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.

Not all jobs are offered full time.

none of my jobs are FT. At the moment I have about a dozen bits and pieces that I do. I work at least FT (plus commute) and make way less than the average wage.

Catontheroof, do you have private medical care and do your children go to private school?

"Why shouldn't you work just so that you are not dependant on strangers (like me) to pay for your upkeep?"

I only claim Child Benefit. I don't claim JSA as I am not looking for a FT job and I make enough working from home and around my 3 children who are at school.

As for Tesco, they were able to make billions without free labour. Why should they benefit from a tax-payer subsidised lower wage bill when there are lots of other business and workplaces who are feeling the pinch and could probably offer more relevant work experience. (Not everyone wants to work in retail)

Nowthenwreck.

I completely agree that housing is to blame for the majority of this situation. When my sister bought her first house in 1981 she paid 18,000 which was 2.5 times her husband's salary (hers wasn't allowed to be counted in case she had a baby). When we bought a similar first house 20 years later it cost 5 times our joint salary.

The house didn't change, our money didn't change, just the amount that the mortgage companies allowed us to borrow became the default cost of housing.

This is even more acute in the social housing sector which has, to all intents and purposes, been privatised. When we had real social housing, owned and run by councils, tenant paid nominal/token rents.

When the council houses were sold off the need for social housing still existed, and instead was paid for in the form of housing benefit paid directly to private landlords at commercial rates. As house prices and rents have increased it has become an upwardly vicious circle with ever increasing rents causing an ever increasing housing bill, and ever increasing margins for landlords without a penny of it ever being seen by the dole scrounging wastrels you think are spending our taxes

Do you suggest everyone in the country has a husband at home who can do the school run?

What do you suggest for people who have employers who don't let them work from home?

I see no reason why people on JSA should not be expected to do something to improve their employability. They are financially in a better position than all those graduates doing internships for nothing at all, who are usually expected to sponge off parents.

Some provision would need to be made for those with childcare responsibilities, but otherwise YANBU.

Tesco were doing a public service IMO, and so what if there was a little bit in it for them? I can't imagine it was much. The management and training overhead must have been immense.

The answer is quite simple. The standard of living in the UK is too high to be sustainable without using cheap labour from abroad. It has become acceptable to pay peanuts to those in other countries while expecting to live beyond our means. People calling for a "living wage" fail to realise that this would mean the cost of sustaining our comfortable lifestyles would rise meaning that the "living wage" would need to rise again. Over the past 40 years our standards of living have risen ridiculously. ANyone equating shelf filling with slave labour has obviously no idea of what slave labour means. I don't think we should be forcing people to work for their benefits for large corporations but would have no problem with making work for small businesses and charities. It is also misleading to say that they are working for nothing, as at the moment they are being paid for doing nothing. Also, if you take into account all the benefits many of them are recieving, such as housing benefit etc they would be getting a better wage than many others

They are being "paid" with the JSA they have already paid for by National Insurance.
Which is the insurance you pay against unemployment and ill health.

Debsbear, are you be prepared to be one of the people who works for a small business in return for benefits?

Onehandflapping, what are these massive overheads? I used to work for a supermarket after school when I was 16. The training was on how to use an appropriate fire extinguisher and how to evacuate customers in an emergency. The training lasted about an hour and a half. What is this incredibly expensive training that people now need in order to stack shelves and operate a till?

NowThenWreck Wed 07-Mar-12 13:03:00
They are being "paid" with the JSA they have already paid for by National Insurance.
Which is the insurance you pay against unemployment and ill health.

thats not correct.

1.the welfare bill is larger than the entire income tax take

1. you have to earn > 26K (on average) to pay more than the services you are currently using.

1. you have to earn > 26K (on average) to pay more in tax than the value of services you are currently using.

catontheroof no, but you have said that you and your husband manage to juggle childcare between you.

My DH leaves the house at 7.30 and gets home at 6 each day - or thereabouts. We don't have the option to juggle. We did in the early days when his job was um, less critical.

But nowadays he chairs meetings, delivers workshops and co-ordinates projects. I don't know what you and your DH do, obviously, but whatever work I do now must fit around the children because I do the childcare. He works for the council and has flexitime but cannot use it to get in an hour late or leave an hour early like he used to be able to because he can't just not arrive for a meeting or leave a workshop early.

We don't have any kind of support network, so there is no one else to help out. Childcare is expensive.

FWIW, it does piss us off that some people 'choose' to live on benefits. And yes, as much as some people on here refute it, they do. And yes, it pisses us off that if you've been working and are made redundant you can only claim contribution based JSA for a maximum of 26 weeks, whilst you can claim income based JSA indefinitely. So long as you are satisfying their looking for work conditions, you're fine.

People have told you why workfare is disgusting. Besides forcing people to work for less than the minimum wage it undercuts the number of real jobs available. It's not the same as work experience at all.

I'd like to query your belief in the almighty GDP. Why on earth do you think that increasing it is definately a GoodThing (tm)?

