UK: One third of homes dependent on benefits

[tagos]

@rocksolid

I have no real political affinity, indeed i actually have never ever voted. But i just don’t see why people reckon Labour have ‘raped and destroyed’ our country. I’m 31, i remember the whole of the last Tory reign. I remember being a teenager and feeling like i had no hope of finding a job when i left school. Feeling like there was only hope for the few lucky ones who could make it in the city and the rest of us would rot in the slums. I don’t feel like that now. I don’t worry about finding work anymore. Again, i repeat i’m not saying everything is perfect but i just can’t understand how people can suggest it’s so much worse under Labour than it was under the previous Government. What am i missing?

You’re missing the ‘I’ve got Mine’ gene and don’t suffer from the delusion of the ‘self made’ types that put down all their success to their own moral fibre and discount luck, circumstance, advantages inherent in their situation like parents, educational circumstance etc.

And you’re right - how quickly we’ve forgotten the sheer awfulness of the previous Tory regime. The unemployment, the abandoned communities, the ruthless and destructive torching of swathes of British industry and the squandering of North SEa oil on unemployment benfits instead of investing in jobs.

The UK today is a much better place for most people and I certainly don’t mind paying a reasonable tax rate for the benefit of my less fortunate fellow citizens, even if a minority are scrounging cheats.

[Lust4Life]

Britain is heavily overpopulated,along with Japan and Holland it is one of the most densely populated nations on earth.
The strain on our infrastructure has been making itself obvious for years ,water shortages,congested roads,failing rail system,overstretched National Health Service and educational resources ,absurdly inflated housing prices and pollution all getting worse as the years pass.

The effects on our society and quality of life of overcrowding are likewise all too obvious,increased levels of stress,mental illness and crime rising almost daily.
Large numbers of children leaving school unable to read and write or make simple calculations beyond the most basic of levels let alone anything else.

Advances in technology have made labour intensive industries a thing of the past and many jobs are being outsourced to third world countries ,so why are we offering financial incentives to people to have children that if they were to take responsibility for their own families they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford ?

You often hear the old chestnut that these kids are going to grow up,get jobs ,pay national insurance and as such pay for our generations old age pension ,N.H.S. etc.
Well unfortunately for many of them ,no they wont,many of them due to progress will not be needed on the labour force and will have no real chance of getting fulltime jobs other then government financed "make work employment " created for cosmetic purposes and much more expensive then simply paying out benefits.

Not only will many of the children being born today play no part in funding our old age but they will actually be in competition with the old for the increasingly scarce financial resources for welfare payments and a lot of them will have made no realistic contribution to welfare funds during their adult lives.

[Imasquare]

@Quartz

And what does it say about Britain today? I’m all for a safety net. But as a single middle-aged (eep!) wage-earner and taxpayer, I get precious little from the state, and this does seem to be taking the piss.

But at least if you ever are in a situation where you need welfare assistance it is available to you. You have a safety net.

[Nava]

@Lust4Life

The strain on our infrastructure has been making itself obvious for years ,water shortages,congested roads,failing rail system,overstretched National Health Service and educational resources ,absurdly inflated housing prices and pollution all getting worse as the years pass.

(bolding mine) And the solution to that? Why, importing more people! I realize that getting a greater % of locals trained for health professions takes time; it’s not seen as a glamorous sector any more (Euro docs don’t “make rich” and they’re not perceived as the mouth of God as they used to); many intelligent people would rather move to the South Pole than go into health care.

But all over Europe, we need to stop pulling down our school system standards and start looking at them strategically as “training our future”… instead, politicians turn schools into electoral weapons; if I can get elected by passing a law that says “all students must be passed and if they don’t do well it’s the teacher’s fault”, why would I not pass it?

[tagos]

@Lust4Life

Advances in technology have made labour intensive industries a thing of the past and many jobs are being outsourced to third world countries ,so why are we offering financial incentives to people to have children that if they were to take responsibility for their own families they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford ?

Because we don’t want to be a nation of old people working until we drop because the tax base has been eroded by short term thinking like this.

