NHS should prescribe the unemployed money and double dole to pregnant

[Vague_Boy]

Let's hope he comes up with a cracker tonight.... I do hope he takes the same drugs.

 

Don't worry, there'll be a new chem1st thread along before long.

 

I'd like to see him do one explaining how the sort of overly generous benefit provisions he advocates won't

 

[a] Discourage people from working. Ever.

Create a dependency culture whereby people expect the State to provide them with everything.

 

Benefits were originally meant to be a safety net, surely? Not a lifestyle choice.

[chem1st]

I agree on the monetary front entirely, although I don't know how we can afford it, (but an we afford not to do it in the long run?) However, mental health is not just about money. I do think some sort of work activity is good for people's mental health in terms of socialisation, usefulness and longterm goals.

 

Do you agree? And have you any thoughts on how this side of the equation can be tackled?

 

We should of course be making voluntary work easier and paid work easier to do. By providing grants for work associated costs and training etc.

 

This would also save money.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 00:53 ----------

 

I have to ask: what is your choice of drug that makes you come out with this? Is it prescription or recreational?

I really need to know.

 

It is not a drug, the call it 'common sense' and 'humanity'.

 

I appreciate you might want to consume a substance to improve yourself, but you cannot. You have to change your soul and become a better person Ron. You CAN do it. I have faith in you.

 

Why don't you start by sponsoring a pregnant person if you're so keen on this? Or is it only a good idea if someone else is paying?

 

I've sponsored a pregnant person on more than several occasions.

 

I'd be happy to sponsor a pregnant person. For the second person she carries is our future.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 00:56 ----------

 

Wheres the funding coming from?

 

This policy would save money in the long term. You should be asking where will we spend the savings?

 

On affordable housing of course. which would save even more!

 

Which we could then spend on more affordable housing and free education.

 

Which would save even more.

 

We could pay off the debt, which would save even more, then invest in manufacturing that would save even more.

 

 

Then we would be able to build a sovereign wealth fund for humanitarian

war. And launch a global war on poverty, by building decent housing for people who would gladly allow us to. We wouldn't force it on people.

 

This would save even more money. We'd spend a little bit of that on a party to celebrate world peace.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 01:06 ----------

 

Being unemployed is not a medical issue.

 

It is a lot more dangerous to your health than many medical issues.

 

the means testing regime and sanctions also cause serious health problems. We ought to be taking preventing measures, much like we encourage people not to smoke, when the health effects of smoking pale into insignificane when compared with a condition like unemployment under the current UK regime.

 

Although I do understand what you mean about long term health and the costs associated with it being poor.

 

Thus you see the argument I make and understand it would save money in the long term

 

I'm not sure about this. They don't have twice the costs, they won't get twice as much once the child is born, so I can't really see the justification. They already get free healthcare, and so will the child.

 

Aye, the point has been made so I can highlight what I would term current DYSGENICS policy.

 

DYSGENICS is where we intentionally damage a human foetus and cause it harm.

 

We do this by sanctioning pregnant women.

 

To understand this, all a person need do, is think of the mother of a child. Would you intentionally harm the mother or deprive her of food? No. not unless you were evil. Because you would put the child at serious risk of harm, injury and death.

 

Suppose we sanction 10% of mothers and potential mothers. We create a hell of a lot of miscarriages that needn't have been. And perhaps some disabled children also, and increase the rate of infant mortality.

 

Whilst this is not measured in economic effects to the NHS, perhaps it should be. Perhaps society should fine itself for an increased risk of miscarriage in the general populus and sub-sections of it.

 

If we forcibly create injury, disability and death in our fellow citizens children through cruel and unusual punishment such as sanctioning, we can see the cost this puts onto wider society. It is irrational.

 

The death of foetueses does not imply such a cost.

 

We ought be avoiding such violence towards our fellow species, if proven, and the current regime of sanctioning is providing the 'experiment' and results.

 

How many of our citizens are we killing and maiming in the misguided quest for savings through austerity?

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 01:14 ----------

 

Don't worry, there'll be a new chem1st thread along before long.

 

I'd like to see him do one explaining how the sort of overly generous benefit provisions he advocates won't

 

Easy peasy.

 

 

[a] Discourage people from working. Ever.

 

Lower the MDR. Do not means test the benefit and withdraw it. Everyone is better off for working, the system is less complicated and bureaucratic.

