible for it (as someone else said the Jeremy Kyle guest type of people are in social housing, whilst everyone else struggles) are time and time again kicked in the teeth.

We know full well our own government lied to us all- look at the Spartacus Report. They cannot be trusted and frankly they need to go. Cameron is the worst PM we've ever had, and Clegg is just his whipping boy.

i think the people who need benefits should get them but i think £26,000 after tax is a lot of money and more than your average working joe.
i think a cap is needed for the ones who have no intention of ever contributing to the state and will keep popping out kid after kid so they can get more cash.

"I fail to see why the state should fund people who don't choose to look and plan ahead."

Let's leave aside the moral argument for a minute (i.e. it's immoral to leave children suffering in poverty through no fault of their own when we can do something about it).

Let's look instead at the bigger picture.

I absolutely want the state to do what it can to prevent people falling into poverty, because it benefits us all. And because, actually having children growing up in poverty cost us money!
(And I don't mean through benefits).

A government study called "The costs of child poverty for individuals and society" concluded:

"the consequences of child poverty are serious, far-reaching and multi-faceted ...
Child poverty ... takes its toll on communities, the cumulative effects of disadvantage and inequality, reducing social cohesion (HM Treasury, 2008)...

Review findings indicate that ... there are wider social implications of doing nothing about the 2.9 million children in our society growing up in poverty.

These wider impacts, including

• losses to the economy through reduced productivity,
• lower educational attainment,
• poor health
• and low skills,
• mean stunted economic growth and
• limited ability to compete in global markets (HM Treasury, 2008).

They also place an additional burden on the costs of public services (i.e. health care and children?s services) that has implications for all taxpayers, and arguably impact on everyone?s, ?day to day experiences of safety and well-being? (HM Treasury, 2008, p. 6).

Although it is unlikely that we will ever be able to precisely calculate the full cost of child poverty ... Existing approximations offer a useful marker of the economic cost associated with not ending child poverty (£40 billion per year according to TUC 2007 figures) and are of great importance in light of evidence that the UK population continues to underestimate the extent, severity and the structural basis of child poverty, and so fails to appreciate its true personal and social cost (HM Treasury, 2008; Fabian Society, 2005).

Reductions in child poverty will benefit everyone: more children will fulfil their potential, more families and communities will prosper and the UK will succeed.

This is why it is in everyone?s interests to play their role in eradicating child
poverty. (HM Treasury, 2008, p. 32)"

Full report here

Why don't people research their facts?

A large part of that £26,000 is HB, which varies across the country. Most people on the UK on benefits are not getting anywhere near that sum.

Most people with a household income of £26,000 take-home pay will also be getting tax credits and CB if they have children, which means they are living on more than £26,000.

benefits will be lowered to an unaffordable ammount? still more than what the average worker earns.

Or in short, if you can't be bothered to read all that (but you should!)

Having lots of children growing up in poverty costs our society money in other ways.

but the average worker is getting top-up benefits if they have children. If they don't have children they won't, but then they won't have the associated costs either. A person on JSA will get HB but only £67 per week to live off, which is hardly equivalent to £26000 per year).

This shift in the last few decades of seeing those out of work, or claiming benefits, as scroungers whose excesses need to be capped is extremely depressing.

Can you all stop and think before posting about the 26k limit.

Because we're not talking about 26k. We're talking about 35k.

If I want to get my hands on 26k worth of material goods and services, I have to pay tax on it.

Therefore talking about someone working for 26k is not an equivalent of someone collecting 26k in benefits.

It's a really important distinction to make.

If the average worker is living on an unaffordable amount then that's a problem!
The answer to that problem however isn't to cut benefits.

They are playing us of one against another - an old trick!

Can't you see that?!

*off not of!

If you want to deal with exhorbitant private rents, tackle the buy to let market or target taxation at that income.

These changes will make very little difference to rents - the vast majority of private landlords reject tennants on housing benefits and those that do tend to charge bang on average market rate. If a 4 bed that's open to housing benefit is £X/month a 4 bed in the next street that's not open to those on benefits is £X/month + 10-15%.

If landlords find they can't get the rent paid through housing benefits they will get the property empty, make improvements, and relet on the private market for increased rent. In the short term it might have a stall effect on rent inflation but it's unlikely to actually lower rents. It's more likely to be of helpful to those looking to buy as landlords may well look to offload some properties so you might save £20-30k on a £500k house.

