Confused re attitude to benefits and work experience

[catontheroof]

Your thoughts please - why has it become so politically incorrect to suggest that fit adults in this country should be expected to work for a living?

I believe that we need a safety net but cannot understand why people should not have to take jobs that they are qualified for if those jobs exist. I also cannot understand why people "deserve" tax credits etc.

If large chunks of our population do not work then our GDP is low. The only way that we can afford to have so many on benefits with a relatively high standard of living is by importing goods from other countries where the workers live and work in atrocious conditions.

Why do we think that it is right and proper that people in this country sit around being paid not to work whilst tens of thousands all over the world work in sweat shops to provide them with a lifestyle?

If our fit population all worked then we'd increase GDP and have money to help people in other countries where there is real poverty.

There are large numbers of people who are deserving. My point is if measures are designed to punish behaviour x then they should punish behaviour x and not punish behaviour y while having no effect on behaviour y. That is what the welfare reforms in their current state are doing.

I agree, Hecubasdaughter.

Rabbit - i see the current system as causing lots of colateral damage. DP is a HT in a rough area of London. his DF in the NHS & DSM an education welfare officer. They are an old Labour family but I have never heard them say anything like more money needs paying to claimants. They do think people need to take more responsibility for themselves & their family - based on what they have spend decades of their working lives doing.

obviously we must provide for the old, sick, disabled etc. but everyone who can work needs pressure on them to work. these changes should have been brought in when the economy was booming & there were more jobs. but politicians never do that - why change anything if you are in power, times are good & you want reelection?

so we over spent in the good times & now we need to rebalance. how?

taxing business will result in fewer jobs in the UK, taxing the rich leads to more use of structures to reduce tax (which often have an underlying common good reason to exist - generally encouraging job creation, improving balance of trade deficit which is wealth flowing out of the country), no politician wants to tax the squeezed middle as that just gifts popularity to the other side, so the alternative is to cut costs.

in 1-2 years time when the changes have kicked in, the economy will be in stable growth & job creation will start properly.

It's not so much about giving them more money but money at the right time and in the right way as well as campaigning to change attitudes in society as a whole. From what you say tilly I am sure you agree that those who find themselves unemployed should do everything they can to get back into work. The problem is the current and proposed systems both actively penalise those who take this attitude. Hardly good encouragement or and advert for anyone else to do the same.

The reforms aim only to cut the benefits bill while doing nothing truly constructive to change the culture, encourage work and sustainable economic economic growth. to avoid too long a post I will explain what I mean in my next post.

To illustrate my point imagine the main employer in a town has gone out of business leaving a lot of people redundant, affecting the profitability of other local businesses and leaving a lot of people chasing very few jobs. I'm sure you would agree that it is a depressing situation for those involved.

For my argument look at person A and B, both were hard working family people on just below average wage with small amount of savings when made redundant. Both act sensibly using their savings to get out of unnecessary contracts and meeting rent and council tax etc for the weeks it takes to get their benefits sorted, and it can take a lot of weeks especially after a large number of redundancies in one small area. It leaves both with no savings to speak of.

That's where the similarities end, person A does the absolute minimum required by JCP and puts so little into his applications he has little chance of getting the job. Person B puts every effort into it applying for anything and everything and putting a lot of thought into each application. However due to the climate neither has a job a year later and they have spent it living hand to mouth thanks to having no jobs. At this point person B's efforts finally pay off and he is offered a short term (3month contract) with about a 10% chance of extension or becoming permanent. He jumps at the chance seeing at as an opportunity to maybe have a permanent contract and at least get more work experience, to not be applying for jobs as someone who has been unemployed a year and quite frankly to just have the chance to work again.

Person A carries on as before, no luxuries but roof over his head and food on te table. Person B's benefits stop instantly yet he won't get his first pay for 4-5 weeks. He, as a result defaults on his rent and other DD, giving him rent arrears and extra bank charges. When he gets paid he has to meet 2 months' bills plus admin charges and interest on what he has missed leaving him less money. so no chance to save. He also has the extra cost of commuting to work. After 3 months due to no fault of his own there is no funding to keep him on so he is redundant again but this time with no savings to fall back on and benefits yet again take weeks to be sorted and again he defaults more than once though this time he ends up evicted and therefore homeless with no prospect of help from the homeless team as he is regarded as 'intentionally homeless', his benefits claim is stopped as he is of NFA and he cannot apply for jobs as he is of NFA.