 

Create a dependency culture whereby people expect the State to provide them with everything.

 

Not a problem. We need to make people understand it is completely ok to consume the fruits of technological advance and automation, and that technology is capable of sustaining us all, without us having to do much in the way of work.

 

 

Benefits were originally meant to be a safety net, surely? Not a lifestyle choice.

 

They were not intended to be a system of control, and used to punish the poor, that is for sure.

 

They are not a choice, and they remove people's choices. They are a trap and they are debilitating.

 

Pay everyone, regardless, we will have a safety net. We don't need give them conditionally and with mutliple strings attached to use benefits as a tool to force people to behave how the state thinks they should, it destroys the human condition.

 

We need a real safety net now more than ever, not a conditional and broken system that is referred to as a safety net when it is nothing of the sort.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 01:19 ----------

 

Haven't looked at your link, but from what I remember reading before, the bulk of welfare goes to people who DO work, in payments such as tax credits, rather than to the long term unemployed.

 

We have to work out whether or not, a human life is of value in the UK.

 

Then we can determine if the birth of a UK citizen is good for the country.

 

If so, then every miscarriage that could have been prevented is in effect a financial crime that deprives our economy of resources.

 

Whilst we shouldn't even be having this conversation, the economic value of humans is now seemingly more important the human life itself, so we need to make the economic case for a person to live.

 

Ironically, many of the people on here critiscising are probably a drain on the taxpayer as it currently goes, and probably take more out, even when working, than an unemployed person does.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 01:23 ----------

 

Chavs already breed for money and council houses. All you would do is increase this!

 

Rather them than you. Automation ought to be freeing people from the shackles of wage slavery so they can live. Rather than us having an obedient serf/slave/working class that resembles automation and machines created by fiscal policy.

 

Human live ought be something to celebrate.

 

As it stands it seems humans are being deprived of the things that makes them human.

Edited June 26, 2015 by chem1st

[psynuk]

 

Not a problem. We need to make people understand it is completely ok to consume the fruits of technological advance and automation, and that technology is capable of sustaining us all, without us having to do much in the way of work.

 

 

They were not intended to be a system of control, and used to punish the poor, that is for sure.

 

They are not a choice, and they remove people's choices. They are a trap and they are debilitating.

 

Pay everyone, regardless, we will have a safety net. We don't need give them conditionally and with multiple strings attached to use benefits as a tool to force people to behave how the state thinks they should, it destroys the human condition.

 

But chem, you and I both know that the chances of enough people bucking the yoke, of actually realising that much of what we do and are 'told' is just forms of control, the chances of anything changing in the western world are ever diminishing.

 

It's stated on this thread in more ways than one.

 

"you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, the very minds we are trying to save. Until we do, these people are part of that system and that makes them our enemies. You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many are so hopelessly dependent on the system, they will fight to protect it. The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

 

I'm not sure that capitalism, the course it's on can be halted or turned aside now.

There's something about standing on the face of a fellow man to reach a little higher- that appeals to some that much more than the idea of lending a hand help those below.

[Cyclone]

My apologies. I misread the table on page 22 of http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/wordpress/docs/Welfare_trends_report_2014_dn2B.pdf. Obvious now you point it out.

Housing benefit bill for the <16 hours is £3b, not £40b.

I'll correct the previous posts.

 

And that makes quite a difference!

 

But the headline figures don't tell us all that much (apart from the obvious). You're claiming it's too much to give to each individual and that it shouldn't be increased, without including the numbers of people that are claiming in each category.

 

You've ignored what I said about money saved though, which is the key to this discussion. If giving someone an extra £1 today saves us £2 next week, then it's not too much and is good value for money.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:28 ----------

 

Yes, but people working full time are clearly making an effort. They don't cultivate reasonable resentment from others.

 

Don't you think it reasonable that people should be expected to do their utmost to provide for their own children? Only if they have honestly tried their hardest and still failing to provide adequately for their children do they deserve our full respect. Would you not agree?

 

£20b/year is a hell of a lot of money. If we could recover it, there'd be little need for public spending restraint elsewhere.

We'd also raise more tax revenue without increasing rates if these people were properly employed.

 

You realise that most people who become unemployed stay that way for <6 months?

