Benefits for the well off

[lindyloo]

something else that i think is counterproductive, when talking to a someone, whose foriegn ( csa cant touch him) husband has left her. she works, but doesnt earn enough to be able to pay the high rents in this area, even though she is in a housing ass. house. she gets working tax credit, and of her wages and tax credits, the local council takes 87 pence out of every £ she earns/ tax credits, over about £55. so she is trapped in poverty. when there was an automatic increase of tax credit a couple of years ago, for everyone who claimed it, to meet the cost of living, the council took the lot, about a fiver or something, and she had enough extra to buy half a loaf of bread per week!!

[Brengirl]

I have no problem with the rich getting richer if they spend it all. The more money in circulation means more jobs and a stronger economy which should benefit all of us. Money makes the world go round. Seems like I am back to swings and roundabouts again

[miffy]

Scrap trident that will save the country an enormous amount of money, stop lighting up public buildings at night so saving thousands in energy bills. Scrap Ofsted and SATS so saving thousands paid to fat cats who come into schools to tell teachers how to do their jobs.
Should have gone on rant page. Sorry.

[zazen999]

I have no problem with the rich getting richer if they spend it all. The more money in circulation means more jobs and a stronger economy which should benefit all of us. Money makes the world go round. Seems like I am back to swings and roundabouts again

But if it's not in circulation then it is in the banks, who lend to it people who need it....or at least they used to before they broke the system.

[Nessa]

What I can't understand is how some of these people end up so well off from the benefit system. I am currently on maternity leave and my OH is not working due to being made redundant at the end of last year. He is now not entitled to any unemployment benefits as, with my £123 a week, I earn too much! Having paid into the system for 18 years each we are not entitled to many benefits, but have put claims in for everything going and taken what has actually been offered. And then when I go back to work we'll accept that benefits and tax credits will go down.

If we hadn't paid in, having never worked, we'd be able to claim much more. How wrong is that? As was said in an earlier post, the system disincentivises people to come off benefits.

IMO the main problem with means testing benefits etc is this - where do you draw the line? If £35k is too high to be receiving tax credits what value is right? Just a thought?

Something that might help would be to restrict the number of children people have. I know of several people who have had children to be able to claim extra benefits. This is plain wrong in my book.

MrsC - I'd give the tax credit people a ring, you must be entitled to something, as the calculators on the direct.gov website are not even remotely accurate.

x

[Caro]

it would just be fairer and cheaper to admin. if they would just do what i keep saying: up the minumum wage to about £12- £15 per hour and then pay the companies a "benefit" so they can afford to pay the wage at that level. they will never solve the benefit system, if they dont get wages inline with mortgages and rents. and the new tax threshhold is a joke- s, you are £200 pounds a year better off if you are a low earner, and then if they increase vat, everything will go up anyway, soon gobbling it up.


as to child benefit, well- i have known people, in the past , who have thier kids in private school, and the child benefit pays the cleaner!! and to be honest, i dont think that is right.

Lindyloo, how on earth is that meant to work??? If you make the minimum wage £15, then it's £15 everywhere and those in the non-expensive areas will be laughing all the way to the bank. At someone's expense, as someone always has to pay. And, as an employer, I don't for a minute believe any government would fully top up the extra cost, so i can tell you now that jobs would have to go, so how does that help? I don't think my part timers would be at all happy when I had to let them go.

something else that i think is counterproductive, when talking to a someone, whose foriegn ( csa cant touch him) husband has left her. she works, but doesnt earn enough to be able to pay the high rents in this area, even though she is in a housing ass. house. she gets working tax credit, and of her wages and tax credits, the local council takes 87 pence out of every £ she earns/ tax credits, over about £55. so she is trapped in poverty. when there was an automatic increase of tax credit a couple of years ago, for everyone who claimed it, to meet the cost of living, the council took the lot, about a fiver or something, and she had enough extra to buy half a loaf of bread per week!!

I'm really struggling to understand this. How do the council "take" her money? Or do you mean if she earns her own, then her benefits are reduced? As many others have said, as there's a big difference between "giving" to the rich and "taking" less from them, so there's a difference between taking someone's earnings and reducing their benefits. I quite agree that the system is out of balance when it disincentives people from working full time, but that doesn't mean that people can claim the council is taking their money!