[FRDE]

@tagos

Because we don’t want to be a nation of old people working until we drop because the tax base has been eroded by short term thinking like this.

To be fair, I think that Lust4Life was saying that due to technology and offshoreing we don’t or rather won’t need those kids.

[rocksolid]

I don’t entirely disagree with a lot of what **Lust4Life ** has said, there is a certain truth there. However it does seem to be that he/she is suggesting that the current situation can be controlled by benefits policy which i doubt it can.

We often talk of girls having babies just to claim benefits but i still find this very hard to believe. I don’t doubt there are some people stupid/selfish enough to follow this idea but i just can’t believe it’s anything other than a very small minority.

People are gonna have babies. I don’t think we can control that by changing benefits policies to any real extent, unless we are going to leave these people completely high and dry and out on the streets. It may be a catch 22 but i for one would not support cutting benefits and depriving innocent children of a decent standard of living in order to try to curtail procreation. I just couldn’t do that.

It may be true that a whole bunch of these kids will end up being resource hogs and contributing nothing, but if population control is needed then that’s another debate as far as i’m concerned. Cutting benefits to poor parents, thereby decreasing the quality of life of their children is likely to be counter-productive and in my opinion is not what a moral and affluent society should be considering.

[rocksolid]

@FRDE

To be fair, I think that Lust4Life was saying that due to technology and offshoreing we don’t or rather won’t need those kids.

I think what **tagos ** was trying to say was that this is a short-term view based on the way we see things today. We may see things differently tomorrow you just don’t know.

But if we follow that short-term view and somehow stop people having children then we will all end up working to the grave as there will be no young workforce to take over out jobs. We won’t have any choice then, we’ll be stuck with the problem.

Anyway, as i said in my previous post, i think population control is a whole other debate. Or maybe not?

[tagos]

@rocksolid

I think what **tagos ** was trying to say was that this is a short-term view based on the way we see things today. We may see things differently tomorrow you just don’t know.

But if we follow that short-term view and somehow stop people having children then we will all end up working to the grave as there will be no young workforce to take over out jobs. We won’t have any choice then, we’ll be stuck with the problem.

Anyway, as i said in my previous post, i think population control is a whole other debate. Or maybe not?

I was making the pretty obvious and uncontested point that until the such time as we can levy a tax on foreigners living abroad a shrinking population in terms of a working tax base combined with an ageing retired population = crisis in tax revenue and contributions to pay for our retirement. As well as people to do the work other than tele-sales.

That’s the ‘crisis’ Europe is facing. That is why we need immigration and why retirement ages and pension rights are being fiddled with.

[matt_mcl]

@Quartz

And what does it say about Britain today? I’m all for a safety net. But as a single middle-aged (eep!) wage-earner and taxpayer, I get precious little from the state…

Now I’m not British and I don’t know all that much about the British state, but I have visited before, and it seemed to me as though there were roads to drive on and to bring goods to market, public transit to make the air capable of being breathed, hospitals to heal the sick, police and fire services, and so forth. That’s just the most concrete examples, leaving out how things that don’t go directly to you nevertheless improve your quality of life by keeping other people out of misery and thereby making the society just that much more coherent and safe.

I don’t mean to jump your shit, but I feel that a lot of people substantially underestimate the magnitude of what state-paid infrastructure actually does and to what extent it makes them capable of living in a society.

[Quartz]

@matt_mcl

Now I’m not British and I don’t know all that much about the British state, but I have visited before, and it seemed to me as though there were roads to drive on

Have you seen how much fuel duty we pay? Petrol is currently 85p (US$1.65) a litre. That’s US$7.45, CA$8.70 per gallon. Plus £150 a year car tax (sorry, Vehicle Excise Duty); lorries pay vastly more - up to £1,850 a year.

and to bring goods to market,

On which we pay 17.5% VAT. It’s generally less than half that in the U.S., isn’t it?

