£42,000 a year benefits

Originally Posted by Jabba

The problem is that those in power have, over the years, allowed the system to change to the point where people, like the bloke in the Daily Wail's article, decide to give up work to live off the state. That is just wrong. Why should he have anything at all?

Grrr!!

If only I was allowed to repsond to that! (you'll have to wait until 7 May)

Originally Posted by CoolGirl

If only I was allowed to repsond to that! (you'll have to wait until 7 May)

You can respond, but not publically

Go on, I'd like to know. Cream cake in it for you

I've said this before on here but...
When my dad died aged 52 my mom was left with 4 kids, three at home, i was the youngest at 7.
She hardly got any help from benefits and we didnt have a pot to urinate in, yet she still had 3 jobs at one point which went down to 2 after a while.
My mom worked damn hard in crappy jobs for crap pay but she still worked.
I dont begrudge anyone with help when needed but to have their lifestyle if its true in that article then that stinks.
If you wanna have 20 kids thats your perogative, but ONLY if you can support them dont leave it up to us, should be a legal limit or sterilise them.

The story is complete nonsense and anyone who thinks anything the Daily Mail publish is in any way truthful and accurate is an idiot.

The reason why they're apparently well off is that they're funding their lifestyles via debt and topping it up with welfare payments. They've been shopping their story round the papers for a while now to try and get more money to pay off their credit card and loan debts.

More to the point, stories like this shouldn't prompt you to say that the welfare state should be cut back in any way. The minimum wage should be increased to the point where it becomes preferable to be in work as opposed to out of it or, ideally, we'd have a national living wage rather than a minimum wage.

edit: forgot to mention that he's probably lying about his reasons for quitting work. Currently the bailiffs/creditors cannot claim any debts owed via your welfare payments if you are unemployed so it's more likely that he quit work to avoid having to repay his debts. The minute he gets back into employment they'll come after him for the money and he'll be screwed.

There's also the fact that most councils have sold off their larger properties to the private sector thanks to that mad bitch in the 80s so if he were to work then they'd lose their housing payments and have to pay commercial rates, which are impossible to meet for a family with that many children.

Originally Posted by ranathari

The story is complete nonsense and anyone who thinks anything the Daily Mail publish is in any way truthful and accurate is an idiot.

The reason why they're apparently well off is that they're funding their lifestyles via debt and topping it up with welfare payments. They've been shopping their story round the papers for a while now to try and get more money to pay off their credit card and loan debts.

More to the point, stories like this shouldn't prompt you to say that the welfare state should be cut back in any way. The minimum wage should be increased to the point where it becomes preferable to be in work as opposed to out of it or, ideally, we'd have a national living wage rather than a minimum wage.

Just out of interest, who pays for the minimum wage?
What about companies that can barely stay afloat due to being heavily taxed by the government, foreign competition undercutting them etc etc.
This issue goes further than the dss payments.
Import duty will cure all, we've lost all our manufacturing, lots of companies now manufacture abroad then import back in, high import duty would discourage this.

[anna]

Originally Posted by Sosha

Not sure how you'd go about it. Stop artificially inflating prices with "Part buy Part rent" schemes and restrict holiday homes/ non resident ownership and buy to let?

I fail to see why you should do this considering a lot of people use this as an alternative to the failing pension schemes.

Any system you put in place will fail on some levels, that isnt to say that they should be abolished.

L3nny I disagree, the scheme was set up so that people might get a chance to get onto the property ladder, yes their properties are now worth a lot more then they first brought it for, but that might easily have gone the other way, and indeed in our current climate did for a lot of people who brought their houses in the 90´s!

Getting people back into work incentives are good, and there should be more for those in the nursing, education, police and fire services.

Social services might even save themselves a bit of money if they set up nurseries so that parents might be able to drop kids off at free day care centres whilst they work, for those that are trying to get back into work, and for those that earn less then x amount.

I am sure these arent new ideas and that they have been tried to some varying degrees.

You are never going to rid yourselves of people who will find loop holes in the system, either in the benefit system at the bottom of the chain, or the tax system at the top of the chain. The only thing you can do is to make sure that a system is set up so it is transparent and works to help the majority of those who genuinely require it.

I think that for all the complaints the UK systems are the best in the world, and whilst we havent got it completely right, we are far from being the worst.

1) Impose breeding resistrictions for fat, stupid, or socially irresponsible people.
2) Failure to comply with breeding restrictions incurs forced sterilisation after 2 children.
3) Welfare provided in the shape of trailer parks and food rations provided to meet minimum nutritional and calorific requirements.
4) Problem solved.

Originally Posted by specialone

Just out of interest, who pays for the minimum wage?
What about companies that can barely stay afloat due to being heavily taxed by the government, foreign competition undercutting them etc etc.
This issue goes further than the dss payments.
Import duty will cure all, we've lost all our manufacturing, lots of companies now manufacture abroad then import back in, high import duty would discourage this.

Would you like to point out some of these companies who are struggling to stay afloat thanks to our (surprisingly low) taxation levels? Most of the opposition to increased taxes on businesses like the proposed national insurance raise is coming from larger companies where the executives stand to have their enormous salaries reduced. Screw the bosses, support the workers instead.

If you're seriously advocating increasing import duty and don't understand why that's a stupid idea then you're just buying into nationalist idiocy.

Originally Posted by ranathari

The minimum wage should be increased to the point where it becomes preferable to be in work as opposed to out of it or, ideally, we'd have a national living wage rather than a minimum wage.

I can't agree with this; in the present economic climate, this will price people out of jobs. Employers don't currently have the margins to support this.

An overhaul of the benefit/social security system is the way forward. Simplify it at the same time. Ditto with incapacity benefit.

Originally Posted by ranathari

Would you like to point out some of these companies who are struggling to stay afloat thanks to our (surprisingly low) taxation levels? Most of the opposition to increased taxes on businesses like the proposed national insurance raise is coming from larger companies where the executives stand to have their enormous salaries reduced. Screw the bosses, support the workers instead.

If you're seriously advocating increasing import duty and don't understand why that's a stupid idea then you're just buying into nationalist idiocy.

Im not talking about large companies, im talking about small ones, with 20 or so employees, i have a friend with an engineering company, whose order book has almost gone due to customers all buggering off to foreign countries.
He pays more than minimum wage but is struggling and with the national insurance being talked about going up it could mean the difference between staying afloat.
Are you an employee by any chance???
Do you think its a good idea that all our trade has buggered off to be made cheaper in other countries?? where do you think it will end???
Dont you think its a coincendence that all the manufacturing has gone that the number of jobs thats available has fallen.