The numbers of long term unemployed are really very small.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:30 ----------

 

Right and what was different between those times and now. Three things life expectancy, child labour is illegal and we have rules surrounding abuse. Also contraception is available. To quote Jeremy Kyle the parents could put something on the end of it but yet they chose not to. So you cannot compare now with that far back.

 

We just want people to take some responsibility for their offspring or producing offspring and not expect us to pay for them. Unless they are temporarily out of work which is understandable and we should support them till their parents go back in employment.

 

There's a reason that lifespan has changed, and that's partly because of the social safety net (and obviously a lot to do with medical advances).

 

You appear to believe that there are a large number of people having children and having no intention to work, it isn't true, there are a small number of such people.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:32 ----------

 

If we weren't spending so much on those who unwisely had children they can't support, we could be more generous to those who did not make that mistake.

Like I said before, we've created a perverse incentive to have children one can't support.

 

Your own numbers have now shown that the spend of CTC and related stuff going to the long term unemployed is extremely small compared to the overall spend.

There is no perverse incentive. Having children is not the way to an easy unemployed life.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:32 ----------

 

i agree the children are the blameless ones and deserve the compassion, to combat the fraud we should issue vouchers for the esentials that can only be used in specified and monitered shops. then at certain times the children get special vouchers for special occasions christmas, birthdays etc. no actual cash should ever be handed out in welfare it should all be done on vouchers and ration books.

watch the rates of claimants drop.

 

Good way to create a black market in vouchers... Or to get many items put on ebay after they've been bought.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:33 ----------

 

I've actually thought about this. Other countries have tried it.

I think that it's very difficult to prevent a black market in these vouchers emerging.

 

I have a counter-suggestion.

How about requiring those on child based benefits to present receipts showing that at least a good fraction of those benefits have been spent on the child.

 

On the child includes food, transport, heating, lighting, rent... Given that these are the main expenses of the unemployed that can't be avoided, there's really nothing to check.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:35 ----------

 

Don't worry, there'll be a new chem1st thread along before long.

 

I'd like to see him do one explaining how the sort of overly generous benefit provisions he advocates won't

 

[a] Discourage people from working. Ever.

Create a dependency culture whereby people expect the State to provide them with everything.

 

Benefits were originally meant to be a safety net, surely? Not a lifestyle choice.

 

There are more generous benefits systems than ours. Some massively more so.

They apparently don't incentivise unemployment. Evidence provided.

Is it Germany where you can get full pay for 6 months and 1/2 pay for another 6 after losing your job?

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:36 ----------

 

Chem1st, I see the argument. I don't see any proof that it would save money. I'd want to see a real analysis and business case to support it.

[unbeliever]

And that makes quite a difference!

 

But the headline figures don't tell us all that much (apart from the obvious). You're claiming it's too much to give to each individual and that it shouldn't be increased, without including the numbers of people that are claiming in each category.

 

You've ignored what I said about money saved though, which is the key to this discussion. If giving someone an extra £1 today saves us £2 next week, then it's not too much and is good value for money.

 

I've posted the link to the document. I'm not the head researcher for this forum.

 

You make a good argument for education spending. And to a lesser extent, healthcare spending.

 

The problem with applying it to hand-outs is that you're creating a culture of dependency.

Money to provide for oneself and ones family has to be earned. If you don't earn it, somebody else has to.

You're breaking the link between effort and reward.

Even in people with of conscience, the link between effort and reward can only be eroded up to a point before pragmatic considerations drive one to make choices that are damaging to society. Such bad choices include avoiding work when possible as the small extra income (if it exists under the benefit system) is not worth the extra effort; and having more children you can't afford in order claim more and thereby better your standard of living.

One does not have to be evil to make such bad choices. At some point, the temptation is too much for some to resist. The more temptation you place in front of people, the greater the problem becomes.

[woodmally]

And that makes quite a difference!

 

But the headline figures don't tell us all that much (apart from the obvious). You're claiming it's too much to give to each individual and that it shouldn't be increased, without including the numbers of people that are claiming in each category.

 

You've ignored what I said about money saved though, which is the key to this discussion. If giving someone an extra £1 today saves us £2 next week, then it's not too much and is good value for money.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:28 ----------

 

 

You realise that most people who become unemployed stay that way for <6 months?

The numbers of long term unemployed are really very small.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:30 ----------

 

 

There's a reason that lifespan has changed, and that's partly because of the social safety net (and obviously a lot to do with medical advances).