public transit to make the air capable of being breathed,

Public transport is only effective within major metropolitan areas, like London and Manchester, and I don’t live in one. My father used to be a councillor on the transport committee in a district council and he has told me that the subsidies given to the busses were significant. Further, I very much doubt that public transport has much effect on the quality of the air. The biggest cleanup was when the Clean Air Act was introduced in 1956 banning coal fires in London. Nothing to do with public transport.

hospitals to heal the sick,

With waiting lists so long that anyone who can afford it has private health insurance. If it’s a real emergency then they’re very good.

police

Mired in paperwork, disinterested IME in real crime, and taxed seperately on a local, not national, basis.

and fire services

Taxed seperately and on a local, not national, basis.

and so forth. That’s just the most concrete examples,

I think I’ve shown that they’re not. You could have chosen better: like defence, disaster relief, or regulation of trade. At least you didn’t mention education: the state education system is very spotty, and those who can afford it and are unfortunate enough to not live in the catchment area of the better state schools have their children educated privately. Or the complete cock-up that is immigration, or the disaster called the Child Support Agency.

I’m well aware of what the State actually does for me. I believe I’ve mentioned before that I used to work for a County Council. I’m also aware how how much the State attempts to do for other people, and how much certain parts of the country subsidise others (mainly Labour constituencies, funny that). I’m also aware of the vast amounts of good that they do.

I don’t mean to jump your shit, but I feel that a lot of people substantially underestimate the magnitude of what state-paid infrastructure actually does and to what extent it makes them capable of living in a society.

Perhaps you ought to consider the magnitude of our taxes. About one third of my gross salary goes to national government in taxes. That’s before I start to spend any money or do anything. Or make money from other ventures. The threshold where taxation starts is very low too. Plus another £1000 a year to the local government (which includes fire and police). If I want to travel anywhere, I have to pay about 4x what Americans pay for petrol - this must have a hugely stifling effect on trade. When I was in business for myself I was doing 18,000 work miles a year, plus weekly train trips. Sure I could - and did - expense the travel where possible, but my company had to earn the money to pay for it. When I reverted to being an employee, I was still doing about 12,000 work miles a year, and was unable to expense it. Call it 6 miles per litre due to poor traffic conditions and simplicity. That’s 2,000 litres or £1700 per year. Just to commute to work. And that’s £1700 after tax has been paid on my salary. And it was vastly faster and more convenient than public transport. Now I live very near where I work and my transport costs are very little. This has had a very significant effect on my bank balance.

I’m sorry: if I continue, it will become a rant.

[yojimbo]

@Quartz

Perhaps you ought to consider the magnitude of our taxes. About one third of my gross salary goes to national government in taxes.

The UK 33.5% includes employer contributions

the combined effects of personal income tax, employee and employer social security contributions, payroll taxes and cash benefits.

MSN

In this thread the Brits that did the calculation on their sallery came in at lower than 1/3.

In fact the Americans weren’t that much behind when all taxes(State and Federal) were taken into account and they do not have the kind of safety net you have and have to deal with most of the infrastructural issues that you have as well.

[Quartz]

@yojimbo

The UK 33.5% includes employer contributions MSN

I’m talking about my pay packet, thank you very much.

But we have a huge benefit trap. Minimum wage is a bit over £5 an hour. Call it £10K per year. But you get taxed on half that. And the fuel duty makes it really expensive to get to work. So you’re better off on benefits. To the detriment of those who are working.

[Quartz]

I should note that I have taken steps to reduce the Government’s take, mainly pension contributions, hence the specification of gross pay packet.

[Smitty_B]

In most countries half the populace works outside the home and the rest are women. Is that saying they don’t deserve to eat?

[jjimm]

@Quartz

I’m talking about my pay packet, thank you very much.

What, you don’t live in the UK?

[FRDE]

@Quartz

I should note that I have taken steps to reduce the Government’s take, mainly pension contributions, hence the specification of gross pay packet.

Watch out Sunshine, what looked like a good pension 10 years ago looks like a dodgy proposition today.

[Quartz]

@jjimm

What, you don’t live in the UK?

Mwahahahahahaha!