Should the UK stop giving out handouts to the unemployed?

[banesmabes 10]

But life on benefits is much harder! A lot of people only have anecdotal evidence to offer, but the only real evidence is hard facts and personal experience, not hearsay of blustering relatives and neighbours, who are simply trying to act tough.

 

 

Not an minimum wage it isn't. You might not get as many paid benefits as you'd get working full-time on minimum wage, but the non-paid benefits such as not paying full rent (or any rent) and not paying Council Tax mean that being on benefits often means you are better off than on minimum wage. I see this every day in my job - people turning down positions because they've done the maths and worked out that it's just not worth it. And you say it is up to employers to pay a decent wage - where exactly do you propose this money comes from? If we increase wages for low-skilled jobs we will also have to increase them for higher paid skilled jobs. This isn't going to happen. Benefits should be there to help you get by when you can't find work. When people start being better off on benefits than working then the system just isn't working.

[banesmabes 10]

You have also rightly pointed out that there are jobs that need doing, cleaning graffiti, picking up litter - in that case these jobs should be advertised and paid for at the going rate. In the event that unemployed people are given the responsibility of doing these jobs, then they should be compensated accordingly, and not just by their normal benefits, but a top up according to the hours they have worked..

 

Look at the Star on a Thursday night, go to the job centre, use the endless community groups that are available to help find people work. The jobs ARE advertised, they ARE paid at the going rate. The problem is that benefits are so generous that they work out more than the going rate for these jobs. So there's no need to 'top up' wages if they are doing this work to keep their benefits. If benefits were stricter, lower than a minimum wage job, then being made to work full time for benefit means that people will see that they may as well be working directly for the employer.

 

And what of single mothers, are they to earn their way as well? I can just see that. A mum breast-feeding a baby while scrubbing graffiti from a wall. .

 

Just as other mothers work! Usually part-time whilst paying for childcare or getting relatives/friends to help.

[Plain Talker 11]

My following comments may be looked upon as controversial, I want to point out, they are aimed at the feckless, not at those who have "fallen on hard times."

 

after all, the inception of the welfare state was based on the premise

 

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

 

I do get angry when i see "career claimants" whinging about how little they have to "live on"

 

There are those I have encountered, in my time, who can easily afford £150 nike (or insert brand name of choice here) trainers, they can afford to buy dope, to smoke and can afford to go out boozing.

 

Yet they complain that they can't afford to buy a loaf of bread, or a bottle of milk to feed their children.

 

I do think that "indiscriminate breeding" on the part of claimants should be discouraged, in the way they do it in america. You know, the "trisha" guest-types. The "I'm only just twenty, and have four kids, all by different fathers" type. In a lot of states in the USA, if you go onto "welfare", and have kids, you get an allowance for the kids that you have/ are pregnant with, but, if you produce more children, then you don't get any extra.

 

I remember one bloke, from the folk I used to knock around with in my teens, and he was adamant that he was not going to take a job! Not no way, not no how! And he was the sort that would not have taken a job, even if benefits were reduced to zero.

 

I completely agree, that the genuinely "Fallen on hard times" should be supported, but that the feckless should be given some kind of incentive to lose the feckless attitude. (My god! I sound like the beadle from a Dickensian workhouse! lol)

 

I do know of a number of young women who claim as "single parents" and yet they actually live with their "Babyfather", (who works!) and are turning out hordes of children with monotonous regularity, and yet the DSS have not cottoned on "all these children to the same father, but he doesn't live with them...? odd!" just how single is this woman?

 

it's ridiculous.

 

PT

[Rich 12]

*Sigh*

 

People who are unemployed aren't all hopeless layabouts who don't want to work, a lot, myself included, are perhaps unemployed for a reason... Now I don't want to get into a long rant about how I can't get a job because I'm disabled and the so called "Equal Opportunities" laws in the UK simply mean sweet chuff all IMO, so I'll just say this, please DON'T tar all unemployed with the same brush, as not all of us are what you think.

 

Now I'm sure some smart arse will come on and tell me to "Get a job", Bartfarst anyone? And before he starts, I have already previously explained at great length the reasons I can't get a job, if he can't or won't accept this then that's his problem, but I do not take kindly to being flamed on an Internet message board for things I can neither help nor do anything about.

[Tipex 10]

*Sigh*

 

People who are unemployed aren't all hopeless layabouts who don't want to work, a lot, myself included, are perhaps unemployed for a reason... Now I don't want to get into a long rant about how I can't get a job because I'm disabled and the so called "Equal Opportunities" laws in the UK simply mean sweet chuff all IMO, so I'll just say this, please DON'T tar all unemployed with the same brush, as not all of us are what you think.

