How do we as a country eliminate 'benefit culture'?

[whomovedmychocolate]

Serious question, not asking for a bunfight but donning teflon knickers nevertheless.

We seem to have got ourselves into a right pickle over this - we have a myriad of benefits - which don't seem to fit together or make logical sense and which seem open ended.

Is this right? Should we say (with obvious exceptions for people who are going to need help forever because of health issues) 'right, we will support you for X months and then you are on your own'?

Should we require people to dispose of any and all assets before providing benefits? This would counter the 'well he has a plasma telly and is receiving JSA' arguments I've heard recently.

What about generations of families who have never worked. What do we do about them then? Do we do intervention stylee retraining for them all, and force them to work?

I'm really interested in the ideas you lot might have because I am finding it very hard to establish the extent of the problem or any solution.

Defo don't want genuinely entitled people to feel ashamed of getting benefits (it's like withdrawing your savings from the public purse if you've paid in then that's what benefits are there for) but that is what is wrong.
People who haven't paid in don't realise that that is what benefits are they are the worker's savings.

The answer is to create more jobs. Completely agree. I don't think replacing machines with people is the way to go though. The UK needs to stand out in the world marketplace, for example for its creative and skilled workforce, we should look forwards, not try to turn the clock back.

Also agree with Kaloki about the shame factor. I think there is still a shame factor in claiming benefits but it isn't felt by the whole population.

When I left the UK (central London) almost 3 years ago, there was some complaining about all of the 'immigrants taking our jobs' . People were upset at the number of Poles, Czech (and other Eastern Europeans) coming to the country to work/send money back to their own countries. There was also a huge Philippine population working, and other nationalities too.

Is that still the case? If so, how are those nationalities (and others) able to come here, find work, afford to live/eat, and be able to send money 'home'? I know the easy answer is that some of them live 8 to a flat, but what are they doing that our own citizens can't/won't?

They came here (and perhaps still do) because the prospects here are better than in their own countries. How is that possible?

Again, I've been out of the country for several years, so perhaps things are different now.

No Earlybird things are still the same, where I live there are loads of polish people buying houses for themselves and families setting up polish shops (2 in a medium sized town). Obviously in Poland they don't have a welfare state and working for agencies in factories here is a good option for them. I don't get the impression that the recession has affected them.

Earlybird I do not know about London, and can only speak for myself. But I remember moving to England from Eastern Europe having had a good career in banking. My specialist field was of no interest to our local bank (now bust - guess where I live), so I was willing to take quite a pay-cut just to start to work. My DH, who is English, was absolutely horrified. "You must not work for so little money, because it will be forever on your CV, and nobody will ever pay you more" he said. While my thinking was that it is better to have a low-paid job than no job at all. Then work your way up.

There are very few jobs where I live, so I lost my job twice in the past few years (once during my maternity leave ). I have never ever signed on (yet), and found a job within a week at first, then within 2 months. I am young, fit and healthy, so as long as I can find a job, I do not need to sign on. We need to help people who are sick or in any way less able to find work, not me at the minute.

Please, remind me of this little sermon, when I lose this job especially now that I am a parent [scuttles back to work looking very frightened].

And the other thing about economic migrants that they do not have the time to socialise so much, and spend a lot less on clothing. If buying a new pair of shoes / spending a couple of nights in the pub are not your birth rights, you can make huge savings.

[now really goes back to work]

'I can't be bothered with scapegoating and implementing policy to weed out a tiny percentage of skivers at the expense of many more legitimate beneficiaries. '

It's not in your, or my, or anyone's individual hands anymore, Lenin, which is why whomoved may have started this discussion, which so far has gone quite well, IMO.

I agree with SGB on a lot of points, but again, it's not in hers or my hand invidual hands anymore, either, and a Tory/LibDem govt. is hardly going to be the turkey who votes for Xmas.

Reform is needed, some reform at least.

And they're not going to get rid of the royal family or that.

I don't agree with them but they do bring in revenue to the country. All junkies like the people downstairs bring is chaos, murder, misery and perhaps more money for Al Queda to blow us all away.

The welfare budget is the biggest one in the government. Save 1% of it and it's an enormous amount of money. It's not about weeding out skivers... but we all know there are inefficiencies and loopholes, waste and duplication. People on moderate incomes that don't need the handouts. And yes, there are a few skivers and moonlighters in the mix as well. Labour asked Frank Field to 'think the unthinkable' but weren't brave enough to 'enact the unthinkable'. Now's our chance

BTW If you're not claiming benefits it doesn't necessarily mean you've had lucky breaks. The children of low-income migrants routinely outperform the children of other families on low incomes... nothing to do with 'fortune' and everything to do with being told to study hard and aim high.

Hmm... some junkies do recover to become functioning and heavily contributing members of society though expat.

However I have read some of your posts and it must be awful to be in that situation - they are in a bad place and are 'contaminating' everyone and everything around them. It is shit.

It is worth remembering that economically we do need a pool of temporary and disposable labour.

Factory and manufacturing jobs no longer needed so much nowadays, and I think that as a society we are really feeling the impact.