Thousands of people continue to migrate to the South East and London in particular every year for work. They more than outpace any current or planned home building. It's basic supply and demand - number of people goes up, number of available homes doesn't match that growth therefore demand is higher than supply so rents rise.

The current economic climate means more people than ever are likely to need to move to the South East and London - outside of these areas job opportunities have fallen more steeply. The situation is only likely to get worse.

Not when you consider Tax Credits, tax breaks for married couples, and child benefit- however much you earn or don't earn, everyone is entitled to Child Benefit.
My remark on unaffordable amounts related to Housing Benefit. They will force people onto the street, or into sub standard accommodation, or into living with their family which means overcrowding and the knock on effect that causes.
Sort out the housing crisis (over a million homes empty which could house a large number of those on housing waiting lists), sort out migrant employment, sort out employment full stop so there are jobs for people to go to, then, by all means, moan about those who are on benefits who despite the Daily Mail trying to make all benefit claimants out to be scroungers, including using made up figures on DLA procured from our lying cheating government, for the most part do not want to be on benefit but it's either that or go shake a tin in a subway.

It speaks for itself- university fees were never going to hit the well of. The government knew this but did it anyway. As I say, this is our government, who rather than make businesses like Vodaphone pay what they owe, rather than stopping ex-bank chiefs being given gold handshakes for doing precisely nothing, they pick on the hardest up, on the disabled and on children.

Nice.

No they're not.

Sorry if people on benefits can get £35K and at the moment a lot more (not including school dinners,free prescriptions etc) then those in the squeezed middle should get help too sorry. You can't say one section of society is living in poverty but not the other.Those not on benefits will actually be worse off as paying the entire rent/mortgage bill not getting £100 a month in free school meals,water capped etc.

So that's a hell of a lot of people who deserve help.

Unfortunately we're broke(partly due to uncapped benefits in the first place)so why should some people get help and not others?

Obviously not fair.

Soooooooo lets cap benefits-ta da it's now fair.Really don't see the problem.

And for those of you who seem to see the people whose benefits will be cut as scroungers, how do you see their eg 10 month old babies? Even if you think these people are 'greedy' or 'lazy', do you think their toddlers are? Do their 5 year olds have an 'entitled' attitude?

Maybe they shouldn't have had 'children they can't afford'. But they did. Those children exist, and it's their homes that will be lost and their plates that will have less food on. They're not responsible for the choices of their parents but they're the ones that will suffer as a result of these cuts. The government wants their child benefit included in the cap - a universal benefit that will still be paid to the children of families on incomes up to £80,000.

Sorry if people on benefits can get £35K and at the moment a lot more (not including school dinners,free prescriptions etc) then those in the squeezed middle should get help too sorry.

That's not the middle! That's part of the problem. £35K has been used to target those who earn that amount or less as a family; to make them think, 'Why should they get what we don't?'

How about asking a different question. Why do those on a family income of £35k before tax get so little support? Why are we paying benefits (child benefit) to those on a family income of up to £80k when there are people struggling on less than half that? Why aren't we doing more to help those people?

For a couple both working on 35k with 2 kids without childcare costs, their entitlement to benefits is only child allowance and a very small amount of tax credits - about £600-£700 per year. Where I live they wouldn't be entitled to housing benefit on top of this level of income.

So this means a working couple could potentially only be £2,000 to £3,000 better off a year than the top cap on welfare benefits. This still seems a very generous cap to me.

lesley, the combined income of that scenario is £75,000 - of course they don't need benefits.

The £26,000 cap is for the entire household, not individuals.

And its not about seeing people as greedy or lazy. Many people on benefits are working or desperate to work. Its about setting benefits as a safety net. Not at a level that potentially gives people the same income as a working family on a reasonable wage.

tax breaks for married couples - what, you mean if one of the couple was born in 1935 or older?!

What ill-informed people deem themselves worthy of contributing to this thread! It's all opinion, and not based in reality. Just like the sense of entitlement constantly on show on this thread - the benefits pot is finite, and paid for by taxpayers. I think we are perfectly entitled to add in a handout cap. After all, isn't that what working citizen's salaries are, essentially?

Because if all we care about is e.g. child poverty, let's increase the child benefit element which is open to everyone. None of this 20 quid here or 30 quid there nonsense - let's give everyone £150 a week for each child.

Oh wait, the country would end up bankrupt? Woops!