There are too many people on benefits

We need to cut spending. This is the only way for our economy to grow and finally compete with countries like America and China.

I'm surprised that you would choose to use gross income per capita when comparing Britain with a huge country like China as its surely bound to be a largely pointless comparison isn't it?

I mean aren't there still 100s of millions of dirt poor Chinese?

However so far as the USA is concerned that's a rather surprising stat I must say.

But once again I'm not sure what exactly it tells you?

Anyway these questions are rhetoritical since its up to you what stats you use of course.


Cheers

and keep the local economy going as opposed to your middle-class parents who horde a lot of their money.

Or much more likely they put all their money into their house which they then leave to their daughter.

It's ok in our society for people to pay virtually no tax on property inherited even when much of its value accrued because of an artificial shortage but apparently it's absolutely awful for someone to collect say £100,000 in benefits during their life.

It also never ceases to make me laugh to read that apparently every single person who has a job works hard.

Because I used to work ( not that I'm on benefits now,no sir) and when I did I constantly observed people doing as little as they could.*


* Mind you that might be because I worked for TFL

We don't have enough jobs in the economy to accommodate everyone in need of a job, especially after the recession. Believe me, people are encouraged to find jobs. They are encouraged by having sanctions placed on their benefits after not meeting the most specific of criteria. We pay more for MPs to have a second home than we pay to a person on benefits. My mum was driven to tears multiple times when she was signing on for Jobseekers Allowance at the Job Centre. I'm now on benefits while I recover from an illness that has taken almost all of my life away from me. Neither my mum or I smoke or drink. The most out there thing I spend my benefit money on is books in order to keep up with my academic abilities while I'm unable to work or attend university.

Most people on benefits who do smoke or drink have been driven to abusing substances because of the state of their lives. We need to do more to make sure work is available for people in this country - bring manufacturing back, so people with all skill sets have an opportunity to work (my mum was a very good sewing machinist when she was younger, working in factories to make sure people had clothes to stand up in - it was an important industry that gave her a sense of purpose and it has been taken away from this country now, because it's cheaper to do elsewhere). When businesses and governments and society start to value trades again instead of always valuing what is cheapest then I think the jobs available here will rise and as a result people's mental and physical health will be better.

I'm of the opinion that once you have been taxed from your income you shouldn't be taxed again in any form.


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"Compete" why is this necessary?

Except in a restaurant you have a free choice of what to buy. With public services you use them because you need them.

It's time to grow up and pay up. Otherwise you and the rest of us will pay some other way, our society would become like Somalia or feudal.

And of course you will never be rich: it's just a fantasy they dangle before you to appeal to your narcissism.

In lesser developed countries the kids are so joyful for a chance to learn they dont focus on any of this as they recognise their privileged position relative to their peers and whilst this will still go on its to a far lesser extent. When you slam people from different backgrounds with so many different personal factors without any attempt to promote proper cohesion what other outcome is possible?

edit - before the inevitable you rich muppet how dare you slander poor people nonsense let me point out that i am poor, my parents skipped meals to buy me stuff as a kid so in the long run i'd get into uni. Not all people can do that, so i'm more lucky than anything else. The facts simply are intelligence equates to socio economic class in no small part because clever people change their class quite rapidly. Also genetically clever people are more likely to have clever kids.

EDIT - A post brought to my attention i may have worded it incorrectly. To clarify, smart people can begin as any class but class mobility generally propels them to the top increasing the concentration of intelligent people in higher classes. I certainly dont think intelligent people are de facto of a higher class, i simply mean due to capitalism and society there is a more dense concentration of intelligence at the top which is often passed in - in no small part via the indirect assistance of money

Obviously I was saddened like no doubt many others were to read of your mothers plight.(And yours of course).

I was particularly saddened because of course your mothers plight is the plight of literally hundreds of millions of women all over the world (men too of course but they don't sadden me as much for some reason)- except that they don't receive any benefits when they cannot find work -and your post reminded me of that.


One of the biggest problems this country appears to have-according to some anyway- is that the more jobs we create ,as you have stated we should, the more immigrants we attract.


And that's because our benefits system as you no doubt are aware acts as a disincentive.

Thus creating lots more jobs certainly helps 100s of 1000s of poor immigrants every year but doesn't necessarily help people like your mother.edit I mean such as your mother.

I personally dont have a problem with that but many people do and while we have the benefits system we currently have the problem cannot be easily solved.


Unfortunately genuine people like you and your mother almost inevitably get caught up in this messy situation.


Good luck to you both.

Nope, I don't expect anyone to split the bill. If one friend orders champagne, they can pay for the champagne, if one orders tap water, they can pay nothing.

I don't expect anyone to split the bill. I don't expect anyone to pay for me, and I don't expect me to pay for anyone else.