 

You appear to believe that there are a large number of people having children and having no intention to work, it isn't true, there are a small number of such people.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:32 ----------

 

 

Your own numbers have now shown that the spend of CTC and related stuff going to the long term unemployed is extremely small compared to the overall spend.

There is no perverse incentive. Having children is not the way to an easy unemployed life.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:32 ----------

 

 

Good way to create a black market in vouchers... Or to get many items put on ebay after they've been bought.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:33 ----------

 

 

On the child includes food, transport, heating, lighting, rent... Given that these are the main expenses of the unemployed that can't be avoided, there's really nothing to check.

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:35 ----------

 

 

There are more generous benefits systems than ours. Some massively more so.

They apparently don't incentivise unemployment. Evidence provided.

Is it Germany where you can get full pay for 6 months and 1/2 pay for another 6 after losing your job?

 

---------- Post added 26-06-2015 at 08:36 ----------

 

Chem1st, I see the argument. I don't see any proof that it would save money. I'd want to see a real analysis and business case to support it.

 

I dont believe there is a large number of people I do know the number is small however look at the problems they cause. You only have to see this small minority on the Jeremy Kyle show. None of them work. Usually take drugs and booze and have kids to different fathers therefore needing a dna test.

 

Meanwhile us taxpayers have to pay for them. Also those people are genuinely unemployed get tarred with the same brush because of these scroats.

 

In addition most have had criminal records stealing from people causing trouble that the rest of us have to put up with.

 

So its not the number thats the issue its the trouble they cause. How much money is spent on the police dealing with them? On social services dealing with their offspring etc? So its not just the benefits they get.

[unbeliever]

I dont believe there is a large number of people I do know the number is small however look at the problems they cause. You only have to see this small minority on the Jeremy Kyle show. None of them work. Usually take drugs and booze and have kids to different fathers therefore needing a dna test.

 

Meanwhile us taxpayers have to pay for them. Also those people are genuinely unemployed get tarred with the same brush because of these scroats.

 

In addition most have had criminal records stealing from people causing trouble that the rest of us have to put up with.

 

So its not the number thats the issue its the trouble they cause. How much money is spent on the police dealing with them? On social services dealing with their offspring etc? So its not just the benefits they get.

 

I know it sounds ungenerous, but I think that it is a necessity that the long term unemployed, with or without children, should experience a significantly lower standard of living than their working neighbours. I'm open to debate on how this be achieved, but I think it must be achieved one way or another.

I extend this to the severely under-employed. i.e. those healthy adults of working age doing less than 30 hours a week, with an exception for one parent per family who has a child too young to go to school.

I think IDS's universal credit is a big step in the right direction and we shall have to see how that pans out.

Disincentives to provide for ones own family are not only damaging to the tax-payer, but over the long term they create a sub-class of the workless and create resentment and in some cases anger within communities and society as a whole.

This is not the time to talk about handing out yet more free money. We need to extinguish the idea that manipulating benefits is a legitimate lifestyle choice.

[retep]

I know it sounds ungenerous, but I think that it is a necessity that the long term unemployed, with or without children, should experience a significantly lower standard of living than their working neighbours. I'm open to debate on how this be achieved, but I think it must be achieved one way or another.

I extend this to the severely under-employed. i.e. those healthy adults of working age doing less than 30 hours a week, with an exception for one parent per family who has a child too young to go to school.

I think IDS's universal credit is a big step in the right direction and we shall have to see how that pans out.

Disincentives to provide for ones own family are not only damaging to the tax-payer, but over the long term they create a sub-class of the workless and create resentment and in some cases anger within communities and society as a whole.

This is not the time to talk about handing out yet more free money. We need to extinguish the idea that manipulating benefits is a legitimate lifestyle choice.

 

Not very well according to this,

 

“Universal Credit costs have risen by £3billion despite only 65,000 people claiming Universal Credit. It will take 495 years to fully roll out Universal Credit at the current rate.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/universal-credit-cost-soars-16billion-5950976

[Obelix]

Wheres the money coming from chem1st? You've haven't answered the question, as usual.

[unbeliever]

Not very well according to this,

 

“Universal Credit costs have risen by £3billion despite only 65,000 people claiming Universal Credit. It will take 495 years to fully roll out Universal Credit at the current rate.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/universal-credit-cost-soars-16billion-5950976

 

Universal credit is an enormous undertaking and it's far too early to judge the results.