 

Now I'm sure some smart arse will come on and tell me to "Get a job", Bartfarst anyone? And before he starts, I have already previously explained at great length the reasons I can't get a job, if he can't or won't accept this then that's his problem, but I do not take kindly to being flamed on an Internet message board for things I can neither help nor do anything about.

 

I agree i've been there. I'm sure somewhere in barfasts family, one is claiming.

[Cyclone 10]

Rich, you weren't being flamed. You don't have to get a job, but get over your complex about everything being about you.

 

I guess i'm on the liberal side of this argument, but at no point have I said I wanted to support the people who make a career of claiming benefits.

Benefits are there for the people who actually need them, preferably for a short time. The 'feckless layabouts' should be identified and have their benefits cut, if they aren't just jailed for fraud.

The total sum of benefits including all the reduced rent et al, should come to less than a full weeks minimum wage. That way there is always an incentive to work.

[TwoFour 10]

I'd vote for that - or forced labour schemes at any rate.

 

 

I am not surprised that you support the idea of concentration camps.

[TwoFour 10]

should people just be able to claim unemployment benefits, have their housing costs paid, get free school meals and prescriptions without having to put in any effort to earn those things?

 

yes. how can you put effort in if you can't find work?

[Mathom 10]

Not an minimum wage it isn't. You might not get as many paid benefits as you'd get working full-time on minimum wage, but the non-paid benefits such as not paying full rent (or any rent) and not paying Council Tax mean that being on benefits often means you are better off than on minimum wage. I see this every day in my job - people turning down positions because they've done the maths and worked out that it's just not worth it. And you say it is up to employers to pay a decent wage - where exactly do you propose this money comes from? If we increase wages for low-skilled jobs we will also have to increase them for higher paid skilled jobs. This isn't going to happen. Benefits should be there to help you get by when you can't find work. When people start being better off on benefits than working then the system just isn't working.

 

Yes it is. Council tax benefit works out at about £15 a week for a full household, housing would probably be around £300 a month for a whole house, and JSA is around £55 a week. Whereas the minimum wage should pay at the very least £200 per week. I'd say at the very least, a person moving into work should be £50 a week better off.

 

The question of people with kids is a different matter, and they may indeed be much worse off if they worked as childcare is ludicrously expensive. But its not moral to force people with children to care for to take a job that will leave said children starving, putting aside the turkey twizzlers they'd get for lunch at the nursery. Of course, women could start bringing their kids to work with them.

 

And employers should increase wages if they want staff, that's simple Keynsian economics. A decrease in the unemployment rate would mean a decrease in the need to pay more tax, more cash flowing back into the economy in terms of spending power, ergo, more money to pay staff.

 

Why would wages for higher skilled jobs necessarily have to increase? What's going to happen? The Sales manager sees that the cleaner has had a pay rise so he decides to throw his dummy out the Merc window until he gets a payrise too?

 

And that's another simple rule of business. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. If you're lucky.

 

Of course it is madness that some people get more on benefits than they would from working, but none of these claimants are single or childless people - the system is designed to make that an impossibility for them. This group of claimants is exclusively made up of families with kids, and that is the issue at point, not that they are 'scrounging', but making sensible decisions over whether to potentially allow their kids to starve or carry on claiming.

[yozmund 10]

although people who don't work, and have no intention of working for a living, get on my goat.... i think stopping hand outs wouldn't work in sociaties favour - things would get worse

 

- theft would increase

- poverty would increase

- children would suffer more than they do now

 

it's a never ending cycle, and stopping benifits would make things a lot worse!

[UKer 10]

I believe there should be support for a set time, maybe 6 months, then none. I know several people who are more than capable of working but choose to laze around all day watching TV and drinking/doing drugs. While people like me have to graft all day and help pay their "income" through tax. Makes my blood boil to be honest. As for people who are actually unable to work, fair enough, but controls need to be stricter. Someone I know has been faking a mental illness for several years, and gets more on the sick than I get from a week working. Another who lives near me gets the same amount (i.e. much more than I earn) and is well enough to go to the pub all day, everyday, getting totally wrecked. He claims to have hearing difficulties (the reason for being on the sick), yet can talk all day and night in loud, crouded bars.

[Draggletail 60]

Originally posted by stars_gazing You wanna support people who, as Tango wonderfully put it, study for "degrees in Trisha and Jeremy Kyle shows", then be my guest. I just wish I didn't have to

No! Of course not! But I do believe that there are genuine cases of unemployment/hardship, and in these cases people should be supported by the state until they gain employment/get back on there feet.

No country has full employment, so there are bound to be genuine cases of unemployment

 

Originally posted by stars_gazing If I do, (benefit from the welfare state) why shouldn't I? I contribute to it. They don't, so why should they

Hardly in the spirit of the welfare state as set out by Aneurin Bevin, the founder, is it stars_gazing? Quite the opposite, in fact....