And benefit money goes back into the economy via revenue for various businesses.

I agree you have free choice of what to buy in a restaurant. (In a restaurant, if I know someone else is footing the bill, of course I'll order the most expensive thing on the menu.) Just like how people in this country have the "free choice" to work, and the free choice to raise 7 children at home, considering no in come is from their work. I wonder how many people on benefits are smokers, how many have more than 2 kids, how many actually go on the free courses the government provides to learn a skill.The point I'm trying to make is that this country gives us so many choices, to a point that it is taken advantage of.

With regards to me being rich.... the % of my earnings which goes on tax is such that I would never receive as much as I would like to. Perhaps if tax was actually reasonable and we saw it going to help those who are genuinely in need, then we wouldn't have so many moving to Switzerland or opening off-shore bank accounts, and we would actually have more money to play with, as people would actually want to contribute.

But the taxpayer has already paid for you despite your desire to be wholly independent. Who paid for the schools, roads, infrastructure, will educate and train the people whose labours will make your success possible?

It's myopic and self-centrist of anyone to think that their success or wealth is entirely at their own doing. Every wealthy person in this country has succeeded because somewhere along the line they've been propped up by everyone who pays into the system.
That's why it is immoral for a govt to allow tax dodging on the scale it does while punishing poor people for being on benefits.
Anyway if employers paid people the true worth of their labours the working tax credit bill would be slashed. The rich receive way more social benefits than the poor.

All this argument supports is better welfare systems around the world. Is it any wonder that people are desperate to move to a place where they can see at least a bit of help is being provided rather than none? People are desperate to survive, so they move here. That doesn't mean we have to make benefits more difficult to access - it means we need to fight for humans around the world to have access to help when they need it. It's not us and them, it's just us. I think if you've been in the position of worrying where your money is going to come from and how you're going to survive you can more easily see others as humans with the same needs as yourself, rather than how the politicians (and some people) want us to see immigrants (greedy and stealing all 'our' jobs).

Just lol, you must be trolling. You tried to row back before, but here we see the stereotypes come out.

I believe it's less than 1,000 families in the country have more than 6 kids, and you only get child benefit for the first 6 anyway. Barely anyone smokes any more; although who are you to tell people what they can and cannot spend their benefits on? Economically it doesn't matter what they buy as long as it's from a British domiciled company.

I don’t care if you "want" to contribute or not. It's not about what you "want" to do: it's about what is needed. I do not share your blind and naive trust in the generosity of rich people if only we lowered taxes on then EVEN MORE than we have over the past 50 years, and I certainly don't want us to have to rely on the capricious whims of "philanthropists" for our social welfare.

As an illustration of how crashingly unfit for purpose voluntary social contribution is, have you seen the list of bulshit charities the British public donate to? Dogs and cats high up on the list, homeless nowhere, and of course with the sort of rhetoric put about nobody is going to donate to the "lazy, feckless" who haven't got a job.

Sort it out Stargirl.

Various businesses equalling the tobacco companies, energy drink companies and the local kebab shop. They really are supporting local businesses.

Well I for one am certainly not in favour of making benefits harder to claim.

I spent a year caring for someone a while back and I had to wait nearly 6 months to claim benefits that the patient was clearly entitled to.

Six months! To claim benefits for someone who couldn't even ******* well wash themselves!!

Apart from that the problem I have with your post is that it is,I believe,out of touch with how an ever increasing number of people in this country and all over Europe are now thinking.

It's not what's true that matters it's what people think is true.Especially in democracies.

And you don't think we should fight to change what people are thinking rather than just accept that they think this way and react to that? I'm not interested in getting into an argument about immigration. The problems in this country (and around the world) largely come from the rich having an unfair share of the resources, not the poor (immigrants to a country or not) who end up jostling over jobs and welfare just to survive. We need to solve the problem of uneven income and resource distribution before anything else.

You may get child benefit for the first 6, but you also get a bigger house, and more kids that we have to help put through education, more free school meals, more everything, and for what - so that they too go on benefits. Stereotype maybe, but there seems to be a trend that those on benefits have children on benefits too - reason being that work ethic is not instilled in them.

I agree that we can't tell people what they spend their money on, however it's not their money, they haven't earned a penny, it's ours, it's the government's. If you loaned someone money (or should I say give, since we won't see this money again), and then they spent it on something that you disagreed with, wouldn't you be upset? I think in that way, money should be given in the form of food vouchers (or something along those lines).

I'd love to see how many people are suddenly able to work, if benefits were cut tomorrow.

Also LOL at the " bs British charities, dogs and cats" that made me laugh. I think the novelty in the charity is that it's a choice, rather than tax which is compulsory, ,so it makes them feel good about themselves. But I really don't know because I don't give to any charities.