And as for child benefits, I don't think anyone who receives them should moan about anyone else receiving them. just be grateful. I'm a higher rate tax payer (just, don't think I have a ridiculous salary),I have no children, I receive no benefits, I even pay for private health insurance which gives me good care and reduces the burden on the NHS. I'm not bitching about subsidising people, I believe we should have a welfare state. I'm just fed up with people moaning that I have more disposable income than they do. I studied hard for years, I work hard. What's wrong with me earning a decent income and being allowed to enjoy it in peace?

[jackie j]

We are what is known as middle income earners, my OH has a good job which allows me to work a few hours a week. We have a modest mortgage, we dont smoke or drink, we dont have take away meals or go out for meals very often, we dont have any credit cards or debt, we cant afford to take foreign holiday's or even uk holiday's. We go camping if the weather is ok. We do get child benefit and working tax credit for one child. We run out of money every month yet we dont spend it on what ever the latest craze is, or on anything we dont need. We pay one of the highest water rates in the country. Without the benefits we get we would be back to struggling like we were a few years ago.
I thought the reason the child tax credits were paid and the tax allowance stopped was to make sure the mother (usually ) got the money rather than the father in his tax allowance as some fathers even when living in the same house didnt always pay for the things that children need and children went without the basics.

[lindyloo]

as i understand it caro, the gov. says the money you need to live on per week is 59£ ( or similar- obviously i dont know the exact amount, but it was 50 something- i am hardly going to ask the person inquestion) so, for each pound over the 59 that she earns, 87 p is taken back against her rent. which means that if as she, you are a low earner, then how are you supposed to get clear of this? i dont say people should get everything paid for them- far from it, but how can anyone get ahead if out of every £ they earn, they only get 13 pence to help them out of the situation? the point i am making is that there is a huge gulf between what most people would say is average wages for an average lifestyle, and what minimum waged people are struggling with trying to live on. i live in an affluent area, but believe me, there are a lot of respectable locals here, who are struggling on minumum wages to pay high rents, and they are trapped.

and while i agree that wages could be linked to area, to be fairer, i fail to see why a small business, should suffer if they recieved the top up on staff wages. what i fail to understand, is why a person who works 40 hours, should be paid such a low wage that they have to go cap in hand to the government, for handouts, in order to get by. if you atre in full time work, you shoud be paid enough to live on.

[chris]

I have a friend (sorta) who has 5 kids - and he's 28 odd? He makes a living from the benefits he (and mrs) gets for having that many children.

Doing the calculator thingy, for just my income I'm going to be ~£360 worse off. Addressing my finances yesterday I worked out that this year, we've been spending £68 a day -going from the past 6 month credit card statements, averaging them by 30 days. Scary.

We're making cut backs now..

[jackie j]

Lindyloo going back to when I was on benefits due to being left on my own with 4 boys ( 18 yrs agso ) I was allowed to earn £15 a week on top, for every £ over that was taken away from my benefits. This was made up of family allowance, maintenance from ex ( £50 a week ), council tax paid, Income support, my mortgage was paid and I had to increase it to pay ex OH off. As I only worked part time and I was allowed to take school holidays off using all my holidays and unpaid time off, by the time it was sorted every school holiday was over, It was a nightmare trying to make ends meet. I cant remember how much I was allowed to live on but it wasnt much. My sister worked in the post office and she was convinced I wasnt getting enough, so a friend who worked in the benefits department went through everything I had coming in and going out, he said I was getting everything I was entitled to.

[OverWyreGrower]

So, if lots of people are unhappy with the way the budget has gone; what (useful and workable) suggestions have you got?

What should the Gov't have made cutbacks on instead? What should be increased?

[SarzWix]

The child benefit freeze, and the 20% VAT is going to hurt us. The difference in tax allowance and NI isn't going to make a lot of difference because the OH isn't earning enough (on 4 hours a day) to pay much tax anyway.

The idea of spending £68 a day shocks me a bit! Does that include bills? We've had to make £70 last this whole week, including fuel, dinner money and food, and there's 5 of us, plus 4 pets!