All sorts of wonderful things don't directly increase GDP. Parenting, Caring, Volunteering are all ways that people occupy their time which don't increase GDP (in fact they may lower potential GDP by preventing these things from being paid jobs). Playing with a child, smiling at a stranger, picking up litter - these are all things which make our lives richer, our communities happier and our environment healthier but they don't increase GDP.

In addition, there are many vile things which increase GDP. If a factory pollutes a river then the cost of cleaning it up and restocking the river with fish increases GDP. But wouldn't it have been better if they hadn't polluted the river at all? Crimes are terrible, but think of all the people they employ to investigate the crime, catch a suspect, go through the legal process of convicting (and defending) them and then looking after them once they are in prison. This all increases GDP, but most sensible people would agree that less crime is better for society.

GDP is a measure of economic activity. But it does not disguish between beneficial and detremental economic activity. Economic growth is one tool that can be used to improve the lot of mankind, it is not and should not be seen as the ultimate goal in itself.

Tesco is a very rich company, sitting on BILLIONS of pounds that it hasn't got a clue what to do with. It can afford to pay ALL of its employees a fair wage. It shouldn't be subsidised by the tax payer.

P.s. I'm sure you are intelligent enough to know this already but people on benefits spend a higher percentage of their money directly back into the economy than richer people who often save money? Increasing benefits would be a very effective if unpopular way of stimulating the economy rather than giving it to banks.

'Countries like China make more than they spend (because their populations work stupidly hard compared to us). We are living off the goods that the Chinese etc produce by working so much harder than people in this country. How can this is ethical?'

It is not as simple as 'the Chinese work harder'. First, there are a billion Chinese, many of whom live in poverty and receive very little from the government. Second, China relies much more than people know upon child and slave labour, and generally people are forced to work appalling hours in horrendous conditions. Not heard of the mass suicide threats among Chinese Apple workers, have you?

China's economic growth is based upon practices that would be illegal and unethical in a UK context.

I do believe that the world's reliance upon this unethical labour market for cheap goods is itself unethical.

But it makes no sense to somehow place any of this blame on UK benefits recipients. The Chinese labour model is spurred by foreign industry and governments exploiting the cheapest production methods they can find. This in turn means they can close down production in the UK, thus contributing to UK unemployment and, yes, more people on benefits.

Actually Tilly, you have to earn a lot more than that to "pay" for the services you use. (like A LOT more).

But that is not what insurance is.
When I insure the contents of my house I pay £15 a month.
If my house burned down the insurance company would (supposedly) give me 15k to replace said contents.
I don't have to pay them 15 K in order for them to do this.
My house (God willing ) never will burn down, so they might have the benefit of the £9000 odd I will end up paying them, and never have to pay me a penny.

Also, the welfare bill includes paying for old people who no longer work, paying for housing costs for people who work but cannot pay the extortionate costs of housing and have no access to social housing (since so much of it has been sold), caring for people with disabilities.

The welfare bill is a long list of very different services and costs, and it would be wrong to suggest that it is composed entirely of people on JSA.

yanbu

we are in a right fucking pickle

but YAWN YAWN YAWN

you will be accused of wanting to make terminally ill cancer patients do a 12 hour unpaid shift in Tesco

its sooooo ridiculously left wing on MN

and everyone will start fucking blaming housing costs and childcare costs

and sit on their fucking arse on the social as after paying childcare they only get £40 a month, bla bla bla

Actually Tilly, you have to earn a lot more than that to "pay" for the services you use. (like A LOT more).

the 26k figure from More or Less a radio program by statisticians.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00msxfl

there is also a BBC calcualtor which come out with 22k+. whats your reference?

Fucking hate Maggie Thatcher but she was right when she said there is no society. There is certainly a lack of compassion as Porcamiseria clearly demonstrates.
Hope karma pays you a visit one day.
You all think you are so fuckin untouchable.

I think you should stop trying to understand complicated GCSE economics textbooks and go back to watching eastenders, sweetie.

porcamiseria actually it is about people being able to see outside the narrow little world they live in, or assume that there is enough room in the world for everybody to be like them.

If you must know, I am self-employed and a high-rate tax payer whilst still working part time and taking my kids to school. However, I accept that not everybody in the country is in this position and that some people may need more help than others. Not because they deserve handouts or don't need to take personal responsibility, but actually because society as a whole is better if people are helped, educated and kept in housing, rather than left to fend for themselves.

shotinfoot - maybe if you had a lower income and had to work full time to get by, you would have more sympathy for posters who are fed up of funding others.

actually it is about people being able to see outside the narrow little world they live in

there are NO jobs

It's Maggie Thatcher that got us into this mess by privatising companies, closing mines etc, shipping manufacturing abroad. She knew very well it would leave a section of society unable to find work, she acknowledged it and it is widely acknowledged amongst political historians

Actually probably not. I didn't come out of the womb with this income. I merely pointing out that the knee jerk reaction on here is that everybody who supports benefits for the unemployed are lazy, and it's only hard working people who are fending for themselves.

A case in point, Peter Lilley defending tax credit cuts by saying 'I don't see why people can't work another 3 or 4 hours a week'

No, you wouldn't...... and therein lies the problem with this government.