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.

Why is no shame felt by the people who have enriched themselves by impoverishing others? The company executives who have cut benefits, cut corners on health and safety, subcontracted out all the unskilled jobs, or made half the workforce 'redundant' so the rest are too scared to object to doing twice the work for the same pay...

There is nothing wrong with menial work, and these unskilled jobs always have to be don, sure. And it's not unreasonable that unskilled work commands less pay than skilled work. Decent employers also take note of the bright and hardworking people among the unskilled workers and make them aware that there is a chance to progress, for instance - stacking shelves or scrubbing toilets becomes a less depressing prospect when you are aware that there are opportunities to move on up the ladder.
However, the problem often is that companies treat unskilled workers like shit. 'Flexible' means 'unpaid overtime with no notice', 'right attitude' means servility and being prepared to compromise your health and wellbeing without arguing. No one is remotely interested in promoting the unskilled or even bothering to distinguish them from one another as they have stopped being people and become 'cheap unskilled labour'.
It's not workshyness that's the reason some people won't take any awful underpaid job, it's actually sufficient self-respect not to want to be treated like a serf.

"but that rather assumes that people have kids FOR the benefits, which they don't."

Some do, for the sake of housing perhaps rather than benefits. Maybe some for benefits too.

Also even if babies aren't born "for the benefits", it's true that people are more careless because of the safety net.

Why would a teenage dad care about a pregnancy? he's got no job, no prospects, the state will be paying for his food and shelter, maybe he's at school. There are many single mothers around, his mates might be dads and do nothing for their children. Some one else will pay for the baby. Why should he care?

Pregnancy is, by and large, a choice. It rarely "just happens". Not caring about getting pregnant is a choice. Being with someone for a couple of months and OMG I fell pregnant -- it's a choice.

"Why is no shame felt by the people who have enriched themselves by impoverishing others?"

Completely agree SGB. I don't understand this. It makes the stomach turn.

nymphadora, the situation you describe would only be resolved by taking away the lad's money/benefits

but surely if he refused a job that would happen?

"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."

sorry to be just quoting and agreeing but I really agree with this wmmc

Paying benefits in the way that we do does indeed add to unemployment as it removes or reduces any incentive to support oneself.

How about saving and preparing for the worst? Doing without various nice-to-haves instead of spraying money up the wall?

Then again, given that the Labout Govt did exactly this when it had a booming economy, it's not surprising its client voters mimicked it.

"How about saving and preparing for the worst?"

Which is fine if you are in a position to do so. Benefits are for those who aren't.

SGB - no, we have all been far too comfortable for far too long.

Real poverty (something that none of us on this forum can claim to be experiencing - consider yourself poor? Sell the computer then and stop wasting time online) is experienced across the world by people who would give their eye teeth to be treated so badly in the way you describe.

Barmyarmy: How and why do you think reducing the status and material wealth of the UK's poor to that of shantytown dwellers and third generation beggers would actually do anyone any good?

Oh and telling people to sell their computers isn;t very helpful - some of us use them to work and apply for jobs on, you know.

Mind you, the trouble with 'benefit bashers' is there is no getting through to them, they are engaging in the usual fuckwitted superstitious behaviour patterns of 'magical thinking' - if they can only shout loudly enough they can convince themselves that the poor are ignorant feckless lazy scum and their poverty is all their own fault so as long as the non-poor continue to demonize the poor and ignore the greedy rich who have created the poverty, the superstious can hold on to the belief that being a good little mundane will stop poverty happeneing to them.
It won't, you know.

Oh and another thing, blaming the poor for not saving FFS! When interest rates were at below sea level, why the fuck would anyone with not much money bother to save any of it?

SGB - I don't think we should reduce the status and material wealth of the UK to anything like you have described.

I was trying to point out that what is actually under discussion here is 'relative poverty' and 'relative need' and, to my mind, comes across as little more than envy, i.e. Mr X has a nice car, I don't...therefore it's unfair and Mr X is a fat cat and doesn't deserve his nice car etc etc.

Re. computers - of course many of us use them for such laudatory purposes as seeking jobs etc. I just question how 'poor' someone can be if they have a computer/mobile phone/SKY etc etc.

SGB - ah, yes, of course, people didn't save because of the level of interest rates...that was the reason!

The answer is in my humble opinion a citezens wage for every man and woman in the country, say £150 a week.
That gets paid to you no matter what but then you never get a penny more.
If you have 10 children you have to decide if that £150 a week plus what ever wages you can command is enough to support 10 children. If you have no children, lucky you you keep every penny for yourself.
But it would remove any incentive to knock kids out for financial gain and remove any bitterness from those who feel they are supporting other peoples choices.

Clue: 30 years of crazy right wing politics designed to push money up the chain to the very richest.

This is what you get.

Hard luck.

Wait until the next recession!

And I hope no one on here has a mortgage, getting bailed out by the bank of England to the tune of billions. Scroungers? Moi?

I hope no one here works in banking which openly socialised its losses and brought on this recession.

This is a conversation of the blind. Banking collapses our economy, in tune with the prevailing political ideology of the day, and you blame the poor.

Read some history, you think the poor are a new invention? You think the US is a shining example but not the Scandinavians? Not the Germans?

Turkeys voting for Xmas...

wot, shroeder, does merely talking about reform, personal and societal responsibility automatically mean one is a Tory? How patronising.

[no comment]

No one is blaming, that I can see, Coolfonz.

And again, it seems we can never have one of these threads without it dissolving into a slanging match of 'Tories did this!' 'Labour did that!'

Yeah, well, here we are!

This is now, totally fucked up. What are we going to do about it?

How do we know you are responsible Expat? Maybe we should send the police round to check? Maybe some cameras in your home?

SGB, what do you mean by "benefit bashers".

Regarding people saving rather than using benefits.

If you were in a minimum wage job barely making ends meet and then lost your job in the recession, where would your savings come from? Benefits are a safety net for people like that.

Yes, you're so right, Cool. Fuck it, then. Let's just keep squabbling with one another whilst it all comes crumbling down.

That's really fucking productive.

Fuck the Tories and Labour right?

They both promote the same kind of economics which got us here.

In fact there is no such things as economics, only politics. So they both trod the same path.

Reward the rich, screw everyone else.

The problems we now have will take generations to sort out and no one in the UK has a flying bit of interest in doing it. In stead everyone looks to lifestyles of other people - "ooh i know a woman with six kids" - which is a pretty sickening type of piety...

I mean I hate the politics of this country, but even I didn't miss it, I use this place to get as much cash as I can then I fuck off. Don't you get it too? Don't you learn? Or are you dazzled by the plasma TV you don't really need...

I don't see how an ever-expanding welfare state, paid for by the State taking an ever-increasing share of GDP can be accurately be described as "30 years of right-wing politics"????

Thatcher et al only slowed this trend slightly and besides, public spending rose during her tenure!!

What are you on about "ever expanding welfare state"?

What do you mean? Do you even know? Do you know what kind of benefits are paid in Europe?

You don't think this country is right wing? Seriously?