Look at this situation and tell me which person did what society wants and what our economy needs him to do and which one at the end is financially better off. Do you see what I mean?

IMHO benefits should run on for 3-4 weeks to cushion the transition into work. I know it will cost money initially but it should encourage people into work by removing the first punishment there is for taking a job. Secondly the application process for benefits should be streamlined and have an enforced time frame in which to be completed in. This should save on admin costs for a start. Some sort of scheme whereby LL, banks and mortgage lenders have to wait this time before considering it a default they would charge for if the default is due to redundancy with the guarantee of getting their money at the end of this period at the latest.

Think about it, in the example above person B would have been declared bankrupt, meaning his debtors got nothing. At least with a scheme like I have proposed they would be guaranteed some money.

Tilly - I have never made the blanket statement that more money needs paying to benefit claimants. I also agree more people need to take more responsibility for themselves and their families (but then my opinions on fidelity, a person's responsibility to any children they produce, the extent to which one has the right to seek happiness at the expense of others for whom one is responsible, etc, are exceptionally old fashioned, and my idea of entertainment is also not necessarily compatible with many other peoples' views of a good time...). The State should not be there to take on peoples' responsibilities for them, it should be there to support them in taking on their responsibilities.

I also agree that changes should have been made in the good times: I found the "good times" deeply frustrating, because "good times" seemed to be a translation of "careless wastefulness," "thinking only of yourself" and "avoiding the issue" in many cases. In the good times, we were far too reliant on capitalism sorting everything out if we just sat back and let it. However, the changes now are not what should have been made in the good times, let alone what is good for us, now. I think they are poorly thought through and just a quick way of trying to cut back costs, justified on the back of propoganda. I have no objections to changes being made honestly and with some sort of coherent vision, I just have a problem with the way politicians have to get their own way - even if that is and ever will be the way of the world. And I dislike having to hear self-justifications from sectors of society who ought just to admit that they are being selfish because they can get away with it, rather than bleating that they are being hard done by and feel unfairly disliked. If people were a bit more honest with themselves about their own motivations, they might just shame themselves into changing their own behaviour a bit, too - and it is not only those at the bottom of society who need to change their behaviour, even if they are the only ones who might find their behaviour changed forcibly. We all need to change our behaviour.

Basically, I agree with Hecubasdaughter that the current changes make it even harder to behave in the way society wants to encourage people to behave, anyway. And I admit, I have very high expectations of our politicians which will inevitably be let down, but I would at least like to feel that they actually believe half the things they say and half the justifications they make for their behaviour and policies, and that they have some kind of vision for the future of this country that makes coherent sense and which I could feel proud to support. I still feel like the country has lost its way and doesn't really know which direction to head in, so is just randomly cutting costs and hoping business will sort everything out - any old random business, no particular focus, of course. I'm just very afraid we all think we can dig our way out of a hole and then carry on as we did in the "good times," with the exception of being at all generous to those who can't make an economic contribution even if they want to.

I agree with lots of your last posts. My best guess as to why the system is so poorly administered is the IT systems are so bad, common sense changes are completely unworkable.

Well it is really unacceptable they have allowed it to get to this stage. The JCP job search function is rubbish too. I ran a search for a job within 15 miles of my home postcode and it came up with a job in Wimbledon. Another search for sales assistant came up with a job as a security guard. Nothing wrong with being a security guard btw, just that it didn't match the search.

More money needs to be paid to people jobseeking.

JSA is only £67.50 per week. That covers food and bills only.

Can you imagine having NO disposable income whatsoever? No new clothes. no shoes when they wear out. If anything breaks, you have to miss meals. Going without winter heating because that's the only way you can afford all the other essentials.