I think that an increase in army recruitment is helping somewhat though, whatever the moral rights / wrongs of that.

I'm actually really impressed we've not managed to dissolve into bickering

I don't think the 'poor' are the problem actually. I think the problem is expectation of wealth. There's been this massive social change where everyone became materially aspirational since the 70s - perhaps they always were but there's much more to buy now.

No-one needs a plasma TV (I don't have one, I could afford one but I have a small flat screen already, why would I?) No-one needs designer clothes etc. But people aspire to have things they can't afford and I think that's a big part of the problem. Easy credit means people have for the last ten years or so, maybe more, learned to overspend and live beyond their means, and then they have to earn more to service the debt and eventually it all tumbles and they often turn to the state for help.

There's bog all wrong with being poor IMHO. Some of the most honest and happiest people I've ever met have been very low on financial resources, but they've managed with what they have. My grandma yearned for a china dog and a doorbell for ages, when she got them she adored them - absolutely fripperies but she worked in a munitions factory - there wasn't a lot of money about and that was the extent of her wishes. When we cleared out her house, there wasn't a lot there but every single thing mattered to her - it wasn't the latest or the best but it was cherished because that's what she'd worked for.

Yes, and some people on welfare go on to work.

We can't keep legislating based on what some people might do in the future.

That's the problem with threads like this.

People keep jumping in with, 'But some junkies recover . . . ' 'Some single parents are really good . . . ''Some convicts don't reoffend . . . .'

No one wants to push past their own personal experience or viewpoint.

The trouble with that is that, well, I'm not a Tory, but I'm going to have to live with their viewpoint for the next 5 years. That's just tough for me, they're in charge now.

That's why talks and discussions like this are, I feel, important, but without the whole dismissing of it because it's automatically scapegoating someone, some do this and some do that.

They're going to change things.

That's how it is.

If you pay people to be unemployed, they will be unemployed.

If you pay people to have children, they will have children.

One of the big problems is that the tax and benefits systems are separate. How about joining them up and everyone should receive an income from the state, albeit taxed once earning above a certain threshold?

So, no special dispensations for having children, being married, living alone, TV licences, cold weather payments etc. They should all be combined into one payment, less 30% and we should all muddle on through like that.

We really shouldn't get more money for having more children - it would encourage people to think twice about whether they can afford to have them or not....rather than happily let other people pay for them

Well put, whomoved.

That's certainly a salient point and one that encompasses much of society not just 'the poor'.

You see it here on so many threads with 'I work hard.'

Well, probably about 90% of people in the world do.

There's an expectation that increasing material reward in the form of increasing buying power should go along with that otherwise there is much disatisfaction and it's not fair and such.

When really, it doesn't always.

It's like someone pointed out on another thread recently, 'People want to stop work at 60, but they only started working when they were 22.'

Trouble is, everyone has differing needs.

So what does a government, who has to make policy for a society do?

Well, exactly, Lenin, as state pension is a benefit.

I was never brought up to see it as anything but another tax on me.

There's no way people my age, 39, will see much, if anything, in the way of state pension, IMO.

We'll work till we drop.

It's only been in the past 60 years that people have been groomed to see 'retirement' as a time of relative wealth lasting years and years.

It's not got a basis in reality for most our age, though.

Also, people have to get it into their heads that they probably will have many different jobs in their lives - I've had three careers so far and I'm only 36. Did well in all of them oddly. But I think it's only by being flexible and not having on to the past and saying 'well I used to earn X so I should now earn more than X'. The economy has changed and different things are valued.

I do wonder what happened to all the typewriter ribbon makers/ coal miners etc, they will have had to change careers and there will be a percentage who were unable to go into another industry because they got mentally stuck with the assertion that 'this is what I do'.

I think instead of thinking your earnings should constantly go up, we may have to accept that throughout life they will fluctuate. My dad for example, earned a lot more in today's money working at a factory than he does now working at a museum, but the factory closed and actually because we'd all left home, the amount of money he needed to survive had dropped too. So it works - sort of.

Lenin, yes there are some differing needs, I accept.

But what I am driving at is that we should try to minimise the fluctuations in entitlement and force people to live according to their means, rather than how they want and have that lifestyle subisidised by others.

By stepping in and 'assisting' in so many ways, the social security system has reduced the likelihood that people will seek help from friends and family as a first port of call. I mean, we now have this ridiculous state of affairs where people are actually paid by the State to look after their next of kin.

Whatever happened to a sense of family loyalty or duty?

Why can't we see that help as a thing in itself worth doing, rather than seeking some sort of financial reward for it?

"If you pay people to be unemployed, they will be unemployed."

And if you don't pay them, they'll still be unemployed. It's not the paying them that causes unemployment.

Yes, the prevailing cutlure has us believe we will all be siler foxes, leaning against the rails of a cruise ship at sunset and gazing into debonair gent;s eyes over glss of bubbly.
As opposed to being skint, exhausted, and pissed off, running around after small children we had when ancient as well as proppping up elderly parents who won't do the decent thing and drop off, leaving us some £££.

Falls off chair as expat says she's not a tory.