Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
£500 still too much
Anyone else think £500 is too high still? Yes these people may be forced out of London and how is that a bad thing? Rents will decrease and as a knock on effect so will property prices allowing more people who make the economy turn get on the property ladder. I work full time as does my wife as with many of you this Christmas we had to struggle to buy gifts for our 6 year old son. A friend of our who is on full benefits and has never paid into our tax system in the 10 years she has lived in this country was able to buy her 8 year old daughter an £500 iPad mini. WOW. I am sick to the point of rage that people who work get less than those who don't. I asked my friend why she has to live in Haringey where the council pay her £1100 rent why can't she be unemployed somewhere cheaper like leeds for example.
£500 I wish I could have £500 a week free. Time to ship out dead wood it will be better for all of us and we know it, cap should be £400 a week and thats still being generous but I think that is the average amount a working family would have so why should those on benefits get more?
Tags for Forum Posts: benefits cap
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by LSquared on
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On undermining jobs, I made it clear that this would be set up under clear boundaries and in such a way as to be inaccessible to traditional employers specifically to avoid preclude undermining paid jobs. If you don't think it would be possible to prevent that it would definitely be interesting to understand the reasons, but I don't think it is a prima facie objection.
The reason low pay is a separate issue to unemployment is because the situation it leads to is very different.
State support of the unemployed (or part time employed) creates people who are very cash poor but very time rich. I am interested in whether there is a way to fold those people back into society in a more active way than we do today.
State support of the employed but low paid enables businesses / services which would not be viable if they paid a realistic wage. This might be a benefit overall (eg if London businesses couldnt afford to employ cleaners they might relocate, reducing employment opportunities for Londoners and taking jobs out of the local economy and tax base), but it seems to me a very unwieldy way of delivering it as it effectively puts the onus on the low paid to apply for subsidies to the company wage bill, and it doesn't differentiate between supporting a valuable but non-viable business and just increasing the profits of a viable one.
This is a separate and huge topic in its own right, and although I alluded to it briefly in my first post I really don't intend to get into this one too!
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I think others have responded better than I could about WHY I am so against the idea of asking the unemployed to perform "useful" work in the community (although a lot of them do already). As for the £71 a week, that is what they get to live on, we have already concluded on here that the housing benefit goes straight to a very wealthy landlord who can afford to own a house that they do not live in.
Seventy one pounds a week! £71!!!! Even extremely right wing economists in the city think that job seekers allowance is not enough to live on in London. They do however think that to many people are claiming it long term.
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The money paid to the landlord still provides the claimant with the benefit of accommodation (ie stops them having to move to Leeds!) If they were working that is something that would have to come out of their wages. Therefore when comparing working and unemployed incomes in order to highlight how little the unemployed receive, it is disingenous to ignore it unless you also subtract the money spent on accommodation from the working income.
And while you may feel others have responded better to my question I am still unclear as to what you actually think! So an answer would still be appreciated, thank you. Why can't people who are not currently working and are relying on public support give one day of their week to the public benefit in return, on the understanding that (1) this will be used only to provide additional labour to the existing workforce, not to replace existing jobs, (2) the fact that they are not able to look for paid work on that one day will not affect their eligibility for any benefits, and (3) they will only be asked to do work of real benefit (ie should we ever reach the happy state of looking around and seeing that absolutely nothing needs doing hat isn't beng done by a paid employee already, the proper response will be to continue to support the unemployed without thinking up pointless make-work).
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I am starting to come around to your point of view with regards to housing benefit but only a little bit. It must be nice to have someone else responsible for putting a roof over your head but I think the actual cost is completely irrelevant for a couple of reasons. The first is of course that tenants do not, in any way at all, benefit from this money. Their landlord does. If the rent was lower would you have such a problem with it? The other reason is that the proportion of the social welfare budget spent on housing benefit is actually tiny. Notice that young people are not complaining about the pension bill when in fact they damn well should be.
I've tried to show you that the long term unwilling and unemployed are the price we pay for a comprehensive social welfare net, you've consistently just concentrated on the amount spent, especially on housing. I know it's hard to put that out of your mind if you are paying something similar out of your own wages and I've often thought this way myself. The alternative is of course, mothers on the streets with babies and skinny young children begging for food. Nobody, not even the nastiest Tories, want that.
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John, I don't have a problem with hb other than I don't think it's valid to ignore it when considering unemployed income. It's really just an aside to my main point. Think of it this way - if a claimant suddenly found they couldn't claim it any more they would certainly notice that lack! So I think we do have to consider it part of the state support an unemployed person receives.
But on the main, more interesting point:
I agree that the few long term unwilling and unemployed are the price we pay for a comprehensive social welfare net, but again that's not really relevant here as it implies some sort of deserving/undeserving split which is very definitely not what I am saying. If you are reading it that way you are misunderstanding me.
My point is that a comprehensive social net does not preclude expecting the recipients of that support to do something in return, and in fact creates possibilities that would never arise as traditional jobs. I think we should recognise and take advantage of this. Not as a punishment, or a deterrent, or a moral statement, or cheap labour for corporates, but just as another mechanism by which people make a practical contribution to the community they are part of.
Basically, get away from thinking in terms of the unemployed as people "on the bench" with nothing to offer until something they will be paid for comes up (such a capitalist view of the world!) and start thinking in terms of people with something to offer and, due to state support, the time to offer it.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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There are some basic principles here
London is a very expensive place to live
London depends on low waged people to clean up our crap and look after people
If there was an exodus of low waged people from London our crap wouldn't be cleaned and vulnerable people not looked after
A. We all sink a mire of crap
B. We give people who do the important stuff a living wage (paid for by their employers)
C. We upgrade their salaries through benefits from taxpayers.
I'm thinking B
Benefits support companies who pay a pittance to the people they employ and we pick up the bill as tax payers. Isn't that the real scandal?
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Last night on Twitter people who have experienced what it is really like to live on benefits in this country shared stories with Alex Andreou whose own story of being homeless for a year kicked the conversation off.
Although I've had times when money was tight, I've never had to undergo the kind of exhausting and demoralising experiences that were shared.
I'm reminded when reading these of the American proverb Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes
Read the stories here
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