OWG, I'd have liked to see the banks and other financial institutions made to cough up more. No matter how much the Conservatives blame this on Labour, if they hadn't had to bail out the banks (which the Conservatives backed at the time) the country wouldn't have so much debt. Perhaps if the credit sector were made to pay more tax on their profits, they wouldn't be so quick to give people 29.9% APR credit cards/catalogues/store cards, Buy Now Pay Later, and all the other rigmarole which gets people into a mire they can't get out of...

And then we might have a nation that remembers that you have to work for things before you get them...

[OverWyreGrower]

And then we might have a nation that remembers that you have to work for things before you get them...

Imagine that

I have just used the BBC's budget calculator, and calculated that we will (allegedly) be about £230 a year better off. AFAIK, this doesn't take into account the VAT increase.

I suspect this is because we don't have children, don't claim any sort of benefits, and both work full time.

I'd like to say that we're well off, but we're not, by any stretch of the imagination. I suspect that any saving we make will be subsumed by the VAT increase.

[jackie j]

In this area two people from the council went to south africa for the football at our expense £6,000 for them both. They say it was all to do with tourism, yeah right. Recently it was announced how much this government have spent on drink entertaining guests since they came into power, in my opinion its this sort of thing that ought to be cut back on. I think every council should be made to tell us exactly where our money goes, yet again too many cheifs and not enough indians. We are all being told we have to cut our spending so why shouldnt they, and I dont mean by getting rid of staff.
In my job I was recently told we are overstaffed and people are being moved around to help ease the area's that are over, and help the area's that need help. This is one of the big supermarket chains.
For far too long the lowest paid always get the brunt of cuts, the rich like those in parliment dont have to worry. As my mum used to say the rich get richer and the poor get poor'er.
Those that are work shy should not get any money, those that can prove they are unfortunate enough not to be able to work should be allowed to live comfortably.

[lindyloo]

jackie i, i think the problem with the person i was talking about is that the local council takes off so much against the rent. but i agree with everything you say in your posts. the government parties are all saying that the welfare system needs a radical rethink, but they really just wheel out the same old stuff, and as you say , the rich get rich and the poor get poorer. yes there are scroungers, but i think most people are just doing the best that they can do in the situation they find themselves in- and not everyone is created equal; we dont all have the same gifts and strengths. and i dont think the problem is benefit system being too generous, i truly think the problem is that the wages are too low. the entire financial world is out of kilter on a very basic level.

back to my theory- if the top ups were paid to companies, not only would it be easier to admin, but it would cut a lot of cheating as well.

my ideas for the cuts the government needs to save money would be the one i have already suggested. also, stop paying people to have children, and dont put single mothers who get pregnant as a career move, to the top of the housing queue.
i truly question the wisdom of encouraging peole to have children they cant afford, and also the raising of the retirement age. i am all for people who want to continue to work, to do so as they get older, but, for those peole who want to retire, why not let them do so at the same age it is now. what is the point iof having a glut of old workers, plus schoolleavers, and no jobs to actually fill- it just doesnt make sense!

also, why not save money by scrapping the space program.

and why not build some really affordable housing, run by councils and not housing asc.; that would create jobs and stop the councils having to pay out for private rents ie housing benefit- was anyone else shocked when they announced that as a spending cut, they are capping the amount of weekly housing benefit at £400 a week-- i ask you, what are they housing them in- buckingham palace? and who is "benefit"ing from the high rents they pay out- a certain type of private landlord

they should certainly have got money back, on a large scale, from the banks

i definately think that the rich should have to make more cuts than the poor, because, it has to be said, some of the salaries they command are obcene, and i was brought up to the standard that with position and priveledge ( top of the pile) comes responsibility, and that includes doing as much as you can when the going gets tough. and of the rich people i know- yes i know those too- the last couple of years has hardly made a dent in thier lifestyles.

and they should have a dormitory so that mps have somewhere to stay, whilst about thier business in the capital. it should even have a canteen! then we could scrap 2nd homes, allowances and expensive expense accounts

i also think cuts should be made to the nhs, by allowing people to die when they have no longer a quality of life.

I have just read that our mps have claimed 10 million in expenses in the last 3 monthes! so i question if we couldnt save money by getting rid of them as well (LOL)